The Lost Stories (26 page)

“Anything else?”

“I don't know . . . Yes. One more thing. I want them to know that if they ever need me, if they ever need to call on me, I will be there, no matter what.”

“That's what you want to say?” Halt asked.

Will paused, then nodded. “Yes,” he said. There was a definite sense of purpose about him now. Halt was pleased to see it.

“And do you think that's what they want to hear?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

Halt reined in and Will checked Tug to stop beside him. They half turned in the saddle, facing each other, and Halt spread his hands and raised his eyebrows.

“Well then, Will, that's all you need to say.”

Slowly, a rueful smile spread over Will's face. “That speech I wrote,” he said. “It was pretty awful, wasn't it?”

“It was appalling,” Halt said, then couldn't resist adding, “and I say that with the greatest fulsomeness of my heart.”

Will winced as the memory of that phrase came back to him.

“Did I really write that?” he said.

Halt nodded. “Oh yes. You really wrote that.”

“Just as well I threw it in the fire, then,” Will said. He clicked his tongue and Tug started trotting down the highway again. Halt urged Abelard to follow them. He caught up and they rode side by side for several hundred meters in silence once more.

Then Halt said quizzically, “I didn't realize your speech was in the satchel. Mind you, it does explain one thing I've been wondering about . . .” He let the sentence hang, unfinished, so that Will had to ask the question.

“What was that?”

“Why the flames turned purple. It wasn't the dye. It was the speech.”

“And I suppose you'll tell everyone about that, won't you?” Will asked.

Halt turned a beatific smile upon him.

“Of course I will,” he said.

FOR WHAT MUST HAVE BEEN THE TENTH TIME IN AS MANY minutes, Jenny glanced around the interior of her restaurant. Everything seemed to be in order. The tables were neatly positioned, the chairs arranged around them in perfect symmetry. Each table was laid with a red-and-white-checked cloth, and the eating utensils glistened in their places. She walked quickly between the tables, checking that knives and forks were on the correct side of the settings. Her headwaiter, Rafe, hovered anxiously behind her.

Rafe was a good worker and a loyal employee. He was well intentioned, cheerful and honest. In fact, he was everything Jenny could hope for in a head waiter. Except for one failing. Rafe had an unfortunate tendency to confuse his left hand with his right. This meant that, from time to time, his cutlery settings became reversed, and for a perfectionist like Jenny, that was a source of extreme annoyance.

Some time back, Will had more or less solved the problem. He had pointed out to Rafe that a knife was like a small sword, and so it should be used in the right, or sword, hand. This simple mnemonic had been remarkably effective. For some weeks after, Rafe could be seen setting tables, from time to time making a mock sword stroke to establish which hand was which and which side the knives went on.

But occasionally, Jenny noticed, he became overconfident and placed the knives and forks where instinct told him they should go. When that happened, they mysteriously reversed their positions on the tables and Jenny's temper, always close to boiling point, would explode.

Her friend Alyss, with a diplomat's eye for compromise, had suggested that she could solve the problem by simply folding the knife and fork together in the napkin and placing the rolled bundle in the center of the setting. But Jenny was stubborn.

“Right is right and left is left,” she said. “Why can't he learn that?”

She sensed Rafe behind her as she checked the restaurant. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that his right hand was describing small, jerking motions as he made incipient sword strokes to test the positioning of each setting. As she checked the last table, she turned to him and nodded.

“That's all fine, Rafe. Good work.” She saw his shoulders sag in relief and a beaming smile break out across his open, honest face.

“Thank'ee, Mistress Jenny. I do try my best for 'ee.”

“I know, Rafe,” she said. She patted his hand and for a moment regretted the number of times she had cracked him across the head with a ladle when he had failed to live up to her high standards.

But only for a moment.

He followed her now to the kitchen, where her assistant chef was hard at work cutting and chopping in preparation for the evening meal. Scullery assistants hurried to and fro, bringing more food from the larder for the cook to prepare and polishing serving platters and cooking pans till they gleamed. At Jenny's appearance, the pace in the kitchen increased noticeably.

Rafe could afford to be more sanguine about this part of the inspection. If something was wrong in the kitchen, he couldn't be blamed for it. Jenny cast a professional eye around the room. Somewhat to Rafe's disappointment, there seemed to be nothing wrong. He would have enjoyed seeing someone else suffer the cracking impact of Jenny's ladle on the back of their head. She gestured to a row of ducks spitted on a long metal rod, their skins glistening with the spiced and flavored oil that had been rubbed over them.

“Those ducks will have to go over the fire no later than four o'clock,” she told the assistant chef.

The woman looked up, blew a stray strand of hair away from her eyes and nodded. “Aye, Mistress Jenny.”

“And make sure Norman turns them regularly. They must cook evenly.”

“Aye, mistress. Norman? You hear the mistress there?” she called to a young scullery assistant, who was currently bringing a basket of potatoes from the vegetable locker.

“Aye, Miss Ailsa. Aye, Mistress Jenny. I'll turn them regular like. Never fear.”

Jenny nodded. The ducks would be placed on their spit over the large open fire in the dining room. They would be turned regularly so that the skin roasted evenly and crisped to a golden brown. The fat dripping onto the coals would sizzle and hiss and fill the room with its delicious odor, creating a truly mouthwatering atmosphere. Jenny had learned from Master Chubb, her mentor, that there was a certain amount of show business necessary in a good restaurant. There were only six ducks, but their effect on the atmosphere would far outweigh their relatively small number.

“Very well.” Jenny cast one more look around, trying to find something out of place, something that needed correction, and failed. Her staff watched her anxiously. This would be the first time in many months that Jenny had not overseen operations in the restaurant herself. She was something like a new mother leaving her baby in the care of others for the first time.

It would take a very special circumstance for Jenny to trust her restaurant to them in this way. Both Rafe and Ailsa knew that. And this was a special occasion. Tonight, she was cooking a romantic dinner for two in her cottage for a special guest.

A very special guest.

Tonight, the handsome, young Ranger Gilan was coming to dinner.

 

Resolutely, Jenny turned her back on the restaurant and strode up the high street of Wensley Village. It felt unnatural for her not to be in the kitchen at this time of day, preparing for the evening dinner service. But she had left Ailsa and Rafe in charge and she had to trust that she had trained them well.

“After all, I have to have some time off occasionally,” she muttered, resisting the almost overwhelming temptation to rush back and see what disasters had occurred in the two and a half minutes since she had left.

She entered the butcher's stall, halfway down the high street. Edward, the butcher, looked up and smiled as he saw her. Jenny was an excellent customer, of course, buying large amounts of his product for her restaurant. And on top of that, she was extremely pretty. Just the sort of young lady that butchers the world over enjoyed flirting with.

“Ah, Mistress Jenny. Looking more beautiful than ever!” he boomed.“You've brought a light of rare beauty into my dim little shop.”

Jenny rolled her eyes at him. “I see you have a surplus of tripe available today, Edward.”

He laughed, unabashed. “Ah, bear with me, Jenny. There's few as pretty as you come in here in a day and you should know it. You're a rare treat for these poor old eyes.”

Edward was barely thirty-five. But it's an unfailing trait of butchers to behave as if each customer is far, far younger than they. With the more mature housewives, it was probably a good tactic, Jenny thought.

“Do you have my order?” she asked. She enjoyed the hearty, good-natured atmosphere of the butcher's shop, but today she was in a hurry. Edward turned to his apprentice, who had been watching their exchange with a grin on his face.

“Dilbert, fetch Miss Jenny's order,” Edward said, then added,
“d-na yrruh tuoba ti.”

Jenny smiled to herself. It was another peculiarity of the butcher's trade that they learned to talk in butcher speak, in which words were pronounced backward. This allowed butchers to have private conversations even when their shop was full of customers. Often, the remarks passed were about the customers themselves, although the customers never had the faintest idea what was being said. Edward was obviously letting Dilbert get some practice in this strange language and had just said, “And hurry about it.”

Jenny had discovered this strange phenomenon some time ago and had secretly practiced backward speak herself. Now she smiled as Dilbert moved toward the cool room.

“I epoh s'ti a ecin gel fo b-mal,”
she said sweetly, and both the butcher and his apprentice let their jaws drop as she told them that she hoped it was a nice leg of lamb. Edward hurriedly searched his memory, trying to recall if he had ever said anything disparaging about Jenny in butcher speak. He thought not, but he couldn't be sure. Sensing his concern, she smiled at him.

“You'll never know,” she said, and he hurriedly looked away from her and went back to slicing a rump of beef into thick steaks.

Dilbert returned, carrying a leg of lamb, and placed it on the counter for Jenny's inspection. It was a prime piece of meat, its freshness confirmed by the whiteness of the fat glistening around the edges. Jenny eyed it critically, a slight frown on her face. It would never do to let Edward know that she was too pleased with his produce. She poked the leg, feeling the slight resilience in the flesh, then slapped it with the flat of her hand, creating a resounding smack. She nodded, satisfied at the sound. If asked, she would have been at a loss to explain why she invariably tested a piece of meat by slapping it. It was merely part of a ritual that she had developed over the years.

“That's fine, Edward. Wrap it for me, please.”

Edward nodded to Dilbert and the boy produced a length of clean muslin and proceeded to wrap it around the leg of lamb. As he did so, Edward glanced slyly at Jenny.

“Not too much for just two people, is it?” he asked.

Jenny shook her head. She had thought her dinner with Gilan was a private affair, although she should have known that it was impossible to keep a secret in this village. But Edward was right. The leg was a little large for just her and Gilan.

She estimated that it was close to three kilos in weight. But whatever was left over would go to good use.

“Whatever we don't eat, I'll give to the orphans in the Ward,” she told him.

Edward raised his eyebrows. “Lucky orphans,” he said. He knew Jenny's reputation as a cook.

Jenny placed the wrapped leg in her basket.

“Thanks, Edward,” she said. “It's a nice piece of meat. I'll try to do it justice.”

She smiled, including Dilbert in her thanks, and left the shop.

THE THREE MEN HAD BEEN WATCHING THE VILLAGE, AND particularly the silversmith's home and workshop, for the past week. Now, Tomas decided, it was time to act. He jerked his thumb toward the heavy, iron-reinforced front door of the house and spoke out of the corner of his mouth to Nuttal.

“Right. Get going.”

Nuttal was the smallest of the three of them. He was a thin man, a little reminiscent of a ferret in his features and his tendency to make sudden nervous movements. It was his small stature that had made Tomas select him for the task. Of the three of them, he was the least threatening.

Nuttal strode across the high street toward Ambrose's house, glancing nervously from side to side as he went. Tomas let him get halfway, then nudged Mound in the ribs.

“Right. Come on!”

They walked hurriedly across the street, angling toward the side of the house. They saw Nuttal arrive at the front door and reach inside his jerkin for a small leather-wrapped pouch. Then they hurried down the narrow side passage to the small window they had noticed several days before.