The Highwayman's Curse Read Online Free PDF Page A

fighting my brother once more, in that duel where at last I had beaten him and taught him to fear and respect me. But now, I did not beat him: now, I was lying, writhing in the mud, while he loomed over me with his sword-tip tracing its way around my throat, his nasty ginger moustache dripping rain, his little eyes gleaming. I could not move and his foot on my chest squeezed the breath from me. Behind him I could see Blackfoot, the wounds on his sides raw from where my brother had used the spurs so cruelly. Somehow my sisters were there, with their silly frills and squeals, their soft satin shoes sodden in the mud. And then I was in thick fog, alone, in a stinking marsh with my feet sinking into the mud. Was that a ghostly horseman through the swirling fog? Was that a light? Did I hear the galloping hoofbeats of pursuing redcoats?
    â€œWill!” It was Bess. I opened my eyes. At first her face was blurred and strange, the surroundings half dark, but quickly my sight adjusted. Everything rushed back to me: the murdered old man, the boy and his broken arm, the men who had taken us. I had been hit from behind. But where was I? No longer outside. In some kind of barn or byre, I guessed. Thin lines of white outlined the shuttered door and a few rays of sunlight pierced the holes in the thatch. Twisting my head painfully, I saw that some light also came through a high window, with partly open shutters. Over there was the shape of something that looked like a plough, and I thought I could smell the vinegar tang of apples that had been stored over winter.
    Where were the horses? Blackfoot and Merlin? I struggled to sit up but something tugged at my throat. I was tied by my neck to something I could not see.
    Bess was not far away, sitting on the floor with her hands bound behind her. She too was tethered like a horse by the neck to a metal ring above her. I tried to twist my hands but my bonds were too tight. Our saddlebags were gone, along with our few possessions.
    â€œHow long have I been here?” My words were thick, my lips stiff as leather.
    â€œI know not. Perhaps three or four hours. Or more. It has seemed a long time. I thought…” She did not need to say what she had thought. She did not ask as to my suffering. I think she was angry with me. “On your head be the consequences,” she had said, yet now she too would bear the results of my decision to help the child.
    â€œWhat do they plan?” I asked.
    â€œEvil, I fear. The child will not speak. Or cannot. They think we murdered the old shepherd.”
    She had been right. But it would not help to dwell on that now. I struggled to think clearly.
    â€œTell me all you’ve learned. Anything may help us and for certain we need help now.”
    Closing my eyes, I tried to slow my spinning head, quell my churning stomach. I let my muscles soften, my neck loosen, wishing for the drumming in my skull to cease. Her words came slowly at first, then more quickly as she remembered more.
    The injured boy was called Tam and the old shepherd had been his great-grandfather, Old John. Thomas, the man with the dark beard, was Tam’s father and there seemed to be no mother – the other woman was Tam’s grandmother. Bess said her name was Jeannie. The older man, the quiet man with the trim grey beard, must be Jeannie’s husband, though Bess was not sure. His name was Jock. Bess did not know who the other men or the girl were, though she guessed the red-haired girl was Tam’s sister. He had a brother too, older, but Bess didn’t know his name. There was the boy who had seemed about my age, I remembered – that must be he. And there were two or three other men but Bess did not know their names. Some of the family had gone to church while the others guarded us.
    This much she had gathered from their words as they tied our limbs and bundled us into the place where we now found ourselves. She had also heard snatches of conversation