The Lightning Bolt Read Online Free PDF Page B

hooded cloak crouched before the fire, poking it with a long stick. The room was dark, with shutters drawn over the narrow windows. It had a strange lingering smell. As she passed, the figure looked up. She saw the pale, miserable face of a boy about the same age as her little brother, Noah, who was nine. He scowled at the sight of her, and picked up a small log of firewood and flung it at the door, slamming it shut. Fairnette looked round at the sound, but Emilia was already well away from the door, her hand on Rollo’s back.
    A kitchen garden was laid out all along one side of the house. Emilia had never seen such straightrows of peas and cabbages. A vine grew along a trellis, shading a wrought-iron table and chair. Bees hummed in the rosemary and bean flowers. There was not a weed to be seen.
    At the end of the yard was a long, low stable.
    â€˜That’s my father’s forge,’ Fairnette said. ‘He works in there sometimes, on his good days. Not so often any more.’
    An old man sat on a bench in front of the forge, staring down at his hands. They were huge and hard and callused, and lay idle on his lap. A pipe smouldered from the corner of his mouth.
    â€˜Father?’ Fairnette said hesitantly.
    He looked up at the sound of her voice, and took the pipe out of his mouth. He was huge, the biggest man Emilia had ever seen. He wore a blacksmith’s scarred leather apron over a rough linen shirt, rolled up to show the strength of his forearms, the collar undone. His eyes were yellowish and watery, with red, inflamed edges.Although his beard was vast, streaked with grey as if he had wiped his ashy fingers through it, Emilia could see that he wore nothing about his neck. Disappointment stabbed through her.
    â€˜Eh?’ he said.
    â€˜Father, it’s me, Fairnette. Your daughter.’
    He stared at her without recognition, then moved his vacant, rheumy gaze to Luka’s face. ‘Do I know you?’
    â€˜No,’ Luka said, ‘though we’re kin, way back.’
    â€˜I think you may know their grandmother, Maggie Finch,’ Fairnette said.
    â€˜Maggie? Maggie Finch? But she’s only a young thing, with black hair hanging down her back. They say she’s got the eye.’
    â€˜Her hair’s grey now,’ Luka said, thinking of his grandmother, bent and crippled with rheumatism.
    â€˜Can’t be the same Maggie. Why, I saw Maggie just last month, dancing at the horse fair. Theymarried her off to that boy with a bear, I can’t remember his name.’
    â€˜Sylvio,’ Emilia said, her heart aching.
    â€˜Aye, Sylvio. What ever happened to him? We used to love his bear. He’d fiddle for it, and it’d get up on its hind paws and dance.’
    Neither Luka nor Emilia wanted to say that Sylvio and his bear were both long dead. They looked to Fairnette pleadingly. She said gently, ‘Maggie Finch is in gaol now, Father. Emilia and Luka want to get her out. Can you help?’
    â€˜I’ve got wax imprints of some keys,’ Luka said in a rush, and rummaged in their bag until he found them. ‘Could you make copies of the keys for us?’
    The old man looked at them suspiciously. ‘Why? Who are you? I don’t do things like that any more! Why, I’m the master smith at the foundry. Our guns are the pride of England! The king himself came to see them. I’m no tinker boy, to make keys and lock picks for thieves.’
    â€˜Lock pick?’ Luka asked eagerly. ‘What’s that?’
    â€˜You trying to trick me? What are you, some kind of spy? Get out of here, I say!’
    â€˜Father, no, Luka’s our kin, he’s no spy, nor a thief either. He just wants our help.’ Fairnette held out both hands imploringly.
    He glared at her with his red-rimmed eyes. ‘Who are you? I don’t know you. What do you want? Coming round, trying to trick me and steal from me. I won’t allow it, I won’t!’ He