The Vanishing Witch Read Online Free PDF

need? Unless he was entering the Church, and Robert didn’t intend his son to waste his life as a priest, scraping a pittance from tithes and alms. But if Edith didn’t stop coddling the boy, it would be all he was fit for.

    Adam was Edith’s baby. Jan had arrived after two stillborn boys. The two others who came after him had died in infancy and Edith had despaired that she would ever have another child. So when Adam mewled his way into the world, he was to her an Isaac, born to Sarah in old age and destined for great things. Edith had refused to allow any but herself to nurse him, day or night, certain that onlyconstant vigilance would keep him safe.
    Robert supposed it was only natural that his wife should cosset the lad. Not that his own mother had ever fussed over him, quite the contrary. He’d been raised on a diet of indifference, thrashing and hard work, and had convinced himself he was glad of it: at least he had been able to stand up for himself when he was sent to work as an apprentice. As soonas Adam turned twelve in a few months, Robert was determined that his son should learn a trade too, however much Edith protested. His own business was naturally entailed to Jan as the eldest and Adam would have to make his own way in the world.
    But if the boy didn’t toughen up, a miserable time he would have of it. Apprentices and journeymen could spot a weakling the moment he walked throughthe door and would make him the butt of every cruel jest that young lads can devise. Barely a month went by without some young apprentice hanging himself in his master’s workshop to escape the torment. And for all that Robert did not dote on the boy, he would never want to see his son unhappy.
    Tenney flung open the door at the back of the hall, which led to the courtyard and the kitchen, andbore in a great dish of beef stew. A rich steam, heavy with vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, mace, ginger, sage and onion, wafted through the room. Beata, the maid, followed with a basket of fresh bread. She gave Robert a reproachful look, as vexed as her mistress by his late arrival, but Robert knew it was more because he’d put Edith in a bad humour than for any fear that the stew would spoil. Beata tookfar too much pride in her cooking ever to allow that to happen.
    The arrival of supper was a welcome diversion and the piquant steam sharpened their already keen appetites. They had barely swallowed a mouthful when the door from the courtyard was flung open and Jan strolled in. Adam scrambled from his chair and, heedless of his father’s earlier warning, ran across to him, jigging expectantly fromfoot to foot. ‘Did you get it, Jan? Did you?’
    His brother grinned and, with a flourish, produced a small wooden model of a trebuchet, used to hurl stones at castles under siege. He held the toy high in the air, making Adam leap for it. Adam’s eyes shone as he whispered his thanks.
    Robert’s elder son had lodgings near the warehouse on the Braytheforde harbour. It was an arrangement he and hisfather had come to by mutual consent. It was easier for Jan, as Robert’s steward, to keep a close eye on the business, but it also meant that if the lad came home drunk after a night with his friends at the cockpits or with some girl hanging on his arm, Robert, and more importantly Edith, wouldn’t know of it – at least, not immediately. Nothing happened in Lincoln that was not round the city by thefollowing day. Even so, Jan usually called in each day to see his mother and reassure her that he was not lying dead in a ditch and had not contracted some fever in the night, which Edith would imagine, if a day passed without her seeing him.
    With a friendly nod towards Thomas, he crossed to his mother, planting a kiss on her cheek as she lifted her face to him. She patted his shoulder. ‘Evenlater than your father,’ she murmured. ‘He works you much too hard.’
    ‘The last of the cargo arrived late from Boston and I wanted to check that the tallies