The Witch of Eye Read Online Free PDF

lose my job.’
    Jenna sat quietly. She was well aware that only men of the greatest integrity and honesty would be put in charge of a big cattle drove like this one. Robin Fairweather was certain to be well-respected in his home village, probably from a good family. Just the kind of man, in fact, to whom she could entrust her safe conduct. She couldn’t let this opportunity pass. Just as she was about to speak again, to beg him to take her on, he cut across her.
    ‘If ... and I mean if ... I were to allow you to travel with us there’d be no flighty, fancy nonsense with the men. You would have to promise me. Is that clear?’ His face was stern but there was still that twinkle in his eye.
    ‘I promise,’ said Jenna with great solemnity. ‘I shall behave like a nun.’
    ‘Huh! That guarantees nothing. Nuns are often no better than they should be!’
    ‘Very well, then – I shall behave like a decent, respectable Devonshire woman.’
    ‘In that case,’ said Robin, ‘you may travel with us. If you’re quite sure you want to.’
    ‘Clear and sheer,’ Jenna said. ‘I was never so sure of anything in my life.’
    Having relented, Robin assured her that though no one could offer her complete protection from the many dangers on the road, she would be safer with the drove than she would be on her own. The animals were being taken to a stock farm on the outskirts of London, he told her, in the village of Westminster where the bullocks would be grazed and fattened up for a few weeks before being sold in the livestock market at Smithfield.
    ‘Sleep on it,’ advised Robin. ‘And if you still want to go through with it, be ready at cockcrow. I want to be on the road as soon after daybreak as we can. I haven’t got time to waste.’
    Should she join them? Would she be putting herself at risk? It was difficult to think rationally in the festive atmosphere of the barn: by now, small beer had given way to stronger ale, and the wrestling match was well under way, the favourites being cheered to the rafters.
    Jenna spent the remainder of the evening veering between her conviction that the idea was a good one and nervous apprehension at venturing into the unknown – but she also realised that the last place Jake would think of looking for her was in the middle of a cattle drove. It was no use dithering, she  had to make a decision because this could be the best opportunity she would ever have. And she knew what Alice would have done.
    Jenna left with the drove when it moved out shortly after dawn the next morning.
    ***
    T he Duchess of Gloucester had a feeling of delighted anticipation on the one hand and disturbing anxiety on the other. These conflicting emotions had been brought about by an urgent request from the King for the Duke and Duchess to attend him at the palace at their earliest convenience and, while Eleanor was always eager to be in the presence of her husband’s royal nephew, something had set an alarm bell sounding in her head. She had no idea why they had been sent for. Neither, it seemed, had her husband.
    Yet again, niggling disquiet had dragged Eleanor out of a shallow, fretful slumber, to the sound of her own aching teeth grinding against each other. She had been through a whole bottle of Margery Jourdemayne’s tincture of myrrh in a single week. It often amazed her that her restlessness didn’t wake Humphrey but there was nothing of the alert soldier about her husband when he was in his bed. He slept like a man with no conscience and now, lying on his back, he was snoring fit to wake the dead. There would be no more sleep for Eleanor that night.
    Admittedly, Humphrey was not at his most attractive at moments like this: the passing years had not been kind to him, and the excesses of his table and his liking for Burgundy wine had thickened his waist. But his wife was able to look beyond the slackly open mouth, the stained teeth and the smell of stale drink and still be grateful that he was