Trouble in the Forest Book One: A Cold Summer Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

rode into the woods. He guessed it was useless to look for the watchers, for they would not be readily found.
    Finally, half a league or so further on, Chilton pointed to the left. “There’s the way to the croft, that little path there; you can see it just beyond the fallen beech tree,” he announced in a cracked voice, and swung the head of his mule in that direction. “It is not far now. The track to the croft isn’t long. The buildings are on the far side of the dell.” His relief was apparent, and deSteny wished he knew why.
    The path was mottled with sunlight and well-kept, the underbrush nibbled back by the crofters’ two nanny goats who provided milk for cheese. These, along with a dozen pigs turned out in a fenced area to eat the acorns and new shoots under the oaks, constituted the entire wealth of the crofters, who had lived in a two-room tie-beam timber house with a small kitchen-and-creamery on the far side of the narrow court centered on a well. For a crofter, it was a prosperous establishment, one that many others might begrudge the holder.
    DeSteny swung out of the saddle as the party drew up in the little courtyard. “We might as well water the horses and mules while we have the chance.” He removed his helmet and held his mare’s reins as he looked around the croft. Empty hardly more than two days, it already had that vacant, neglected look of abandoned places, and it made deSteny ill-at-ease to be here; in a year it would be overgrown and crumbling. Thrusting his worst fears out of his mind, he made himself attend to the task at hand, taking a brisk tone to ask Chilton, “Where did you find the bodies?”
    “In ... in there.” The warden was still on his mule, as if he expected he would need to escape at any moment.
    “In the house.” DeSteny pointed to the door, which stood ajar. “Inside, not out.”
    Chilton nodded.
    Wroughton was already drawing a bucket up from the well, and motioning to his men to dismount. “Horses first, then you,” he reminded the men-at-arms as the bucket came into view. “Men stand thirst better than their mounts.”
    DeSteny pulled off one gauntlet and dipped his hand into the bucket, drawing out a cupped-handful of water that he held under his mare’s nose, and smiled as she licked his palm eagerly with her soft tongue. When she had got all the water, he filled his hand again and gave her more.
    “You spoil that mare,” Wroughton chided him. “You treat her like another soldier. She’s just a horse.”
    “She has taken good care of me. I will take good care of her.” He knew his men regarded his fondness for his mare as one more in a long list of eccentricities.
    “How many were there? Bodies, I mean,” asked the Red Friar as he got off his cantankerous mule, taking care to hold the pyx protectively.
    “Six.” Chilton ticked them off on his fingers, using his thumb twice. “The man, his woman, three children, and an old woman, probably the man’s mother, though she may be an older sister or an aunt.”
    “And no sign of a fight,” prompted deSteny. “Nothing is overturned or disturbed, and not one of them has weapons in hand.”
    “No, they haven’t—none that I noticed,” Chilton answered, dismounting reluctantly. “Nothing was disturbed. The furniture was not in disorder. I hauled the corpses away in their cart. I used the goats to pull it.”
    “Did you know the crofter?” asked deSteny, realizing he should have inquired some time before now.
    “I ... had met him a time or two,” Chilton lied clumsily.
    DeSteny let this pass. “And you took the bodies to the White Friars in the hamlet nearby.”
    “Yes, to Chefford,” he answered, becoming fearful again. “The White Friars have a chapel there, at their friary.”
    “I know,” said deSteny gently, reminding the warden he was familiar with the area he was called upon to administer.
    “Then you will know the way to the hamlet,” said Chilton, glancing around in distress.
    “I