Suzanne Robinson by Lord of Enchantment Read Free Book Online Page A

Margery. Beshrew that girl. I’ll have her hanged for a thief, the hagborn piece.”
    Trailing his yellow bedgown and robe across the floor, Ponder shuffled into a dining chamber like an animated custard. He started and stumbled into a chair upon perceiving that the chamber wasn’t empty. His guest sat with his legs propped on the dining table. Beside a candle sat a bottle of wine. Ponder glanced at muddy boots, clothing of black silk trimmed with gold, and a dark visage surrounded by ebony hair and eyes. Disheveled as he was, the guest managed to make Ponder look even older and more ungainly than he was while himself resembling a beautiful blue-black raven.
    Ponder glanced at the sword at the young man’s side. His gaze slid away and landed on the wine bottle. He found a goblet and filled it. Draining it, he mumbled to himself.
    “The devil take her, stealing my prize sow. I should have burned her out of that castle years ago when she spurned my offer of marriage. She spurned me, and after I took so much trouble in wooing her. Cost me, did that wooing. It isn’t right. Not right. The vile creature, depriving me of my land, my castle, mine. Old King Harry gave it me, he did. His son had no right to take it away. None.”
    “Give o’er, Cutwell,” the young man said.
    “Foul thievery, that’s what it was. I’ve tried salting her fields, poisoning wells, naught avails me.”
    Ponder’s dark-haired guest sprang to his feet. The chair flew back and slammed against a sideboard as the young man roared at his host.
    “Stop your tongue, lackwit! By the trinity, I’ll hear no more. Why didn’t you tell me the girl found a man washed up on the beach?”
    “By my faith, what man?”
    The guest planted his hands on the table, leaned toward Ponder, and stared like a snake gazing at a field mouse. “Before he sailed for France, my ship’s master told me that your steward mentioned a young castaway lodged at Highcliffe Castle. I don’t pay you to worship pigs, Cutwell. I thought this man drowned with the rest of those bastards in the storm, and now I find him lolling and taking his ease under my very nose.”
    “Upon mine honor, I didn’t know.”
    “That, my fat host, is the trouble.”
    The guest released Ponder from the prison of his gaze and studied the candle flame. He cradled his goblet in both hands, revealing well-groomed, strong fingers capable of snapping Ponder’s neck. After a few minutes of silence broken only by Ponder’s agitated breathing, the guest spoke again.
    “God has brought him near to me, and I will study to make of him an instrument, ere I take his life. For indeed, Mistress Fairfax’s guest must not leave Penance Isle alive.”

CHAPTER IV
    Muttering to herself, Pen preceded Nany Boggs up the stairs the morning after abducting Margery, set two pails down, and paused at a window slit to gaze across the castle walls to the sea beyond. Offshore she could see the fog bank that had crept in early that morning. She glared at the fog and muttered to herself again.
    “Thievery, by the saints. And who made him God’s apprentice to sit in judgment?”
    Behind her, Nany Boggs glared over a pile of clothing.
    “No good will come of this, mark you.” Nany grunted as she joined Pen on the landing. “You should send him to Much Cutwell.”
    “I’m no thief. What? Send him to Ponder Cutwell’s?” Pen wavered on the brink of temptation, then drew back. “Nay. Ponder wouldn’t shelter Christ himself without profit, and there’s no profit in Tristan. Mark you, he might hold him for ransom if he could discover who Tristan is.”
    “So be it, but I like it not.” Nany snorted at the view through the arrow slit. “That be another sign. Whoever heard of fog in bright sunlight?”
    “Tush, Nany. If I can endure, you can.” Pen picked up her pails and climbed to the next floor, where sheset them down again and turned to the nurse. “Give those to me and go away.”
    Nany relinquished the clothing