The Copper Sign by Katia Fox, Lee Chadeayne Read Free Book Online

reached out to him. “I hope you enjoy them, my lord,” she said with a trembling voice.
    “I hope so, too, and if they’re not fresh and good, I’ll get my money back and rip off your head.” He suddenly had a fearsome look in his eyes as he gazed at her. He was no longer laughing.
    The girl looked up anxiously, and Ellen saw the fear in her eyes.
    “I just had one myself. They’re still warm, fresh, and nicely seasoned, I’ll assure you, my lord,” Ellen said, amazed at herself and how outspoken she was.
    “Now, young man, then I hope your tongue is not only insolent but discriminating.”
    The knight raised his eyebrows derisively, then burst out laughing and gave Ellen a friendly but forceful slap on the back that nearly took her breath away for a moment. Still laughing loudly and shaking his head, he returned to his companions, handed them the basket, and said something to them in a foreign tongue. The men looked at him and roared with laughter.
    When they finally left, Ellen breathed a sigh of relief.
    The little fish-cake vendor looked stunned. “I’ll have to buy myself a new basket,” she stammered. “Otherwise, how can I sell my pasties tomorrow?” She didn’t look happy at all, as one would expect after such a good sale. “A basket like that is not cheap. I hope I have enough money left to buy one. If my mother thinks I haven’t come home with enough, she’ll have her seven-tailed cat jumping on my back.”
    Ellen saw the tears in the girl’s eyes and was sorry for her, though she didn’t know what a seven-tailed cat was. In any case, it sounded frightful to her. She wondered whether it could be worse than being whipped with Leofrun’s leather strap. “His coin is surely worth much more than the basket with the fish cakes,” she ventured, trying to cheer her up. “Your mother will surely be happy with you.”
    “It was really brave of you to say that the fish cakes are good,” said the girl, looking her directly in the eyes, “and very courageous, too.” Then she looked up proudly. “If you’re here again tomorrow, I’ll have a free one for you, as a thank-you.” She smiled and left with a kiss to Ellen’s cheek before she hurried off.
    This time it was Ellen who blushed. She wandered slowly along until she reached the market square, where she watched a juggler and a magician who made the bashful girls blush and caused the rest of the crowd to laugh at the girls’ discomfort.
    Again and again he bowed with a grin and thanked the crowd for their applause and the coins they tossed at him.
    Not far from him stood a fire-eater and sword-swallower, a stout fellow with a hairy, naked chest and bald head who put a long sword through his mouth and thrust it deep into his throat to the astonishment of the onlookers. Ellen turned to watch a group of jugglers when suddenly a piercing cry diverted her attention to a cluster of people.
    She pushed her way through the crowd. The tooth puller that the girl had spoken of and a barber were standing atop a big wooden platform at the far corner of the market square.
    As one could tell from the greyish, weathered color of the platform, it stood outside there all year long at this spot. Perhaps trials were held up there, adulteresses whipped, crooks pilloried, or thieves had their hands cut off. Maybe even executions took place up there where you could see dark splotches on the wood. But now there were two large chairs to accommodate the patients.
    The tooth puller had a little table where his tools were displayed: clamps and tongs in various sizes as well as herbs and tinctures to promote faster healing. Ellen thought of the girl with the red hands and wondered if she actually had fallen in love with the morose-looking old man who was just spreading out the instruments. Only when a handsome young man in a maroon robe appeared on the platform did Ellen understand that the old man was just the tooth puller’s assistant.
    On the other side of the