Chapter 4 #2
“I will stroll into the village now and cause a sensation,” his lordship said. “I will be all that is polite and speak only the King’s best English, but the speculation and eyewitness accounts will doubtless become a roar audible from Newcastle to Liverpool. Wish me luck.”
Charging the village head on was the opposite of dithering and likely the wisest strategy. “I wish the village luck. Behave yourself.”
He sighed and bowed. “If I must, I shall. Thank you again. Until supper, Amabel.”
He departed at a brisk pace, and his stated business—to cause a sensation in the village—struck Mabel as both the obvious next move and a harbinger of mischief.
If the solicitors were halfway interested in living to a ripe old age, they would take heed, get their reports in order, and prepare to be interrogated within an inch of their miserly, greedy, fusty old lives.
A thought to make Mabel smile if ever there was one.
“Swidhelm?” The grizzled stable lad looked Richard up and down. “T’ divil, ye say.”
What followed thereafter was an unintelligible spate of broad vowels, growled r’s, and a sprinkling of nobbuts and summats with a final niver haird t’ like.
To complicate matters, the whole diatribe was rendered with a lilting inflection that made distinguishing questions from statements nigh impossible.
“Two sound riding horses,” Richard said again, wondering if he’d just been treated to a dose of true Yorkshire dialect. “Up to my weight. To be kept at Shepherd’s Glen for the next fortnight at least.”
At the mention of Shepherd’s Glen, the lad’s bushy white brows rose and fell. “T’ Glen, ye say? Mares for Miss Mabel an’ Miss Wealtha?”
“Mare or gelding makes no difference, provided both horses are sound, sane, and substantial. At least one should be trained to carry a rider aside.”
“Ye’ll want Frigg and Baldur.” The old man nodded confidently, while Richard puzzled out what Frigg and Baldur…
“Named for Norse deities. A mare and a gelding?”
“Aye. Foin muckle beasts.”
What followed was a peculiar exchange of gestures, words, pantomime, and—on Richard’s part—figures drawn in the dirt to resolve the issue of price and duration of the lease.
A quarter hour later, Richard had arranged for both horses to remain at Shepherd’s Glen on trial for at least the next two weeks.
Or those were the terms as best he could make out the exchange as the lad disappeared into the barn’s dim interior.
Rather like arriving in Portugal with Latin vocabulary in one hand and a Portuguese dictionary in the other. Mentally exhausting, often frustrating, and occasionally hilarious, but precisely the humbling experience a young man afflicted with excessive self-importance had needed.
Richard crossed a two-acre green being kept in trim by a few nanny goats, one of whom paused in her grazing to watch his progress. Her regard shared something of the old stable boy’s shrewdness, though her eyes were yellow rather than blue.
“I am imagining things.” Also suffering from fatigue, lack of a proper luncheon or breakfast, and the disorientation of having an aunt and meeting that aunt while anticipating an introduction to a sister later in the day.
All a bit much.
The posting inn, The Happy Rooster, was a half-timbered, whitewashed, three-story affair holding pride of place along one side of the green.
Directly opposite sat a venerable granite church with a square bell tower.
Shops and a smithy shared the inn’s side of the green, while the church claimed several houses as neighbors.
The whole lot was constructed of the same gray stone as the church, which gave the taller, brighter inn a beckoning air.
Somebody had also troubled to adorn the steps of the inn with half barrels of red salvia, though, in fairness, a few of the houses also sported window boxes and planters of various posies.
A small yellow bloom was popular among the goodwives.
Charming, and different from the towns and villages of the south. Very little wood construction, save for the inn, no new construction that Richard could see, and every hillside to the west was dotted with fluffy white sheep.
He was halfway up the inn’s steps when a sizable specimen of manhood in a white apron came through the door and gestured to him broadly.
“Welcome, milord, to The Happy Rooster. Simon Gowan greets you personally, and it shall be my pleasure to serve you!”
Let the sensation begin. The proprietor had boomed his greeting so loudly the ewes on the hillsides had likely heard him.
“Gowan.” Richard nodded. “Swidhelm, much to my surprise. I am famished and thirsty.”
Gowan beamed. “Ye’ve come to the right place, sir. The private parlor is available, if that’s your pleasure.”
He spoke the King’s English. Accented, but understandable. “The snug will do.”
“Ye’ll have company in the snug. Our Fergus is havin’ ’is forty winks.”
“I won’t disturb him.”
Fergus took his winks seriously, rattling the low, dark rafters with his snoring. His beard reached a good foot below his chin—snow white, of course—and a green felt peaked cap sat next to a tankard on the table beside his bench.
A low fire burned in the hearth. Unnecessary, given the mild day, but cozy too.
Peat rather than coal. The snug consisted of a high-backed wooden bench built along the wall that ran at a right angle to the hearth.
A deal table slightly higher than a dining table sat before the bench, with several footstools beneath it.
Fergus had wedged himself into the corner of the snug, where he looked to become one with the general rustic appointments.
Richard took the opposite end of the bench and ordered sandwiches and summer ale, though Gowan had clearly wanted to lay on a feast.
“’Ether isle, ’twill be.” The beard had spoken.
“Heather ale?”
“Aye. Ye be stranger.”