Читать книгу The Season of the Beast - Андреа Жапп - Страница 11

‘BRING him to me! Drag him here on his backside if you have to! He won’t be needing it much longer,’ bellowed Eudes de Larnay as he glowered at the tiny pile of iron ore at his feet, the meagre result of a whole week’s mining.

The two serfs, heads bowed, had stepped back a few yards. The Baron’s angry outbursts were well known, and could end in vicious blows, or worse.

They did not wait to be asked twice, and were only too glad to have such an excellent excuse to put the greatest possible distance between them and their master’s fists. And in any case, that half-wit Jules, who was no better than they were, had done his fair share of swaggering since being promoted to overseer. He had become too big for his boots and now the boot was on the other foot.

The two men, exhausted by overwork and lack of sleep and nourishment, hurled themselves across the tiny arid plain towards the oak grove that stretched for leagues – almost as far as Authon-du-Perche.

Once they had reached the relative safety of the trees, they slowed down, stopping for a moment to catch their breath.

‘Why have we come to the forest, Anguille? This isn’t where Jules ran off when the master arrived,’ said the older of the two men.

‘I don’t know, damn it. What does it matter? We had to run somewhere or we’d be the ones taking the beating.’

‘Do you know where Jules went?’

‘No, and I don’t care,’ snapped Anguille, ‘but it makes no odds, he won’t get far. The master’s mad as a drunken lord, and a nasty piece of work to boot.’

‘What is it with that cursed mine? It’s not for lack of digging. My legs and arms are well nigh dropping off.’

Anguille shrugged his shoulders before replying:

‘His cursed mine’s dried up, hasn’t it? Jules told him, but it’s no good, he won’t listen. It’s about as useless as a dead rat and not worth all the fuss. He can cry all he likes, he’ll get nothing but dust from it now.’

‘And to think it gave them bags of lovely gold for nigh on three generations. What a deadly blow for the master. He must be taking it hard!’

‘Oh yes? Well, he’ll be over it before it ever bothers me. Because, you see, that cursed mine might have given him bags of gold, but what has it ever given me, or us, except aching limbs, floggings and an empty belly? Come on, let’s go deeper into the forest and have a little snooze. We’ll tell him we couldn’t find Jules.’

‘But that’s a lie.’

Anguille looked at him, flabbergasted by his naivety, and said reassuringly:

‘Yes, but if you don’t tell him, he won’t know.’