Echoes of a Legend

Chapter THREE: Secrets Best Kept Untold

”Calling my name-, in the pitch black-, in a Chapel for the dead! Why on earth should that startle me!?” Roldan De Godefroy  

He will not sleep tonight. Tonight he will complete his objective and travel as far as the light held out and just before sunrise, he will rest, he will hide, then as dusk turns back into dark, he will travel again.

The night sky is eminently black although a few stars are doing their level best to shine through the blackness. A faint breeze picks up and the light drizzle had has come and gone in equal measures over the past few hours. There is either a storm brewing or the evening weather would remain relatively calm.

The final few dense miles through Mently Woods were in the cover of shadow and Musmet made them successfully, without being detected. He now lay, belly down, on the ground and to the side of a large oak tree. The floor is not as soft as the sands he had been used too but evidently softer than the wooden planks of the ship’s hull where he had spent many nights. It is also not as damp and the sheep’s skin is doing its job of keeping the cold off his body.

Through the trees and in the distance, he can make out the various patches of light from the torches at the Manor House and is surprised at how far they spread. ‘This is a very large place,’ he whispers to himself as he rubs his greasy black beard covered chin. So it would not restrict his movement, Musmet removes the sheepskin, lies it on the ground behind a large oak and places his pack on top of it. Opening the bag he removes three knives and tucks one in his right boot, one in the left and fixes one to his belt behind his back by sliding it in place and leaving the edges of the handle to hang over his leather waist band. He is ready and restless to finish what the De Godefroy’s had started many years ago. With his dark scraggy clothing, leaving his figure camouflaged in the trees shadows, and hunching in a low stance, he slowly creeps forward. 

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‘Not that I will waste away but any chance we can eat and not wait for father? We should have finished ages ago let alone start!’ asks Burleigh to no one in particular. The brothers are seated at the grand table in the main hall. It could host nearly forty and as always they sat at each end to either annoy the servants, who would have to amble up and down when serving dinner, or to annoy each other with loud calls down the room so they could hear one another.

‘Did Jerold seem strange to you today?’ poses Ackerley.

‘No stranger than normal for a strange man,’ smiles Burleigh, always pleased at his own drollness. ‘Unless you consider flicking crap off his boots strange, as he then walked straight into the stable not a hares breath later!’

Ackerley scratches at the table with his dinner knife and draws a diminutive piece of oak from its surface which he bangs straight back in with the heel of the blade. ‘I meant asking how father was to us.’ He looks up at his brother who is now re-lacing a boot which is perched on the table and knowing he had already lost his attention he shouted, ‘Burleigh!

‘What-, err-, nope seemed fine to me.’ Comes the stumbling reply.

Ackerley is still not sure his brother is paying attention to the question and more likely just placating him so he could concentrate on threading a frayed piece of leather through one of the eyes. Concentrating on more than two things at once is not Burleigh’s forte and Ackerley would know, at this moment in time, his voice comes in a distant third, behind the food and lacing his boots.

The smell of hot black puddings wafts from the kitchen entrance at the far end of the hall and has been ready to eat for over two hours now. Ackerley takes a sip of beer from the tankard in front of him and stares into one of the ten torches on the wall that lit the room. Its flame violently flickers from the draft coming through the kitchen door, but would hold its own for a good few hours yet.