Read Online Queen's Ransom by Fiona Buckley - Free Book Online Page A

you?”
    “Charpentier doesn’t know I’m married to Matthew. I wish now that I hadn’t mentioned Matthew at all,” I said. I wondered, in passing, whether, after all, Luke Blanchard knew about Matthew, too. Not that it mattered. “I shan’t ask after him again,” I said. “It isn’t safe.”
    Brockley, who was fuming, said that he would go down and punch Charpentier on the jaw, but I forbade it. “We don’t want to get into trouble. What we do want is to carry out our business and go home safely. The sooner we leave this detestable inn, the better.”
    “There’s not much chance of that just now,” said Dick Dodd glumly. “We have just seen Harvey. He says that Master Blanchard is very unwell, won’t take anything except warm milk, and by the look of him, we’re likely to be stuck here for days.”
     
    I went at once to see how Luke Blanchard was. He was lying in his bed, his proudly curved nose pointing to the ceiling and his short gray hair tousled. He looked miserable.
    “I’m not at all well, Ursula,” he said when I asked him how he did. “I fear it’s beyond me to leave this bed.”
    “What are your symptoms? My mother taught me some simple remedies. Perhaps I can help.”
    “My stomach’s been hurting ever since I was so sick on the ship,” he said fretfully. “And I’ve no appetite. If I try to eat anything, I feel sick. Milk is all right. Charpentier says he shouldn’t, because it’s Lent, but he let me have some milk all the same.”
    I asked a few more questions. He had had loose motions, he said, but not to a violent extent and no, the stomach pain wasn’t more in one place than in another. But it got worse if he moved about. He just wanted to lie still. I said I hoped he would feel better soon, and went worriedly away. “Just when we need to get on with our journey, this has to happen!” I said to Dale when I rejoined her in our room. “Well, we had better take some food ourselves.”
    As promised, Charpentier had set out a meal on the forecourt, and Lent notwithstanding, there was meat in the soup, and the bread was fresh and crusty. The red wine was fullbodied and there was cream cheese, so delicate and light that I found I could eat cheese after all. Mark Sweetapple positively wolfed it. We also had some kind of fruit preserve that went well with the bread. We all felt better when we had eaten.
    A maidservant waited on us, but Charpentier presently emerged, behaving as though the scene in his kitchen had never happened and inquired, like any other innkeeper, if all was to our liking. I took courage and said politely that it was, and then asked if there was an apothecary in the town, as Master Blanchard was still ailing.
    Charpentier said yes, there was such a one, but the shop would be shutting by now. It would open early in the morning. If Master Blanchard was no better at daybreak, I said, I would see what the apothecary could recommend.
    When we went indoors after eating, we found De Clairpont in the wide entrance hall talking to another man. De Clairpont called to me.
    “Mistress Blanchard, I hear that your father-in-law is ill. I am sorry. A miserable business for him, away from home, and in a troubled land. I wish him better health soon.”
    “Thank you,” I said. I glanced at the second man, wondering who he was. He did not, somehow, go with De Clairpont. He was some years older, and did not have the air of a retainer, or even of a Frenchman. His brown doublet and hose were very well cut, in a style often seen in London. He had a plain linen collar, but his sleeves had scarlet slashings and his boots were of very good kid. He had a compact, broad-shouldered build, a rosy-brown face, a brown beard and bright dark eyes, and reminded me of an outsize robin redbreast.
    He smiled, and announced in competent but heavily accented French that he was Nicolas van Weede, merchant, from Antwerp. “I, too, am a guest at this inn. I have been hearing of your unhappy experience