Read Online The Banshee's Walk by Frank Tuttle - Free Book Online

chuckled and turned back toward the road. “It were Skin what found them first stakes,” he said. “Dern fool didn’t know what they was. Brung ’em in for kindling-wood.”
    “Skin?”
    “He keeps the bees,” said Marlo. “I reckon Skin might be a bit tetched. In the head, you know. But he’s a deft hand with them bees.’
    “How long ago did he find the first stakes?”
    “Reckon it were the first of the month. Yea, that would be right, it were payday.”
    I shot Gertriss a look. Lady Werewilk had put the discovery of the stakes only two weeks past—as usual, the communication between masters and servants was showing a few holes.
    Gertriss nodded, understanding.
    “How many times since then?”
    “Damn near every other day,” grumbled Marlo. “Never in the same place, you understand. Sometimes here, sometimes there. Onced they was right in the middle of Skin’s beehives. I thought he was gonna bust a gut, made him so mad, them messin’ with his bees.”
    I nodded, went quiet while Marlo urged his ponies in and out of a ditch with a series of grunts and foot-stomps.
    “Lady Werewilk said she’s had people out at night watching the grounds,” I said, once we were back on the road. “Why do you think no one has ever seen the surveyors laying the markers?”
    “I reckon they’s awful sneaky,” said Marlo. He spat. “We’s housekeepers n’ cooks and one daft beekeeper. Ain’t a soldier in the lot. No, sir. And this be the Banshee’s Walk.”
    Gertriss poked me. I nodded since Marlo couldn’t see. I knew we’d both come to the same conclusion—Lady Werewilk might well have ordered her staff to walk the grounds at night and keep watch, but the only walking they’d likely done was well within their doors, and the only watching they’d done was between naps and from behind their windows.
    “I wonder why it’s called that? Banshee’s Walk, I mean. No such thing.” I let the wagon roll over another bone-jarring bump. “Is there?”
    Marlo snorted. I watched him look around, watched him gauge the distance between us, the kids and Gefner, who were lagging a good thirty paces behind the wagon and were well out of easy hearing.
    “You can think what e’re the Hell you want,” said Marlo. “I know you city folk don’t hold no truth to old stories or old pony-masters. But I’m gonna tell you, you and your lady friend, that there’s more than just big old trees out here in these woods.” He raised his hand in protest, though I’d not said a word. “Now I ain’t sayin’ there’s banshees. I ain’t saying there ain’t, neither. I’m just sayin’ that people ought not to think that everywhere in the world is just like it is back there in that city, ’cause it ain’t.”
    “I’ve been a lot of places,” I said, after a moment. “I’ve seen a lot things that people said I wouldn’t see. And one thing I never do is ignore what the people who live in a place say about a place.”
    “Then you’re smarter than you look.” Marlo gruffed out a laugh to show, I suppose, he meant that as a compliment. “You just remember what ol’ Marlo told ye if you take a notion to go out of doors after dark. Might be more’n wild boars to worry about. Might be worth a damn sight more’n you’re gettin’ paid.”
    “I’ll keep that in mind.”
    Marlo spat again, feigned a sudden interest in the road ahead.
    I got nothing out of the rest of the crew. The skinny kids, Scatter and Lank, were stable boys who tagged along ostensibly to help with bags but were actually out to escape a morning shoveling the stables while sneaking gulps out of the bottle of still-brewed whiskey they utterly failed to hide. The other adult, Gefner, had introduced himself as a carpenter and hadn’t said a word to us since, although he was verbose enough with Scatter and Lank. I caught enough words on shifts of the wind to guess the topic of conversation—women—and gather that Gefner had quite a few opinions on the