“An hour.” A jerk of the farrier’s head towards the coaching inn as he led the horse away. “Try the pork pie.”
But the coaching inn and village had been bustling, full of horses and wagons and people carrying things, and Henry had needed to think far more than he needed to eat.
Out of all the quaint corners of England, the Earl of Ashthorpe had somehow arrived in a place straight out of the pages of a Tommy Treadwell storybook.
He had long ago discarded the notion of fate and believed every man charted his own course, so clearly his being here was a happy accident. Serendipity, as Walpole had said. And, like those wise princes of Serendip, Henry could deduce and reason and discover Puddlewick.
So he had retraced his steps and walked back to the church, to the first place he’d sensed something out of the ordinary. However, it wasn’t a church in the Tommy Treadwell books. It was a castle full of labyrinths and treasure, boasting the same large gargoyle in the shape of an elephant.
How Tommy Treadwell turned the rampaging elephant to stone and hung him on the castle wall.
And that was where Henry had met Miss Beasley. But did she really belong in a children’s story? She was something out of a grown man’s dream, one that involved skin and scent and hard things going into soft places. The kind of rare dream from which he would never want to awaken.
In a different time, she’d have been thought a witch. Except she’d been tidying a churchyard and surely that would have excluded her from suspicion.
Or maybe not.
It wasn’t that Henry had sensed any darkness or malice about her. Quite the contrary. But she’d held him rapt. He’d looked at her and then wanted to keep looking at her.
Miss Beasley was not a witch but anenchantress. A short, bosomy enchantress with dirt on her face and fly-away hair.
She could have done more than made him lookat her. She could have seduced him and kept him trapped in her castle with an elephant to keep guard. But there had been no seduction—damn—so maybe she was the kind of enchantress who would speed him on his way with a magical thingummy to complete his quest. But she hadn’t done that either, had given no answer to the mystery of Augustus Puddlewick.
And Puddlewick was why Henry had walked back to the church. He hadn’t gone there to fall under Miss Beasley’s spell, to while away his morning looking at her and wondering why he couldn’t stop looking at her.
So.
How might Henry find the man? Because if he lived, he was here.
In the hour that had taken Henry to walk to the church, fall under Miss Beasley’s spell, and return to Much Wemby, the village green had been invaded by half a dozen small boys who were removing sheep trattles and chasing sheep away as men set boards atop trestles.
Henry turned his head and saw something he had missed previously. He didn’t know why he hadn’t seen it before. He must have not wanted to see it.
“Ho,” he said to a nearby young man who was surveying the doings on the green. The fellow looked around to make sure Henry was speaking to him before he removed his cap and walked over.
“Sir,” the young man said, all smooth agreeability. “What service might I do for you?”
“That hill.” Henry pointed.
It was a hill all by itself with three notches at the top as if it had once been a lump of dough and a three-tined fork had come down upon it, leaving an impression behind.
The young man twisted around to look. “The Wrecknot.” He turned back to Henry with a grin. “They say it was a giantwhat did it. He wanted to dam the River Wem so he could take a bath, so he dug up a hill’s worth of dirt to make the dam, but then he got tired and dropped it and made the Wrecknot.”
How Tommy Treadwell tricked the Giant Scognal into making a mountain and saved the town from a flood.
“The dents are from the giant’s fingers because giants have only three fingers. Did you know that, sir?” The young man sidled closer. “For a small fee, I can take you up. There’s ruins of a Roman fort on top and a view for miles. Do you fancy climbing it, sir? ”
Henry could think of nothing he—or his knees—would like less. Instead, he said, “Mr. Augustus Puddlewick.”
Yes, the name might be false, and if Miss Beasley didn’t know it, it seemed unlikely this youth would, but Henry was feeling untethered now, his nerves ajangle.
The young man scratched his head. “No one by that name in Much Wemby.”
“And no authors—men who write books—in these parts.”
“No.”
Henry gave the young man a shilling.
