[Roger the Chapman 03] - The Hanged Man Read Online Free Page A

not fit to lift things yet, and besides, we have to manage by ourselves when you're not here. We're both willing and able.'
    I had to admit that Lillis, for all her apparent fragility, had great strength in her stick-like arms, and made no more ado about hooking the full pot on to the crossbar of the cooking crane than she might have done about lifting a jar of flowers. I retired once more to my stool, where I sat watching the two women chop up the herbs and root vegetables which provided the staple ingredients of the afternoon meal. For dinner, we had had some salted mutton with our broth, but a lump of bacon fat was considered sufficient to give whatever flavour was needed to our supper stew. And, ladled over a slice of wheat and rye bread, it would suffice to curb my swiftly reviving appetite.
    Margaret looked up from her chopping and gave me a smile. 'You're beginning to get the colour back in your cheeks at last, what I can see of them under that beard.'  
    'It's coming off tomorrow,' I promised. I shifted uneasily on my stool, rightly foreseeing that my next words might cause trouble. 'And then I must be off, to Wells, if I can make it,' I added, coming to a sudden decision. 'It was where I was heading when I lost my way, coming up from Salisbury. It's my birthplace. I was hoping to renew some old acquaintance of my mother’s and find a berth for the winter.'
    The consternation on both their faces was writ large.
    'But you can't think of walking twenty miles or more in your condition,' Margaret protested angrily. 'I've never heard such foolishness!'
    'You have a place to stay. Here!' Lillis wailed. 'You can't desert us, not after all we've done for you!' But this remark only diverted her mother's wrath on to Lillis's own head. 'What we've done, we've done because it was our Christian duty, my girl, and don't you forget it! It's not a weapon to force Roger's hand and make him do something he doesn't wish to.' Margaret turned back to me. 'Take no notice of her, lad. Never consider yourself beholden to us for a minute. I'm only thinking of your health, although I don't deny we'd both be glad of your company if you changed your mind and decided to stay.
    It's lonely, just the two of us, these long, dark nights.' Lillis nodded agreement. 'Especially since Grandfather died and there's been all the whispering behind our backs. And sometimes people pass remarks openly within our hearing. As though what happened was our fault, or had anything to do with us! We're just as ignorant of the truth as the rest of them.' She caught Margaret's eye and added impatiently: 'He's going to hear the story sooner or later, Mother, if he stops, So he might as well hear it from us and not just anyone. At least what we tell him will be fact and not just rumour.' She laughed triumphantly. 'Look! I've aroused his interest, you can see it in his face.
    Who knows,' Lillis went on mockingly, 'Roger might even be able to resolve the mystery for us!'

Chapter Three

    At Lillis's last words, I felt again that mounting sense of excitement blended with resentment which I had experienced twice before, on the two previous occasions when I had been sure that God was using me as His instrument of retribution. When I had discarded the religious life, some three years earlier and against my dead mother's wishes, to gain my independence on the open road, it had not occurred to me that God might demand some return for the loss of my poor services. But He had given me a cool-thinking brain and a sharp eye for detail, which, allied with a tender conscience, had twice now caused me Io turn aside from my own affairs and resolve those of others. And here I was, once more the recipient of an obvious cry for help by two women who had made me their debtor. For although Margaret Walker immediately distanced herself from her daughter's suggestions, her need for a sympathetic listener with whom to share whatever trouble she had was plain for me to see.
    In a last, desperate