The Baron's Quest Read Online Free Page A

I’ll go overseas instead.”
    “Muriel, you know that is not an option. What will you use to pay for passage since you don’t have any money?” asked the monk.
    “I’ll find a way, now please just leave.”
    Oliver shook his head and scowled. “Nay. Not before we get some kind of compensation.” He waved over a man holding a torch so he could see inside her home better. “We’re taking enough wares to pay for the guild dues.” He nodded his head, giving the rest of the members the signal. They piled into the room with baskets in their hands and started collecting up her spun wool, her spindles, her needles and thimbles, and her bolts of cloth as well.
    Oliver pulled a piece of parchment from his bag and studied it closely in the torchlight. “Brother Germain tells me what you owe him in rent on the building comes out to sixteen shillings. I think that old draft horse of yours is worth about that, so the horse will go to Brother Germain in compensation. Your wagon on the other hand will be given to the men who brought your father’s dishonesty to our awareness, to sell and split the money between them.
    “Nay, stop!” Isaac rushed forward, but Muriel stopped him with another grab to his arm.
    “Isaac, we can’t fight them. Let it be.”
    “But our father wasn’t dishonest. I’m sure he followed the guild rules, Muriel.”
    “I have the proof right here he didn’t pay his dues,” said Oliver, holding up the parchment. “He owes us two months of guild fees at six shillings, eight pence for each month. So we will take whatever woven cloth and spun wool you have left that wasn’t stolen from your father on the road by the bandits who killed him. And to compensate the sales lost to our guild members due to your father’s dishonesty, we’ll take . . . ” he looked around the room which was sparse of any furnishings to begin with. Then his eyes settled on the one thing Muriel did not want to lose. “We’ll take your weaver’s loom as well.”
    “Nay!” she shouted, feeling his words stab at her heart like a sharpened blade. She could always make new spindles or get more wool, but without the loom her father had paid for dearly, they would have no real business at all. “That is not fair. That loom is worth ten times what we owe you.”
    Oliver just smiled. “Perhaps, but with the fines of breaking the rules of the guild, not to mention the fine that the lord’s dockman will need the guild to pay from your little endeavor yesterday, I figure this will make the situation even.”
    Damn, so they knew about her trying to sell her wares on the docks. She had a feeling that might come back to haunt her, and now it had. But still, he was only making up fake fines so the guild could get their hands on a loom they’ve coveted since the day her father sold most everything they had to buy it from an overseas tradesman.
    “I thought we weren’t in the guild anymore, so why would there be these additional charges?” she asked.
    “Muriel, don’t let them do it,” urged Isaac in a soft whisper.
    “It’s either you pay the charges or be brought before the town’s council to be tried and sentenced,” said the man. “This is the better choice, I assure you.”
    Muriel felt so helpless right now, and knew she could do nothing to change the decision. The guilds were powerful, and Oliver was on the town board. She didn’t have a hope that they’d change their minds.
    All she could do was stand there and stare as the guild members cleaned out her home. Everything they had worked so hard for was gone in a matter of minutes. She still hadn’t recovered from grieving the loss of their father, and now she had even more to grieve.
    “How do you even know for sure my father did what you accused him of doing?” she asked.
    “We know, because we have witnesses,” said Oliver, nodding toward three men standing behind him. “Thomas Fox, Bertron Chandler, and Samuel Fuller found him wounded and robbed on the