The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) Read Online Free

vegetables was reduced to
a small pile of potatoes, rejected ones with bruises. Maggie’s favorite gardener
who raised herbs had also departed. It said something of his good fortune, he
decided, that the candle maker had a nice supply. He spent the majority of his
coins there, tucking the heavy wax sticks deeply in among his tools.
    A shout caught his attention as
he picked up the cart’s handle, turning toward home.
    “You! I’ve one last chicken,”
called the poultry woman.
    He pulled up short beside the
stack of empty cages.
    “You’re John Carver, aren’t you? I
noticed you trying to round up some food.” She nodded toward the lone hen. “She
was not my largest but maybe she’ll provide the children with something.”
    John felt his face redden. Was
this the new rumor about the village, that his children were going hungry? He
started to decline her charity.
    “It’ll be ten pence,” the woman
said.
    He reached into his coin pocket
and discovered that ten was all he had. He tossed it to her. She expertly
grabbed the chicken and wrung its neck in one quick move.
    “There. All ready for tonight’s
supper.” She stacked the empty cage onto her hand-truck and started off in the
opposite direction.
    John fumed, wanting to shout
something about how his children ate quite well, thank you very much, but what
would be the point? At least now he had a decent meal to soothe Maggie’s likely
complaint about how much he’d spent on candles.
    His legs ached as he pulled the
cart home, the rising moon lighting the double track by the time he caught
sight of the cottage. He stopped beside the lean-to workshop and secured the
tarpaulin against a possible night rain before picking up the dead chicken and
small net bag of potatoes.
    Inside, smoke rose to the peak of
the thatched roof, a little of it wafting out the hole at the top, most of it
filling the room. Maggie stirred a pot that smelled like boiled cabbage,
balancing the eighteen-month-old baby on her hip and ignoring the pitiful
whines of the next two. Her brother sat on the bench against the wall, scraping
thick mud from his boots, making no move to help. She brightened slightly when
she saw the chicken, but her brows knitted together in worry only a moment
later. John followed her gaze.
    On the floor in the corner young
Ethan lay on his straw pallet, his eyes closed. John started to tease his oldest
son for being lazy but noticed that the boy’s face was unnaturally red, his
breathing shallow.
    “He’s taken worse and worse all
day,” Maggie said, leaving the cookpot long enough to take the new food from
John and set it on her work table.
    He marveled at how she handled it
all one-handed and kept the toddler under control with the other, and he
wondered how she would manage once the new infant came. Soon, Ethan would be
strong enough to lend a hand. But a second glance told him the six-year-old was
not doing well.
    “What’s the matter with him?” he
asked.
    “Fever, and now he’s got some
spots on his skin.”
    “Better not be bringing the Black
Death in upon us,” Sean piped up from his corner.
    John felt his stomach tighten.
Surely, here in this little village ... even in town, a half mile away ...
surely, the dreaded plague had not come this close. He rushed to the bedside
and knelt down. Ethan’s skin was hot and dry to the touch.
    “He’s burning up! Why haven’t ye
done anything?”
    Maggie’s face tightened. How much
could one woman cope with, he supposed. He found a scrap of cloth lying beside
his son’s head.
    “It’s slipped off,” Maggie said.
“Dampen it with cold water. Try to cool him.”
    John dipped the rag into a crock
of stream water they kept beside the door and returned to dab at the boy’s
face. Ethan barely responded. Meanwhile, the others began to wail and Maggie
ordered them to the table where she set out bowls of cabbage soup. Sean joined
them, John noticed, while Maggie tended the baby and he continued to press