Barbara Gaskell Denvil [Denvil - Blind Man’s Buff

Copyright 2018 by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

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Its A Wrap

Barbara Gaskell Denvil

Chapter One

B ent double, keeping his head down and keeping to the shadows, John edged down the alleyway, watching for the first possible silver flash of magic in the air, while listening for any passing gossip that might be important. He could smell the rank sliding sludge in the gutters, the stale beer when passing doorways of inns and taverns, and the sweat of the people pushing past him. But that didnt worry him. He was working hard at the one thing that mattered.

He was covered in mud from his hair to his feet. It slipped down his face, stuck in his eyelashes and trickled over his nose, so he kept his mouth firmly shut. He didnt want a breakfast of thick sludge. It squelched up between his toes. Ten toes. He almost laughed, but this was no laughing matter.

The City of Peganda closely resembled medieval London, in some places so closely that he almost started looking for Bishopsgate, and Alices home where he could have a wash and change his clothes. But the mud served its purpose. He was part of the Resistance Movement and needed anonymity. He was a shadow amongst shadows. And that was the way it was supposed to be.

He could hear Alice, but he couldnt see her. Avoiding where he knew she sat, he crept the other way. She was sitting dressed in rags, cross-legged on the dirty cobbles, with her hair in tangles and dirt on her face. She was singing in a fine, high voice and placed on the ground before her was a battered hat, turned upside down, to collect the coins that passers-by might throw to her in sympathy. They were Peters fine compositions that she sang, none of which had ever been heard in Lashtang before, so the hat was almost full. Lashtang money, each copper coin, was heavy. But it wasnt the money Alice truly wanted. It was the gossip she heard while sitting there, and the people she saw meeting in the old house opposite. Meanwhile, at some distance away across the city, Peter, dressed in a dirty old tunic with a torn hem and big wooden clogs, was on another street corner, playing his beautiful lute, carefully watching the pluck of his fingers while he played, but listening only for the gossip in the passing crowds.

Sam sat on the doorstep of a grand house overlooking the high stone wall that surrounded the city. He was also dressed in rags and looked even more of a beggar than he had in London when he truly was a penniless orphan. He pretended to be half asleep, but he too was listening for any important conversations between the men passing by.

Alfie sat on the rivers edge, dabbling his bare toes in the dirty water. He was very close to the end of the big wooden bridge. Crowds of people were pushing and shoving to cross from one side of the river to the other. Unlike London, this was a poorly made bridge with no shops or houses and no sheltering wall, so sometimes passing children and animals were elbowed out of the way and fell head over heels to tumble into the River Rass with a yell of fear. Alfie had already rescued one little girl who had nearly drowned, and one little brown puppy who wagged its tail, shook the water from its fuzzy coat, and ran off with a yelp and a bark for its master.

Also hoping to hear important gossip, Alfies toes were looking like wrinkled prunes from being in the water so long, but he stayed where he was and ate an apple hed found under the old apple tree on the bankside.

Poppy was on the other side of the river, wearing Lashtang-style trousers and a grubby torn shirt on top, her hair knotted and dirty, and a smudge of mud on her nose. More noticeable were the bright red spots all over her cheeks and forehead. Ive lost my brovver, she kept moaning. Will anyone help me find him? No one offered to help such a dirty child, and they hurried out of her way, thinking she must have some dreadful disease. But she could hear whatever they said, she had very good hearing.

It was Braxton that Nathan was looking for. Zakmeisters brother had pretended to work for the same Resistance, but he was a traitor and worked for the other side. This risked all their plans being discovered. Braxton had to be stopped. But so far, no one had found him.

You go that way, Nathan whispered. And Ill slip down by the River Rass where Alfie is.

John had nodded. Beneath the mud, he wore the clothes of a medieval clown, the fool of the village. He had laughed at himself when Nathan pointed to the long mirror in their new secret bedchamber.

I looks a proper twit.

Nathan nodded. Yes you do. A good disguise.

Sniggering, John had answered, You might say this aint no disguise, for Is a proper twit meself.

But they were all disguised in different ways and were collecting information that no one else heard.

The rebellion had been planned and was due in ten days. But some essential news had to come first. How many more of the Octobr resistance movement might be traitors? Did the Hazlett regime have any idea that the rebellion was already organised?

Alice, back sore from sitting on wet cobbles, and tired of getting a sore throat as well, suddenly forgot the tune, and started to croak, turning it quickly to a cough. Nathan could hear her and tried not to laugh.

The streets were so narrow, and those passing by in the opposite direction pushed him into the central gutter, which was full of dirt and rubbish. Then there was a groan. A loud creaking, and with a squeak of breaking timbers tipping, suddenly the whole front of a nearby house came tumbling down into the street. The metal rods that pushed against the front wall had slipped on the wet cobbles and had left the little iron balcony without any support. It cracked in two and fell with a crash. That was when the front wall began to hurtle down and break into a hundred pieces of stone, wood and metal. Explosions of smashing brick on the cobbles continued and piece by piece the entire house collapsed, while those on either side began to shake and tremble.