If this place had a fire.
“Yes, Your Grace,” Hendricks said immediately, running off to tend the horses.
Following the wall to keep out of the worst of the rain Avers headed for the inn’s door. On trying it, he found it locked. Not a good sign. He rapped on the wood.
A middle-aged man, presumably the landlord, finally opened it to a rather vexed Avers.
“Good day to you,” said Avers in passable French. “A room, if you please, in which I might partake of a modest repast?”
Droplets dripped from the brim of his hat and despite wearing his roquelaure with its high collar up around his face, he felt moisture over his cheeks.
The landlord did not immediately greet him. Instead, the beady eyed individual peered around Avers at the coach in the courtyard. There was the flicker of a smile across his face and then he focused back on Avers and bobbed his head.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
That was an exceptionally good guess at Avers’ title from a brief glance at the crest on the Tremaine carriage.
“But there is no cook on the premises.”
Of course there wasn’t. Avers’ stomach rumbled.
Behind him, the sound of the carriage wheels turning on the wet cobbles indicated that the stable boy was helping the coachman to unhitch the horses.
“I have a room with a fire lit that you may have,” said the man, head nodding vigorously. “You must come in and dry yourself.”
That was more welcoming than Avers had so far experienced.
“And some drink you might rummage up?”
“Oh yes, yes, come in, come in.”
From no greeting to practically pushing him into the hostelry. This was an odd little man indeed. But by now the rain had seeped its way through the gaps in Avers’ clothing and that fire sounded very appealing.
They crossed a dimly lit and dirty floored passage into a taproom of sorts. A few men were dotted here and there. They glanced over at the newcomer and several whispered behind tankards to each other. What had he walked into? Avers thought of the blunderbuss beneath Hendricks’ seat on the carriage and wished he had it about his person right now.
At least the landlord had understood his request for a private room. He took Avers through this public space into another passageway and finally through a creaking door into a tiny, rudely furnished boxroom with a small dusty window set high in the wall.
“A candle perhaps?” Avers requested. “And what drink you have.”
“Oui.” The landlord bowed away, leaving Avers to take a seat on an uneven chair as the latch of the door fell into place with a resounding clunk.
It did not fill Avers with confidence. He was hard pressed not to imagine he’d just been locked in and was immensely relieved when the landlord returned with his requested candle and drink.
He was once again shut into the room, but this time felt less like the prisoner he had before. Passing an uncomfortable half-hour in what Avers was fairly sure was a storeroom and not a private parlour, he tried his best to drink the acidic ale he’d been served. He stomached it for the sake of his parched throat and was thankful that at the very least he’d determined their location from the landlord—a small hamlet called Buc.
When the coachman finally knocked on the door to tell him the rain had lifted, Avers was the most thankful man in all of France.
Hendricks went on ahead while Avers settled his bill. Leaving a third of his drink untouched, he paid what he was sure was an inflated sum to the innkeeper, and donned his cloak with gusto. Leaving the questionable establishment in his wake, Avers entered the courtyard once again, expecting to see Hendricks and the coach waiting.
He saw neither.
Looking right towards the yard entrance did not reveal the Tremaine vehicle or the smart greys waiting on the road. Just as he was about to turn back into the inn, the door slammed in his face. He tried the handle. Locked.
An involuntary shiver ran down his spine.
Releasing the door, all his misgivings coming to the fore of his mind, he slowly turned to face the deserted stableyard again. An unnatural silence greeted him.
Rain dripped from a broken gutter into a pile of sodden hay, the sound oddly muffled, but aside from that nothing stirred. The lack of human presence in a place which should have been bustling with activity fed the uneasy feeling in Avers’ gut.
He considered calling out for Hendricks, but thought better of it, checked by the feeling in his stomach. Instead, he headed to the stables to discover what had become of the missing greys, carriage and driver.
The cobbles and muck beneath his boots clicked and squelched alternately. The pattering from the gutter into the hay slowed. The abnormal quiet continued.
Arriving at the entrance to what passed as a stable he peered down the long passage formed by the lean-to tacked onto the side of the ramshackle inn. No natural light penetrated the interior passage which Avers assumed was home to several looseboxes for the horses that were regularly stabled at the inn. Thanks to the heavy rain clouds, the lack of any artificial light, and that dusk was now falling, Avers could make little out in the darkness.
He was debating whether to venture into the gloom in search of Hendricks or a sign of the horses when someone grabbed him roughly from behind.
Avers was thrust forward into the darkness, forcing him to stumble and flail to catch his balance. Just as he saved himself, a second set of hands reached out from the darkness to Avers’ left and pushed him into an empty loosebox. He was sent careening downwards, mercifully onto a freshly made bed of straw. Scrambling, Avers turned to face whoever was attacking him, his mind struggling to catch up with the sudden turn of events.
“Tell us what you know of the Comte de Vergelles,” a voice hissed through the darkness at the same moment a flint was struck and an oil lamp blazed into light.
The glow revealed three men, heavily garbed in greatcoats, faces half-obscured by mufflers. Each looked at Avers with the eagerness of a pack of hounds staring at a cornered fox.
Avers played for time, gaining his bearings and surveying his captors as he brushed several strands of straw from his cloak, which had become horribly tangled up around him. “I shall do no such thing, after being manhandled by strangers.”
His apparent nonchalance seemed to wrong-foot the men. There was a moment of hesitation. Avers thanked God that while he might be seriously shaken, he had an uncanny ability to present a calm front.
“You will do as we say,” repeated the man who had spoken before, this time in English. His accent was rough and common.
