"Clayton Emery - Robin & Marian - Dowsing The Demon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emery Clayton)

Dowsing The Demon
a Robin Hood & Marian Mystery
by Clayton Emery

"Murder! Help, for God's mercy! It's murder and witchcraft! Help!"
Hammering on a door rang on and on. Robin scrambled off his pallet, fumbled for his bow and sword,
found neither, settled for his hat. Marian scuffed on her shoes and combed fingers through her dark hair.
The outlaw wrenched the bar from the inn door and they dashed outside.
The morning sun slanted long shadows down the sleepy streets of Lincoln. The faces and shuttered
windows of one- and two-story houses were etched in darkness. April was already warm. Dew spiralled
from the trashy street. Four doors down from the inn, a young man pounded on the door of a small
house.
His cries of "Murder and witchcraft!" had people congregating from all sides. His wails were infectious.
One man shouted, "Open the door then, by the rood!" Another yelled, "It's barred tight!"
Robin shoved through the crowd and jiggled the wooden latch, thumped the door with his shoulder. It
bent at top and bottom but not the middle. Barred. As he smacked the door, smells spurted around the
edges. Brimstone. And blood.
He whirled on the shrieking lad. "Hush! All of you! Whose house is this?"
The youth plucked his thin beard with both hands. He wore a smock of rich blue with an embroidered
collar, a belt with a silver-hilted dagger, yellow hose, good shoes of oxhide, a brimmed black hat. "It's
the house of Jabin, my father, but something's plaguey wrong! The house stinks of blasphemy!"
Robin had to agree. The smell that wafted from inside was enough to knock a man flat. "Is there a back
door?"
"No, only the window, and it shuttered! And the chimney!"
Though still befuddled by sleep, Robin felt hairs prickle along his neck. What devil's work had the
occupants gotten up to?
"The door it is, then. You and you and you, come with me!" From the crowd of workmen, wives, and
idle children, Robin picked out a porter with a tump line and a pair of masons in stone-dusty aprons.
While Marian minded the door, the four men hopped down the street to a house under construction,
hoisted a square beam, and trotted back. Three lusty blows at the middle right cracked the door and
bashed loose the inside bar.
The reek of brimstone made their eyes water, the smell of blood gagged them. Holding his breath, Robin
slipped inside and fumbled open the shutters to the one window on the street.
Dawn's light filtered through a yellow haze. Revealed was a scene from some pardoner's chapbook of
Hell.
The house was only one room. Four whitewashed walls, a worn wooden floor, smoke-stained rafters, a
stone chimney, a saggy rope bed, a red chest against the wall, a table and two stools, a cabinet for a
larder, pegs on the walls where hung clothing. Spare, dingy, but tidy. A short broom of rushes stood
propped against the fireplace.
On the floor lay an old man stringy and naked as a plucked chicken, and white as one. His throat had
been hacked away, his belly from ribs to crotch torn open, as if he'd been rooted to death by boars. His
eyes were wide open, filmy and white as boiled eggs. By the bed, tangled in blankets, lay a goodwife in a
pool of tacky blood, she stabbed so many times her skin and organs hung in shreds. The gore looked all
the more offensive for having violated the woman's clean floorboards.
Marian bit a knuckle. Robin blocked the door with one brawny arm as the crowd pushed for a look. Yet
the young merchant, the son who'd raised the alarm, squeezed between him and Marian with the strength
of the hysterical.
He flopped to his knees alongside the dead man. "Oh, father, father! Who's done this? Who?" Old Jabin
didn't answer, only stared wide-eyed at his son as if in accusation. Unmindful of blood, the lad touched
his father's face.