15/100 The blacksmith's wife [19]

If not himself a spy (he yet breathed and, blood no longer churning out, looked less like to die) in truth a twin of one.   We’d not yet perused all hidden letters but had gleaned enough to know him a cog in some labyrinthine circle of duplicity.

Gabriel stirred him with his toe.

‘Sweetling, shall I avenge thee fully or wouldst thou do the deed?’

’Ask how a bargeman came by these … and wherefrom the gold … if he answers truthfully we can delay.’

'Ever practical', appreciatively, as the huddled body groaned ‘If I don’t deliver, I shall die!’

This is part 19 of 'The blacksmith's wife'.   The whole is a prompt-led serial  which began on the Friday Prediction, in March  and continued, one hundred words at a time, for forty-one episodes.   One of my aims in this 100 days project is to complete the illustrations for each episode and publish the tale in book form.

The  story can be read in its entirety here.