19/100 The blacksmith's wife [23]

‘For all he’s a one-legged, pensioned-off foot-soldier, the Constable knew what best to do, organised a line of buckets to the pump.   It’s better than it looks.’

Gabriel had been relieved to see me, I at his survival.   Brick fireplace and chimney were undamaged, the rest a blackened lath-and-plaster-tacky, straw-strewn mess.

‘Your tools?’

‘Mostly salvaged.’

‘Mathias?’

‘Taken.   This’ (he gestured) ‘revenge for what they saw as sanctuary.’

‘They?’

‘Impossible to know.   The message?’

‘Not delivered.’

‘Then his life is forfeit.’

‘As mine when, finding letters missing, they return for me.’

‘He’ll likely claim bewitchment.’

‘Then I must make it so.’

This is part 23 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.