21/100 The blacksmith's wife [25]

Godfrey Janninge, of the Cooper’s Arms gave us a bed, wherein we slept for more hours than we’d been wont to do together, waking only with the rising of both sun and Gabriel’s morning need.  

At the acrid-reeking forge a stiffly formal youth waited to serve notice of arrest for stealing letters.     Gabriel raised his fist with  sufficient menace that he rocked back, new-broken squeak, ‘I am a protégé of the Earl, harm me and ‘twill fall ill on you!’

‘Begone, stripling, tell your lord he must come himself for me!’

‘Sir, ‘tis your lady wife he wants, without delay.

This is part 25 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.