‘Written
in squid ink and signed with the Captain’s blood!’
‘It
doesn’t smell of fish, and blood dries rusty.’
‘Not
this! The treasure map. This tells where it’s hid.’
Mathias,
having drawn my blood, forced Gabriel to release the letter. Starvation rendered him irrational; he clearly under-estimated our intelligence.
I
snorted with disbelief: Gabriel’s
warning glance suggested he’d likewise under-estimated mine. Flattering his recently-incarcerated brother,
he said ‘You forget I‘ve not your
education, find it hard to trust in pen-scribed words. Why risk your life, and threaten me and
mine, for this?’
Hoarsely,
eyes a-glitter, ‘Riches, brother, riches beyond compare!’
This
is part 32 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.
I'm a sucker for calligraphic pictures - love this one
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