Free Shadow of the Raven by Tessa Harris Page B

villagers that no one would volunteer any assistance. He would have to act alone. So, less than an hour after his arrival at the Three Tuns, Thomas’s fresh mount was being saddled to transport him up to Raven’s Wood.
    The stable lad with the false leg bobbed up and down with remarkable dexterity as he readied the horse. “She’s a good girl. Not like the one that kicked me in the shin,” he volunteered, patting the mare.
    â€œIs that how you lost your leg?” asked Thomas.
    â€œAye,” came the reply. “But this one’s not easily spooked.”
    Thomas picked up on his words. “Spooked? Is that likely?”
    The lad looked away. “You be going into Raven’s Wood, ain’t ya, sir?”
    â€œAye.”
    The youth shook his head. “No one goes there ’less they have to,” he said.
    â€œLike Mr. Turgoose and his assistant?” Thomas suggested, poised on the mounting block.
    The stable lad nodded warily. “I warned him, sir,” he replied, watching Thomas settle himself on the saddle.
    â€œYou warned Mr. Turgoose? Of what, pray?”
    The boy stood back from the horse, looking up at Thomas, but his furtive expression gave him away. He knew he had said too much and backtracked. “I told ’em not to go into the woods. ’Tis not a place for gentlemen. ’Tis the Raven, see.”
    â€œThe Raven?” queried Thomas.
    The lad squinted in the bright light. “Him and his gang, sir—” He broke off to allow Thomas to imagine for himself the horrors the eponymous highwayman might wreak. “And you, sir. You take care, too,” he said.
    â€œI intend to,” replied Thomas with a smile as he tugged the rein. The goings-on in the wood seemed to have cast some sort of ghastly spell on the villagers. Whether local superstition was to blame or other, more earthly, reasons he could not be sure, but if no one in Brandwick would tell him precisely where the murder had taken place, he would try to find someone who would. In all probability that would mean asking a sawyer or a charcoal burner or someone of that ilk who worked in the forest.
    He rode up the incline past the fulling mill. On the nearby tenter frames, the woolen cloth flapped in the wind. The noise of the stocks as they pounded the fabric echoed around the narrow valley. There had been rain the previous day, and the river, while not in flood, was flowing well, turning the waterwheel at a goodly pace.
    At the foot of the slope Thomas dismounted and led his horse up the steep incline that led to Raven’s Wood. It was dotted with shards of flint, and the overnight rain had turned the cart track into a greasy mire. When the hill leveled out at the top of the incline, he remounted his horse and turned left onto a well-trodden path. The trees were not yet in leaf; nevertheless, as Thomas rode on, the branches overhead seemed to thicken and entwine into a single canopy, blocking out much of the light. The birdsong that had been so lively at the beginning of his journey had all but disappeared, save for the shriek of a pheasant or the call of a red kite up above. Rainwater from the earlier downpour hung in droplets from twigs, dripping constantly onto his hat, and wet branches whipped his coat. He carried on deeper into the wood until, at a point where the track narrowed and dipped into a hollow, his horse suddenly jerked its head and pricked up its ears. Patting its neck, Thomas tried to reassure the animal.
    â€œNothing amiss,” he soothed, his own eyes darting from left to right, scanning the wooded terrain. It was then that he spotted what had distracted his horse. A wooden cross, girded with red rowanberries, was dangling from a branch up ahead, directly in the horse’s eyeline. He had seen such crosses before, when the Great Fogg, which local people called the Devil’s Breath, had covered the countryside and many thought the world was about to