Free The Curse of Salamander Street by G.P. Taylor

up two flights of stairs and along another dark hallway until the man took a key from his belt and opened a door for Barghast.
    ‘Hope this’ll do, sir. I’ll have someone come and take the things away. I’ll double the man up in another room. Don’t think he’ll mind, not if he knows it’s you who has taken his room.’
    Barghast didn’t reply. His eyes scanned the room and then he turned to Raphah and Beadle. ‘Only one bed, sadly. I am sure our host will find you a soft resting place?’
    The man nodded as he tugged on his belt and pulled up his breeches over a large paunch that flopped like the rump of an elephant. ‘This way,’ he said as he pushed Raphah back along the way he had just come. ‘I’ll send up some food, Mister Barghast. We tend to turn in early. If it’s a coach for Peveril you want then it leaves at six. Breakfast at four. Three tickets?’
    Barghast nodded and smiled as he slid into the room and quickly shut the door.
    ‘Important friends,’ said the innkeeper as he hurried them along and pulled the hairs from the wart on his chin. ‘Without him you’d be in the barn, if you were lucky, and you’d be walking to Peveril.’ His mood had changed and he glared at Raphah.
    The innkeeper pushed them along the landing and down the stairs until they came to the kitchen door. Once again the gathering in the parlour hushed their voices to a mutter as Raphah and Beadle went by the open door.
    He took them into the kitchen. ‘In here and up there,’ he said, pointing to a double bed that was framed to the ceiling and hung across the room just below the roof. ‘It’s warm and toohigh for fleas, so think yourselves lucky. Eat, drink, sleep and make it quick – not good to be awake when it’s dark. Too much goes on that’s not the doing of men.’ The man gestured for the maid to leave the room. ‘All you can eat on the table, the oven’s stacked so will keep you warm. Important friends … Huh!’
    ‘What did he mean, Raphah?’ Beadle asked when he was certain they were alone.
    ‘He meant we take some bread and cheese and drink some ale and fall asleep.’
    ‘No, about the darkness and the goings on … And what about Barghast? Why did he follow us?’
    ‘It was only when I saw him in the light that I realised who he was. He is more than he says he is. I have heard of him. Cartaphilus Barghast is a collector of antiquities. He searches for that which he thinks has special powers. I was once told that he carried the finger of a saint and that all he desires to find is the Grail Cup,’ Raphah said. He picked at the meat that had been left on the table, pulled a chunk of bread from the loaf and filled his pockets with tiny apples that had been daintily stacked upon a white plate. ‘I think he knows who we are. It was not a coincidence we met on the road.’
    ‘The Grail Cup? Demurral spoke of it often. So what’s Cartaphilus Barghast doing here and why does he travel with us?’ Beadle pleaded.
    ‘That we will discover my friend, that we will discover,’ Raphah said as he climbed the ladder to the high bed and looked down at Beadle from the ceiling. ‘This is a good place. A warm night’s sleep and then on to Peveril. Soon I’ll find Thomas and Kate.’
    ‘But who is he?’ moaned Beadle as he warmed his steaming backside against the oven. ‘Did you see the coach hounds? Every one of them terrified and he said he’d been with us whilst we walked. What is he – invisible?’
    ‘If Barghast is the one I was told of when I sailed to this land, then he will soon reveal himself and his purpose. Until then, let us keep close counsel.’ Raphah rolled himself into the blanket. The heat from the oven had warmed the bed, and it was as if he rested on hot buttered bread. Raphah smiled to himself as he looked down at Beadle, who shuffled and strutted up and down the kitchen angrily chuntering to himself. ‘Beadle, sleep.’
    ‘SLEEP?’ Beadle asked as he stepped too close to the