Free The Silver Horse by Kate Forsyth Page A

bring us some better food,’ she said, ‘if he feels sorry for us. And I need to think of the future too.’
    â€˜The future,’ Beatrice said, hopeless misery in her voice. ‘What future?’
    â€˜Whatever future I can salvage for us,’ Maggiesaid. ‘I may not be able to save myself, or my sons, or even you, but the little ones? Will they truly hang the little ones? And if they don’t, where are they to go? Who will look after them? My kin, I hope, but these are bad times for the Rom. I have to grasp whatever straws I can find.’
    Understanding dawned in Beatrice’s eyes. ‘You think . . . you hope . . . that he . . .’ She gestured towards the door.
    â€˜No harm in planting a few seeds,’ Maggie said. ‘Besides, we all need hope in our lives. Even a prison guard deserves that.’
    Beatrice sat down with her tiny wedge of bread and cheese as her grandmother tried to coax Silvia into eating some of the hard-boiled egg. She mulled over what her grandmother had said. She wished she could be so optimistic. Her mind flashed to Emilia and Luka, and to her betrothed, Sebastien, and though she wanted desperately to believe that they could help her and her family insome way, she could not think how. Beatrice could see no hope at all in the future. No hope at all.

    Luka and Sebastien, at that very moment, were talking about Beatrice. Sebastien wanted to know everything about her. So Luka told him about how Beatrice had practically raised Emilia and Noah by herself, even though she was not much older than they were, and how she had taught herself to sew so she could get work up at the manor, helping the seamstresses, which paid better than the usual gypsy method of helping out at harvest time and making baskets and other trinkets. Sebastien already felt a warm glow of interest in his young wife-to-be. Luka wanted to stoke this blaze even higher, so he told many tales of Beatrice’s sweetness of temper, her practical good sense and her gentleness. He did not even have to exaggeratevery much, for Beatrice was indeed very sweet-tempered, if rather too prone to dissolving into tears for Luka’s taste. He thought to himself, with a private grin, that he was glad he was not having to burnish Emilia’s character. It would have been much harder to do so with every appearance of sincerity.
    â€˜It is a crime that such a sweet and lovely girl should be locked up in prison,’ Sebastien cried. ‘What evil has she done? What wrongdoing?’
    â€˜They said we were begging, but we weren’t, we were performing for our pennies,’ Luka said righteously. ‘You’ve heard Beatrice sing, don’t you think it’s worth a handful of gold to hear her?’
    â€˜Indeed,’ Sebastien said. ‘She sings like an angel.’
    â€˜Maybe that’s why the pastor had her locked up,’ Luka said. ‘He hates anything beautiful or joyous, he hates people to be happy. He wants us all to be as gloomy and miserable as he is.’
    â€˜I don’t understand these Puritans,’ Sebastien said. ‘If they want to go around with long faces, wearing nothing but black and feeling utterly miserable, let them. But why do they have to make everyone else miserable too? What do they care if we want to sing and dance and make merry?’
    â€˜Makes no sense at all,’ Luka said, and lifted Zizi so he could cuddle her under his chin, taking comfort from her little nuzzle of affection and the softness of her fur.

    While Luka and Sebastien were filling in the long hours of the day with idle conversation, Pastor Spurgeon was writing letters. He wrote swiftly and strongly, filling page after page with sloping black letters that flowed from his pen with utter assurance and certainty. Every now and again he signed his name with a flourish, then sealed theletter with red wax and set it in a neat pile of other letters to be