Chapter 22

It wasn’t a reunion. Timm had been on the bad guys side and nobody was sure if they had just changed masters ... gone from bad to worse. But they helped. There was loot stashed all over the place. Since nobody listens to slaves ... or pays attention to slaves ... the slaves knew where everything was. Including the new girl in the root cellar.

“The boss brought her back from Bridgetown,” Timm was told ... and she told me.

“Seems the big boss went to Bridgetown to settle a dispute about the ten mile stretch from here to there. This boss wanted exclusive rights to the road and that one in Bridge was making incursions. Of course, the Bridgetown boss felt like this boss was violating his territory. As it turns out ... they both were being set up by His Honor, the mayor.”

“Wait ... girl in the root cellar? How long has she been there?” I asked.

“Two or three days ... or weeks, depending on who is telling the story,” Timm said. “I had no idea so I suppose she’s been here since I went to Painswick.”

“The damsel I’m supposed to rescue is in the custody of the Mayor. She’s in the cellar?”

“So they say,” said Timm.

“Think we should find out?” I asked.

The root cellar door was locked by looping a new rope through the the two handles and tied with a square knot ... ease of extraction and deposit.

“I’ll fix that,” I said and hauled out my sword.

“No!” said Timm. “Don’t cut it ... we might need a nice piece of good rope.”

It was a square knot ... lift up one tail and they come loose ... and that’s what Timm did. Untied, she raised the bifold doors and I hollered, “Eloise, Entertainer of Cassandra, come forth.”

You would have thought I’d rolled away the stone and summoned Lazarus, I put so much feeling into it. Then I felt really stupid. These people have no reference to books or learning. They have experience. Somebody does something stupid and the survivors learned to not do that again.

“I can’t,” Eloise hollered back.

I stuck my head in the cellarway,”Why not?”

“Chained to the wall,” she said.

“That’ll work,” I muttered. I strode down the steps and had a look. Yup. Chain. Not rope ... smith made chain. But ... the wall the chain was stapled to wasn’t concrete ... it was stacked rocks. I was able to get a better purchase on the staple. It wasn’t easy ... but I pulled it free.

Helping Eloise up the stone slab steps, we wobbled to the barn and tools. Her shackles off, I gave possession back to the original owner, and we mounted up and rode back to Painswick and the bank. Anticlimactic ... sure. A simple green folder rescue ... sorta. Two damsels were better than one ... and unexpected.

Someone had taken over the stables ... New at it ... there wasn’t a lot of money, I sold the horses on credit. The blacksmith took the shit iron, with my blessing. As far as wealth went ... the barns and bedrooms of the farm-house yielded up their gold and that and my weapons and accouterments went in the bank box. I closed the lid and we were home.