Mist Over Pendle by Robert Neill

our Constable--sent word, a half-hour gone, of a man dead at a place called the Rough Lee. And some people, it seems, are asking why. Which is a nuisance. I was due at Altham today. Are you finished?”
    “I ... I think so.”
    He looked her in the eye, and burst out laughing.
    “That’s an answer more of manners than of stomach. I’d forgotten, your youth. Get you to it! Mitton won’t mind waiting.”
    He began to charge his tobacco pipe while Margery, nothing loath, attacked the bacon again and helped herself to more ale. The frugality of her mother’s housekeeping had taught her to take chances when they came.
    “This ale,” she said happily. “Do you call it small ale here?”
    “Mostly.” Roger’s eyebrows had taken a sardonic lift. “You find it none so small?”
    “It’s better than our best. As for our small....“
    “I know it. I know your London ale--and a poor-weak-sinner’s brew it is! You must try our October----”
    He put fire to his pipe while Margery cut at the bacon for a third time. She ate steadily until curiosity woke in her. Then she looked up at Roger.
    “This Mitton, sir, who won’t mind waiting. May I know who he is?”
    “He isn’t. He’s dead. That’s why he won’t mind waiting.”
    “Oh!”
    And Margery, who had been contemplating a fourth attack on the bacon, suddenly decided not to. Instead she told Roger she had finished.
    “You’re sure?” He looked hard at her. “To horse then in ten minutes’ time.”
    She was out of the house in less than that, and on the gravel by the great door she found the horses, held by the man who had led the pack-horse yesterday. He handed her a packet done in white cloth.
    “Bread and cheese,” he explained. “Master Nowell said it should be in your saddle-bag.”
    She took it with a surprise which he must have noticed.
    “Said you’d not had much breakfast,” he added, “and maybe you’d be sharp set before we’re back.”
    Margery saw no sense in contradicting this, so she took the packet and stuffed it into her saddle-bag. Then she turned to look at him more carefully. She saw a small stocky fellow, thick-set and strong, with fair hair, unwavering blue eyes, and a nose that looked as if it had once been broken. She found herself smiling at him, and he smiled back with a display of startlingly white teeth in a face so brown and creased that she wondered where, and under what suns, he had been. Margery’s smile broadened’. She thought she liked this man.
    Then Roger came out of the house to join them, pulling on his gloves as he walked.
    “So you’ve met,” he said. “That’s well. You should know Tom Peyton, little cousin. We’ve been together many a year, and he’s my old and trusty friend.”
    And Margery knew from his tone that he meant it. She turned to Tom Peyton again.
    “I hope you’ll be in some sort my friend too,” she told him. “I’m a stranger here and have need of friends.”
    His smile broadened into a grin.
    “Do my best ma’am. Command me.”
    Roger nodded approval and then swung lightly into his saddle. Tom Peyton held Margery’s stirrup.
    They went away at a brisk trot, and soon Margery was staring at the contrast between this country and the Kentish fields she had known. She could not, indeed, see it as fully as she could have wished, for much of the road lay between banks that cut the view; but she was soon aware that they were climbing to a bleak and undulating moorland, a place of rock and bracken, of tufted grass and scattered trees.
    Roger waved his gloved hand to the left.
    “The great hill’s yonder,” he explained, “and it runs, as I told you, to the nor’east. This side, there’s a great broad face of it that dips to the valley where runs the Sabden brook....“
    “Which we crossed last night?”
    “That one. And this side of the brook the ground sweeps up again to this ridge, which marches with the hill. We’re on the outer face of the ridge just now, which is why