‘An apprentice quaestor,’ Gil said thoughtfully. ‘I hate to think what we’d put in the indentures. Promise to teach the aforesaid all the mysteries of the craft, as, inspecting bodies, detecting poisons, studying wounds.’
‘Asking impertinent questions,’ Kate supplied, laughing.
‘Nosing about,’ said Alys, obviously quoting somebody.
‘And all the other ways of clearing innocent names,’ said Augie with feeling. Kate sobered, and put out her hand to him, and Gil said,
‘No, merely an assistant, to help me with the work and to train as a notary forbye. It’s Lowrie here. That’s why I brought him down the now, to introduce him.’
Lowrie looked up, smiled, accepted their good wishes. Augie poured more ale, and they drank a toast to the future and the signing of the contract. John and his wooden horse had galloped off across the wide hall, but Wynliane and Ysonde watched with interest.
‘What’s it for?’ Ysonde asked Lowrie, tugging at his sleeve.
‘I’m to serve Maister Gil,’ he explained, ‘and learn to be a man of law.’
‘Is it a good potition?’
‘A good position? One of the best,’ he assured her seriously.
‘That’s good. Then when I’m old enough, you can marry me, and I can help to catch bad men too. Will we do that?’
Her parents and nurse exclaimed at her forwardness; Gil covered a grin and avoided Alys’s eye; but Lowrie, flying scarlet at the ears, sat down again and held out his hand.
She put her hand in his.
‘I won’t change my mind,’ she said. ‘So they’d better.’ She leaned against his knee and smiled at the company. ‘That’s all right, then.’
Also by Pat McIntosh
The Harper’s Quine
The Nicholas Feast
The Merchant’s Mark
St Mungo’s Robin
The Rough Collier
The Stolen Voice
A Pig of Cold Poison
Copyright
3 The Lanchesters
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First published in the UK by Constable, an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2011
First US edition published by SohoConstable, an imprint of Soho Press, 2011
Soho Press, Inc.
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Copyright © Pat McIntosh, 2011
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
UK ISBN: 978–1–84901–867–8
US ISBN: 978–1–56947–950–6
US Library of Congress number: 2011003199