Read A Christmas Visitor for Free Online

self-righteous …” He stopped. “It’s thirsty work walking in this. Let’s go to the Fleece and take a pint of Cumberland ale. It’s a long time since I’ve tasted a jar of Snecklifter. It’s too early for lunch, or I’d have had a good crust of bread and a piece of Whillimoor Wang. There’s a plain, lean cheese for you to let you know you’re home. I’d like to hear a tale or two of good men and dogs, or even a fanciful yarn of demons and fairies, such as they like around here. They used to write that in as cause of death sometimes, you know? Taken by fairies!”
    Henry smiled. “That must have covered a multitude of things!”
    Benjamin laughed harshly. “Try explaining that to the constable.”
    An hour later, warmed and refreshed, entertained by taller and taller stories in broad Cumberland dialect, they emerged into the street again to find theweather brighter, and the sun breaking through wide rifts in the clouds, dazzling on the snow and reflecting on the lake in long blue and silver shards.
    They had ridden barely a hundred yards, past small shops, the smithy, the cooper’s yard, and were just level with the clog shop where the clog maker was hollowing out the wooden soles with his long, hinged stock knife when they almost ran into a broad-shouldered man with densely black hair.
    The man was on foot and Benjamin looked down at him with an expression of cold fury. The man’s eyes were narrowed, hard with loathing as he stared back. Henry did not need to be told that this was Ashton Gower.
    “So you’ve returned from following the footsteps of God!” Gower said sarcastically. “Much good it’ll do you. I’ll give you a decency of mourning, for the widow’s sake, though those that profit from sin are as guilty of it as them that do it. But I suppose a woman’s got to stay by her man, she’s little choice. It’ll make no difference in the end.”
    “None at all,” Benjamin agreed harshly. “Speakanother word against my brother, and I’ll sue you for slander and see you back in prison, which is where you belong. They should never have let you out.”
    “Slander’s a civil suit, Mr. Dreghorn,” Gower replied, glaring up at him. “And you’d have to win before you could do anything to anyone. I’ve no money to pay you damages. You and your kin have already taken everything that was mine. You can’t rob me twice, even if you could prove I was lying, which you can’t, because every word I say is the truth.”
    Henry tensed, afraid Benjamin might lunge at him, even mounted as he was.
    But Benjamin did not attempt to strike Gower. He sat quite still in the icy air. “The pity is that I cannot slander you, Gower,” he replied. “Nothing I could say about you is untrue. You are proven a liar, a forger, and a would-be thief. You only failed at it because you were so clumsy, so damned bad at forgery that they could see at a glance that the deeds were rotten. You didn’t even do it well!”
    Gower’s face flushed dull red, his eyes like black holes in his head. Now it was he who looked for a momentas if he would find it impossible to control his physical desire to lash out, even grasp at Benjamin and pull him off his horse. He moved, his arm out, then stopped.
    “Is that what happened to Judah?” Benjamin asked, his voice grating between his teeth. “He called you a failed thief, and you lost your temper?”
    Slowly Gower relaxed and a slow smile spread across his face. “I’m not sorry he’s dead, Dreghorn. I’m glad. He was a corrupt man, an abuser of power and office, and there’s not much worse than a judge who uses his position to steal from the men who come before him believing they’ll receive justice. If the judge himself is rotten at the heart, what hope is there for the people? That is a high sin, Dreghorn. It stinks to heaven.”
    He stepped back, lifting his head. “But I did not kill him. He wronged me bitterly. He sent me to prison for a crime I did not commit, and