Read Ellis Peters - George Felse 12 - City Of Gold and Shadows for Free Online

morning. Water’s been right up over the path two days or more, I reckon it’s loosened part o’ the foundations under here.’ He stood at the edge of the slope, looking down the line of his cordon and into the turgid water. ‘Who’d get the blame, I ask you, if some young big-head like him got larking about in that lot, and the whole thing caved in and buried him alive? I don’t reckon they’d allow as a rope and three notices was enough. It’d be me for it, me and Mr Paviour and his lordship—ah, and in that order! But they expect us to keep the place open for ’em. We got stated hours, nobody lets us off because the Comer floods.’
    His deep, warm western voice had risen into plangent eloquence, indignant and rapt. And Charlotte was suddenly aware of him as a person, and by no means an unintelligent person, either; but above all a vital presence, to be ignored only at the general peril. He was built rather heavily even for his height, a monumental creature admirably suited to these classic and heroic surroundings; and his face was a mask of antique beauty, but crudely cut out of a local stone. She could see him as a prototype for the border entrepreneur trapped here in the decline and fall of this precarious city, the market-stallholder, the baths attendant, the potter, the vegetable grower, any one of the native opportunists who had rallied to serve and exploit this hothouse community of time-expired settlers and pay-happy leave-men. He had a forehead and nose any Greek might have acknowledged with pride, and long, grey-blue eyes like slivers of self-illuminating stone, somewhere between lapis-lazuli and granite. His fairness inclined ever so slightly towards the Celtic red of parts of Wales, an alien colouring in both countries. He had a full, passionate, childlike mouth, generously shaped but brutally finished; and his cleanshaven cheeks and jaw were powerful and fleshless, pure, massive bone under the fine, fair skin. It was easy to see that his roots went down fathoms deep in this soil, and transplanting would have destroyed everything in him that was of quality. There was nowhere else he belonged.
    Charlotte said, on an impulse she only partially understood: ‘Don’t worry about him. In an hour they’ll be gone.’ And just as impulsively she turned to check on the movements of that incalculable swarm of half-grown children who were causing him this natural anxiety. The boys and their uneasy pastor were moving tidily enough into the first green enclosure which must be the frigidarium of the baths, emerging in little, bulbous groups from between the broken walls of the entrance. She saw the stragglers gather, none too enthusiastically, but not unwillingly, either, and waited for the last-comers. Something was missing there. It took her a few minutes to realise what it was. The teacher, selfconsciously gathering his chicks about him, was now the tallest person in sight. Where had the odious senior, Boden, gone, somewhere among those broken, enfolding walls? And how had he shed his train? The numbers there looked more or less complete. He was a natural stray, of course. He needed the minimum of cover to drop out of sight, whenever it suited him. But at least he was well away from here. No doubt something else had diverted his attention, and afforded him another cue to spread confusion everywhere around him.
    ‘There’s always closing-time,’ said the gardener-handyman philosophically. He lifted one narrowed glance of blue-grey eyes, slanting from Charlotte to her escort and sharing a fleeting smile between them as recognised allies. He was gone, withdrawing rather like a mountain on the move, downriver where the water most encroached. He walked like a mountain should walk, too, striding without upheaval, drawing his roots with him.
     
    ‘Come down to the path,’ said the enthusiast, abruptly returning to his passion as soon as the distractions withdrew, ‘and I’ll show you something. Round this