The Girl He Sold Returned as the King's Mate novel · Chapter 9 of 24
Chapter 9: Who Paid Him
"Alpha Edmund Molyneux paid me," Crispin said.
The Justice Hall did not make a sound.
"Two nights before the festival, he called me into his study at Riverbend Hall. I was eleven."
"He told me my mother's debt to the dock company would be wiped clean. He said she'd see the physician. He said all I had to do was walk a girl to a wagon and hold her thumb."
"He gave me the story to tell afterward. A paper boat, the rapids, a fall. He made me say it three times until I had it right."
"And you did," the presiding justice said.
"I did. Then he put coins in my hand, and my mother died anyway two years later." His voice broke on that. "I want the Court to know that I know exactly what I am."
My father rose slowly to his feet.
"This is an outrage," he said. "The boy is a liar and a thief, and he is saving his own neck."
"The woman who brought this charge is a stranger with a borrowed face. My daughter is dead. I signed her death notice myself."
"I have the notice here," I said.
A clerk carried a sheet of yellowed paper to the justice's bench.
I had asked for it from the Riverbend registry four days ago, under the Crown's seal.
I laid beside it the page the bookkeeper had hidden in his boot.
"Please compare the hand on the notice and the hand on the bottom line of the carnival ledger," I said. "The signature reads E. Molyneux in both."
The justice held the two pages side by side.
She looked at them for a long time.
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