Percival novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: Inn by the Road
The whole keep came out to watch me go.
They stood in the courtyard in the grey dawn, three hundred of them.
There were cooks and clerks and grooms and wolves from the upper halls, with their breath smoking.
Nobody had told them to come.
Maisie stood at the foot of the steps with her arms folded and her face like stone.
She did not cry until I had passed her.
Bascombe stood at the top, leaning on his cane, with six of his guards.
He did not say a word.
He wanted me to see him not saying it.
I walked down the steps with my one bag and my notebook and Percival's long black coat around my shoulders.
Nobody had taken it back.
At the bottom I turned.
Percival stood between two guards at the top, in his shirtsleeves, with his hands at his sides.
He looked at me across the whole courtyard, and the thread on my wrist burned.
"Mr. Wolcott," I said.
My voice carried.
I had spent four years learning to read aloud in that stone hall.
"Miss DeMille."
"I'm going to the inn at the bottom of the mountain. The one with the green door."
"I know it."
"I'm not asking you to follow me."
"Will you?" I said.
He could not lie.
He could not even stay silent, and I watched the answer come up in him.
"Yes," said Percival.
Three hundred wolves heard it.
"I will follow you if I have to crawl."
Somebody at the back whooped, quickly cut short.
Bascombe's cane struck the stone.
"The adviser is confined to Greyholt," he said, "by order of the Council."
"Then he'll have to find a way," I said.
I got into the carriage.
The driver clicked his tongue, and the horses leaned into the traces, and the gate swung open on the white road.
I did not look back until the pines closed in.
It took him eighteen days.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Percival are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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