The Emerald Swan by Jane Feather Page A

ahead now to enable them to follow without seeming to be a part of it, and he kicked the nag into reluctant motion again. But when they reached the next village, he was forced to draw rein again.
    The skimmington had come to a halt outside the Bear and Ragged Staff and the participants thronged the ale bench and the small walled yard to the side of the inn. Potboys ran hither and thither with foaming tankards to quench the thirst of the music makers, who spilled out onto the lane that ran through the middle of the village, drinking, laughing, exchanging lewd jests.But there was a brutal edge to the apparent good humor and as Gareth looked for a way around the melee a pair of beefy carters, red-faced with great knotted arms, exploded from the inn, locked in vicious verbal argument that rapidly deteriorated into blows.
    A crowd quickly formed around them, chanting, yelling encouragement and obscenities. “God’s blood,” Gareth muttered. There was no knowing how ugly this would become and he was ill-equipped to find himself in the middle of an affray, particularly when he had Miranda to worry about.
    “The couple on the ass,” Miranda whispered urgently into his ear. “Look. They’re over there and no one’s taking any notice of them.” She pointed to a corner of the inn yard where the ass and his bound riders stood in the full sun.
    The ass was chewing from a nose bag and seemed impervious to the sun, but his riders were red-faced and sweating, drooping in their bonds. Lethargically the woman continued to swing her great wooden spoon over her shoulder as if she’d been doing it for so long her arm had become automated. The spoon didn’t always make contact with her husband’s bruised ears and cheeks but he still plied spindle and distaff as vigorously as before although they were no longer tormented by the crowd of stave-wielding threatening louts who had accompanied them on the ride.
    “We can unfasten their bonds,” Miranda continued in the same whisper. “They can slip away while everyone’s occupied with the fight. If they can hide for a few hours, the people will lose interest soon enough, particularly after a few more tankards of ale.”
    Utterly astounded, Gareth stared at her over his shoulder. “Apart from the fact that it’s none of ourbusiness,” he said, “the crowd is already in a dangerous mood. I have no desire to incite them further.”
    “Oh, but you can’t leave them like that, not when you have the opportunity to help,” Miranda murmured, her eyes intense with passionate conviction. “They’re so miserable and surely they’ve suffered enough …. assuming they even deserved to suffer. We
have
to untie them. It’s our … our human duty!”
    “Duty?” Gareth was dumbfounded. He found the style of country justice loathsome in many ways, but it was something a man endured with good grace, and without interfering.
    “They don’t even know we’re here,” Miranda said firmly and slipped from the nag’s back. She darted across the yard, Chip clinging to her neck.
    Gareth felt the quiet order of his existence begin to slip, and found himself moving the nag in Miranda’s wake, positioning him so that Miranda was hidden from the sight of the excited, yelling crowd.
    Miranda struggled futilely with the knots that bound the couple.
    “Move aside.” Gareth leaned over from the saddle and sliced through the knots with his poignard. Then he hooked Miranda’s waist with an arm and hoisted her bodily onto the saddle in front of him.
    “Hurry!” Miranda said to the bewildered pair still sitting on the ass. “You can get away if you’re quick. We’ll shield you.”
    “Oh, will we?” muttered Gareth, but he held the nag in place as the man and woman half fell from the ass’s back.
    “You great lumbering idiot!” the woman shrieked, belaboring the little man with the spoon in good earnest.“If you ’adn’t gone an’ blabbed, none o’ this would ’ave ’appened.”
    “Oh,