Gallagher waved them on. “Can’t hurt. No one likes horse thieves.”
They gave Gallagher their orders, then proceeded to make their way around the room, asking if any of the seven patrons had seen The Barbarian.
None had been on the Sleaford road during the critical afternoon, but two farmworkers had been repairing a fence beside the Ancaster lane just north of the village.
The older man shook his head in definite fashion. “Sure as I’m sitting here, no such horse passed us that afternoon.”
The other nodded. “And there’s no way we would’ve missed seeing such a beast.”
Nicholas asked, “You’re sure it was Wednesday last that you were repairing that section of fence? Not any other day?”
“Nope.” The older man sounded certain. “Had to be last Wednesday because Squire—it’s his field—rode up to check with us midmorning and told us he was off to Sleaford market.”
“And as we all know,” the other man said, “that means it was Wednesday.”
Dickie clarified, “And the stretch of fence you were repairing was just north of the village, before any of the smaller lanes go off this road?”
“S’right,” the older man said. “So unless the thief went into one of our cottages or houses along here, he didn’t pass this way.”
Addie and Dickie were hugely relieved. Even Nicholas brightened.
The three of them returned to the table where the rest of their company had gathered and were accepting the plates the serving girls had brought out.
Leaving it to Dickie to explain what they’d just learned, Addie slid onto one end of the bench seat and drew her plate toward her. She picked up the mug of cider Dickie, after completing his explanation, slid her way. She sipped, then said, “Well, at least we can now go back to the Sleaford road and continue along.” Over the rim of her glass, she met Nicholas’s eyes. “And between here and the town, there’s only really the lanes to Rauceby that we need to check.”
Nicholas met her gaze, read the challenge within it, and carefully nodded. The last thing he wanted her to do was, once again, rush ahead. He picked up his fork and considered the large slice of pie before him. “We’ll still need to ask everyone we can find. We need to be certain he went into Sleaford proper and didn’t stop somewhere on the outskirts.”
She and Dickie mumbled that it would be difficult for anyone to hide The Barbarian in that area without someone catching sight of him.
Nicholas acknowledged that with a dip of his head. “Just so, and until we actually locate our thief and The Barbarian, we need to remain thorough and vigilant in our search.”
The siblings cast him identical looks of suppressed frustration, which made him inwardly smile, but which, otherwise, he ignored.
After finishing their meals, they quit the inn and rode south to, once again, turn onto the Sleaford road.
As they continued along, time and again, Nicholas had to rein in the siblings’ impatience to push ahead. He quickly realized the best way of doing that was to send the pair to the farmhouses and cottages to ask the inhabitants if they’d seen their quarry. Given that, of their company, they were the two whom locals would recognize and most wish to accommodate with information, that was easily justified.
After the next positive sighting they uncovered—on the outskirts of the hamlet of Wilsford, sufficient to confirm that the thief hadn’t turned south but continued toward Sleaford—both Adriana and Dickie ceased their mutterings against Nicholas’s enforced thoroughness and threw themselves into finding another sighting. Their efforts soon engendered the usual sibling rivalry, something Nicholas recognized and subtly encouraged, given that kept the pair engaged with the search rather than fighting against his yoke and wanting to race ahead.
When they reached the turn north to Rauceby, Addie and Dickie insisted on first pursuing any possible sightings along the next stretch of the Sleaford road. Nicholas could see their point—that if they found such a sighting they could ignore the minor lane—and when Addie almost immediately found a farmworker’s wife who had been overseeing her children playing in their front garden when “a massive bay horse went prancing past, led by a man on a chestnut horse,” everyone felt vindicated.
They forged on with even greater determination.
Increasingly, the siblings and, indeed, the entire company, saw the value in Nicholas’s approach and, when they hit the outskirts of Sleaford, threw themselves into the endeavor. Although still not plentiful, the sightings were sufficient to, step by sure step, lead them into the town.
Carefully and methodically, they tracked horse and rider, confirming that, late on Wednesday afternoon, the thief had brazenly led The Barbarian up Southgate, the main street running south to north through the center of the town. Along the way, he’d passed the lane leading to the London Road, as well as a road leading southeastward, known as Mareham Lane, which ultimately led to Threekingham. They’d also established, somewhat painstakingly, that their quarry had ignored the major eastward road to Boston, the town most of their number had assumed the villain had been making for.
Instead, the rider had continued north along Southgate to the point where that road became Northgate, at the southwest corner of the marketplace in the very middle of the town.
They cast about, but as it was Monday, there were far fewer people about the market square, and those they found were hurrying home from being elsewhere or after shutting up their shops.
While the others dismounted and quartered the surrounding area, Nicholas remained on Tamerlane’s back, holding the other horses’ reins while he studied the signpost that stood at the corner of the market square.
According to the arms on the post, a well-used road appropriately labeled Eastgate led to Ruskington, which lay some way to the northeast. In the opposite direction, Westgate led to the causeway of Sleaford Castle. They’d seen the ruins, looming over the road to their left as they’d entered the town. That was one lane Nicholas doubted the thief had taken.
The highest arm on the post pointed up Northgate, which was marked as the way to Holdingham.
By Nicholas’s reckoning, that meant the most likely—but not certain—route the thief had taken from that spot was via Northgate to Holdingham or via Eastgate to Ruskington. However, it was possible that he’d come this far into the town to see someone and, subsequently, later on Wednesday evening or night when there were fewer people around, had left again by one of the other roads—to London, Threekingham, or Boston.
