The Gypsy Crown by Kate Forsyth Page B

bear. The children were left with Coldham, who was looking very grim. He dropped his hands on their shouders and they were unbearably hard and heavy. Squirming a little, trying to hide their anxiety, the children were pushed up the steps together and taken into into a vast hall, magnificently decorated and hung with shields and banners. They were taken through one chamber after another, each more lavishly decorated than the one before, and ended up in a room with a view out over the lake, and a table groaning with all sorts of food. Emilia and Luka saw a great, dismembered pheasant, a gleaming pink ham, a dish of eggs swimming in butter, smoked herrings and a steaming plate of roast beef, all flanked by jugs of foaming ale. Their mouths watered and their stomachs grumbled loudly. They were so transfixed they barely noticed the pastor sitting at the table, a virtually empty plate before him, his fingers drumming impatiently.
    â€˜Here you go, Spurgeon, the gypsy brats you wanted. Nothing if not quick off the mark, hey?’ The colonel grunted with laughter, his triple chins wobbling, then dropped into his chair. ‘But you’re not eating, man. Eat up, eat up!’
    The pastor ignored him. ‘Indeed, the colonel’s man has done his work well,’ he said in a low, cold voice. ‘Better than my man, who let these squalid little gypsies slip his net.’
    â€˜I beg pardon, sir,’ Coldham said gruffly. ‘It won’t happen again.’
    â€˜Indeed it won’t, because you shall take these spawn of Satan back to Kingston-upon-Thames this very day, and you will have them up before the magistrates by the end of the month, and you will see them hang.’
    The colonel looked up, startled. ‘Hang? You mean to hang ’em, my dear fellow? Not to say they aren’t nasty little pests, but a little young, don’t you think?’
    â€˜Never too young to stamp out the Devil,’ the pastor said.
    The colonel had stopped chewing. His mouth hung open, showing a most unpalatable lump of grey, half-chewed pheasant meat. Then he shrugged and went back to eating. ‘Whatever you say, dear fellow,’ he mumbled. ‘I cannot think you do our cause any good, though, to hang such a pair of grubby brats. What is their crime? You know the Lord Protector abhors a judge too quick to hang.’
    The pastor was quiet for a moment, frowning, and looking very displeased. ‘Coldham,’ he snapped. ‘Go through their bag. Let us see with our own eyes what Devil’s wares they carry. For we know nothing of true significance was found in their wagons, or in the bushes thereabouts. The old witch must have given her Devil’s wares to these young fiends to carry away for her.’
    Luka clutched the bag closer. Both he and Emilia remembered, too late, what Maggie had said about her crystal ball and fortune-telling cards. They should have thrown the bag away during the chase through the forest. They looked at each other in horror as Coldham wrested the bag from them and upended it on the table. He found the crystal ball and tarot cards at once, and held them up for the pastor to see, almost smiling.
    â€˜Aha, behold the malignancy of their sin,’ the pastor cried, that strange burning light in his eyes again. ‘Indeed, they are about the work of the Devil. See there his prayer books, painted with all sorts of foul and loathsome idols; and their scrying ball, for contacting and communicating with his evil spirits. Did I not tell you? And what is the penalty for those wicked and devilish arts called witchcraft? Death! Only then can we stamp out the devil in them!’
    â€˜So help me God,’ Coldham said piously.
    Luka glanced at him in acute dislike. He found the pastor quite terrifying, but also strangely fascinating. When he spoke, his voice rose and fell in rhythms that were almost soothing, and it was hard not to nod and agree with him, even when he was