The wall was modest, the guards few, but the house within was substantial: two stories of timber and stone, with a slate roof and shuttered windows and the kind of sturdy, unpretentious architecture that spoke of money earned through labor rather than inherited through blood. Smoke rose from the chimney.
Lanterns burned in the windows. The place looked, from the outside, like the home of a man who had done well for himself and expected to continue doing so.
I did not enter through the front gate. I had the carriage stop two hundred meters from the wall, in a copse of trees where the vehicle would not be visible from the house.
The knights who had accompanied me — Pell and his companion, silent and obedient since the morning's events — looked at me with questions they did not dare ask.
"Wait here," I told them. "If I am not back by morning, return to the manor and tell Martha I said to prepare the study for two guests."
