Warwolfe (de Wolfe Pack Book 0)(2)

They were in search of someone.

“Queenie!”

The old man banged his cane on the wooden floor, a floor that, at one time, had been finished but now it just looked splintered and dirty. And the smell of the house… God, the smell was that of dust and must and dampness.

It was glorious.

“Do you think he’s home?” the young woman asked timidly. “I mean, the front door was open and….”

“He’s home,” the gray-haired man cut her off with confidence. “Queensborough Browne and I have known each other for many years. My family has lived in a house on Telham Lane adjacent to this house since the turn of the last century. My property backs up to Queenie’s property. He’s most definitely home, Miss Devlin. He never leaves. Therefore, we simply have to find him.”

So they were on a hunt for a man named Queensborough Browne and Abigail Devlin was simply along for the ride, an important path in the course of her research for her Ph.D. dissertation in Medieval History at the University of Birmingham. She’d been to the bucolic village of Battle several times over the past nine months, all of her time spent at the battlefield or the museum that held the artifacts of the Battle of Hastings. During these many visits, she’d struck up a friendship with one of the docents there, a Mr. Peters Groby.

It had been a most fortuitous acquaintance.

Mr. Groby was blind in one eye, half-crippled and had a terrible wet cough that seemed to weaken him when it came on, but the man knew the history of England, and the history of the Battle of Hastings, like nobody’s business. He and Abigail spoke weekly and she’d been making the trek down to Battle nearly every weekend to listen to his tales and speak with the curators of the museum. They had artifacts and documentation in their archives that she’d been given access to, thanks to Mr. Groby, and she was very grateful for it, but it seemed like all of that history wasn’t telling her much about what she really wanted to know. For Abigail, she was looking for something very specific.

The unsung heroes of the Norman Invasion and their impact upon the Conquest.

That was the tentative title of her dissertation. She’d refine it at some point, but right now, that was pretty much the entire focus of her paper – the men other than the Duke of Normandy who had made a difference in the conquest of England. The curators at the museum had been very helpful with suggestions on where else she could find additional material that might tell her of the driving forces behind the Duke of Normandy’s army, but the truth was that there was very little documentation about that subject in general. There wasn’t a great deal known from period sources about the actual Battle of Hastings and the ensuing conquest.

Nearly a year into the first of three years for her Ph.D. studies, Abigail was starting to become discouraged with just how very little information there was about a subject she was certain held great and deep secrets – the front lines of the Duke of Normandy’s army, the knights who would have led the cavalry and would have broken through the English army’s mighty shield wall, a shield wall that had held for nearly nine hours on that fateful day. But someone had eventually broken through.

Abigail wanted to know who that was.

Now, she had what she thought might be a breakthrough in finding out. Mr. Groby had a friend, it seemed, whose family had been original land owners in the area in the High Middle Ages. This family was very old and the very last of the line, an old man by the name of Queensborough Browne, lived like a hermit off of Powdermill Road, which was in sight of the battlefield and the demolished abbey. Mr. Groby had made an appointment on this day to go and see him but it seemed that Queensborough was nowhere to be found.

Now, they were wandering in the guy’s house like a couple of burglars, hunting him down as Mr. Groby continued to bang his cane on the floor and call his friend’s name.

“Queenie!”

“Mr. Groby, maybe he’s just not here,” Abigail said, trying to insist because, even though she was awestruck by the old house, it didn’t seem right prowling through it without an invitation. “I can always come back. I’ll be back next weekend.”

“Nonsense,” Groby said. “He is here, somewhere. He’s expecting us, I assure you.”

Abigail wasn’t so sure. They had made their way through the foyer, into what appeared to be a back hall that was cluttered to the roof with all kinds of things, and now they were entering an extremely old kitchen. The floor was stone and the stove in what had been the old hearth had to be a hundred years old. They hadn’t made stoves like that for decades, if not centuries. The old sink was iron and the very old spigots were also made of iron, or so it seemed. Truthfully, it was difficult to tell. As they passed through the kitchen and towards what looked like an orangery beyond, an old man suddenly appeared with plants in his hands.

“Queenie!” Groby exclaimed. “Didn’t you hear me calling you, old man?”

Queensborough Browne looked rather surprised to see his friend, immediately spying the young woman behind him. A stub of a man with a crown of white hair that looked like cotton and enormous hands now dirty from potting, his old eyes inspected the young woman for a moment before replying.

“Is that the girl?” he asked.

Groby nodded, turning to look at Abigail rather proudly. “An American convert,” he said. “She’s coming back over to this side of the pond. A very intelligent young lady, actually. This is Miss Abigail Devlin. Miss Devlin, this is my friend, Mr. Queensborough Browne.”