Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 128 of 150

Ben slept two hours on Al's bench and woke with the problem still on his chest. Eileen would walk in three days. He had no place to put her when she did. Al's shed sat too close to the road. Payne's carts passed at dark. Two men had come by the fork yesterday asking after a repair that did not exist. He needed stone walls, one door, and no neighbors. He wrote three options on the back of the same feed slip. A music hall two valleys east, loud enough to bury any hum but crowded with strangers. A courier hut on the fast run north, tight and defensible but too small for four people and a chest. A collecting house at the trade stop, roomy but watched by every trader working the road. He crossed out the music hall first. Too many ears meant too many mouths. Joe came in with pine needles on his coat. He had walked the courier hut before dawn. "Door faces the track," Joe said. "One window. A rider passes every hour. If she comes in there, someone counts her going in and someone counts her coming out." Ben crossed out the courier hut. "Collecting house?" Al asked. "Watched," Ben said. "And the trader who runs it owes Payne." He crossed that out too. The slip was empty now. Lolly stepped in from the yard with her hands wet to the elbow. She had been washing at the trough. "There's a stone cottage," she said. "Off the old plague road. Nobody goes near it. Roof half gone but the front room is whole. One door. Thick walls." "How do you know it?" "I hid there in the fall. A woman lived in it once. She left." Ben thought about the plague road. Payne's men used the west end for their carts, but the east end ran into brush and stopped. No one traveled the dead half. The cottage sat on the dead half. "How far?" he said. "Half a morning on foot. Less if we cut the ridge." Millie whistled from the door. Her winged creature landed on the rail. She had sent it up at first light to look at the roof line. "No smoke for a mile," she said. "No tracks on the approach." Ben took the axle piece out from under the floor and wrapped it in the wool. The fox climbed into the sack on its own. He gave Al a folded note for Anita's runner. "Change of address," he said. "Stone cottage off the east plague road. Bring Eileen there at dusk on the third day. Alone." Al nodded and pocketed the note. Ben shouldered the sack. He had a room now with one door and stone on every side. He had two days to make it ready before his sister walked through it.