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Mungo stopped abruptly and yanked his left arm from his guard’s grip. ‘You got me well enough looked after, dontcha, you two?’ He snaked his right arm from the other guard’s grip and bent over a bit to rub at the backs of his legs. ‘Stupid old sow!’ he growled turning to glower at Granny Greenhill. He stood up hunching his shoulders this way and that to ease the sting of the whack she’d given him after he’d fallen.
‘Shoulda followed the first of my druthers and passed the Perch on by. Always too many busybodies here. Shoulda kept on hoofin’ it downriver; that’s what I shoulda done.’ He looked from one to the other of his guards, but neither of them appeared to be paying much attention to his ‘shouldas’.
Mungo’s cap, askew from his recent fall, slipped off his head and thumped to the floor. He picked it up and slapped it soundly against his leg, as if to knock off what dirt it might have gotten from the dusty boards. It was a vain attempt since there were layers of grime already embedded in the cap and what dirt there was dislodged was really the dust that flew up from his breeches. He smoothed back his greasy curls and shoved the cap firmly back on his head.
He glanced slyly from one to the other of his escorts, sizing up whether he might be able to escape. No chance! Both pairs of eyes were fixed firmly on him. With a resigned sigh he smoothed down his raggedy tunic and limped on toward the Shiriff and that loudmouthed Ranger.
‘Din’t do nothin’!’ he said, coming to a halt in front of Rusty Smallburrow. Mungo hitched his thumbs in the waistband of his breeches and puffed out his chest like a feisty little banty rooster.
‘Didn’t say you did, Mungo,’ the Shiriff replied. ‘Though I’m sure if I looked close enough there’d be something you’d not want the light of day shone on.’
Mungo narrowed his eyes and dropped his gaze to the floor. ‘Whatcha want, then?’ he mumbled.
‘Miz Cela Brandybuck’s gone missing, disappeared,’ Rusty continued. He shook his head as Mungo started to protest his innocence. ‘Now I’m not saying you had anything to do with it. But . . . . I’m supposing you were out last night, like most nights. On business, of course.’ Rusty cleared his throat meaningfully and went on. ‘What we want to know is if you heard anything or saw anything as you were out and about. Anything that could help us find Miz Cela.’
Mungo scraped his foot on the floor and pursed his lips. ‘Mighta,’ he answered. ‘Now I’m not saying I was doing anything but passing by, but I did find myself coming up the west bank of the river last night . . . .’
Before he could continue, the Shiriff asked, ‘The river? You mean the Brandywine, yes? You were coming north up the Brandywine?’
‘Yeah, sure, the big river it was. And north. Anyways, like I was saying I was stepping along at a fair pace when I heard some voices drift over the water. I stopped, and peeked careful like out through the bushes. Was a little cloudy, you know; moon’s light was weak through ‘em. There was a boat with three fellows in it. Leastways it looked like three fellows; they all had cloaks on and the hoods pulled up. Their faces were all in the dark. One was rowing; the other two were talking, arguing some. Couldn’t hear what exactly.’ He paused for a moment, nodding his head at the memory. ‘Coulda been a female voice I heard from one of them. Hard to tell. Didn’t that Cela have kind of a low voice? Anyway, the boat and whoever was in it passed by pretty quickly – what with the current and the hard pulling of the fellow doing the rowing.’
Mungo shrugged his shoulders at the end of his story. ‘Yep, that’s about all there was to it. Like I said, they was moving like a hot knife through butter now wasn’t they?’ No need to elaborate further he cautioned himself. They only want to know about Miz Cela. No need for them to know what he’d been about at the time.
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