The White Horse Inn, Act II

[Bêthberry]

"Ruthven!" Madi cried suddenly.

Surprised, the old pedlar looked up.

"Madi Codex! And here I was worried you had been trapped in the fire. What mischief are you up to now, dragging a young girl around who ought to be in her room?"

"I dragged him out," spoke up Linnea proudly. "You had said you were looking for him and I was the one who found him."

"So it seems, my child. Yet you haven't found your clothes or shoes, have you?" replied Ruthven, her brusqueness not discounting her concern.

"Oh, hmm," was all the girl responded, becoming self-conscious about her bare feet and her nightdress, which was stained now with grass and some mud.

"Here," announced the old woman, as she took off her old brown woolen shawl and wrapped it around the girl. "This will help you look like a grand adventurer from Gondor, a cloak of mystery and intrigue it is."

Madi rolled his eyes and snorted. "That doesn't look like any clothes I saw in Minky Ting."

Ruthven shot Madi a look of reproof. "And I suppose we are all to be enthralled by your imagination, are we?"

Madi ran towards Ruthven, lowering his head and actually trying to head butt her. "Yes," he retorted, smugly, with a great deal of self-satisfaction, before she caught him and held him off.

"Madi, I've not such a soft heart as Bethberry has. Your stories won't work on me, not when you have to resort to lies to make them work, for I see through your lies faster than she does. "

"Lies! What lies have I told!" he responded indignantly.

Linnea spoke up at this point. "You did, you did. You called the drawing a map." She squirmed under the shawl, the wool tickling her but not in an uncomfortable way. "And I like my magic cloak. It will make me invisible."

"I hope it will, child, for I fear what your father will say or do if he catches you here instead of in your room. Off with you now. The excitement here is over."

"But I brought your boy to you."

"He's not my boy, Linnea. We don't know who he belongs to. Perhaps he can tell you that as the two of you return to The Horse. Now, go, so your father won't be worried and become angry." And with that, Ruthven playfully shoved Madi off towards the Inn and turned to the two men who had started to wander off.

She whispered confidentially to them. "There's a small shed built onto the back of the bakery, on the next street over. It is used for storing flours and sugars. And it is warm. It will be a good place for you to stay, at least until you can clean yourselves up so you don't look like ruffians and draw the wrong attention."

With that, the three of them, Ruthven, Aldor and Findur, began to walk away from the Inn.