Page 26 of The Blacksmith

“You’re earlier than expected,” he noted.

They’d agreed it would take Lance at least a sennight to gather the information they needed, perhaps more.

“I’m impatient.”

“I have little information yet.”

Guy leaned against the only semiclean surface in the shop, the stone wall behind him. “We have Baron Chauncey.”

Lance whistled. The East Anglian landowner was both the itinerant justice on the eastern circuit and sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk. Unlike Stanton, he was unusually vocal with his grievances against the king. Most expected his tenure as the king’s servant to end at any moment.

But for now, he was a powerful ally, and not one Lance would have expected the order to secure so soon.

“Conrad managed it?”

Guy nodded. “He spoke to him just after you left.”

“The baron will be discreet?”

“Our treason is his own.”

A typical Guy answer. For as many years as the two had known each other, Lance still had a difficult time gaining direct answers from his friend.

“And how have you fared?”

Each of them had support to gather. That his role was as important as the others left Lance more humbled than he’d shared with the men.

“I’ve not seen Terric since the tournament,” he said of their friend whose role was nothing less than gaining the support of the king of Scotland. “But FitzWalter is ours.”

“So quickly?”

Guy’s smile was his only answer. All knew Robert Fitzwalter had a personal reason to dislike the king, but that Guy was able to secure him to their cause so quickly was still surprising.

“Stanton?” Guy asked.

Moving toward the only open window with a clear view of the path leading to the forge, Lance adjusted the shutters—leaving them open only a crack so he could spy the path—and turned back to his friend.

“I’m still not sure where his loyalties lie. The people here have yet to embrace me. That the previous blacksmith here was beloved by all hasn’t helped my cause.”

Guy snickered. “Your dour disposition is unlikely to have helped.”

Lance cocked his head to the side. “If only we could all be as pleasant as you.”

They both knew the description hardly fit. While it was true Guy smiled more easily, those who knew him would not use the word “pleasant” to describe him.

Confident. Witty, sometimes cuttingly so.

But not “pleasant.”

“What have you learned?”

With a glance through the crack in the shutters, he thought about the conversations he’d had in the past few days.

“Two of the king’s men were housed at Stanton when I arrived.”

Guy groaned.

“But I don’t believe the welcome they were given goes beyond simple hospitality. I’ve been listening, and while none of the people here are openly hostile, the general sentiment seems to align with our own.”