Historical Setting, 631 C.E. A public stable at a market in Dorestad
With the spying complete and the birds let go, we take the horses and the mule to a public stable. The stable hand here is a young fellow sitting at the far end of the first row of stalls. He sees us come in, but he doesn’t seem particularly interested in the stable customers, apparently distracted with his inks. My assignment will be easy, since all I have to do is make sure no one is watching when Gaillard retrieves the sack of the king’s gold from the oat bag on the pack mule.
Tomorrow, Greg wants to ride directly to the swordsmith on the river, and return to Gaul only with swords from Vlfberht. He complains that the repair to his chain mail was done with an inferior iron ring and he wants a more trusted swordsmith to make the new weapons.
I take the coins for the stable fee to the man with the inks. He drops our coins in the box by rote habit, without looking up or even counting. I stand by the little writing bench with this young fellow, still so deep in his writing — surely it is a love letter.
I ask the prying question, “Is she also literate, that she can read your love letters?”
Blushing now, he looks up from his work, “It is a journal, the Wrankle Journal.” He shows me a fine book’s binding of blank pages. “Posterity is literate.”
“So how is it that a stable hand is literate?”
“I’m not a stable hand. I am the keeper of the count and the collector of the fees.”
He shows me the tally sheet for the stable business, nothing at all like his finely made journal. A quick glance, I see he has taken our coins for fees for four beasts, and has marked us as two, which is the number of stalls we are using. It seems a subtle robbery his employer endures to have a literate fee collector.
I ask him if he was schooled by the monks.
“My father hired tutors to live in our midst.”
“You must, yourself, be a nobleman?”
He doesn’t affirm my assumption. He just looks up from his writing. He looks right at me, staring in silence — a blankness which says to me, “ask no more questions of this thief.” But it leaves me curious.
With the beasts in for the night, Gaillard hides the king’s gold, now fastened to his belt under his cloak. We go on to the alehouse.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 
Comment on my own blog? Why would I consider such a brutal piece in a story “devotional?” Because this blogger interprets devotional,as the writing experience, not necessarily the content. In these days of scary things, I would rather face fictional fears than real world woes. So I type the sorrows, and let them go that way. Thank you, readers, for sticking around.
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