time he’d make do, make do…
The Man in Motley was a floor lower than the four-storey tenements around it.
The ground level was well lighted. Across the street behind a row of palings, a
slave gang worked under lamps scraping dung from the cobbles of the Beef Market.
Tomorrow their load would be dried in the sun for fuel. The public room of the
inn was occupied by a score of men, mostly drovers in leather and homespun. A
barmaid in her fifties was serving a corner booth. As Samlor entered, the host
thrust through the hangings behind the bar with a cask on his shoulder.
Samlor had sheathed his knife. He nodded to the brawny innkeeper and ducked
beneath the bar himself. ‘Hey!’ cried the host.
‘It’s all right,’ Samlor muttered. He slipped behind the hangings.
A stone staircase, lighted halfway by an oil lamp, led down into the cellars.
Samlor followed it, taking the lamp with him. The floor beneath the public room
was of dirt. A large trap, now closed and bolted, gave access to deliveries from
the street fronting the inn. The walls were lined with racked bottles, small
casks, and great forty-gallon fooders set on end. One of the fooders was of wood
so time-blackened as to look charred. Samlor rapped it with his knife hilt, then
compared the sound to the duller note of the tun beside it.
The stairs creaked as the host descended. He held a bung-starter in one heavy
fist. ‘Didn’t they tell you to go by the side?’ he rasped. ‘D’ye think I want
the name of running a devil’s brothel?’ He took another step. ‘By Ils and his