Jobyna - "On my way to rescue my father..."

I ran from the woodshed, around to the stables, but all the horses were gone! Only my first horse, if you can all it a horse, was there... 'Rainbow' ... I had called the small mare by that name because she was a rainbow of colors. I should have run to the village, but somehow, in my racing mind, a horse would get me there faster...
Upon arriving at Reeve Gauzier's house, and waiting for a servant to fetch him, I blurted out the sorry story, only to hear him asking, "This is some kind of game you are playing, isn't it?"
"You must believe me," I pleaded, "I wouldn't lie about my father being taken away, or about Sir Felix asking me to tell you to send men with axes and battering rams. Please... it's true..."
The Reeve raved on about the past and the pranks we used to play...
I bowed my head in despair.
“I’ll have to call some men from their places of work to check it out. All the knights and soldiers who guard the village keep have gone to Frencberg. I won’t have the bell run, not until I prove such an action to be justified. You’ll be in big trouble if you ARE making up this story, Miss Jobyna! You forget. But I don't..."
"Thank you, Sir, thank you," I said, and I hurried around to Hedy's house. Hedy was kind of a friend... anyway, her father, whose name was Norman, was the carpenter in Chanoine. Father had commissioned him to make a number of the wooden screws for the invention.
I could see that he didn't believe me. . “They’ve taken the printing press too, Norman. I saw them putting it in saddle-bags... please, you have to help..."
I was getting desperate for my father's sake.
Norman called two of his workers to go with him. I was so pleased to see him taking an axe with him. Hopefully Mother and my brothers and sister, and everyone else, would soon be freed from the woodshed.
But what about my Father. There was nobody here to help him.
Hedy started asking all kinds of questions. 
I saw a little carving knife on the bench among some tools that had obviously been in use. I pushed it up my sleeve, between the layers. I was thinking of the leather ties that had been around my father's wrists which were behind his back. How could he ride like that?
I ignored Hedy and hurried to where I had left Rainbow and climbed on.
Rainbow could not go far, she was so old, so I dismounted and walked up the slope to where I had left Brownlea. 
All I could think of was my father and how far away he would be. Brownlea would have to gallop for as long as he could... they had gone south, I was sure of that.

Soon, I was riding south...


 

When my father was taken away...

I was only about 9 years old when my father was taken away. They call it 'kidnapping' even when it is an adult. Sometimes, it is 'abducted'. I learned later that it was because of my father's invention - you see, he was working on a printing press. Yes, way back in early medieval times. People were fascinated by inventions, especially something that seemed impossible. But long before my father began inventing a printing machine, people in China had been printing with movable wooden letters.
Papa had made another one when he lived at Kings Castle, and this one had been sold and taken away to another Kingdom. But they couldn't get it working and now, bad men had come back to take my father away with the partly finished printing press he had been working on in a building at the back of our manor house attached to the wood-shed.
So, while Luke and I were out riding, having a bit of a race to the cliff-top where we could look down on the village and manor house, my father was taken away. Everyone was locked in the wood-shed. Luke was taken there, and when I got back home, I was locked in there too.
Because I was the smallest one in that room, I was lifted to climb out and get help.
I told the Reeve in Chanoine village what had happened and while he took care of it, I decided to ride my new horse, Brownlea, in the direction the kidnappers had gone because I could not just let my father be taken off like that, could I?
Everything happened so fast, but I know my heart was full of prayers for my father. How could we be a family without Father?  I so wanted to do something to rescue him...