[Roger the Chapman 06] - The Wicked Winter Read Online Free PDF Page B

were listening or no, he suddenly interrupted me with, 'Miller. You visit mill.'
    'How do you know that?' I asked him.
    For answer, he put out a hand and brushed my sleeve.
    Then, holding the rushlight closer, he showed me the tips of his fingers which were lightly powdered with flour. On another occasion he said, 'Your wife dead.' It was not a question, and once again I demanded how he came to his conclusion.
    He smiled his faint smile. 'You speak of child. Daughter. You speak of mother. Not speak of woman. Why?' He shrugged his thin shoulders. 'Because dead.'
    It was, I suppose, something that anyone might have worked out for himself, but in Ulnoth I had not expected such powers of deduction, for he mingled hardly at all with his fellow men. This was plain from the way he shrank back into the farthest recesses of the house and waved me to silence whenever any traffic passed on the road. It was very light at that time of year, but only that morning, we had already heard the slap of shoes on the iron-hard ground and, a little later, the clop of hoofs as someone rode by in the opposite direction.
    He lived on small animals and birds which he trapped in the woods, but he attended to his snares and filled his water pots at the rill very early in the day, before anybody else was about.
    But when he was forced into company, as he had been into mine, he revealed a kindliness and sweetness of disposition often found lacking in a lot of people who have more to be grateful for than he. He did not forgo companionship because he doubted others - on the contrary, I thought him if anything too trusting - but because solitude was his way of life. I managed to prise out of him that his parents had died 'long, long time gone'; probably, I surmised, when he was still a child. There was no means of telling how old Ulnoth really was, and it was likely that he was younger than he looked. Nevertheless, he had spent many years on his own, and it was only natural that after all that while he should prefer it.
    Before I said my farewells I asked for directions to Lynom Hall. Ulnoth led me outside and pointed back along the track, the way I had come four days earlier.
    'Road,' he said, pointing to the right, and I recalled that other track which, as I approached the boulder house, had branched off to my left. 'There along.'
    I thanked him for all he had done, my gratitude the deeper because he had refused to accept any payment from me, eitherin money or in goods from my pack.
    'What need?' he had asked, spreading wide his skeletal hands. And indeed, I could see that by his standards he wanted for nothing. Nature and his own ingenuity provided everything, including homemade needles and thread.
    I embraced him, hoping that I might perhaps claim him as a friend; but I had gone only a yard or two along the track when, turning to glance over my shoulder, I found the road behind me already empty. Ulnoth had not waited to see me on my way, but scuttled back into his house like a frightened coney into its burrow. I smiled to myself with a little shake of my head, then set out, my left ankle as strong as ever, to discover Lynom Hall.

    It was as cold, if not colder than it had been on Friday, and I was thankful not only for my thick, hooded frieze cloak, but also for my leather jerkin, lined with scarlet, which a widow woman had parted with some years earlier in exchange for necessaries from my pack.
    I retraced my steps to that other, south-bound track and turned the corner, searching the landscape ahead of me for any sign of habitation. But the last in a range of hillocks obscured the view, causing the path to swerve first right and then left as it curled around its base. Once this double bend had been negotiated however, a broad plain opened up in front of me, and the sharp, salt tang of the sea was borne inland on the wind. In the near distance I could see the outbuildings of what promised to be a sizeable building and which I thought must certainly be