The widow recovered from her fear quicker than most. “No one can walk in that.” She gestured for him to sit on a large rock.
He did and extended a foot.
She took an awl—for piercing holes in skins—out of the purse at her waist and scrutinized his foot. “Trim toenails. Maybe you really are a count.”
His Lordship thought, She’s speaking to me as I might to Nesspa. “Thank you.”
“Oh!” She dropped the awl into her lap. “Beg pardon. I’m sure you must be a count, Your Countship. I thought you spoke only the ogre language.”
There was no ogre language. Ogres spoke the tongue of wherever they lived.
In less time than he expected, crude boots were on his feet, fur side in, bulky but warm and possible to walk in. Next, Widow Fridda contrived a tunic and hooded cloak. For the tunic she merely cut a slit in a blanket for his head. For the cloak, she made a few tucks for the hood in another blanket and sewed in fabric strips for ties. While she labored, His Lordship fed the fire in his usual silence.
“There,” the widow said. “Hard times make a pauper of a king.”
He donned his new apparel—scratchy and smelling of smoke and tallow. “Thank you.”
She folded the leftover skins. “I’ll be going home now.”
“Brunka Arnulf told me to help you.”
“Your Countship is a bee?” She tilted her head. “There’s plenty to do. Fences to be mended. Grain to be put out for the sheep. I have a salve for your shoulder.”
Goodman Otto hadn’t warned her about the mountain? Ah. If he had, she wouldn’t have come. His Lordship explained in a few words.
She rushed to the donkey. “My babes! Come!”
He didn’t move. “Do you have cats?”
She was already several yards away. “One cat. Hurry.”
That was all right then. A single cat couldn’t wish hard enough to make him turn into a mouse. In two strides he caught up with her and put his hand on the donkey’s rump for guidance in the deepening dusk. They traveled north and upward, their breath puffing white in a quiet, windless cold. As they went, he realized that going to Svye would have to wait for morning. He didn’t know how they’d do it even then, since the widow’s farm cart would instantly be mired in snow.
He wondered when he might eat again.
After a half hour, when night had fallen, they reached her home, where firelight shone through the single window. She tethered the donkey and bustled inside.
Although the hut’s walls came up to his chest, the steep thatched roof made the whole structure about a foot taller than he was. The wall gave off a little heat from the fire within. He stood close enough to benefit, but his head and shoulders were in the cold, and the exertion of walking no longer warmed him.
The donkey and the widow’s cart occupied a lean-to that abutted the cottage. He could haul the cart out and curl up in the shed, where the ground was free of snow. The beast wouldn’t mind. They’d be company for each other.
However, he wanted the Widow Fridda’s approval of this arrangement.
She emerged from the cottage with a baby in her arms and a clay crock in her free hand. “This will ease your shoulder, Your Countship.”
He crouched and bared his shoulder. She spread the ointment, which smarted and smelled like a frightened ferret.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She returned without the baby, carrying her entire pottage pot and a ladle. “Better you eat it than the volcano.”
She gave him permission to sleep in the lean-to, then went back inside. He started on the pottage: no meat, many onions, thick with oatmeal, and flavored with a spice he didn’t recognize and didn’t like. But he finished to the last speck.
Soon he was on his side in the shed, a mound of hay for a pillow, the donkey’s even breathing reminding him of Nesspa.
At least the dog was safe, and Elodie and Meenore would see that he lived well if his master never returned.
He slept.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Stars, a quarter moon, and the gleaming snow showed Elodie and Master Robbie the path back to the Oase.
“I’m not reckless!” Elodie clutched her cloak tight around her.
“Did you really call Greedy Grenny cruel?”
“It popped out. I think ahead—usually.”
“Did you, when you searched our room?” He didn’t add, And saw my knife, but the accusation was there.
She defended herself. “I did it to find the thief.”
“It had been searched by bees.”
“Everybody sees something different.” Hoping to win him over, she added, “If you’d been there, you might have noticed a detail I missed.”
He said nothing.
She pulled an apology out of somewhere near her toes. “I’m sorry.” Then, “But I won’t apologize to anyone else.”
He laughed.
Feeling immensely better, she said, “Maybe to Albin.”
The Oase door was just ahead.