In a Dark Wood by Michael Cadnum Page B

compensate you for your skill and for your—”
    â€œWe are grateful, and we accept your gift,” said Geoffrey. The apple was now bare of skin. He cut the fruit in two and dug the pits out with the point of the paring knife. “You do not come from this shire, do you, potter?”
    â€œNo, my lord, and it’s difficult to say where exactly I do come from. I travel so much plying my trade that I seem to be everywhere at once.”
    â€œHow marvelous it must be to be everywhere at once,” laughed Lady Eleanor. “Sometimes I feel that I am nowhere at all.”
    â€œAnd that, my lady, must be a terrible sensation.”
    â€œOh, it is, my good potter, it is indeed. But you will allow us to provide you with a meal. You will dine with us, potter.”
    â€œBy all means,” said Geoffrey with no enthusiasm. “You will join us and tell us stories of the road.”
    It was not unheard of for the sheriff to entertain a traveler, such as a minstrel or a wayfaring merchant. A potter was a lowly guest, but this potter did have a gentle, courteous voice and a way about him that was immediately appealing, an eagerness to have fellowship that inspired even Eleanor. Geoffrey chewed his apple and hoped, dimly, that the potter would provide diverting conversation. It was not a strong hope and faded as he realized that Eleanor was more interested in the man’s leg, and in the man’s quick eye and merry laugh, than in his conversation.
    The potter wore a borrowed tunic to the table, a coarse wool equal to a wealthy miller or a traveling clerk from a distant shire come to give the compliments of his own sheriff. The potter drank deep of the slightly inferior white wine the sheriff served tonight, and the candlelight made the craftsman’s face dance with shadows and made his eyes twinkle above his auburn beard.
    Geoffrey sucked the flesh off a partridge’s wing and leaned forwards. “You are from north of here, I gather.”
    â€œTrue enough, my lord. From north of here, but not far.”
    â€œFrom where, exactly, if you will forgive my being blunt?”
    â€œMy lord, you must be blunt. A sheriff has many duties and many worries on his mind. A humble potter can talk, chattering like a finch in the bush, all day, and no one will mark a single word.”
    â€œMy husband was born blunt. If he were a potter, he would sell every pot for as much as he could, walk all over the shire with a full cart as a consequence, and die of weariness.” She picked at the leg of a bird, but apparently the physician’s potions had not yet helped her stomach.
    â€œWhere?” asked Geoffrey calmly, as if all intervening talk had been the merest rustling of leaves.
    â€œBarnsdale, my lord.”
    â€œYou carry a sword.”
    â€œThese days even millers carry swords, and bucklers, too. I have to protect myself from envious potters, who lack skill and business sense.”
    â€œYou pushed your cart through Sherwood Forest?”
    â€œWith these stout arms.”
    The potter held up one arm, letting the sleeve of the coarse tunic fall, and displayed a muscular arm, and brown, too, from the sun.
    â€œAnd no one troubled you along the way?”
    â€œNo one. Save a surly miller who swore that traveling craftsmen should be strung from a gibbet.”
    â€œOne of our local gentlefolk,” Geoffrey said. “He is worse than the sourest of women when it comes to saying the exact words a man doesn’t want to hear. And yet I understand that his son, Thurstin, won the gold mark today.”
    â€œA worthy accomplishment.”
    â€œEspecially when you consider that we have, here in Nottingham, the finest archers in the kingdom.”
    â€œI see you have a Fool, my lord.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIsn’t he the wittiest creature? See! He chews exactly like my husband.”
    Geoffrey spoke with more lightness than he felt. “My wife enjoys him, and