The Silver Knight by Kate Cotoner Page B

attempts to save his immortal soul.
    The woman bobbed a half curtsey. “Drink, sir? Something to eat?”
    “Ale,” he said. “And a dish of whatever's cooking. No pig, though.”
    “Very good, sir. Lamb stew it is. It'll be ready in a moment.”
    She hurried off to the bar and returned with a tankard of frothy ale. Sufyan drank, hiding his distaste for the bitterness of the brew. Alcohol was forbidden to those of his religion, but he'd found that people spoke more easily to a man with a flagon of beer in his hand than to the man holding a cup of water. If only he could deaden himself to the taste, Sufyan thought he could be content with drinking the stuff.
    As he put down the tankard and wiped a hand across his mouth, he saw that his presence had been temporarily accepted. He noticed a slight thaw in the atmosphere. Conversations continued at their normal level. If people looked at him, it was just because he happened to be sitting in their line of sight. Curiosity had been laid aside for the moment.
    The lamb stew arrived at his table. He ate with quick economy and called for a second tankard of ale. Only when he'd pushed aside his dish and let the spoon clatter into the empty bowl did any of the locals approach him.
    A group of men rose from their place by the fire and came near. Their leader was large and burly, with a shock of gray curls and a beard. The miller, Sufyan guessed from his build and the dusting of flour through his clothes. The others looked like farmers, with dirt beneath their nails and their faces tanned to a wrinkled darkness that made Sufyan's golden skin seem almost pale.
    “Good evening, friend,” the miller said as he seated himself astride the bench opposite. “Have you come far?”
    Sufyan smiled peaceably and lifted his fresh tankard, curling both hands around it in a gesture meant to reassure his audience that he was harmless enough. “From Durham,” he said, “with a diversion by way of the Scottish border.”
    The miller nodded and glanced at his companions, who also nodded. “A fair distance. At least the weather held fine for you. Was it Berwick you went to? My wife has kin there.”
    “Inland from Berwick.” Sufyan took a sip of the foul-tasting beer. “I had business with a baron, but it seems he was out visiting his neighbor over the border.” He smiled again, inviting them in on the joke. Any man who ran into Scotland to avoid a visitor was a man admitting to guilt.
    The miller nodded again, and Sufyan thought these northerners were a dismal bunch of people. Not a cheerful word or a laugh among them. He would be pleased to get on the road again tomorrow and leave this place far behind him.
    “Staying for the night, are you?” the miller asked.
    “Yes.” Sufyan set his tankard on the table. “Unless I'm not welcome.”
    The men looked at him in silence, clearly surprised by his plain speech.
    “You're welcome right enough,” the miller said, recovering himself, “but if you'd arrived any later than sundown, all the doors in Kirkfield would've been locked against you. Not for all the gold in the kingdom would you have been let inside!”
    Sufyan doubted any of these people would have turned down the chance to earn even a silver threepenny, but he didn't wish to argue. From the way the miller leaned closer and the way the farmers shuffled in tight, it seemed obvious there was a tale here waiting to be told. He contrived to look interested. “Why would that be, then?”
    “Why?” The miller lowered his voice. “Because for the next few nights, the village is cursed.”
    “Aye,” said one of the farmers, nodding solemnly. “Cursed!”
    Sufyan tried not to laugh. The English and their curses amused him. They had no concept of what a curse truly meant or what damage could be caused by the glare of the evil eye. In this green land of rain and mist, a curse amounted to nothing more than a wax manikin stuck with pins or the fetus of a sheep laid on a neighbor's