The Widow and the King by John Dickinson

house any more. Whatever had covered its floor had gone, too. There had been fire. It must have been a big one, to scorch the stones like that. Now only the lower walls were left, providing a little shelter from the weather.
    What was he doing here?
    He remembered that there had been a knight in the woods above Chatterfall. He had put Ambrose on a bighorse and led him for what seemed like hours. Then they had all stopped, and the knight had told him to lie down and get some sleep.
    The horse was nowhere to be seen. But the knight was a few yards away, crouching by what must have been a hearth at the foot of a ruined chimney. He had a pot on it and was beginning to feed a fire with twigs.
    Food? Ambrose rose on one elbow.
    The knight looked across at Ambrose. He stopped what he was doing.
    Ambrose sat up with a jerk. It was
him
!
    It was the man who had struck Mother on the clifftop! The one she had called a wolf !
    Or was it?
    Surely this knight was much older than that man had been. His hair was lighter – partly because there was grey in it. There were lines around his eyes and cheek muscles.
    Yet it was the same face – the face on the man called Raymonde, who had come up the path to the house a fortnight ago: the same look, the same slanting brows.
    Except that it had smiled then. It had smiled widely, and the eyes had been eager, and the mouth had been full of talk and of confidences. This knight was not smiling, and he was not speaking. He was frowning. He did not seem to like Ambrose's face any more than Ambrose liked his.
    Ambrose looked at the knight and kept very still.
    At last the knight cleared his throat.
    ‘Eat first, hey?’ he said. ‘There are old strip-fields around this place. Things growing – grain, roots; maybe olives and fruit. See if you can find us anything.’
    He still did not smile, although Ambrose could tell that he was trying to sound cheerful. For the moment, Ambrose thought it best to do as he was told. So he rose stiffly, and hobbled towards what must once have been a door out of the wrecked building.
    ‘Keep your eyes open,’ the man said. ‘If anyone approaches, come quickly and do not call out.’
    Among the things piled by the knight's saddlebag was a small, triangular shield of wood. On it was painted the head of a wolf. There was also a hand holding a bar or staff across its face, but it was clearly a wolf.
    Ambrose limped out into the grey world.
    The ruined house lay in low, rolling countryside, covered with scrub and a few trees. There were indeed strip-fields around it, and orchards, all overgrown. There were no berry-bushes of the kind that had fed Ambrose for most of his journey through the hills. Twenty yards away the great, grey horse was pegged on a long rope among yellow tussocks. It lifted its head and looked at him mournfully, as if to say that he would find nothing in that direction.
    He thought of walking away across the brown land: of just walking and walking, as he had done for the last fortnight, and not coming back to the face by the fire behind him. But he had nowhere to go now. His feet hurt and he was weak. The knight had talked about food.
    The smell of onions led him to a small kitchen garden, where he also found a few root vegetables that he did not recognize. They had gone to seed, of course, but Ambrose thought they could still be eaten. He pulled them from the earth and wandered into the orchard. There were somefruits hanging from the trees, but most were beyond his reach. He looked among the grasses for windfalls that might be fresh, and found a few. He also found the remains of a goat, still tethered to a trunk. It was dry and flattened among the long grasses. The eyes were long gone, and the teeth showed from the ragged lips and skin. Someone had cut its neck nearly in two, and then had left it there. He did not touch it.
    He brought his findings to the knight, who scowled and poked among them. The man seemed to think that Ambrose could have done