| A hamlet, twenty houses and a tavern, south of Sinave and Forese, the two great forts that watched each other on either side of the border that divided Certando from what she learned to call Lower Corte
The land so near the southern mountains was not nearly as good as it was farther northThe growing season was shorterCold winds swept down from the Braccio and Sfaroni Ranges early in fall bringing snow soon after and a long white winterWolves would howl in the wintry nights and sometimes in the morning strange footmarks could be found in the deep snow, marks that came down from the mountains and then returned
Once, long ago, the village had been near to one of the roads forking northeast from the main highway down from the Sfaroni Pass, in the days when there was still overland trade with Quileia to the southThat was why the ancient tavern was so large in a village now so small, why it had four rooms upstairs for the travelers who had not louis vuitton bags in uk come for a great many years
Dianora hid her father's silver south of the village on a thickly wooded slope away from the goatherd runs, and she went to work as a serving girl in the tavernThere was no money to pay her of courseShe worked for her room and the scanty board available that first summer and fall, and she labored in the fields with the other women and the young boys to bring home what they could of the harvest
She told them she was from the north, near FerrautThat her mother was dead and her father and brother had gone to warShe said her uncle had begun to abuse her and so she had run awayShe was good with accents and she had the northern speech right enough for them to believe herOr at least to ask no questionsThere were many transients in the Palm in those days, questions were seldom pushed too farShe ate little and worked as hard as any in the fieldsThere was actually little enough to do in the inn, with the men away to cartier pasha women's watch warShe slept in one of the rooms upstairs, she even had it to herselfThey were kind enough to her after their fashion, and given the nature of things in that time
When the light and the place were right, morning usually, and in certain of the higher fields, she could look away to the west across the border towards the river and see the remaining towers and the smoke above what had been AvalleOne morning, late in the year, she realized that she couldn't see anything anymoreThat she hadn't, in fact, seen anything for some timeThe last tower was gone
Around that time the men had begun to come home, beaten and wearyThere was work again in the kitchen and waiting on tables or behind the counter of the barShe was also expected, and had been preparing herself for this as best she could all through the fall, to take a man up to her room if he offered the going rate
Every village seemed to need one such woman, and she was the obvious candidate hereShe dolce |
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