The Widow and the King by John Dickinson

followed a path, not knowing where it would lead.’
    ‘A strange chance! What brought you to the mountains at all, sir?’
    ‘A whim, my lady, I assure you. If my father knows of this place, he has not told me.’
    He was asking a question, Ambrose realized.
Did
his father know of this place? He had said he wished his father had died. Ambrose wondered what kind of father it was that the man had.
    ‘To my knowledge he does not,’ she said. ‘We have not heard from one another in ten years. It was only the chance of your coming that let me think he might have had news of me. But now you are come, and welcome. Rest with us, and eat with us. Ambrose shall wait upon us both. It will be good practice for him.’
    Ambrose bowed again.
    ‘Is his water ready yet? she asked, coming into the kitchen where Ambrose was setting the table. She tested the small pot on the hearth with her finger. ‘It should be warmer than this. A little longer, maybe,’ she said.
    ‘What does he want it for?’
    Splashing sounds were already coming from the courtyard where the man, stripped to the waist, was washing himself from a pail that Ambrose had carried to him from the rain cistern.
    ‘He wants to shave. Now, Amba. You've not seen a man shave before, have you? So you can help him. You'll need to get him some of the fat, and a sharpening stone, and as soon as the water is ready you can take them all out to him. I'll finish in here …’
    She was happy, excited. She seemed to have forgotten their quarrel in her pleasure at the man's arrival. She went on talking while he rummaged for the sharpening stone.
    ‘… Also, we'll need to make a bed for him by the hearth. So you'll have to move our pallets into the next room …’
    ‘What has he got to do with my father?’ Ambrose asked.
    She looked surprised.
    ‘Nothing that I know of, although his father had. Why do you ask?’
    ‘No reason.’
    He still resented the way she had taken all the stranger's attention from the moment she had appeared. He was willing to bet she would do the same over supper, too.
    ‘So what did his father have to do with mine, then?’ he asked a moment later.
    ‘His father is Aun, Baron of Lackmere, and he was one of your father's enemies. But he was also a great friend to me. Without him, and without people like Adam and Evalia, neither you nor I would be alive today. The King owes him much, too. After your father died, the King sent him to take charge …’
    She stopped.
    A frown crossed her face, as though some smell had drifted into the room, and she could not tell what it was.
    Her hand had stopped, too. She had been in the act of laying a knife on the table. The short, metal thing hung in her fingers, a few inches above the boards.
    Slowly, she set it in its place.
    ‘What is it?’ Ambrose asked.
    ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I remembered something, that's all.’
    She looked at the table, as if she had forgotten what she was doing.
    ‘Why,’ she said aloud. ‘Why does a man come riding a week into the mountains by himself ? What sort of a whim is that?’
    ‘Maybe he's bored at home.’ Ambrose nearly added,
Like me
; but he managed to stop himself. She would know he was thinking it anyway – if she was paying attention.
    ‘Riding his horse until it drops? I'd like to know …’ She cleared her throat. ‘What did he say to you when he first arrived?’
    ‘Not much. He wanted water.’
    ‘Water?’ she said sharply.
    Ambrose nodded out to the courtyard. ‘To drink, and then wash in.’
    ‘Oh, I see. Yes, of course he would. All the same …’
    She was still thinking; staring at the table and thinking. Her mood had changed. She was looking the way she sometimes did when she was worrying about stores and whether there would be enough to get them both through the winter.
    ‘Amba?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘You say nothing to him of the pool, please. Thisyoung wolf has a right to our hospitality, but not to our secrets …’
    Wolf ? Why did she call