The Rites of Winter

One morning in March Stella awoke to find the air milder and the frost flowers vanished from her window. The ribbon of road which led north to the city was visible in patches, and snow fell from tree branches. In recent years the weather had become violently capricious; as quickly as winter had come, it had departed. Soon travellers en route to the city would start arriving from the south.

She removed the caged hooded crow from its winter quarters in a south-facing room and set it on the tall pedestal outside the inn; the bird had been inherited from the previous owner and gave the inn its name. The placing of the crow outside the inn always symbolised the start of a new season, and although she was aware that her responsibilities would be heavy without Thomas, she was determined to carry on alone.

She spent the next few days spring-cleaning the guest rooms. Then, one morning, she was drawn to the window by the fractious cries of the crow and saw a stranger chasing away a small boy who had evidently been throwing snowballs at the bird. When the boy was gone, the stranger turned towards the inn, his long cloak damp at its edges from the melting snow. He was a good-looking, bearded man little older than herself, with dark hair and brown eyes. He gave his name as Simon and handed her a silver coin. This was enough to pay for one month's board. Most guests usually stayed no more than a few days, but the coin was offered without expectation of change.

"Have you travelled far?" she asked him.

He gave a thin smile and a hint of a nod. "Far enough."

She handed him the key to the guest room next to her own; the fire downstairs kept both rooms warmer than the rest. Later, when she had brought him some cheese and cold pork, she found that the door to his room was locked.

"Leave it outside," he called to her.

He stayed in his room all day, and at dinner she left a bowl of thick vegetable soup outside his door. Late that evening, while she was sitting beside the fire darning a skirt, he entered the room.

She nodded to him and he seated himself in the rocking chair opposite her. It was where her husband had always sat in the evenings, drinking wine and regaling their guests with fictitious stories of his exploits as a youth. Simon produced a white clay pipe and a small knife with which he scraped the dottle from the bowl. He kept his tobacco in a leather pouch attached to his belt; its scent was more aromatic than that to which she was accustomed.

Intent on her darning, she asked, "Are you bound for the city?" Curlicues of smoke shrouded his head. "Not at present. Do you live here alone?"

"Yes. My husband died last autumn."

He made no reply to this. Stella snipped the woollen thread and inspected the patch. "He's lying in the cellar. The ground froze before he could be buried."

Logs collapsed in the fireplace with a cascade of sparks which were sucked up the dark chimney.

"Are you travelling on business?"

"Of a sort." He began to rock gently in the chair. "It must be hard to be here alone."

Stella rose, laying the skirt over the back of a chair. "The inn has been empty all winter. My only concern has been to keep myself fed and warm." As if to emphasise this she knelt and added more logs to the fire. But it was not entirely true. She had been lonely.

The logs quickly took fire. She saw his image reflected in the curved brass of the coal scuttle.

"You'll be needing more wood," he said.

"I'll be hoping for a delivery of coal as soon as the road is clear."

"Ah."

As she rose from the hearth, so did he from his chair.

"Well, goodnight," he said.

When she heard his door close, she crept upstairs and entered her own room. She knelt at a spy-hole which she and her husband had discovered soon after taking over the inn; the previous owner had evidently been something of a voyeur. She herself wanted to be sure that this man who called himself Simon was just that: a man. She had been chastened by her encounter with Marguerite.

When he finally began to undress, she had already imagined that he might reveal a body covered with scales or strange growths. But there was nothing: just a leanly muscular frame, with a line of dark hair running down the centre of his belly to the denser hair at his groin. He withdrew a book from his satchel, got into bed and began to read by candlelight. She waited. He was facing her and once, when he looked up from his reading and stared in her direction, she had the uncanny impression that he knew she was there. But the spy-hole was well concealed and he could not have been aware of her scrutiny. Soon afterwards he snuffed out the candle and all was dark.