However…
He decided he was wisest to remain mounted, and struck the door with his lance butt. It creaked open. A bent figure stood black against the interior. An old woman’s voice, high and cracked, came to him: “Who are ye? Who would stop with Mother Gerd?”
“I seem to be lost,” Holger told her. “Can you spare me a bed?”
“Ah. Ah, yes. A fine young knight, I see, yes, yes. Old these eyes may be, but Mother Gerd knows well what knocks at her door o’ nights, indeed, indeed. Come, fair sir, dismount ye and partake of what little a poor old woman can offer, for certes, ye’ve naught to fear from me, nor I from ye, not at my age; though mind ye, there was a time—But that was before ye were born, and now I am but a poor lonely old grandame, all too glad for news of the great doings beyond this humble cot. Come, come, be not afeared. Come in, I pray ye. Shelter is all too rare, here by the edge of the world.”
Holger squinted past her, into the shack. He couldn’t see anyone else. Doubtless he could safely stop here.
He was on the ground before he realized she had spoken in a language he did not know—and he had answered her in he same tongue.
2
HE SAT AT THE RICKETY TABLE of undressed wood. His eyes stung with the smoke that gathered below the rafters. One door led into a stable where his horse was now tied, otherwise the building consisted only of this dirt-floored room. The sole dim light came from a fire on a hearthstone. Looking about, Holger saw a few chairs, a straw tick, some tools and utensils, a black cat seated on an incongruously big and ornate wooden chest. Its yellow gaze never winked or left him. The woman, Mother Gerd, was stirring an iron pot above the fire. She herself was stooped and withered, her dress like a tattered sack; gray hair straggled around a hook-nosed sunken face which forever showed snaggle teeth in a meaningless grin. But her eyes were a hard bright black.
“Ah, yes, yes,” she said, “’tis not for the likes of me, poor old woman that I be, to inquire of that which strangers would fain keep hid. There are many who’d liefer go a-secret in these uneasy lands near the edge of the world, and for all I know ye might be some knight of Faerie in human guise, who’d put a spell on an impertinent tongue. Nonetheless, good sir, might I make bold to ask a name of ye? Not your own name, understand, if ye wish not to give it to any old dame like me, who means ye well but admits being chattersome in her dotage, but some name to address ye properly and with respect.”
“Holger Carlsen,” he answered absently.
She started so she almost knocked over the pot. “What say ye?”
“Why—” Was he hunted? Was this some weird part of Germany? He felt the dagger, which he had prudently thrust in his belt. “Holger Carlsen! What about it?”
“Oh… nothing, good sir.” Gerd glanced away, then back to him, quick and birdlike. “Save that Holger and Carl are both somewhat well-known names, as ye wot, though in sooth ’tis never been said that one was the son of the other, since indeed their fathers were Pepin and Godfred, or rather I should say the other way around; yet in a sense, a king is the father of his vassal and—”
“I’m neither of those gentlemen,” he said, to stem the tide. “Pure chance, my name.”
She relaxed and dished up a bowl of stew for him, which he attacked without stopping to worry about germs or drugs. He was also given bread and cheese, to hack off with his knife and eat with his fingers, and a mug of uncommonly good ale. A long time passed before he leaned back, sighed, and said, “Thank you. That saved my life, or at least my reason.”
“’Tis naught, sire, ’tis but coarse fare for such as ye, who must oft have supped with kings and belted earls and listened to the minstrels of Provence, their glees and curious tricks, but though I be old and humble, yet would I do ye such honors as—”