Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South Read Online Free Page A

cool. She was standing in the door to the kitchen, her face in shadow. “As for travelers, there are also saints who walk the world, looking for hospitality. And poor people who have no homes, whom we must help because God sends them to us. Now, dinner is ready. If you don’t want yours—”
    Onda Baia went straight into the kitchen.
    Mariarta’s mother came to stand by her. “Mati—did your aunt frighten you?”
    “A little,” Mariarta said. But it was more than that. The old blood will tell. You and your father both—
    “Your aunt was raised old-fashioned, that’s all,” Mariarta’s mother said in her ear. “New things come down the road, and old stories whisper in her ear, and they both frighten her. You mustn’t let that happen to you. You were right to say God had sent us someone to share dinner with: He did. Now go on in. The soup will get cold.”
     
    •
     
    She sat next to the scolar right through dinner, and was hard put to know what was better to look at—his smooth young face with its pale blue eyes, or the soup, all thick with melting cheese. She had a piece of sausage to herself, and another half a one the scolar gave her. He was kind. Mariarta thought of just asking him outright to let her see the inside of his bag: that would be so brave, even Urs wouldn’t be able to say anything.
    But as soon as they finished eating, her father’s council began to arrive. They gathered around the table with Guigliem, and were given wine, and Mariarta’s father sat  at the head of the table, so that Mariarta knew the council was in session.
    The scolar told them his name again. They asked him about the roads he had walked on leaving val Schatla, about the towns there, when he had left, and why. Mariarta was more interested in the bag. Her mother had told her to sit in the window-seat until it was her bedtime, but the bag had fallen on the floor. The tallow-dip was lit now. It would be hard to get at the bag without being seen...
    “So they sent you away to be a student,” Flep said. The emphasis he put on the last word was amused, for everyone knew what Mariarta thought of the guest.
    Guigliem smiled. “Not in the scola nera . I would hardly have arrived on foot without a solida of my own if I were accomplished in the black art.”
    “But it’s well known that scolars can only do their wealth-making for others, never themselves.”
    “Then it’s a wonder there are any at all,” said Guglielm. “What’s the point in learning a trade that will never do the craftsman any good, or maybe get you turned into a crow at the Crossroads?” They all laughed. “No, I was in minor orders in the Bishop’s monastery school at Cuera, where my father sent me before he died. I thought that after I took the tonsure I might work for the monks in Mustér, doing cattle-breeding for them. But word came that my old stepfather has died, too. I’m needed at home in val Schatla. So home I go, with my tonsure growing out. Just a farmer again.”
    “A learned one, though,” said Mariarta’s father.
    Guglielm looked wry. “Oh aye...I can speak Latin to the cows. But will they give enough extra milk afterwards to make a difference?  And what’s the point of speaking to them in Daoitscha?  The milk would probably curdle.”
    All the councilors laughed. Mariarta’s father sat quiet, smiling.
    Guglielm looked around with sudden concern. “Pardon me if I’ve spoken out of turn,” he said. “I did get the impression there’s no saltér here—”
    Mariarta blinked. Why should the scolar care where the Austriac bailiff was?  He was only a little fat man who barely spoke Romansch; even his Daoitscha was poor, coming out of him in short thick-sounding phrases, with panting in between. He walked around Tschamut as if he owned it, and the one time Mariarta had tried to ask her bab why Reiskeipf acted that way, her bab had growled and stalked away, giving her no answer. She hadn’t raised the subject again.
    “No,