The cottage of Widow Danel sat half a mile south of the monument, perched on a barren clay spit between two abandoned irrigation drains. The walls were built of turf sods stacked between rough cedar posts, their seams packed with dry river moss to keep out the drafting wind. The roof was thatched with grey marsh reeds that smelled of stale ditch water whenever the rain fell.
Martha Danel was sixty-two winters old. Her hands were broad and twisted by rheumatoid swellings at the knuckle joints, the skin as brown and tough as oak bark from forty years of spinning flax and digging potatoes. She wore an apron of patched hemp sacking over a coarse wool gown. Her grey hair was tied back with a strand of tarred twine.
She didn’t invite Tomas Reed into the cottage right away. She stood in the doorway, an iron hearth poker rested against her skirt. She watched the four visitors with the wary, suspicious gaze of a woman who had seen every tax collector and court guard in the province pass down her lane. The cold autumn wind whipped the frayed hem of her skirt against her wool stockings, but she didn’t retreat into the warmth of the peat hearth.
