The inn was as it had always been. A damp, musty place, with tables worn smooth beneath the hands of time and use, and benches that no one could afford to replace, allowing them to creak precariously under the weight of the large man. His face was well-known, for he passed along the Great East Road once or twice a year, and always stopped in for a meal and a bed. He was known for his imposing stature, his booming laugh, and his generosity with coin.
He would never know what urged him to stand up at that particular moment. He was not short on food or drink, and his mind was enjoyably engaged in pleasant banter with the young serving-woman, and there was nothing he needed to do. Yet his legs pushed him upwards and he turned away, as if to walk across the room, and it was at that moment that he saw her.
One half-step he took, and he was frozen. She was pale. Paler far than anyone else in the tavern, not only in flesh but in the color of her hair. A shining cap of flaxen gold that cried out its foreign nature among these dark, ruddy northerners. The same hair her father once bore, before time turned his head into a silvery-grey. Beyond the initial shock came a flood of questions, one after the other. What was she doing in this dismal inn? Why was her face downturned, her shoulders hunched forward, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, looking as if some terrible weight lay on her? Where was her husband?
She was walking towards the door, and the heavy cloak about her slender frame suggested she was about to leave. The man gaped on in stunned silence as she passed and vanished into the narrow foyer. And then he was a blur of frantic movement, lurching forward, his boot catching on the legs of his chair and sending it clattering over the floor as he stumbled and caught himself before falling. The unintentional ruckus worked well enough, for she turned back and her eyes landed on him.
Hours later, evening fell over the bare hills, blanketing the tavern in soft shadows, and found the woman now sitting across from the man at his table. Her eyes were fixed on the grimy, wooden tabletop, and her hands were clenched together in her lap. A bowl of stew sat untouched before her.
Drawing out the story of what had befallen her had taken as much patient silence as it had careful words. She spoke a word or two at a time, sometimes trailing off mid-sentence and going still like a statue, while her ashen face became a mask, stiff and blank, her eyes seeing something far beyond the inn. The man had seen many a grieving woman in his long years. Mothers who had lost sons, sisters who had lost brothers, daughters who had lost parents. And wives who had lost their husbands. He had seen the ravages of sorrow on a gentle heart. Women who sat in their houses and turned inward, reflecting endlessly on their grief until they became catatonic shells, a sort of living death. Others who ran out into the night, frantically fleeing the memories and the pain, becoming lost to wild animals, savage brigands, or the harsh elements.
This woman was on the brink of similar collapse. How she thought she would travel countless leagues alone was beyond his fathoming, but the sight of her pricked his heart too deeply to feel any annoyance. There was only a profound and overwhelming sympathy, and a terrible, nagging question; why? Why her? After her father's betrayal, her exile from her homeland, the departure of the wanderer, she had finally found happiness with the prospector. She was happy, safe, and settled, and he could turn his mind from worrying on her behalf. And now, this. No one had been less deserving of this cruel blow than she.
His gentle, green eyes fell upon her left hand, and the thin band that shone upon her finger. In her heart, she was still her husband's wife, and likely would be for some time to come. As the hour grew late, she stopped speaking altogether, and seemed to not notice his presence at all anymore. His chest ached at the sight of her, and he reached out one of his massive hands, and laid it very gently over hers. Though she didn't react or show any sign of acknowledgement, he spoke a few words to her, quietly.
She would not be going anywhere alone.
