Location:The Millford Road — The Halbrook Holding; The Stone Barn; The Yard; The Byre
Date/Time:TC1858.03.12
Snow, melted in Hob's pot, tasted of iron and onion and the bottom of somebody else's cooking.
Nissa Halbrook drank it anyway, standing by the hearth-stone in the gray before light, holding the cup close. It was the second potful. The first had been his stew.
Nobody had lifted the lid the night before. She'd lifted it at the fourth hour, because the barn needed water and the well was across the yard at the house, and there was snow drifted deep under the eaves at the north gable that somebody could reach with a bucket from the loft door. She'd taken the lid off and found the stew underneath, cold and set, a skin of white fat over it, and the meat in it gone soft the way he'd said it would if you put it in last. She had stood there holding the lid.
