Free Midwinter Nightingale by Joan Aiken

and standing ready with his lighted taper. “We're lucky Edge Place stands high on the hillside.”
    Edge Place was an ancient Saxon homestead, built in the shelter of a horseshoe of woodland halfway up the side of the long, commanding rocky ridge of hill known as Windfall Edge that divided the Combe country from the Wetlands. Like many early Saxon manors, the house stood on stone-built legs over an undercroft, where animals and farm implements were housed, with a great hall and living quarters on the first floor, approached up a flight of stone stairs, and on top of that, a roomy loft, where the servants and children had their sleeping quarters.
    Now the sound of quick footsteps coming up the stone stairs could be heard; the door flew open, and Jorinda came running into the great hall, her fur coattails flying.
    She tweaked off the heavy woollen wig that Sir Thomas wore at all times, planted a loud smacking kiss upon his bald head, then replaced the wig.
    “Sorry to be late for breakfast, Granda! But we met the postman plodding along on his dirty old mule, so I have brought some letters you wouldn't have had till tomorrow. Is there any toast, Gribben? I'm as hungry as a hyena.”
    “Mrs. Smidge will bring you some in a moment, my lady, and a plate of ham.”
    “No ham for me,” Jorinda said with a shudder. “I'm avegetarian. I 'wouldn't touch meat with a pitchfork, not if you paid me.” She flung her fur coat over one of the chairs ranged around the massive dining table.
    “Vegetarian?” growled Sir Thomas. “First
I've
heard of it! Stuff and nonsense. Twaddle! Eat what you're served, girl, and don't come these puling, sanctimonious ways in my house!”
    “Oh, but, Granda, it's very, very wrong to eat live creatures!”
    Mrs. Smidge arrived with a plate of toast in time to hear this. Behind her was Nurse Mara with some of Jorinda's bags, on her way to the upper stair, which led out of the great hall.
    “Vegetablarian? What's this new come-over, may I inquire?” muttered Mrs. Smidge to the nurse, who threw up her eyes to heaven.
    “Fallen in love again!” she hissed. Mrs. Smidge puffed out her cheeks resignedly
    “Who is it this time then? Not the postman?”
    “I'll tell you when I've carried these traps upstairs. Is there a cup of tea? I'm parched!”
    Mrs. Smidge nodded and retired to the kitchen, Jorinda calling after her, “Bring me a pot of chocolate, Smidgey, and mind it's really hot and sweet! None of your meagre lukewarm brews!”
    Sir Thomas was puffing and growling over the letters Jorinda had handed him.
    “Russian boots won't arrive for another three weeks.
    Just
why
, tell me that? Why can't those lazy dolts deliver when they said they would? Laggardly brutes—irresponsible vodka-swilling nincompoops!” He tipped a gill of brandy into his coffee and gulped it down.
    “Russian boots, Granda? What are they? Who are they for?”
    “Clever fella of a Russian invented them—can't be
all
bad, those Rooshians, can they? Electric boots, help you walk twice as quick—just the article for getting up to London, over disputed ground, at the double.”
    “I should just about think so.” Jorinda was greatly impressed. “But do they really work?”
    “So old Marty Stokes-Belvoir—British ambassador in Muscovy, old schoolmate of mine—so he says. No modern infantry corps should be without em.”
    “Electric boots,” repeated Jorinda, a shade of doubt in her voice. “What exactly
is
electricity, Granda?”
    “Just a natural force—knocks trees over in storms— produced by friction,” grunted her grandfather. “Find it up there in the sky—two clouds thumpin' together. That's all I know. Rub a lump of amber on a piece of woollen cloth—makes scraps of paper fly about.”
    “I don't see how that can make you walk faster,” argued Jorinda, munching a piece of toast, which she had spread with anchovy paste. “And suppose you are on horseback?”
    “Oh, you couldn't
ride.
No, no, that would