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Updated: May 4, 2025
Now sooth it is that the best way thither, though it may be indeed the safest rather than the shortest, lies through the Five Crafts; for the road goes thence to Utterhay a three score miles or so, making the longer of it, as it skirteth ever some way off a perilous forest, a place of sore dread and devilish, which hight Evilshaw, on the edge whereof lieth Utterhay, a merry cheaping-stead and a plenteous, and the home of my kindred.
All this saw the warders on the wall of Utterhay; and they told the captain of the porte, and he came up on to the wall, and a man with him; and when he saw this bright company coming forth from the wood, he bade men to him, two score of them, all weaponed, and he did on his armour, and rode out-a-gates with them to meet those new-comers; and this he did, not because he did not see them to be but few, but because they came forth out of Evilshaw, and then doubted if they were trustworthy.
And, said Hugh, there are they abiding me, and it is in my mind that this very eve we go, all of us, and meet them there, if ye may truss your goods in that while; but as to victuals, we have plenty, and it needeth not. And then to-morrow shall we wend our way as straight as may be toward the good town of Utterhay.
But when they were done, spake Birdalone and said: Dear friends, this is the hour and the place when we must needs part; for ye shall go back again to Five Crafts, and do what I have bidden of you, and do your will, and wend your ways with your livelihood unto Utterhay.
It is but of the loss of my babe; but she was of all babes the fairest and the sweetest. Then she fell to telling Birdalone all that concerning the witch at Utterhay and the poor-wife that ye have heard in the beginning of this book, until the time when she left the house to buy meat for the witch; for she herself was the said poor-wife.
But as for that matter of changing of aspect, the maiden came to know thereafter that the witch durst not go into the wood in the same skin as that which she wore at home, wherefore she had changed it for the journey to Utterhay, and changed back again in the night-tide before she arose.
And now did the city and land of the Five Crafts begin to look unfriendly to Birdalone, and she fell to thinking that she must needs depart thence, as she well might do, whereas she had foison of goods: and at first it was in her mind to go with Gerard and his sons unto Utterhay; but then she deemed the thought of her mother, and how she would be ever thinking of the loss and the gain, and the loss once more stood in the way; and she turned one thing and another over in her mind, and might not face it.
Said Habundia: Wouldst thou have come to me so soon otherwise from out of all that happiness? I have come to tell thee of my rede, said Birdalone, and to ask thee if thou art like-minded with me thereon. Said the wood- wife: And what is thy rede, my child? Wood-mother, said Birdalone, we deem that it were good for us all to go down into Utterhay where I was born, and to take up our abode therein.
So when spring came it was set about, but it was five years adoing, and before it was all finished the war-dukes entered into it, and dwelt there with their wives and their friends in all honour. And a little thereafter, whether they would or no, the men of Utterhay had to handle weapons and fare afield to meet the foe with the valiant men of the crafts, and what of waged men they might get.
Birdalone thanked him again full heartily; but therewithal as they rode along there seemed to stir in her some memory of the earliest of her days in the witch's house, and she began to have a longing to betake her to Utterhay and the skirts of Evilshaw.
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