THE WAYFARER'S GAZETTEER

Being an Honest Account of Every Lit Window Between Saltgate and the Hem, and What You Will Find Behind It.

Compiled by the carriers, the drovers and the carters of Sogmarsh, who have no letters to speak of, and who dictated the whole of it to a Quill nun over the course of one winter, in exchange for the loan of a horse.

WHY THIS BOOK EXISTS, AND WHY IT IS NOT A LUXURY

In a dry county a man may set out after breakfast and be somewhere else by supper, and he will think nothing of it, and he will write no book about it.

You cannot do that here.

Fifteen miles is a good day on the King's Highway, in fair weather, and we do not get fair weather. In the wet it is eight. In the fog it is five, and you will spend two of those miles going back for the wheel. A cart that leaves Saltgate on Monday does not arrive at Murkminster on Monday; it arrives on Thursday, in a temper, with a different axle.

Which means the inns of this realm are not hospitality.

They are the road. Take them away and there is no road — there is only a very long stretch of mud with people dying on it at intervals. The Crown built the Highway and is very proud of it. The Crown did not build one single place to stop, and every stopping-place on it was raised by somebody local who had got tired of finding bodies.

Remember that when you are warm.

THE KING'S HIGHWAY

Saltgate — Drudgeford — Murkminster. The main artery, and the muddiest thing the Crown has ever been proud of.

THE SALTGATE ARMS

Saltgate harbour, hard by the customs house.

Salt-crusted, loud, and hung about with rope, figureheads, and charts. The charts do not match the official ones. Nobody in that taproom considers this a problem with the charts.

Regulars: ship captains, customs officers, and men waiting on a tide that is late. They say: a letter left on the mantel at the Arms sometimes reaches the Isles faster than any ship that carried it. The landlady does not encourage the story and does not deny it and does not, you will notice, charge for the service.

THE COLD ANCHOR

Further along the Cold Coast, away from the crowded docks.

Windswept, low, and preferred by men who do not care to be counted. The anchor on the sign came off a ship that went east toward the Hem and did not come back.

Regulars: seal hunters, and sailors on the long runs.

THE FIRST ANCHORAGE

Among the ruins south of Saltgate.

Built into the stones of the old failed anchorage. The taproom floor tilts with the tide — not much, but enough that a rolling coin will tell you the hour better than the clock.

Regulars: fishermen, wreckers, and the occasional optimistic cartographer. They say: on stormy nights the inn sign creaks in a rhythm, and the rhythm is the bells of the drowned anchorage, still ringing the watch.

✦ THE CROWN & ENGINE ✦

The village green, on the Saltgate–Drudgeford stretch. Half a day out of Saltgate; the first real stop on the Highway.

The best-loved inn in the realm and the one nobody can explain.

A solid old coaching house. The lamps are made from cast-off mining gear. The great fireplace is built inside the shell of a rusting boiler, and it draws so strongly that the maps pinned to the wall beside it curl slowly northward over the course of an evening, and have to be flattened out again each morning, and nobody has ever thought to move the maps.

Regulars: teamsters, drovers, surveyors, and shepherds with a great deal of mud on them.

The board. It hangs on two iron hooks over the door: a crown, and beneath it an engine, painted by somebody who had plainly seen one and had plainly not enjoyed it. It is the best-painted object for forty miles. It is better than the inn. It is a great deal better than the ale. Weather that has stripped the Highway milestones back to blank stone has not touched it, and the house repaints it every generation or so out of duty, and every generation the repaint comes out slightly better than the hand that did it, which the painters mention to nobody because it sounds like boasting.

The crown on it is off-centre. Three separate travellers have offered to correct this. The landlord has declined all three, and could not tell you why, and has stopped being asked.

And here is the thing about it.

Ask the landlord why it is called the Crown & Engine and he will wipe a glass and say, with total placidity:

"It has always been called that."

Ask him what engine, and he will look at you as though you had asked what inn meant.

There are three old miners who sit at the end of the bench and argue about it every market day, and have done for thirty years. One holds that it is a king's crown and some forgotten pumping-engine from the old workings. One holds that it is a corruption of something older. The third holds that the first two are fools, and has never once said what he thinks it is, and has been asked, and changes the subject, and looks at the fire.

Nobody has ever settled it. Nobody ever will. Do not raise it with them; they are enjoying themselves.

THE LONG BENCH

Outside the Crown & Engine, under the sign.

Not an inn. A bench — one enormous slab of oak, worn to a shine, and it belongs to nobody and everybody. Drovers rest their feet on it. Shepherds trade news across it. The three old miners argue on it.

It is free, and it is dry, and it is the single most-used piece of furniture in the Kingdom of Sogmarsh.

THE HALFWAY STONE

Midway between Saltgate and Drudgeford, beside a weathered milestone.

An old coaching inn, honest and unremarkable, which is high praise.

The numbers on the milestone are worn away, and if you ask how far it is to Drudgeford you will get a different answer depending on who is in and what the weather has been doing. All of the answers are given in complete good faith. None of them agree. This surprises nobody.

THE MARKET CROSS

Drudgeford market square. The great hub of the realm's middle.

Large, well-kept, and the courtyard never empties of wagons. Every evening the landlord rings a heavy brass bell salvaged from a river barge, and the market packs up, and it has worked this way for longer than the bell has been a bell.

Regulars: farmers, merchants, and the Turnips when they come to town — which they do, openly, and pay in coin, and are served like anybody else, and nobody at the Market Cross has ever once asked to see a number.

THE EMPTY CHAIR

A quiet corner of Drudgeford, near the old market hall.

A comfortable, ordinary, well-run inn, with one peculiarity.

There is a chair at the best table by the fire, and nobody sits in it. If you sit in it — and travellers do, and it is not held against them — a member of staff will come over, very pleasantly, and move you somewhere better, and you will find you have a free drink in your hand and no memory of how the conversation went.

One place is laid at that table every evening. It has been laid every evening for a hundred and twenty-seven years.

They will not tell you who it is for. It is not that they are being mysterious. It is that they do not know, and it has never once occurred to them that this is a reason to stop.

THE LAST FERRY

The River Sog crossing, between Drudgeford and the Great Slough.

Every table has one leg cut shorter than the others, "because the river leans." Every clock runs five minutes slow, and the landlord will not have them corrected, and says it is so nobody misses the ferry, which does not survive examination and is not meant to.

They say: parcels left for collection sometimes turn up weeks later at an inn thirty miles off, with a note added in a hand nobody recognises. The notes are always helpful. That is the part people do not care for.

THE BROKEN CART

On the Highway verge, between Drudgeford and the Seventh Mile.

A rough shelter built around, and partly out of, a permanently broken cart. It began as an emergency and has been an institution for sixty years.

The landlord can mend almost anything you bring him — axle, harness, wheel, temper. He has never been able to mend the original cart. He is entirely aware of the joke and would like you to know he has heard it.

THE SEVENTH MILE

The Highway, between Drudgeford and Murkminster.

Every traveller who has walked it swears the distance from Drudgeford is five miles. The milestone outside says seven, and has always said seven.

The ale here is stronger than a man expects at the end of a long day, and the Committee has surveyed the distance four times, and the milestone has not moved, and neither has anybody's opinion.

THE MURK GATE

The last stop before the capital.

A great gateway inn where the road finally hardens. On a clear day you can see the gates of Murkminster from the upper windows, and a certain sort of traveller sits at that window all evening looking at them, and does not go in until morning.

Regulars: merchants, officials, and people with business in the city, which is a different thing from people who want to be there.

THE BOGMOOR SPUR

Off the Highway, up toward the castle, the Delves, and the granite. The road nobody chose; it simply got walked until it was a road.

THE CROOKED COMPASS

A minor road near Castle Bastable and the Delves.

The walls meet at angles that are not right and were not intended. There are six front doors. The locals have never agreed which is the real one, and use whichever is nearest, and the argument is now so old it is affectionate.

Regulars: surveyors and cartographers, which is the joke of it, and they know.

Sir Crispin Dampworthy is permanently banned — not for drunkenness, not for debt, but for attempting to measure the building with official instruments. He got three sides of it. He is said to have gone very quiet. He has never spoken of it and it is not in any of his reports.

THE BLANK CORNERSTONE

Roadside near Castle Bastable. A wayside chapel that gave up and became an inn, which the parish considers a promotion.

Modest, warm, and named for the thing it is built on: the foundation stone is blank. No mason's mark, no date, no signature. Every stone in the realm is signed. This one never was.

Regulars: stonemasons, worried architects, and pilgrims of a strictly practical sort. They say: travellers leave small offerings on the stone, in the hope the castle will behave itself for a while. There is no evidence that it works. The offerings are left anyway, and taken by the poor, which is a use.

THE IRON BELL

The Delves mining settlement.

Sturdy, low, and built to take a hundred filthy miners at once without complaining. The bell over the door was cast from the first iron ever brought out of the ground here.

It rings once every evening, at the same hour, whether the rope is pulled or not.

Nobody finds this alarming. Nobody has ever investigated it. The Delve drink under it every night of their lives and simply — and this is the whole of House Delve, in one detail — carry on with the conversation.

Regulars: miners, and Castle Bastable servants who would rather drink here than up there.

THE BLACK IRON POT

Near the mine mouth.

A simple miners' tavern with an enormous iron cooking pot over the fire.

The pot is never empty. They will tell you the day shift tops it up for the night shift, and the night shift tops it up for the day, and they have been doing it so long that nobody now remembers starting, and it has therefore never been empty since. This is offered as an explanation. It is, in fact, the explanation.

If you come in off that road with nothing, you will be fed from that pot, and nobody will ask you for anything, and nobody will make you say thank you.

THE BOGMOOR REST

On the spur, on slightly higher ground, which is the entire reason it is there.

Sturdy and unglamorous. The hearth is lined with strange, smooth stones, and the locals will not name them, and are not being coy — they do not have a name for them, and are not curious, and would rather you sat down and had something hot.

THE WEEPING GRANITES

The foothills, hard against the granite outcrops.

Rough, welcoming, and built directly against a granite shelf, so that the back wall of the taproom is the rock itself, and water trickles down it, always, in all weathers.

They say the weeping stone carries faint voices on quiet nights. Miners will tell you cheerfully that it is water in the seams and nothing more.

They will also tell you, if you ask, that they do not drink here alone.

THE FOG & FIRKIN

The edge of Bogmoor, near the granite.

Low, mist-wrapped, and often invisible from thirty yards. The lamp in the window is lit at three in the afternoon in winter, which is earlier than necessary, and is not for the landlord's benefit.

THE TOLLMAN'S REST

The old toll house on the Bogmoor road.

The toll was abandoned generations ago. The stones were used to build a small inn, and the rest-stop outlived the tax, which the parish finds extremely funny and mentions often.

They say the old toll bell still rings some nights, with nobody near it. The landlord's view is that if the Crown wants to come and collect, it is welcome to try, and it can start with the arrears on the roof.

THE WET ROADS

The Slough, the marshes, and the Drownings. Where the road is a suggestion and the ground is an opinion.

THE DAMP STOAT

The eastern marshes, at the edge of the Great Slough.

Low, thatched, and smelling permanently of peat and game pie. The sign shows a mournful stoat holding an umbrella, and it is the best-loved sign in Sogmarsh, and it is repainted every spring by whoever feels like it, and it gets slightly sadder each time.

The owner claims he once saw the Marsh Beast at the horse trough. His wife says it was a wheelbarrow. The parish has taken no view. The wheelbarrow has never been produced.

THE MUDDY BOOT

A minor track east of Drudgeford, going into the Slough.

Tiny, low-beamed, and equipped with a boot-scraper that has never in its life been sufficient.

Fresh rushes go down on the floor every single morning. By afternoon the floor looks exactly as it did before. Nobody has ever suggested stopping.

THE LANTERN & LEECH

A marsh path near the Drownings.

A stilted wayhouse whose lanterns burn through heavy mist, which should not be possible and is not discussed.

It was built after too many travellers were lost overnight. That is the whole of its history and it is the only history that matters. Somebody counted the missing, and got angry, and put up a building.

THE STILT & REED

One of the stilt villages of the Drownings.

Half on land, half on pilings. The taproom sways, gently, when the ground beneath is soft, and the regulars adjust their drinks without looking up.

They say certain upstairs rooms can only be reached when the tide is exactly right. This is true, and is not mysterious, and is simply how the stairs work, and the landlord thinks the fuss outsiders make about it is very strange.

THE MUCKLECOMBE ARMS

Mucklecombe, at the edge of the Drownings.

Squat, friendly, thick stew, and — against all reason in that country — famously dry cellars. Nobody knows why the water does not come in. The Committee, asked, suggested it probably does.

THE STILT LANDING

The Drownings.

Not an inn. Wooden platforms where the boats tie up, and where people stand about mending nets and talking and watching the water, which in that parish is a full and respectable way to spend an evening.

THE WOODS AND THE ESTATES

Quieter roads. Better bread. Watch what you say.

THE HEDGE & HARE

Near Grimshaw's Hedge, on the road through the Woods.

Low beams, a great hearth, and a garden that backs directly onto the hedge. They say the hedge grows thicker after a particularly lively night. The landlord says that is nonsense and has never once cut it back.

THE GREY GOOSE

A minor woodland path near the Hedge.

Quiet, and famous for its goose pie. The geese on the property are entirely unafraid of people, which visitors find charming and locals find sensible, since nothing has ever successfully taken one.

THE TURNIP & LANTERN

A quiet lane near the Bastable estates.

Neat, well-kept, and the lanterns burn with an unusually steady light — no guttering, no smoke, in any weather. It is the calmest room in the realm.

Regulars: local farmers, and the occasional Castle servant. They say the Turnip family sometimes hold very serious meetings in the back parlour. They are not meetings. They are a roll-call, and the door is left open, and anybody may walk in, and that is precisely why nobody ever suspects anything.

THE POXBURY ARMS

Poxbury Estate village.

Genteel, good gardens, excellent cider. Old hunting prints on the walls, which several visitors have described as unsettling, and which nobody who lives there will admit to finding so.

THE NETTLEWICK ARMS

Nettlewick village.

Friendly, quiet, and the bread is the best in the realm — which the parish attributes to the baker and the baker attributes to the water. Detail: the garden out the back grows extremely stubborn vegetables. They are not large. They simply refuse to be pulled.

THE QUIET MILESTONE

A minor road near Nettlewick and Poxbury.

A tiny inn beside a milestone that has lost its numbers entirely.

Nobody knows the distance any more, and nobody minds, and that sentence is the single most restful thing in this entire Gazetteer, and there are those who walk out here specifically to sit next to it.

THE CONTESTED GROUND

The Griddle, and the roads toward the Hem. Fewer stops. Better locks.

THE GRIDDLE GATE

Where the spur turns onto the dry contested ground.

Thick-walled and watchful. The ale is good; the bread is better, and the bread is the reason people come. Every window has a small iron grate, "just in case the ground shifts again."

Nobody in that taproom has ever explained the word "again."

THE HONEST MEASURE

Near the contested edge of the Griddle.

Run by a retired surveyor. Every tankard is officially stamped, sealed, and certified by the proper authority.

The measures vary considerably according to how much the landlord likes you.

He will show you the stamp if you complain. He is very proud of the stamp. The stamp is genuine. This is the funniest thing on the Griddle and everybody there knows it and the joke has been running for thirty years.

THE WAYFARER'S GRACE

A roadside chapel turned inn, near the Griddle.

Simple beds, simple food, and prayers still said at the proper hours by people who are no longer entirely sure who is listening — and who say them anyway, on the grounds that it costs nothing and somebody might be cold.

Regulars: pilgrims, the weary, and those quietly leaving a bad situation. No questions are asked at the Grace. That is not a rumour. That is the rule of the house, and it is enforced, and it has been enforced since the chapel order gave up and went home.

THE WARMING FIRE

The Griddle edge. Not an inn. A fire.

A permanent communal fire-pit on the dry contested ground, kept alight by nobody in particular and everybody in general.

Travellers from both sides of the dispute sit at it together and do not argue. There is no treaty. There is no agreement. There is no authority within twenty miles. There is simply a fire, and it is cold out, and everyone would like to be warm more than they would like to be right.

The Crown has never heard of it. Long may that continue.

THE OLD TOLL HOUSE

Ruined, on the way toward the Hem.

The roof is largely gone. The hearth still works. It is kept swept, and there is always dry kindling in the corner, and nobody knows who does it.

Children dare each other to spend the night. Adults, caught out in bad weather, are extremely glad of it and say nothing to the children.

THE SMALL PLACES

Not inns. Not owned. The places that cost nothing, which are the places that actually hold the realm together.

THE VILLAGE GREEN, MUCKLECOMBE. Mud, and a leaning maypole. Markets, gossip, and the unofficial Goose Tournament, which the Havers claim to have won without attending.

THE WAYSIDE CROSS, near the Blank Cornerstone. A stone cross with a little roof. Travellers leave bread, or a coin, for the next person along. It is nearly always taken. It is nearly always replaced. The parish has been running an unbanked, uninsured, entirely un-audited system of mutual aid out of a hole in a rock for four hundred years, and the Pennyworths have never once found a way to price it.

THE PEAT-STACK SHELTERS, Slough edge. Turf huts where the cutters dry their peat and brew tea, and where anybody caught in the rain may sit down without being asked their business.

THE COMMUNAL WELL, Lowmoss. Deep, and the rope is not long enough. The women of the village talk here. More real government has been conducted at that well than at any table in Murkminster.

THE SHEPHERD'S BOTHY, Weeping Granites. A stone hut, shared, unlocked, never empty of firewood, and never once robbed.

THE HEDGE-WITCH'S CLEARING, near Nettlewick. Ribbons on the branches, a fire-pit, and a woman who will give you a charm if you want one and a cup of something if you do not. Most people come for the second and accept the first out of politeness.

THE SHRINE TO OUR LADY OF THE DAMP. A small statue in a hollow tree. People stop, and ask for drier weather, and do not get it, and stop again next week. It is the most-visited shrine in the realm and it has never once worked.

A NOTE ON DISTANCE, WHICH THE COMMITTEE WILL NOT LIKE

Every figure in this book is wrong.

The Crown Survey will give you miles. The Committee will give you miles, and then revise them. His Lordship will tell you it is about nine. The Reaping Authority reckons in Tuesdays.

We reckon in inns.

Saltgate to the Crown & Engine is half a day. The Crown & Engine to the Halfway Stone is a day. The Halfway Stone to Drudgeford is half a day, unless it has rained, and it has rained.

That is not vagueness. That is the only honest unit of measurement in this kingdom — because a mile does not tell you whether you will be warm at the end of it, and an inn does.

A GENERAL NOTICE, CONCERNING A GENTLEMAN YOU WILL MEET

We cannot tell you which inn he will be at, because he will be at whichever one you are stuck in. That is his gift. Coach broken? Bridge gone? Water at the windowsills? Somewhere behind you, even now, a battered leather case is being held above the flood, and inside it the paperwork is bone dry, and he will tell you so, and invite you to feel it.

If a small damp gentleman in a coat that has seen better decades stands upon a chair and congratulates the room on its fortunate circumstances, you are in no danger of any kind — except one. Mind your signature.

Do not lend him your pen. Do not accept the flood terms. Do not purchase the plot three feet to the left, the meadow with the generous sky-to-land ratio, nor any property described as having had its previous drowning fully resolved.

But you need not leave the room, and you should not, for it is wet out, and he is — we say this with the full authority of the parish, having taken evidence at every lit window on the Highway — very good company on a bad night. Let him talk. It costs nothing, provided it costs nothing.

The tea is not a contract. The listening is not a deposit. The signature is the signature.

THE LAST WORD, WHICH IS THE ONLY REASON WE DICTATED ANY OF THIS

You will notice, going through this book, that we have not once told you which inn is the best.

That is because the question is a dry-country question, and it does not survive contact with this realm.

There is no best. There is only the next one, and how far off it is, and whether the lamp will be lit when you get there.

And it will be. That is the whole point. It will be.

Somebody in this parish, tonight, in the rain, is lighting a lamp in a window on a road they do not own, for a traveller they have never met and will not charge, because the alternative is that a stranger dies in the mud a hundred yards from a warm room.

That is not charity, and it is not religion, and it is certainly not the Crown.

It is a lit window, and it is a promise, and it is the entire kingdom.

Now get up. You have eleven miles to do and it is going to rain.