8
The village of Silvessen turned out to be a ragged cluster of wattle-and-daub dwellings of considerable antiquity. Not a one of them had been built later than the fourteenth century, I’d have wagered. They were also in states of advanced disrepair.
We wandered down the central street, once a path of packed earth and stones, now a swath of soggy mud. Empty windows gaped in begrimed facades; thatched roofs sprouted holes where the dried rushes or straw had weathered away. Some buildings had lost their roofs altogether, their thick wooden beams exposed to the wind and rain.
‘All things considered,’ Jay said, looking around. ‘More of this is left than I’d expect.’
I saw his point. Half-ruined they may be, but if these houses were at least seven hundred years old, and they’d been abandone
