You paint the list on the hospice wall.

Letters large. Lynford. Bridge (sound the cutwater). Ferry a mile south if the deck is wounded. Not the north ford in spate. Ridge: Thatcham, Crow’s Oak, Holmewell. Not the marsh. Inn: Painted Staff, pennies. Here: Saint Julian, storm custom.

You stay. You read it aloud to anyone whose feet are faster than their eyes. Pernell nods as if you had mixed perfect pottage. Aelric leaves you his phrasing like a gift. Osric sleeps, pole against the bed, while the wall does a way-warden’s work.

You do not see the basin this time. People walk because you wrote. Mixed-good: the map is a place; you became a landmark.

Pernell makes you read the wall to a man who will not admit he cannot parse a clerk’s hand. You read it twice. He goes to Bram instead of the ford. That is a shrine-day, in Lynford’s religion of not drowning. You eat pottage. The basin can wait until Osric’s eyes are merely annoyed. Aelric, gone up the ridge without you, said he would tell the well a crossing had a wall now. That is a relic you can test: people not in the river.

THE END

What you learned: medieval travel maps are often itineraries—lists of places, hours, and warnings—not bird’s-eye pictures. A wall-list and a waymark are hospitality in paint.