Galba was short, stocky, with broad heavyset features; he had a pale complexion and thick red hair, which betrayed his people’s probable origin among the Picts north of the Wall. He was young—younger than Brica, who was now a venerable twenty-eight. He had come down from the north with his family, en route to Armorica. They had fallen afoul of Saxons, but a chance encounter with a party of Artorius’s soldiers had saved their lives. Galba’s family had taken over an abandoned farm only half a day’s a ride from here, and had become commoners in the new kingdom. Brica had met Galba at a feast on one of the farmsteads. She had prevailed upon Regina to bring the man into the dunon for a trial at the forge. Galba had acquitted himself so well that Myrddin had taken him on at the manufactory permanently.

And Galba’s move into the dunon had made Brica more than happy, too, to Regina’s chagrin. Galba was cheerful, sturdy, competent, and obviously attractive—but, to Regina, crushingly dull. In that way he was astonishingly like Bran, Brica’s farmboy first love, a relationship Regina had crushed long ago.

Now Galba came out of the workshop, softly calling Brica. Somehow he had managed to scorch a lank of soot-filled red hair at the side of his head. Brica took a knife and carefully began to saw at the blackened ends. Galba crouched a little so she could reach, and as she worked her body moved closer to his, her cheek resting on the side of his head.

They belonged together. It was a sudden, unwelcome truth, and yet it could not be denied. But Regina found jealousy gathering inside her. I can’t allow this, she thought suddenly.

Not for the first time, she found she had come to a decision intuitively, and had to unravel it retrospectively. She felt as hostile to Galba as she had once to Bran. Why?

Galba was now a larger part of Brica’s life than Regina was. So he should be. There were women younger than Brica who were already grandmothers. It was the way of things. A daughter matters more to a mother than a mother can ever matter to the daughter, for the daughter represents the future, and the future must predominate over the past. Regina should simply—let go.