It took a while. I learned another oath in the British tongue. Apart from that, he kept quiet, although I heard his breathing change, and his face grew clammy with sweat. My hands were not as deft as they had been, but all the same, it had been some time since I had spun or woven starwort, for I had neglected the task in my misery, and the swelling in my fingers had begun to go down. Just as well. It was a tricky job. The small sliver, where dagger or sword had chipped against bone, was deeply lodged, and I had both hands covered in blood above the wrists before I got it out. I cleaned the wound again with fresh water, and dried it as well as I could. There was no chamomile, no sweet lavender nor poultice of juniper berries. There were no skilled hands or fine thread with which to sew up the wound. I took a few deep breaths, and then I got out a bone needle, the smallest I had, the one I used to bind the necks of the shirts when I had finished them. And in my pack there was one good spool of thread, a thread not made from the starwort plant, but soft and strong, which one of my brothers had thieved for me that midsummer night. I clenched my teeth and set to work, with an ear to his breathing. He was keeping it slow and steady, but with some effort. I did not hurry the job; it was done as neatly and thoroughly as I could manage. He’d have a scar, but the leg would mend. I finished, and bit off the thread, and felt his large hand encircling mine.

“Tell me,” he said levelly, “why does a girl of good breeding, with skin as white as new milk, have hands like a fishwife’s? Who has inflicted such punishment on you? Your crime must have been heinous indeed.”

That was it for my strength, I’m afraid. All at once, hunger and shock and exhaustion got the better of me, and I sank down to the ground, as far away from him as I could get, and put my poor hands over my face as bitter, silent tears coursed down my cheeks. I wasn’t angry at him, or at the men who had attacked us, or at anyone in particular. I was wet and miserable and tired, and I wanted my brothers, and I wanted my little garden and my dog, and to be able to tell tales and laugh again. I wept in self-pity, and because I knew you could never go back. You chose your path, and that was it. I wept for Father Brien and for Linn, and for what my brothers might have been, and for my own lost innocence. I wept because I had ugly hands. After all, I was but fourteen years old.

“I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly. It didn’t help much. I found that now I had started to cry, I couldn’t stop. Much like it is for a small child, whose woe often outlasts the injury, as if the weeping itself engenders more tears. I wept until my head ached and I saw stars before my eyes, and finally I lay down on the hard rock and went to sleep, still sniffing. After that, he must have forced himself to move, to lay a cloak over me, and a folded shirt under my head, for that was how it was when I woke, much later. It was dark everywhere, night time outside. For a moment I was quite disoriented, groping around me in a panic. I forced myself to sit still, to breathe slowly. And after a while, pale moonlight was apparent, thin fingers of it creeping through the foliage at the cave mouth, and by its dim light I could see the Briton lying asleep against the far wall, his face white, his eyelids heavy with the slumber of complete exhaustion. His bandage looked clean enough, what I could see of it. No new bleeding. That was good.