“These hands bear no traces of recent work,” frowned he with the head of flames. “How will your brothers live, if you neglect your task? How will these shirts be made, without spindle or loom?”

I glared up at him. That’s not fair. And they all laughed again, lords and ladies, their musical voices filing my ears with sweet disdain.

“Fair!” gasped the Bright One, amid his mirth. “Fair, she says? What a child it is, to be sure! Are you certain, my lady, that this is the right girl? For it seems to me she is a fool, and lazy with it.”

He moved right up to me and, taking my chin in his hand, tipped my head back to scrutinize me more closely. His eyes were very bright, shifting, changing. It was hard to look into them and not be dazzled.

“You have no need to ask me that,” said the Lady of the Forest. “You know well enough that this is she. She spits back at your mirth, she holds her head high, after everything. There is no cause to doubt her strength.”

“She neglects her work. Time runs short,” he said, and he was holding my hands now, turning them this way and that. “Is this vanity, I wonder? Do you weep, that your hands will never again be soft and white?”

“Let her go.”

My head snapped around; the Lord and the Lady and their companions all turned their strange, luminous eyes to the cave entrance through which I had come. The flickering light of their torches showed Red swaying there, his face as pale as chalk, one hand resting on the rock wall for balance. His expression was ferocious.

“I said, let her go.”

The Bright One’s hands dropped away from mine and he smiled a small, dangerous smile that was totally lost on the Briton.

“Touch her again and you’ll answer to me in blood,” said Red very quietly, and he limped forward to stand at my side. There was a brief silence, and then the attending folk put their hands together in a slow, derisive clapping. Red started to raise his arm, and I put out a hand and stopped him. Clearly, he had not the faintest idea who or what he was dealing with.

The Bright One folded his arms and regarded us with a half smile. Whether he spoke in the Britons’ tongue, or some other, I cannot remember, save that we all understood him.

“The Lord Hugh of Harrowfield, I believe that is your name? They say still waters run deep; you bear a weight of anger beneath that mask of control, young man. You are far from home; too far, some might say. What brings you across the sea, and into the forest, and alone in the dark among strangers?”

Red looked him in the eye. He was using my shoulder for balance now; it seemed the leg would not take his weight much longer.

“I am not answerable to you,” he said.