The servant appeared with wine. Red made me sit down and take a goblet, but I had only a sip or two. My stomach was still unsettled, and I was very weary. And there were too many people here, too much light, too many sounds. All I wanted was to be alone for a while, and rest. And then I wanted a distaff and a spindle and a loom, and time, lots of time.

“She hasn’t much to say for herself,” said Red’s mother, sniffing slightly. “What’s she to do here? Can she make herself useful?”

Red’s mouth curved in a smile that did not reach his eyes.

“I think you will find Jenny can occupy herself well enough,” he said. “She’s very handy with the needle and thread. But she is not to be employed as a servant here; I expect your women to make her welcome as an equal.”

“I am shocked that you ask this, Hugh. Perhaps I did hope, beyond hope, that you would bring Simon safely back home. Instead you bring the enemy that destroyed him, and ask me to make that enemy a friend.” Under the mask of gentility, she was furious with him.

Red looked at her, and then at me. “Jenny does not speak,” he said, “because she cannot. But she makes herself understood very well, you’ll find. And she understands everything you say.” With that answer, which was no answer at all, she had to be content, but there was a delicate frown between her arching brows, and I saw the depth of anguish in her eyes.

“You give us no choice,” she said wearily.

I thought about Simon, and the things he’d said about his family. In his tale of two brothers, the younger had never been quite good enough; never been quite the equal of the elder. Why had he thought they did not love him? Why had he seen himself as second best? Even in his absence, he stood between this mother and son as vivid as if he had been there in the flesh.

Their talk moved to safer ground. They spoke of the business of the estate, of crops and livestock, the harvest and the welfare of their folk. Red asked question after question; he seemed eager to take up the reins of his household once more. My mind wandered, reliving those days when Simon was in my care, remembering the long telling of tales, the fevered, demon-filled nights, the slow healing of mind and body. I remembered his knife at my throat; I remembered his tears of furious self-loathing. These mind-pictures were strong; I scarcely saw what was around me. Besides, I was growing drowsy with the wine and the long day, and so I started when I felt something cold and wet against my leg, under the hem of the homespun gown that the sisters had given me. I looked down. Peeping out from under the bench where I sat was a very small, rather elderly gray dog, who gazed up at me with sad, rheumy eyes, wheezing gently. I bent over and offered her a hand to sniff; she quivered and put out a small pink tongue in a lick of greeting. Then, with a sigh, she settled down heavily on my feet as if there for a long stay. I stifled a yawn.