I wondered, for a moment, if these men ever slept. Then, I remembered Red lying in the cave, his face white with pain and exhaustion. He was human, I thought; he just didn’t like people to know it. And it seemed he set a very high value on the information I could give him; he would make sure it did not slip through his grasp, while he was waiting for me to talk.

They rose early, but not as early as I. Before dawn I was up and about, washing my face in the last of the fresh water, finding the privy, unbolting the outer door and walking out into the neglected garden. Little Alys followed me, but slowly, her joints stiff with age. Someone had planted this garden well, once. But there was no starwort here; later, when I needed more, I must look further afield. I cursed myself for neglecting my task, before I left the forest. There was an old water trough under the wormwood bushes, half full of mud. I could use that to soak the fibers I had brought from the priory. There were still herbs aplenty here; enough, if I tended them, to stock a good set of shelves with salves and ointments, tinctures and essences. I wondered if they would let me have a mortar and pestle, and some knives, and beeswax and oil. Then I thought, there is no time for this. What of Finbar, and Conor, and the others? Time runs short for them, and it is already autumn. Nonetheless, I could not help myself, and when Megan came to find me I was pulling up weeds, separating out the newly seeded children of the overblown plants, planning how it might be if I pruned, and dug, and planted. I had forgotten, almost, where I was. Of my nighttime guardians there had been no sign, save for the print of their boots in the soft earth. They had vanished with the first light.

The attitude of the folk of Harrowfield toward me could best be described as a sort of frozen courtesy. The lady Anne led by example. There was no denying that her son was the head of this household and expected to have his way, and even she would not challenge that. So she spoke to me only when circumstances made it unavoidable. When she looked at me, the hostility in her bright blue eyes was thinly masked. She provided for me, but only so far as basic hospitality demanded. I told myself that this suited me well enough. I had been living wild for the best part of two years now; I had become unused to luxury, if indeed our life at Sevenwaters could be called that, for in our household of men we had lived simply enough. I had no wish for fine gowns, or wheaten bread, or a bolster filled with goose feathers. So I told myself, and it was true enough.

It was the company that was difficult. I had been alone a long time, alone save for those few precious nights when my brothers could take human form, when we might again speak mind to mind, when we might touch and gaze and store up memories for the long, lonely times between. Now I was surrounded by women, women who chattered constantly among themselves, who were always there, who broke into my thoughts and made my task harder, and slower, and more painful, because I must work doubly to remember why I was there, and what I must do. And the looks; the looks were sidelong, and bitter, and full of fear. I was the enemy; it did not really matter what the lord Hugh had said, for the long sunny room where we met each morning to sew and spin and weave was the women’s place, and I read in the women’s faces what they thought of me.