I could not isolate myself entirely. Lady Anne required attendance at supper. I attended, and sat silently, and ate what I must. There was no John to coax me into finishing what was set in front of me; though once or twice I found Ben slipping an extra wedge of cheese or slice of fruit onto my plate, with a comment about how there was so little of me left, soon I’d be gone altogether. I looked at him sharply, and he winked. Perhaps not everyone hated me. Gone were the cheeky grin and flood of bad jokes, since we had lost John, but Ben was not capable of malice, and I believed he still felt some kind of responsibility for me, born perhaps of being witness to my undignified rescue from drowning. Born also from his failure to prevent Hugh of Harrowfield from making the one wrong decision of his life.

Once or twice I passed Red in a hallway, for we could not avoid one another completely. I lowered my eyes and went by like a shadow, close to the wall. When he had to speak to me, his manner was polite but distant; of what had passed between us that night, not a word was spoken, not a look exchanged. It might never have been, save for the guilt it had made between us, that neither of us tried to bridge. It was better that way. I had a job to do, and no time for distractions. He had his house to put in order, and quickly, for May Day drew on at an alarming pace.

I learned, at thirdhand, of his investigations into the rock fall and John’s death. That the second man, who had watched from above, was on loan, so to speak, from Northwoods, having accompanied Elaine on her visit and remained at Harrowfield. That he had taken the place of another, on the day it happened, without informing John. That there had been no sight or sound of him since. There was a question over it all, for it could still be that his body lay beneath that great, remaining stone. No accusations were made. But things changed subtly. There were more men about the place, and most of them were armed. Foodstuffs were checked and tasted. Red and Ben talked long in the evenings, and started looking at maps. Other men came from time to time, some of them strangers, and were questioned intensely, and given food and drink, and sent away again. All of this I watched, and failed to understand, but I would not ask. I spun and spun, and counted the days as they sped by.

Chapter Eleven

It was May Eve, and the weather was perfect. At home, folk would have been up and out in the night, gathering flowers to hang about their doors and windows, to honor the first rising of the sun. Gifts of milk would be left in the hollows of certain stones; fires lit on hilltops. I remembered my brother Conor coming home with a burning brand, which he had carried from deep in the forest, and lighting our hearth fire anew. Here the folk seemed to have little time for such rituals, perhaps not understanding their importance. And yet, to my surprise, I saw ribbons woven in the bushes by the pathway, and heard the girls in the kitchen chattering about a spiral dance, and which of the young men they might like to take into the woods when the dancing was over. Perhaps the old ways were not quite gone from these parts after all.