Sleep continued to evade me. I paced the room at night, my head full of visions of Red captured by my father’s men, and subdued with hot iron. Of the swans flying over storm-tossed water, the movement of their wings becoming ever more difficult. Of Red sustaining some injury, out in hostile territory with nobody to help. Alone in the forest. There would be no handy girl with needle and thread. I had not even had time to sew a rowan cross into his garments, before he left me. I pictured Finbar as I had last seen him, too weak to walk. Too weak to fly. I imagined Red’s face, when he at last found the young man with no past. The man he believed to be his brother. It could not be Simon. If I had been able to tell him that, perhaps he would not have gone away and left me alone. Then my little voice, the sensible one, spoke up. Make haste, Sorcha. Make haste. There is no time for this. Spin Weave. Make your shirts. Time is shorter than you think. Nonetheless, I had less control over my thoughts than I’d have liked. The little ring hung around my neck, under my gown, where nobody could see it. When I was alone, I took it out sometimes, wondering how he had judged the size, with nothing but my swollen, knotted fingers to go by. Wondering if my hands would ever be as they once were, small, white, and fine. By the time that happened, if it ever did, I would be long gone from here. I would have left behind both husband and wedding ring. It mattered little whether the size were right or no. Yet, when I thought this, I found my hand closing around the ring as if I did not want to let it go. It’s mine, something inside me would say. This feeling troubled me greatly.

In her son’s absence, Lady Anne took up the reins of the household as she had obviously done before, with calm competence. But the job was not so easy this time. The days followed their familiar pattern, but without Red it was not the same. Disputes took longer to settle. A man burned another’s shed, and a donkey was saved only at the very last minute. A stranger, passing through on the road, stopped at one of the settlements for ale and shelter. The next morning he was found dead in the yard, with a neat little dagger wound between his ribs. Some of the men complained about taking orders from Ben. Who did he think he was, anyway? He may have been a foster son of the old man, Lord Hugh’s father, but that didn’t give him the right to start throwing his weight around when Hugh chose to absent himself. Young fellow was getting too big for his boots. Besides, hadn’t Master Benedict been there the day Lord Hugh…well, you know. Lady Anne told them to get on with their work and stop wasting Ben’s time and hers; the estate did not run itself. They obeyed, grumbling. But we could all feel it. The good times were over. As spring grew into summer and a bright, fruitful warmth bathed the land, distrust and suspicion flourished among the people. They became fearful and angry, not just toward me and those who protected me, but toward each other as well.