“You have no wife, Briton,” said Liam, when this was relayed to him. “Our sister is well protected, and content among her own kind. There is no place for you in her life.” Conor’s translation was cruelly accurate.

“Then let her tell me so with her own lips,” said Red quietly. “Let her tell me, and I will go.” I opened my mouth, and closed it again.

Then my father spoke, surprising us all.

“We have been short of entertainment tonight, weary as we are. Perhaps this fellow has a good story for a winter evening. Perhaps he can plead his case through such a tale. Bring the Briton a seat, and give him room. Let him speak, and let us be silent and hear him. Conor will render his words. It will be a fair task. I sense a mystery here beyond what my eyes tell; I would not be hasty to judge.” So they brought out a stool, and Red sat down, long legs crossed before him and the bandage still blinding his vision. They did not untie his hands.

He sat very upright, straight backed, and the firelight touched his hair to gold and scarlet and copper. I was finding it hard to breathe. Around me, Janis and Donal and the men and women of the household stood or sat with their cups in their hands and expectant looks on their faces. I did not know what to feel. I trembled with delight to have him in my sight once more. I glared at the men of my house-hold, who, it seemed, must always play games; who could accept no stranger without putting him to some test. Ask Red to fight with a sword or a tittle knife or with bare hands and feet, and he would be more than a match for anyone. I had seen this myself. Ask him to mend a tumbled wall, or a sick beast, or a broken alliance, and he was your man. But he was no teller of tales; not for a gathering of strangers such as this. He was no playactor. He had told me a story once; but that was for an audience of one, and hadn’t his own mother said he spoke to me as if to himself? The task my father had set him was the hardest he could have chosen. For such a man, who held his feelings deep within, hard in check, whose cold eyes and tight mouth gave nothing away, whose words failed him most when he let his heart speak, this was a cruel challenge. You can do this, I told him silently. Tell your tale to me. One foot before the other, straight ahead.

“There was—there was once a man,” he began hesitantly, who had everything. Well born, richly endowed, healthy in body and mind, he grew up as the eldest son and heir to a wide estate, whose margins were the sea to the west, and the hills to the east, whose fields were fertile and whose rivers teemed with fish for the taking.”