“You’d best drink this,” I said, holding out the cup.

Simon sniffed at it suspiciously. I had given him nothing but the infusion of goldenwood, since the day I came.

“What’s in it? It smells different. I suppose you’re trying to poison me now? Finish me off?”

“Isn’t that what you said you wanted?” It was beyond me to keep this retort back, for I was annoyed with his refusal to help himself.

Simon raised his brows at me. “It smells bad. I won’t drink it.”

I put the cup into his hand and curled his fingers around it. “You have a short memory,” I told him. “Didn’t you promise to do as I told you, as long as I agreed to look after you? I’ve kept my side of it. I’m staying here until you’re well again. Now drink this and stop talking. You’re not the only one who’s tired and out of sorts.”

He drank, scowling up at me the while, and lay back again, his eyes fever-bright. Then I sat by him, talking of nothing much, watching him grapple with the pain and fight to keep silent. After a while, the effects of the herbal infusion stole over him and his features began to relax, his eyes clouding. My arm was hurting quite a lot, and I went quietly over to Father Brien’s shelves to seek an ointment, perhaps mallow root or elderflower. I found what I wanted in a shallow lidded bowl, and returned to my stool to anoint my bruises. There was a ring of reddened flesh right around my upper arm. Massaging with the salve relieved the pain a little.

Something made me glance up as I placed the lid back on the bowl. Simon was still awake, just, heavy lids not quite masking the startling blue of his eyes. “You bruise too easily,” he said indistinctly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Then his lids dropped and he was asleep. The dog moved in closer, wedging herself alongside him on the narrow pallet.

There was a short spell, then, for explanations and decisions. I went to the cottage and we stayed there, but with the door open, for as I told the others, Linn would alert me if Simon wakened. Father Brien insisted that both Finbar and I ate and drank, although neither of us had the stomach for it.

It took a while to persuade Finbar to go home. He still believed me to be in danger, and swore that Conor would never agree to my staying. I used his old argument against him: You should not assume a Briton was evil just because of his golden hair, or his height, or his strange manner of speaking. He was a human being with strengths and weaknesses, just like us. Hadn’t Finbar said so himself many times, even to our father?

“But he threatened to kill you,” said Finbar, exasperated with me, “he held a knife at your throat. Does that mean nothing?”