He sees the image again, as when he told Grim the tale. Himself and his father, side by side at his mother’s grave. His father ashen-faced, silent, robbed of words. The emptiness in his own heart, as if all the joy and laughter had been ripped out of him. Her soft voice echoing through his mind, singing his song, the lullaby he had heard every night since he was too small to remember. None shall harm this child of mine . . . Ten-year-old Bardán hummed the tune, there by the turned-over soil and the sad bunch of wildflowers they’d laid on it, and suddenly there were tears streaming down his father’s cheeks, and a great sob came out of him, a sound so terrible that Bardán’s heart flinched as if a knife had gone into it. His father sank to his knees, hands over his face. Young Bardán wanted to comfort him, but he stood frozen, hardly able to think. And in the woods all around, the birds broke out in song. So, she is gone, they seemed to say. She loved us, and she is gone.

That day is still clear and bright in Bardán’s memory, though so much else has faded away. The day of mourning. The day of loss. His father digging the grave. Carrying her out of the house, cradled in his arms. Laying her to rest, wrapped in a fine blanket of her own weaving. Filling in the grave. Covering her up. The earth on her face, on her closed eyes, on her white, white skin.

‘Bardán? Got food for you.’ Gormán’s there, banging on the door of the hut.

Bardán pushes the door open a crack. It’s light outside, or as light as it can be with the rain still pissing down and the sun barely up.

‘Open up, will you? I’m getting wet.’

Bardán opens the door further, takes the covered bowl Gormán’s holding.

‘No work today,’ Gormán says. ‘Grim won’t be coming in this weather. You want to warm up later, come down by the barn and I’ll find you some dry firewood. Get you another blanket.’

Gormán’s a mystery. Seems like he could be a kind man if he wanted to. Makes Bardán wonder what hold Tóla’s got over the fellow, to have him doing the master’s bidding even when it means being cruel and unreasonable. Wasn’t Gormán once his friend? Or as close to a friend as anybody got? Now, when he looks at the man, he sees someone he can’t trust. ‘Thanks,’ he mutters, not wanting to accept the unusual favour, but knowing he’d be a fool not to.