‘I don’t know much about it, Mistress Blackthorn. Only, first time they tried to build it, the fellow that was doing the work ran off with the place half-finished, and nobody else knew how to do it. Then the lady died, and the master blamed the builder. This house, it’s made very special. Brings good fortune if it’s done right. My auntie told me the story. She lived there for a bit once. At Wolf Glen, in the big house. Wet-nurse for the infant. Had enough milk for her own boy and the girl as well. Long while ago. My cousin’s a young man of fifteen now. Sixteen next autumn and thinks himself all grown up.’

Oh, my treacherous thoughts, suddenly full of my Brennan as he might be now, a fine young man of just that age, with my red hair and his father’s steady grey eyes. What might he have become, but for Mathuin?

‘Is that the settlement up ahead?’ asked Grim.

The terrain opened up and the lake came into sight, a slender body of water with forested hills behind. There was a scattering of houses along the shore, neat, well-kept dwellings, each with a garden patch. House cows grazed in a walled field. A bigger building stood close to the water, perhaps a storehouse, and beside it was a jetty at which two barges were moored. I saw a spot where carts might be drawn up, and a fenced enclosure with horse troughs. Neither man nor beast was in sight today, though we had been lucky with the weather. The rain had eased to patchy drizzle.

‘The house is along the end,’ Osgar said, pointing ahead. ‘This way.’

After that I was so busy I had no chance to think about Mathuin or Wolf Glen or anything else except the task at hand. Folk came out to meet us well before we reached the woman’s house. Many hands were ready to help us down and lead the horses to shelter. I suggested to Grim that he go off with the men to share some ale at Osgar’s house next door and wait for news, and that he take Ripple with him. I didn’t need to add that his job was to keep them calm, quiet and out of the way. Then I went in.

One look told me I needed to act quickly or I would lose both Fann and her unborn child. There were several women tending to her, and they’d been doing a good job, or as good a job as untrained helpers could. The hut was warm; a girl was keeping an eye on the fire, on which a pot of water bubbled. They’d been burning lavender and rosemary.