‘Your aunt will help you pack,’ Father said. ‘Best attend to that now.’

‘Alba?’ she managed. ‘C-comes too?’

‘You won’t need Alba. There will be many maidservants at Winterfalls. Mature, responsible maidservants.’

‘B-b–’

‘Go, Cara. Do your packing. Say your farewells. Within a few days you’ll be thanking me for this.’ He regarded her more closely. ‘Don’t look so woeful, Daughter. The world will not turn to ruin just because you are away from Wolf Glen for a season or two.’ He picked up his cup and took a drink.

A season or two? She sprang to her feet, knocking her own cup over. Mead ran across the work table, and as she looked about for a cloth, Father snatched the documents clear of the flood. She fished out a clean handkerchief from her pouch and attempted to stem the flow. ‘I c-c-can’t!’ Tears were building behind her eyes. ‘Father, p-please!’

‘Leave that, Cara, let the servants deal with it.’ Father’s tone was suddenly weighed down, burdened with that old sorrow. ‘My decision is made, and you must learn to live with it.’

Chapter Three: Blackthorn

3

~Blackthorn~

‘He’s in perfect health, Flidais,’ I said, watching as Aolú practised rolling over on the mat beside us. ‘And very strong for his age. It won’t be long before he’s taking his first steps.’

We were in a comfortable chamber that had been fitted out as a nursery before the little prince’s birth last autumn. Flidais’s handmaid and companion, Deirdre, was folding linen and putting it away in a chest, but none of the nursemaids was present. Since Aolú’s father was the crown prince of Dalriada, the infant had more attendants than any child could possibly need. But Lady Flidais liked to do things her own way. She nursed Aolú herself where many royal women would have hired a wet-nurse. She bathed him and changed his soiled linen. I liked her approach. Which was saying something, since I had little regard for princes and chieftains in general. Power and wealth too often made folk lose their good judgement. It made them cruel and unthinking. I had seen it too many times to count.

‘I’m happy to hear that,’ Flidais said now, shaking a rattle and making the baby gurgle in delight. She was a slight woman, and today, sitting cross-legged on the floor with her dark hair loose over her shoulders, she hardly looked old enough to be a mother. I tried to imagine her at five-and-twenty, with perhaps a whole brood of children around her skirts. I pictured Aolú walking, running, starting to talk. Aolú at the age my son had been when he died. Aolú at the age my son would have been now, if he had lived: a young man of fifteen.