I did those things. The fire, the cleaning up, the cooking, the notes. Firstly, notes about the childbirth in Longwater and the exact proportions of the rather perilous draught I had made Fann drink. I would go through that with Emer next time she came. I did not expect her today; we had an agreement about very wet weather. At the back of my notebook I made some other, more secret notes, pertaining to Mathuin of Laois. I hid the book away, made a brew – often a good way of bringing Grim home – and stood by the window with the shutters open, sipping my drink and telling myself I was not watching out for him.

My moon-bleeding had started. That helped explain my touchy mood; the two often went together. For a long time, season after season, I had bled little and irregularly or not at all. I had wondered if fate’s blows had beaten out of me the capacity to conceive another child. For a while I had thought that would be a good thing. How could such a wretched, bitter creature ever be a proper mother? Now, a part of me was glad my body still held that possibility. Hard to accept, that gladness. It didn’t make much sense. Hadn’t I sworn to myself, after the heartbreak of losing Brennan, that I would never have another child? Hadn’t I sworn I would never love anyone again, since doing so would be like nailing my heart up on the wall and inviting folk to throw knives into it? Just as well, after all, that Grim wasn’t home. I might say something I would quickly regret. Just as well he hadn’t had the chance to see those words I’d written on the wax tablet. I would erase them now. As for what he had written for me, he would never know I’d copied every word onto a blank page of my notebook. His verse lay between a drawing of mistletoe and a set of instructions for brewing mead. Grim would not look there. He knew a wise woman’s book was private.

Someone was riding across the fields from the settlement. A man in a hooded cloak. Two others coming behind. Not Prince Oran’s men, or I’d see his colours. Nobody I recognised from Winterfalls settlement or anywhere else nearby. The Swan Island men again, with their wretched questions? A pox on them! I left the window, put my cup down on the table, hugged my shawl around my shoulders. Why did I feel so cold? Why did the shadow of Mathuin hang over any stranger who knocked on my door? Go away, I willed them. Go somewhere else and leave me alone. Which was foolish. Hadn’t I been cursing Grim not long ago for doing precisely that?