‘Tell me! I’m tired of folk holding things back! I thought you, of all people, would be honest with me.’

‘You are quick to defend your father from criticism, despite his unreasonable treatment of you. I do have some more to tell, but if I go ahead, it could make him angry. Not with you. With Grim, for betraying a secret. And with me, for passing it on.’

‘Something about the wild man.’

‘Something about him, yes. He has a name: Bardán.’

‘Bardán. Go on.’

‘This story does not show your father in a good light, Cara. I’m telling you in confidence, as Grim told me. And I would ask that you hear me out calmly.’

‘All right.’

Mistress Blackthorn told how the wild man, Bardán, had been hired to build the heartwood house the first time. How he was the only person who knew how to do it. According to what Grim had heard, Bardán had been taught the skills by his father who, if rumour was to be believed, had grown up in the Otherworld and become a craftsman of almost uncanny talents. He’d fallen in love with a half-fey woman and the two of them had escaped that realm together. They’d had a son, and that was Bardán.

It was possible, Blackthorn said, that the fey held a grudge against him and his. They might have felt they were owed something in exchange for those two going free.

What had happened next, Blackthorn did not know. But it seemed Bardán had begun building the heartwood house, then gone away abruptly with the job half-finished. There was an old tale that said a heartwood house conferred a whole range of blessings, as long as it was built the right way. If not, it seemed the opposite might happen. Father had been angry.

‘How long ago was that?’ Cara asked, while a trickle of ice went down her spine. ‘Before or after my mother died?’

‘I must assume it was before,’ Blackthorn said. ‘I have heard that Master Tóla believed she might have survived if the heartwood house had been finished when he intended. If the builder had not suddenly downed tools and gone away.’

‘But –’ No, she could not say it. Would her father, so strong, such a leader, let superstition get the better of his good judgement?