Blackthorn was staring at her now.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘You’re different today,’ Blackthorn said. ‘Not hiding away anymore. Sure of yourself.’

‘I’m trying to be more like you,’ said Cara.

Chapter Twenty-six: Grim

26

~Grim~

Things change quick now the master’s seen sense. Matter of ten days or so and we’ve got our crew on the job. Five men, all from Longwater or close by. None of them builders, but all of them strong and fit. Willing to turn their hands to whatever needs doing. Weather’s turned sunny, spirits are up, Gormán and Conn get a chance to go back to their own work and leave the heartwood house to me and my helpers. Ripple’s happy. Job of builder’s dog suits her. The fellows like having her there. Plenty of pats and morsels of food.

And there’s Bardán. The crew are going home at night, coming in every day. Bardán’s staying where he is, in Tóla’s barn, and that means so am I. Promised to keep an eye on him day and night, so that’s what I’m doing, best I can. Been hoping he’d stop going on about his daughter, his baby girl, where is she and so on. But since he heard Tóla talking the night Cara went missing he keeps on coming back to that. And even though it’s nonsense, just his mind mixing things up, the way he says it makes me deep-down sad. Wonder if they tried to tell him what happened, when he first came back? How could you do it? You stole your own baby and ran off into the woods and left her, and she died cold and hungry and scared. You couldn’t say it to him. Losing his memory’s a mercy. If he did remember, how could he live with himself?

When he says it on the job, Where’s my daughter?, the other fellows take no notice. Or they tell him to shut it. Or they start singing to drown out his voice. But Bardán talks about his daughter at night, too. Sings that rhyme, or other ones like it, about the birds, and nothing harming his child. Asks me over and over what happened to her. I say things like, I wasn’t here, or I don’t know. Makes me think about telling lies. Makes me wonder if it’s better to tell the truth even if it’ll hurt someone. Even if it’ll destroy them. Thing is, if nobody tells him he might hear it by accident, someone saying, Do you know what that man did? That’d be even crueller.