Then there was my own task. Prince Oran’s library housed an extensive collection of books and manuscripts, many of them quite precious. And it had an adjoining chamber set up as a scriptorium, with a glazed east-facing window and several writing desks. Shelves held a supply of quills, inks and good parchment. The household did not have its own scribe. Flidais did whatever writing was required for domestic arrangements – lists of supplies and so on – and both she and Oran wrote their own letters. They wrote poetry, too. Flidais had told me so. But I imagined that was set away somewhere private. Fíona, wife of Aedan the steward, cleaned the library herself. The place was spotless. And at present, with Oran and Flidais both away, we were the only people using it. It was a perfect opportunity for me to complete the statement I’d been scrawling in my notebook, then make a fair copy. Cara worked in the main part of the library. I worked in the scriptorium. If she had questions, I did my best to answer them. If she needed help with a Latin translation, we worked on it together. I only had to tell her once that my own work was private; after that, she was careful not to look at it.

Writing the document felt like putting my heart’s blood down on the page. Every sentence hurt; every word brought back the painful past. But I had to do it. Now that Mathuin had shown his hand against Flidais’s family, I felt compelled to record everything I knew about his crimes. I felt as if time might be running out.

We made a decision to work only in the mornings, since my duties as healer continued and I often had to travel some distance to visit folk. Fann and her baby in Longwater, for instance, were still under my care. Nor did I intend Emer’s progress with her reading and writing or her training as a healer to be halted by this diversion. Every few days she joined us in the library to labour over her letters for an hour or so. Poor Grim. By the time he came home he would be far behind her. A pox on Tóla! Didn’t the man understand folk’s need to see one other occasionally, to reassure themselves that their loved ones were alive and well? No building work could be so important that a person needed to give day and night to it. I told myself Grim’s absence meant the job would be done more quickly, allowing him to be home sooner. I missed him so much it was like a physical ache. Which was exactly what Cara had said, once, about how being away from Wolf Glen made her feel. And Cara was fifteen years old. I ordered myself to grow up and stop being foolish.