Cara realised she had stopped shivering; the drawing had helped. You couldn’t do a good drawing with shaky hands. ‘No,’ she said.

‘She speaks,’ said Ségán, his eyes fixed on her face. ‘Are you quite sure about that, Cara?’

Yes, she wrote.

‘This belongs to Mistress Blackthorn, doesn’t it?’ He nodded to one of the others, who came forward and put a little book down on the table. Cara felt her heart lurch. Mistress Blackthorn’s notebook. Her wise woman book. Her secret book. How had these men come by it? Why hadn’t Blackthorn taken it with her?

Yes, she wrote. She wished she was brave enough to write, and it’s private.

Ségán opened the notebook. A marker had been placed between the pages, quite far through. Cara spotted a drawing, some kind of plant, and on the opposite page the wise woman’s script, smaller than usual as if to fit as much there as she could. He held it open before her. ‘Is this her writing?’

Cara pushed it away. A wise woman’s book is secret, she wrote.

Ségán passed the notebook back to the other man. ‘I only need to be sure this is Mistress Blackthorn’s own account,’ he said. ‘Does she write in this book while the two of you are in the library?’

Cara didn’t like his searching eyes. That look was like the one Father used when he was disappointed in her. When she had failed to be the perfect daughter he expected her to be. She didn’t like his tone of voice. What business was it of his what Mistress Blackthorn was writing or where? ‘That’s her personal notebook.’ Being angry seemed to help the words come out. ‘Where she writes down useful things about her work. Remedies, drawings of herbs, potions. She doesn’t do that here. But sometimes she writes . . . notes.’ Cara would have had to be blind not to notice those loose pages filled with small neat writing. She would have had to be stupid not to see how Blackthorn hid them somewhere different every night. But unlike these bullies, she knew when something was none of her business.

‘Notes. Where?’

‘Just on . . . pages. Parchment.’

‘And where are those pages now, Cara?’

Nothing in the world could have persuaded her to tell him. Without a doubt, Mistress Blackthorn would expect her to keep it secret. But she couldn’t stop her eyes from going to the shelves, stacked full of books. It was only for a moment, but Ségán saw it.

‘Here in the library?’

‘I don’t know where they are.’ Not quite a lie; they were here somewhere, but she didn’t know exactly where.

‘Mistress Blackthorn is your friend, isn’t she?’

Cara nodded.

‘Telling me anything you know about this will be in her best interests. We mean her no harm.’