Grim goes quiet. He goes quiet for a long time. Bardán sits quiet too, thinking of his mother. Wishing her embroideries still hung bright and perfect on the walls of that little house. One of them was all birds. Every bird from the song: starling, woodcock, owl and the rest. And some that were not in the song. Every birdling in the wood, she had told him when he asked. You can’t afford to forget even the smallest of wrens. He hadn’t known it at the time, but she’d been talking about the heartwood house.

‘Bardán?’

‘Mm?’

‘How well did you know his wife? Tóla’s wife? Suanach, was that her name?’

‘Hardly saw her. I was working. She didn’t come out much.’

‘What was she like?’

He tries to remember. A little, wispy woman who hardly ever smiled. When she had come out of the house, Tóla had shepherded her around. Watched every step as though she might break if he took his eyes away. Bardán gets a sudden picture of her holding a child, with a shaft of sunlight coming through a window and lighting up both their faces. ‘She was fond of Brígh,’ he says. ‘Used to call her love, sweetheart, precious. She was fussy. Never satisfied, that’s what the nursemaid used to say. Mistress would undo the swaddling and wrap the baby up all over again. Thought she was the only one who could do it just right.’ It’s coming back, more of the past, more of that time. ‘She didn’t like me coming into the house to say good night. Said it disturbed Brígh. That made me angry. Only I couldn’t be angry. Had to swallow it down. I had nowhere else to go.’

‘Holy Mother of God,’ murmurs Grim. There’s another silence, then he says, ‘Suanach’s own daughter must have been born around the same time as your Brígh, though.’

What is he talking about? What daughter? ‘There was a boy. The nursemaid’s child. And Brígh. Enough milk for two.’

‘But the master’s daughter, Cara – she’s fifteen now, nearly sixteen. She’d have been here. Or expected.’

‘Why are you asking this?’

‘Just tell me, Bardán. If you can.’

‘They had no children. Don’t think she was expecting one. Little tiny woman – it would have showed. And nobody spoke of it. Must have been born later. Long after. After I . . . after that night, when I ran and fell and lost myself.’

‘Must have been,’ says Grim. ‘Come to think of it, someone did say the master’s wife went away to give birth. Went to her kinsfolk.’