‘Who went up to Wolf Glen with her father. And never came back.’ The baby who’d been abandoned in the forest. The baby who had died alone and cold, in the night. If that story was true.

‘She was an odd little thing.’ Luíseach was staring off into the distance now, remembering. ‘Long and spindly, all legs and arms. I fed her, yes. But the one who was always walking around with her and holding her and singing to her was Mistress Suanach. Calling her pet names: my precious, my sweet, heart’s dearest. Didn’t like anyone else tending to the girl.’

‘She must have been heartbroken when the baby died.’

‘We never heard how she felt. One day I was wet-nurse in that household, the next day the baby girl was missing, the day after that they told me she was dead and I was packed off back to Longwater with a purse of silver for my trouble. Mistress Suanach went away to stay with her kinsfolk that very same day, or so the story went.’

‘To come back later with her own child.’

Luíseach nodded.

Now the most awkward question; I hoped she would not tell me to mind my own business. ‘She was away a good while, wasn’t she?’

Luíseach gave me a very direct look. ‘Poor thing wasn’t a mother long. My son was born in the autumn. By the next autumn Mistress Suanach was dead. An ague, they said.’

Morrigan’s britches. So Cara could not have been Suanach’s natural daughter. ‘Before Cara was a year old,’ I murmured.

‘As you say.’

‘It’s . . . a very sad story.’

‘It is, Mistress Blackthorn. And you did not hear it from me, or from anyone in this household.’

‘Understood. Your son is a fine young man, Luíseach. You’ve raised him well.’

‘I have a good husband. He’s shown Fedach what a man should be.’

Curse it, what were these sudden tears? I turned my face away, but not before she saw.

‘I’m sorry, Mistress Blackthorn. Have I upset you?’

‘It’s nothing.’ I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. ‘I should be on my way. You must have work to get on with.’

‘Nothing that can’t wait. Ide told me about you. How you birthed Fann’s child when everyone thought she would die and the boy with her. And she told us about Grim. A fine man, she said. A good man.’

‘He is. But we’re not – we are friends, he and I. Thrown together by chance.’ The words sounded like a betrayal. The tone I attempted, light and inconsequential, made a mockery of the truth.

‘When you have a man like that, you should hold on to him,’ Luíseach said quietly. ‘Such a man is rare. Worth his weight in gold, and more.’