Maybe he thought they would all just go away. Even the five men from Longwater who had ridden over despite Cionnaola saying he didn’t need them. Didn’t Tóla realise those men had seen Bardán and Grim brought out of the barn? Did he really still believe life could go back to what it had been? It seemed so. It seemed he was in a world of his own, for he went on protesting while Aunt Della sent serving folk away to fetch clean water and salves and bandages, and Mistress Blackthorn washed and bandaged Grim’s wound then sat on the ground with his head in her lap and said absolutely nothing for a while. Tóla went on talking as Aunt Della herself wiped Bardán’s face and held a cup of water for him to drink. Cara waited and listened as Tóla talked himself to a stop while telling them nothing. Then she stepped forward to speak, finding her voice with no trouble at all, even with all those people looking on. Her new voice: Brígh’s voice.

‘It’s time for you to tell the true story, Father,’ she said, wondering if this might be the last time she called him that. ‘The whole story, from when Bardán came to Wolf Glen with his baby girl. Don’t lie this time. I see a man here who was nursed alongside Bardán’s daughter, in our – in your house.’ The young man, Fedach, had come up from Longwater with the others. Cara was glad he had done that. She liked the steady look of him. He was a man who would surely never tell lies. ‘You said that little girl died,’ she went on. ‘You said Bardán ran off with her into the forest and abandoned her to her fate. And then, after two seasons away, your wife came home with her own baby, though nobody had known she was with child when she left just after Bardán vanished. Her own baby: Cara, daughter of the house. Except that baby could already walk. She could sit upright on a horse. She was getting on for one year old. I was that baby. Not your daughter, or my moth– your wife’s. Bardán’s child, Brígh. If you did not steal me, if you did not lie to him, what happened?’

It seemed for a little that Tóla was not going to answer. The folk watching whispered among themselves while he stood tight-lipped, apart from everyone else. The men who had been acting as guards had melted away into the crowd; he was alone.

‘Must this matter be aired here, in front of all these folk?’ he asked. ‘Let us observe some small measure of propriety. A meeting behind closed doors, down at the house.’