‘Come back tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Grim can find some wood for you to work with – that’s if he says yes about the tools.’ He would, of course. Grim was generous to a fault. I just hoped Cara knew what she was doing and wouldn’t cut off any fingers. ‘Let the prince’s household give you an escort next time. I’d rather not upset Flidais by breaking the rules. I can promise you whoever it is will stay outside. They’ll do as I bid them.’

‘If only Father would say,’ Cara spoke under her breath, more to herself than to me. ‘He never said how long it was for, only that it might be until next autumn. That’s so long! And he didn’t tell me why. From one day to the next everything simply changed. If he’d warned me . . . If he’d explained properly . . . But he just said, You’re going to Winterfalls, and the next day we rode to the prince’s and he left me there. He didn’t even let my maid come with me. I think he dismissed her. Father knows, he knows I can’t live away from Wolf Glen. He knows I get sick if I can’t be near the trees. But he just . . .’

I ordered myself not to leap to conclusions; not to judge. ‘What reasons did your father give for sending you to the prince’s house? Flidais said something about court manners.’ It was not hard to imagine what a trial that would be for a girl who liked standing barefoot in forest pools and communing with birds. If I’d told her the very first thing Flidais had done when she’d arrived in these parts as a new bride had been to strip down to her shift and go swimming in Dreamer’s Pool, Cara would not have believed me.

‘That’s what Father said. Meet a wider circle. Learn how to talk to people. Because I can’t, most times. The words get stuck. But I can do the things I’m supposed to. Aunt Della – that’s my father’s sister who brought me up – has taught me how to dance and sit nicely and make conversation and do embroidery. I don’t like any of it but I can do it if I have to. I don’t need practice.’

‘Have you told Flidais this? She’s quite understanding.’ But young, I thought; not so very many years this girl’s senior. No wonder she was struggling.

‘I can’t,’ Cara said. ‘I can’t talk to folk. I told you.’

A moment’s pause; we regarded each other across the table.

‘You’re different,’ she said. Her cheeks had turned pink. ‘Like Gormán. And Alba. Alba’s my maid. Was my maid.’