Walk to the settlement, boots all mud, heart going too fast, mind full of stories with bad endings. Stupid, I tell myself. Healers get called away all hours of the day and night. What are you expecting, that she’s going to be there with a lamp lit and your supper ready on the table every time you come home? This is Blackthorn, not a village wife. Thing is, though, our life, hers and mine, has got a surprise around every corner, and a lot of them are bad ones.

Next stop is the smithy, where there are lights shining and folk moving about. Knock on the door, Fraoch comes out, takes one look at me and asks me in for mulled ale and a bite to eat. But I’m too worried to say yes, good though their supper smells. Emer comes out with her hair done up in a kerchief and her apron on. Tells me Blackthorn walked over with her and the girl, Cara, in the afternoon, and Emer hasn’t seen either of them since. Emer thinks Blackthorn was going back home to make up some salves.

Hard to ask the right questions. Hard not to rush off blind, start searching everywhere. Almost dark. ‘Scannal told me there’s some kind of trouble for the prince,’ I say.

‘That’s right,’ says Fraoch. ‘An attack at Cloud Hill, in the south. Where Lady Flidais comes from. Some fellow’s marched in with a big body of men-at-arms and taken over her father’s holdings. That’s what folk are saying, anyway. Sounds bad. The king’s called a council and Prince Oran’s heading off to court in the morning. Taking a fair number of folk with him. You sure you won’t come in and get dry, Grim? You look like a drowned rat. An oversized drowned rat.’