There were voices in the corridor now, moving toward them. The drunken man on the bed was trying to rise and come at her but his leg collapsed beneath him. His bellow followed them as they moved past sleepy women emerging from their rooms, and down the stairs until they reached the place where she had left Bea last night.

Her sister was not there, but her man Fergus was. He was rising from a bench by the door, the noise having woken him, scowling in confusion at the stairs.

“What’s amiss?” he asked, looking from Nan to the girls beside her.

Nan let silence serve, as she ever did, but Rosy offered, “Someone’s done the tanner a terrible hurt.” She did not even pause in her step as she said it, the clever girl. Fergus ran to the stairs and they exited the house, stepping into a gray morning.

There. They were out. They paused outside the door while, at Nan’s bidding, Rosy put on her cloak and pulled the hood up to hide her bright hair. The small market up the street was only just beginning to stir, and there were few people to witness them leaving the brothel. She was leading them in the direction of the market, back toward the walls of Lincoln, when she heard her name.

“Nan! Nan!”

There was a desperation in it, a panicked fear that Nan could not ignore. She turned around to face her sister, and felt a similar terror rising in her breast, scrabbling like a frantic animal to get out.

She had been taught how to fight despite fear, how to find and keep her balance through it. You will fear no man, Gwenllian had promised. They will fear you. So she had said and so it was, but nothing a man could threaten was like this.

Bea was red-faced and running, relief washing over her features when she reached Nan.

“There’s no hurt on you? Oh, I’ll take the hide off Fergus for letting him in after so much drink, falling asleep at the door, the great useless lump. Tell me it’s none of your blood I seen back there.”

She was running her hands over Nan’s shoulders and arms, patting her gently as she looked for injury. Nan only shook her head wordlessly. Gradually, a crease of confusion appeared in Bea’s brow. She looked at the girls, then back at Nan.

“Where do you go, Nan?”

They looked at each other a long moment, Nan breathing unevenly and Bea not breathing at all. She thought of their mother. Look after your brother and sister.

“I take Cecilia to find different work,” she said simply. “And Rosy would come too.”