He had mumbled in Welsh for no more than a mile or so, about how according to legend the fairy in the lake would name one of the brothers king, when Nan stopped abruptly and turned to look at the falcon, and then at him.

“Aye, she must hunt,” he answered, for that was the polite question in her face. She did not need words, so uncommonly skilled was she at communicating without them. Now she swept her eyes back toward the river and nodded slightly. He looked to see a mallard floating peacefully by.

He said a quick prayer for better luck than this morning, when Tiffin had missed two coneys and a fat partridge, and he had the falcon in the air. “Quickly, quickly,” he whispered, because there was no way to know if this seemingly empty stretch of land belonged to someone who would call them poachers. Nan was looking up at the falcon, rapt. After a time she inhaled sharply, he looked up too to see that Tiffin had gone into a dive.

It did not take long. When the hunt was done they had two mallards, both kills blessedly fallen to the ground and not in the cold water. Gryff came back with the second one and found Nan already dressing the first. She pulled out the feathers over its belly before cutting it open and removing the viscera. She looked like she had done it every day of her life, and yet she seemed ignorant of every other aspect of the hunt.

He watched her hesitate, shy of the falcon.

“The heart belongs to the hunter,” he said, and pointed to it in the red mound. She picked it up and looked at Tiffin. He could feel it in her, the breathlessness and the awe, the fascination with the falcon, the fear of making a wrong move.

He pointed a finger to his falconer’s glove, just below where Tiffin sat waiting for her reward. Nan looked at the place and then at him, as skittish and hopeful as a shy child. She held her breath as she placed the scrap next to the falcon, and her face transformed as she watched the bird take it. There was the start of a smile on her parted lips, a quiet rush of air escaping her, watchful eyes softened with delight. The sight of it took his own breath away.

Then she turned back to the ducks and tended to the kill better even than he could have. Beauty and blood.