She stirred the sizzling meat, only looking up to glance to where the dog sat. He was meant to be keeping guard, but kept looking back at the smell of the meat. She paused to wash her hands before pouring water into the pot. Then she pulled out the sacks of spices she kept, carefully measuring handfuls and pinches, methodically sifting them into the pot as she spoke.

“Well then, the lord thought it were a plot by a rival to have him murdered. He sent his men to drag me from the kitchen because he knew I had served a lord he suspected. He bade me tell him all I knew of this rival and this plot. I knew naught but said whatever would please him – anything at all, for he held a knife to Oliver’s throat.” Her spoon stirred, scraping along the bottom, a hollow sound. “But naught pleased him, and he killed Oliver. Right there before my eyes.”

The words were very calm. She pulled an onion and two turnips from the sack. The knife sliced into the onion first, peeling off the outer layer. Her hands were perfectly steady.

It was more than she had ever spoken, and he did not know if this was the end of her story. Questions rose up in him, impatient and hot, but she had said I’ll tell you a story. He knew he was not meant to interrupt, that she must say her piece and his only task was to listen well. So he held his breath, attuned to her smallest movement, and waited. It was a discipline born of years spent in training fierce creatures to trust him.

“He was a very great and powerful lord. He kept me there as his amusement. It was a hunting lodge, for he had been on the hunt. Oliver served him and his men, kept the horses for them. Nor can I remember what game they hunted.” She furrowed her brow a little, like it troubled her to forget this detail. “It were more than a week, I think, haps two. I did not count the nights.”

She sliced the onion to pieces and added it to the pot before looking him in the eye. “You would know more?”

There was no belligerence in it. She asked it a little indifferently. He wanted to say no, that there was no need to tell him. But he did want to know more. He wanted to know so many things.

“Did you kill this great lord?”

She laughed with real humor, a short yelp of a sound that broke the spell she had woven. Lines of mirth appeared at the corner of her eyes.