“I was made to strip my clothes every night, and his men threw water on me to clean me before they took me to him. They tethered me with a rope, same as you.” Her hand faltered, a minute slip of the blade that cut the perfect curl of peel that had almost come away in one piece. She looked at where it fell in the dirt, the only moment in all her recitation that was not dispassionate. She pointed at him with the knife still in her hand, a faint but emphatic gesture. “So don’t think I don’t know how it is.”

She finished peeling the turnip in quick, efficient strokes, sliced and dropped it into the pot. She gave it a stir as the quiet settled over them again.

He watched her over many long minutes as the light waned, as the forest sounds around them changed from day to night. She had small hands, not rough or calloused like the servants he had known in Lancaster’s household. She salvaged the turnip peels and washed them, storing them away in a jar of brine so that even the meanest scraps would not be wasted. A serving girl. Widowed of a stable boy.

Blessed are the meek, Brother Clement would have said. He was always urging Gryff to look on others with compassion, to see the divine in the ordinary. Five years spent hidden in the wilds with monks, and still he struggled with humility. Or maybe it was just her – it was that he wanted to look at her only with desire and not compassion, and thus compounded his sins.

“Never could I speak of it as you do.” He was sure of that. He stared hard at the last bit of sunlight that sifted through the trees and imagined his father, alive, hearing what had happened to his least favored son. “Never.”

The sound of her spooning the stew into a bowl did not rouse the same overwrought hunger as in the past. A week of eating every day had calmed his desperate appetite. She had seen to that, so determined to care for him. Now she rose from her place beside the fire and took the few steps to reach him.

“I do not say you must tell it as I do, not even to your confessor. Only that you must not look away from it.” She handed the portion of stew to him, the rich smell rising up from the bowl. “It’s plain to see you were born to finer folk, and lived in fine estate once. But you are in the muck now, if you’ll pardon me saying it, and none down here will shame you for being powerless. It’s only what we all are.”

She went back to her place by the fire and set about eating her supper.