‘Ness wouldn’t leave her dad. She’s devoted to him. Her mother died when Ness was only seven, and she’s looked after him and the house ever since. She does love her fellow, no doubt of that. He wanted her to go away with him, to leave Dalriada and join the travellers – he’d never be able to settle down here, it isn’t in those folk’s nature. But Ness wouldn’t just up and go; not while her dad still needed her. And she’d never take his money. Never.’

‘But she’s gone.’

Emer bowed her head. ‘Gone that same day, and never even told me she was leaving. I miss her.’

I considered this sad tale for a while, and something Grim had told me came to mind. ‘Aren’t the travelling folk due back in these parts sometime soon? You’ll be able to find out for yourself if what people are saying about your friend is true.’

‘If it was true,’ said Emer, ‘and I don’t believe it for an instant, then how could she show her face here again?’

‘But if it isn’t true,’ I said, ‘where is she?’

‘I wish I knew.’

The wax was ready. I waited while Emer finished the grinding, then I showed her how to mix the components to make the salve. The sad little story was at the back of my mind, a puzzle to which the solution was almost certainly the obvious one: Ness had indeed robbed her father and run away with her lover, and did not deserve such a loyal friend.

‘Now scoop it carefully into the jar, and make sure the stopper is tight. Good work.’ Praising folk did not come naturally to me. Perhaps it never had. Helping people of my own accord was easier than helping them because of Conmael’s agreement. That didn’t stop me wishing for the life of a hermit. No Emer, no Grim, no local folk with their ailments, and most certainly no prince and his household of hangers-on. And no Conmael. I didn’t think leaking thatch or muddy paths would trouble me much, if only I could live undisturbed. I wouldn’t be lonely. There were the memories, mostly memories I didn’t want, but a scattering of good ones too. And I could always get a dog. Not a silly little lap dog like Lady Flidais’s creature. I’d have a big ugly hound that kept folk away from my door.

Nice dream. Pity that was all it was. There would be no getting away from Conmael and the promise he’d extracted from me. Besides, I’d last about a week on my own before the memories had me heading back to Laois with a knife in my hand. If my fey friend thought seven years were going to wipe Mathuin’s sins out of my mind, he underestimated the wrong the man had done me.