I’ve got nothing to say to this. Nothing that’ll comfort her, nothing that’s any use. Hate it when she’s sad. Hate it when I can’t help.

‘Cass,’ she says, just over a whisper. ‘My man. Brennan, my baby. Burned, burned to ashes. Nothing in all the world can pay for what Mathuin did to them. Nothing.’

I roll over and see she’s sitting up now, with the blanket hugged around her. ‘A fire,’ I say.

‘His men torched the house. I was down the other end of the settlement, tending to an old woman. I ran back, but I was too slow. By the time I got there it was well alight. I could hear them inside, oh gods, they were still alive, I could have saved them, I could . . . But Mathuin’s guards had blocked the doors. They were stopping people from putting water on the fire. I tried to get in, I tried, but folk pulled me back. They didn’t understand.’

I wait a bit, then say, ‘You didn’t want to go on without them. Better to die than live with the pain.’ Makes perfect sense to me.

‘After a while the screaming stopped, and all I could hear was the fire. And Mathuin’s guards laughing together, watching it burn.’

‘Why? Why would he do that?’

She grimaces. ‘Cass was a scribe. A scholar, but not the quiet kind. Outspoken. Someone wrote a letter listing a few of the injustices of Mathuin’s rule. Suggesting it was time for a challenge. It went out to judges, lawmen, village elders, influential neighbours. Even to the High King. Word came to Mathuin that Cass had made the copies. This was his punishment.’

Black Crow save us. ‘How old was your little boy?’

‘Brennan was nearly two. He wanted to come with me that day, and I said no, stay home with your father, because the old woman had a wound full of ill humours and I didn’t want my baby near it. If I’d taken him with me he’d still be alive. He’d be fourteen by now. Almost a man.’ Her voice is shaky. As for me, I’ve got tears in my eyes, big fellow that I am.

‘He’s with his dad,’ I say. ‘Waiting for you. Watching you, seeing how brave you are, what a fighter. Feeling proud.’

‘Don’t tell me you believe that, Grim. That the dead live on, somehow.’

I can’t lie to her; I know she can see right through me. ‘I do sometimes. It helps. Hope, you know? Something to hold on to. What did you do, after?’