Already on edge in this chamber packed with folk, I felt my body tighten still further. ‘Of course,’ I said in a tone I hoped was not too strangled.

‘Had you been present that day, what course of action would you have suggested, as a wise woman?’

Ah. This was not difficult. ‘I’d have said, consult the oldest person in the neighbourhood. Ask that person if they can remember a story about this kind of creature, something they heard from their grandmother or grandfather. Search in that story for clues. The lore holds all the wisdom we need; it’s just a matter of looking.’ And it came to me that I had done this myself, not so very long ago. That crone whose deathbed I had attended – she’d spoken of a wise woman named Holly, and Dreamer’s Pool, and pigs. A shiver passed through me. The lore holds all the wisdom we need. Had Grim and I been looking for solutions in the wrong place?

‘A good answer,’ said Lady Sochla. The little dog, absent during supper, had come back in; she had it on her knee.

‘Indeed, and I thank you for it, Mistress Blackthorn. Of course, they had already consulted their own wise woman, who had advised them against killing the creature. But although she was wise, she was not the oldest among them. That honour went to an ancient man who once, many years ago, had caught a gigantic salmon and let it go again. He’d sworn at the time that the fish had whispered a secret in his ear, but he’d never said what it was.

‘This old fellow lived on a rocky promontory up above the creature’s cave, in a hut he’d built himself, carrying stones from the fields. He was gnarled and crabbed, shrivelled and bowed, and over the years his life had become as solitary as the creature’s, since any time folk went up to check how he was faring, he’d greet them with a snarl or a curse. A lad took fish up each morning so the old fellow wouldn’t starve, and that lad learned so many oaths he could have used a different one every day, if his mother had let him.’

Some laughter at this. A pity Grim had left the hall straight after supper; he’d have liked the story.