‘All men are liars. He’s a particularly good one. Now I’d best be getting on.’

‘Lady.’

The name stopped me short. I waited, not saying a thing.

‘Don’t want to speak out of turn. Don’t want to upset you. Hard to say this.’

‘Spit it out, Grim.’

‘What Mathuin did to you, to your family, that’s made you deep-down angry. Doesn’t matter where you go, what you do, there’s red rage burning inside you. It won’t die down until Mathuin pays for his sins. Only thing is, it can get in the way of seeing clear. It can make you deaf to the truth.’

‘Bollocks! What would you know?’ But even as I snapped at him, the white-hot certainty in my heart, the passion that had seen me turn my back on Winterfalls forever, began to feel the cool touch of doubt. Men might be liars. But Grim would never lie to me.

‘What if Prince Oran’s told the truth,’ he said, ‘and Lady Flidais has spun you a story?’

‘Why would she concoct a tale like that? If she wanted my help to conceive a son, why didn’t she ask when I first moved in there?’

‘Got a few things to tell you. Will you listen, at least?’

‘All right, but make it quick.’

He told me a story about Donagan, how the fellow had confided in him by night, saying the prince was not very worldly-wise, which Grim took to mean that Oran was inexperienced with women. How Donagan wanted to help the prince, but couldn’t because of something that had happened between them.

‘Mm-hm,’ I said. Donagan was the most loyal servant the prince had; of course he would stick up for him. ‘They said – at least, Mhairi said – that Donagan knew about it all along. Had to, because he used to sleep in the antechamber next to Oran’s bedroom.’

‘Used to,’ said Grim. ‘But moved out by choice. Now sleeps in the men’s quarters.’

‘That proves nothing except that he didn’t like what Oran was doing.’

‘Another thing. The men were talking, and they said Ciar, the girl who was drowned, was . . . ready with her favours. Liked a bit of fun.’

‘Men’s talk. It means nothing except that they have no respect for women.’

Grim shuffled his feet. ‘What I said. About being angry. You’re letting it get in the way. You need to listen.’

‘I don’t need to do anything but pick up my bag and walk away.’

‘Going to rain soon.’

‘All the more reason to get on with this. Anything else to tell me?’

‘Only something I heard today, from one of the brewery lads.’ A story came out, an unsavoury little tale, about Flidais and the prince on a day when they’d gone into the village to talk to the people there. It was deeply implausible. ‘I was thinking,’ Grim went on. ‘When the prince talked to us about Flidais being different from what he expected. He seemed to think there might be something uncanny about it. This sounds crazy, but – could they have sort of – changed over? Ciar and Flidais? When they were in the water, I mean?’