One thing was certain: there’d be no sleeping in warm barns or begging crusts from local farmers until I was off Mathuin’s land, and even then I’d have to find some way of cleaning myself up before I let anyone see me. These filthy, sodden tatters were all the clothes I possessed, and there was no concealing my matted, crawling locks and my bruised and stinking body. All very well for Conmael to say Make your way to Dalriada. Dalriada was far away, and even if I’d had so much as a paring knife or fishhook, I was too weak to do more than pick a berry or two from the bushes as I passed. I was the kind of vagrant who made folk hustle their children indoors and bolt the door behind them. Which I could understand, since if I’d been a respectable sort of person I’d have been doing exactly the same thing.

There was little doubt in my mind that what had happened was Conmael’s doing. The sturdy-looking roof suddenly caving in on a fine morning without a breath of wind; the door conveniently blocked so the guards couldn’t come rushing in; nobody stopping me as I clambered over the roof, climbed down and crossed open ground to get to those woods – that had to be fey work. Conmael must have heard me calling after him, saying I wanted out after all. Or maybe he knew what I wanted without being told, just as he seemed to know a whole lot more about me than any stranger possibly could. It made me feel queasy. And now here I was, free at last, but bound by his poxy conditions unless I wanted to find myself right back in Mathuin’s lockup, waiting for the executioner. Could he do that? After what had just happened, I had no wish to put it to the test.

The first night out saw me making camp – if you could call it that – under oaks, on rising ground. Midsummer, hah! It was freezing. Everything I had on was damp, including the blanket I’d had wrapped around me when Slammer and his cronies threw that bucket of slops to shut me up. I’d been drinking from streams, crouched like some feral creature, wary of capture, but all I’d found to eat were those berries, and they’d been dry and shrivelled, not even good enough for sparrows and shrews. The idea of getting to Dalriada on my own was laughable. One more day like this and I’d be too weak to walk ten paces.