‘This is awkward,’ I said. ‘I don’t wish to offend you by speaking out of turn about the prince or indeed about anything. But . . . it seemed to me you were implying that Prince Oran was not the man he seemed to be, and that this was the cause of your distress. I do not know him well. I do know he is respected by the people of the district and by many in this household. Perfect? Few of us are. But most folk believe him to be a good man.’

‘I . . . I don’t know how to say it.’ Flidais passed the cup to Mhairi; Mhairi set it on the bench and took Flidais’s hand. ‘If my bleeding hadn’t come . . . If I’d thought there might be a chance . . .’

A number of ideas passed rapidly through my mind, to be dismissed each in turn as impossible. Could she be saying she’d thought she might be with child? That she had wanted it to be so?

‘A chance of what, my lady?’

‘You are a wise woman, Blackthorn, can’t you guess?’ Flidais put her hands up over her face. ‘Mhairi, you tell her.’

‘Prince Oran might seem the most kindly and considerate of men,’ Mhairi said. ‘And perhaps he is, when it suits him. He was less than considerate of my lady when we first came to Winterfalls. Helped himself as soon as he got the chance, and never mind that she had never lain with a man before. Over and over, in the dead of night, with her too frightened to call out or tell anyone except me, and what could a lowly maidservant do? It was only when Lady Sochla arrived that he stopped. That’s what Lady Flidais is trying to tell you. She’s afraid of the man.’

And suddenly, just like that, I was back in Laois, with a woman sobbing on my shoulder, telling me how Mathuin had taken her by force, casually, as if he had the right to; and how her husband, when he discovered that the child she was carrying was not his own, had thrown her out of the house to fend for herself. I saw her face, red with weeping; felt her body shaking with grief; heard her voice, harsh with weeping: I can’t bear that man’s child! It will surely be a monster! I’ve nobody else to turn to, Mistress Blackthorn! Help me! And later, when I started asking questions, when the women of the district heard that I was prepared to listen, there was another story about Mathuin, and another and another, all along the same lines. Men! They were liars, takers, hurters, selfish bastards who cared nothing for the harm they caused. Men of power and privilege were the worst of all.