Where had Grim got to? He’d been gone far too long. I sat up, fully awake now and possessed by a creeping sense of wrongness. Just a sore belly, a touch of the gripes that was keeping him in the privy? But the boots. The cloak . . .

I got up, flinging my own cloak over the clothes I’d lain down in, and went to the back door. Stuck my head out into the rain and called out, ‘Grim? Are you all right?’

Nothing. Even through the steady fall, he should have heard me.

‘Grim!’

Not a sound. What now? Go out looking and get soaked? Or stay indoors and build up the fire so he could dry out when he came back? Where could he have gone?

The dog was at my heels. She gave another sharp bark. A warning.

‘What?’

She could not tell me, of course. But something was wrong. I knew it. I felt it in my bones. ‘Grim,’ I muttered, ‘why would you do this, you foolish man? What would draw you out into the dark on a day when everything’s gone so well?’

And then, with a sensation like a plunge into icy water, I realised what it was. Remembered what I had said to him before I settled for sleep, about the dog and my vow to Conmael. Remembered that I had told Grim, long ago, about promising to use my gift for good, and promising to keep away from Mathuin of Laois, but not about promising to help anyone who asked me to. I’d been too ashamed to have anyone know I did not help folk out of the goodness of my heart, but only because I was bound to it. The first person I’d helped, after making that vow, had been Grim. Grim, a dark hulking shadow in those woods north of Laois; Grim wet, cold, alone; Grim, not prepared to come to my campfire that night in case I ordered him to go away and leave me be.

Cursing, I went back for my boots, thrust my feet in, made for the door again. ‘Stay here!’ I ordered, but did not wait to see if the dog obeyed. I ran. Into the woods, along the path, onto the branching way that led to the patch of greensward where Ciar had expected to lie with the prince and make a child. I did not shout his name. I did not shout stop, wait, or anything else. I simply ran, heart drumming, chest heaving, feet stumbling over stones and roots, for the moon was quenched by clouds now and the wood was in near-darkness. Behind me, a faint light shone from the cottage, where I had left the back door open. In there our hearth fire still burned, lighting the way home.