‘This yours?’ he asks me as I’m heading off, and he’s got Blackthorn’s red kerchief in his hand, all floury from the back of the cart where he’s picked it up from a corner. Must’ve got tangled up with something in the wash and ended up in my pocket, though I don’t recall it being there. Must’ve dropped it when I was unloading the flour bags.

I take it and stick it back in the pocket. Needs a good wash before she can wear it again, not that she does wear it much. I bid Scannal good day and walk home.

All this is in my head now while I cook the pie. I want to tell Blackthorn about my day. But she’s gone outside. She’s sitting in the garden, still as a stone, staring ahead of her. Wanting to be on her own. Wanting quiet. Needing to be left alone. So I keep on cooking, and later when she comes in we eat the pie without saying much. She’s had enough of folk cluttering up the house, fine ladies especially. She’s tired of chattering voices. And upset that a girl drowned and she couldn’t save her. Not that she says so, but I know anyway. So we sit by the fire awhile, and outside it gets dark so we go to bed, and somehow my tale never gets told.

12 Oran

12

~ORAN~

‘Give her time,’ Donagan said. ‘She’s young, she’s far from home, the circumstances of her arrival were unfortunate. This is a girl of eighteen, Oran, not a seasoned traveller.’

Donagan was helping me get ready for bed. This was part of the regular duties of a body servant. Since I was an adult man and perfectly capable of taking off my clothes and putting on a nightshirt unassisted, we were doing what we usually did at this hour: sitting in my bedchamber sharing a jug of mead and talking. Or rather, I had been talking and my companion had been listening, until now.

‘But she won’t even see me,’ I said. I understood his argument; I had already made allowances for Flidais’s distress, her exhaustion, perhaps a sudden attack of homesickness. ‘She’s been shut up in her quarters since she first got here. Two whole days. I should be helping her recover, comforting her, reassuring her. We’re to be married, after all. She’s barely spoken to me.’

‘After what happened to her maidservant, you should be glad she did not say she wanted to go straight back home.’ Donagan was looking at Flidais’s portrait; her image gazed back at him, eyes full of love and sweetness. I had been startled, when I’d first seen her in the flesh, how like she was to that picture. It had all been there: the perfect heart shape of the face, the deep blue of the eyes, the delicate mouth and neat straight nose. It had all been there but the look of love. Instead, her face had worn a wary expression, as if she were trying to take my measure. Perhaps I did not live up to her expectations. Perhaps she thought me ugly or weak-looking, too tall, too short, too soft, too . . .