When I judged that he was deep enough in slumber not to wake awhile, I slipped out of the nursery and carried him along the hallway to my bedchamber. I had to leave him there, nestled between two cushions, while I returned to the nursery to fetch my candle, jug and cloth, and to make sure the door was securely locked. Back in my own room, I set up a makeshift hiding place behind my storage chest, lining the area with a blanket and setting the cushions at either end. It would not serve for long. A maidservant would come in, or one of my sisters, and the secret would be out straightaway. Besides, if I could not feed Becan he would not survive long. By the time he woke again I must have something else ready to try.

I lay on my bed, wide awake, my mind full of the shocks, confusions and sorrows of the day’s events: my baby brother, so tiny and new, out there in the forest somewhere with none of his own people to comfort him; Mother with that dead look on her face, her joy wiped away in an instant; Father cold and severe, as if I’d suddenly turned into a different person, one he neither liked nor trusted. And Cathal. He was the most puzzling element in all of this. Earlier it had seemed as if Father was accusing him of being party to my brother’s abduction in some way. I hadn’t been mistaken in that; Aidan had heard it too, but Father had cut off his protest. Could it be true? Could Johnny, whose ability to assess a man’s true quality was almost legendary, have been harboring a traitor in his band?

It was easy enough to believe that Cathal’s kiss had nothing to do with a sudden surge of feeling for me, but was part of some kind of plot. He had made his dislike of me quite clear since our first encounter. He had been marginally friendlier lately, but nothing beyond that. I recalled Aidan’s words after that fight: He wants you for himself. But that was nonsense. If Cathal liked me, he wouldn’t keep reminding me of my faults. A man like him would not be too shy to declare himself. Perhaps that kiss, which I had enjoyed more than I should have, had indeed been contrived as a distraction. But even then, I knew nobody could have slipped past in the time it had taken. No human, anyway.