Where was Cathal now? Why had he disappeared in precisely the circumstances that would indicate guilt? He was too subtle a man, surely, to draw attention to himself in such a way. Perhaps he would be back in the morning, having been on some perfectly legitimate business, and it would turn out he had nothing to do with all this. I found myself hoping he would return and provide a good account of himself. I didn’t like the man, I didn’t trust him, but I didn’t want him to be a spy or a kidnapper either. I tried to banish from my mind the shadowy figure that might or might not have been there that night in the courtyard, the odd disappearance on the way up to the Pudding Bowl, the inscrutable warnings he had given me. It was too hard; I could not put it together in any sensible way.

Becan was very quiet. Was he still breathing? Once, twice, a dozen times I got up from the bed and crouched down to check on him, reassured only when I heard the slight snuffling of his breath and saw the little chest rise and fall under the shawl I had put around him. Poor thing; he’d been as cruelly wrenched from his true home as Finbar had. I loved my brother. I wanted him to be safely back at Sevenwaters and for my world to be at rights. But this sorry course of events had not one, but two babies in it. Why had I been singled out as the only person to see that?

Before dawn I slept a little and dreamed I was out in the forest, pursued by monsters that looked like trees. Baby Finbar lay all alone in a deep cave, with shadowy figures keeping a vigil around him. I had to reach him before he died of cold, but the trees stuck out their roots and tripped me, they tangled my hair in their branches; a strange wind howled through their leaves, like the cry of a starving infant . . . I woke in a cold sweat, my pillow soaked with tears. Outside my narrow window the sky was washed with the first light of dawn, and from the courtyard below came the sound of hooves on the flagstones. A rider, so early. A messenger arriving with news? Perhaps Finbar had been found safe and well. Perhaps he had been found lying in a cave, cold and dead because nobody had got there in time. Shivering, I rose and splashed my face in the bowl of chill water that stood in the alcove. Water, I thought suddenly. Trees, plants . . . Perhaps a baby made of all manner of forest materials did not need milk at all, but something far simpler.