“You’re prepared to have me come with you?” His voice was hesitant; not at all its usual mocking self.

“Crossing open ground by night with a baby in my arms is not something I do often,” I said, wondering if he might be about to lead me into a trap. “If you intend me no ill, I’ll gladly accept your help.”

“Ill?” he echoed. “Well, I suppose your opinion of me was never so very high. I do owe you something for keeping quiet. I can’t say the same for your changeling, but it seems Aidan’s hunters couldn’t hear him squalling and nor could their dogs. Have you thought how odd that is? I’ll carry the two of you over the stream. My boots are wet already, no need for you to suffer the same inconvenience. Where’s your bag? I’ll get out first, then you can pass me the child.”

“I’ll carry him.” There was no way I was handing Becan over to anyone.

The rock wall was where I had remembered, not so very far away. When we got there Cathal insisted on making a fire. “It’s too cold for you. I know how to shield it, Clodagh. And I have good ears. In the unlikely event that they keep on searching overnight, I can get you away before they reach us.”

“Really?” I was unfastening the sling again, getting out the second shawl to wrap the baby in against the piercing cold. “That’s a little hard to believe. Didn’t you almost run right into them before?”

“They didn’t find us, did they? Lugh’s bollocks, that’s the ugliest infant I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s not his fault,” I said, wondering how it was that Cathal accepted the unlikely truth so readily. Of all the people I knew, he was the last one I would have expected to share my ability to see and hear the child as he really was. I watched in silence now as he made a makeshift hearth of stones, stacked fallen wood, then took knife and flint from his pack to strike a spark and kindle the fire. He was efficient, as one would expect of an Inis Eala man. “Are you sure this won’t bring them straight to us?” I asked eventually, as the fire began to burn. Amid the cool blue of the moonlit stones, the silvery fronds of the ferns, the pale gleam of the birch trunks, its glow was like a small, warm heart. I moved closer.

“No, I’m not sure,” Cathal said. “But I’ll know if they’re coming. And you seem to be good at finding hiding places.”