The man considers. He answers slowly, thinking through his pain, “Yes, it was thieves. We have lost some money.” He glances at where Joan is standing and doesn’t say any more.

After his head is bandaged, they give Joan a bowl of something warm and viscous to eat. It is worse-tasting than pottage, but she is starving and drinks the contents down. The wife takes Joan’s empty bowl, refills it, then passes it to her again. They show her where she will sleep for the night, for she cannot go back home, not today, and she lies down. She watches the other children, and they watch her. They could have given her a pallet hard as a rock, and she would sleep soundly on it. How is she still alive, she wonders. How has Jacques not pursued them here and wrung both their necks? It is a warm night, but her body is shaking.

Morning comes. Her eyes open. She reaches up to rub an itch, and a spider falls from her cheek, skitters away. It is almost possible that the events of the previous night didn’t happen, until she sees the siblings who are not her siblings sleeping next to her, and the parents who are not her parents and who, it is still astonishing to her, seem to love their children and have no wish to hurt them. Her gaze passes over their arms, their faces, their bare feet. Their breathing is regular and peaceful. They show no signs of beatings.

She sees the man has been waiting for her to wake. From the cottage they walk to the end of the lane that leads out of Maxey. When he is ready to turn back, he sticks a hand into the front of his tunic and removes a piece of cheese wrapped in damp leaves. He looks sorry for her. Whatever is waiting for her at home…he shuts his eyes, does not want to think about it. But he has suffered, too. Blood has seeped through the bandage on his head.

She takes a good look at him before she crouches, her fingers feeling the hem of her dress for hardness. Her hands tear out the stitches, and coins spill into her palm. She offers a few to the man, who considers their glinting surfaces as if money could make sense of what has happened to him. She watches his fingers close over the coins. This time he takes them.

“I’m sorry,” she says, though she doesn’t add for your wound, for the money you have lost, for my father and his tricks.