'Stupid boy!' stormed Vorna. 'Did I say she was not good? I said she had a need for men – a weakness if you like. That does not make her evil. She was a good mother to Bane, and there was great kindness in her. It is my belief that she never stopped loving Connavar. Her burden of guilt was every bit as powerful as his own.' Vorna sighed. 'Their guilt was the same. And yet Connavar – as you said – is a great man, so he was forgiven. Arian was marked in men's minds as the whore who caused the death of Tae. It is unjust. Even members of her own family turned their backs on her. Govannan, mainly. But her sister Gwydia never invited her to Seven Willows.'

'Why hasn't someone told Bane this?' he asked.

'For what purpose? He loved his mother, and he thinks her almost holy. He was the one person in her life who gave her complete love. It was for her to tell him – if she chose to. And she did not.'

'It was all so tragic,' said Banouin. 'And it doesn't end, does it? Arian is dead, but Bane lives on, with all the bitterness.'

'That bitterness would not be ended merely by understanding of the truth,' said Vorna. 'Trust me on this, my son.'

'But none of this was Bane's fault,' insisted Banouin. 'His mother betrayed her husband, just as Connavar betrayed his wife. Bane is merely the innocent who has suffered.'

'They have all suffered.' She looked at her son fondly, and reached out to stroke his face. 'Men say that there is freedom in truth. Sometimes it is true. Mostly it is not. Truth can be a dagger to the heart. When your father died, and you were born, I was torn between anguish and joy. It almost broke me. And on one day, as I looked at you within your crib, I felt as if I had been cursed by love, not blessed by it. In that one moment I wished you had never been conceived, that I had never met your father. That I had never known love at all. That is a truth, Banouin. Tell me, how does it sit with you?'

'I can understand it,' he said. 'I feel no anger or hurt.'

'Suppose I had told you this when you were five years younger, hated and despised by all the other boys?'

'I would have been devastated,' he admitted. 'I would have been too young to understand.'