“Rolled you in mud, did they?” she says to no one in particular as she begins to clean Thomas’s wound. “Moss, too. Well, I suppose it stopped your leaking. Nasty cut this, half the ear clean gone. And a nice deep furrow in yer skull, straight as a die, I could take a ruler to it. Nothing cracked though, not as far as I can see. Funny smell to the wound. Got yourself singed, did you? Played with guns, I take it. And they beat you, too, by the looks of it, a proper thrashing. Lord, will you look at these bruises! Black and blue you are, all the way down to the navel.” She has unbuttoned his shirt and begins wrapping a bandage around Thomas’s head. “Well, here you are, duck. Swaddled tight like a baby. If you have a rest and it don’t infect, well, you might just mend. But hello! Here you are yerself, our very own Lazarus. One eye open like a pirate at sea! Good day to you, sir, the pleasure is mine, only don’t you try to speak now, just lie back and rest.”

Perhaps it is the pain that has woken him, perhaps it is her voice, deep and pleasant, but as Livia and Charlie bend over him, they do indeed find one eye startlingly open amongst the bandages that crisscross Thomas’s face. Removed from the context of his features, it looks less fierce than Livia remembers, and younger. Vulnerable. But then, he has just come back from the dead.

Instantly, both Livia and Charlie start speaking, trying to reassure him.

“You are safe,” Livia says. “You were shot but all is well now.”

“You are safe,” Charlie says. “I will go and fetch help. There’s a village nearby — I’ll have someone ride to Lady Naylor.”

Immediately, Thomas grows agitated, his limbs twitching, his lips moving within his bruises and the bandage.

“Don’t, you must rest.”

But Thomas ignores Charlie’s advice, keeps trying to raise himself, to speak. No sound will come. Livia accepts a glass of water from the farmer. Something has moved in the woman’s face. She has heard the name. Lady Naylor. The lady of the manor.

It changes something for her.

ф

The water helps Thomas. He takes a sip, coughs, licks his lips. They are so bloodless, they lie grey against his teeth. Again Thomas attempts to speak, again he fails. He has to try four, five more times before it bursts out of him, broken and insistent.

“Tell no one.” And then again, louder, spit in his words. “Tell no one. Don’t trust.”

Livia stares at his mutilated face. He’s not been awake a full minute. And already he’s making her angry.

“Tell no one? He’s thinking that Mother—” She turns to Charlie. “It’s absurd!”

Another word breaks out of Thomas, a syllable at a time.

“Lab. Ra. Tree.”