But the harvest feast was a great success. They were short on men, and there was no Etruscan wine to be had at any price in Albinkirk; Ser Shawn brought one good bottle and she shared it with Mother Crabbe and Ser Shawn; sugar was dear, and saffron and pepper almost unattainable because the seas were closed and the shipping all taken for the war. But there was a bumper crop of honey; the turnips were of legendary size, and the salmon that Jamie Le Hoek had pulled from Ser John Crayford’s favourite pool brought tears to Lady Helewise’s eyes; that man and his fishing rod . . .

They drank beer instead of wine and were little worse for it, and Helewise had to admit that Haegert Coucy was a very funny young man. She laughed at his antics, and then listened to Jamie play an old romance of courtly love, and a nasty Hillman ballad of war and treachery, and then he played a new love song from Harndon, or so he said. Only Helewise thought he’d written it himself and aimed it at her daughter, but Pippa was playing hide-and-seek like a much younger girl, darting in and out of the trestles with Rose and Carli, the daughter of the next farm toward Albinkirk. The three of them ran, and screamed, and laughed, all of them wearing sharp reaping sickles curved like the rising orange moon, and Helewise was afraid people would be injured, and she called to her daughter. But Phillippa ran on, as if her mother didn’t exist, as if Jamie was not singing with shining eyes and holding his audience, too; he had a beautiful voice and his playing was far better than most people in Albinkirk ever heard, outside of a few wandering nuns and friars.

Then he was done, and Haegert was back, throwing purses in the air and juggling them like a mountebank. He pretended to steal Mother Crabbe’s bonnet and then produced it, crumpled and soiled, from under his arm; even as she shrieked in protest, he restored the undamaged original to her head—backward.

Helewise enjoyed herself so much that she missed the moment when her daughter threw a single glance at Jamie and stepped out of the lamplight and into the darkness beyond the hedgerow.

She slipped down the path, damp at any time of year. She wondered at her own boldness, and at her choice; until moments ago, she’d have said that of the two older boys, Haegert was by far the more attractive with his court clothes and fine manners and his easy laugh. And Jamie was an old hat; he was around often, helped her mother, and had been Ser John’s squire.

She’d never heard him sing like that before, though.