‘Skelthsea may have those who believe in the old ways, but there are none here who would consider death a suitable punishment for sin, and certainly not for a child.’

I was further reassured. ‘There are other things too,’ I said cautiously. ‘Ailsa told me of a whistle that she found in William’s pocket. She said it was to summon the dead. And Iskar, in truth, feels at times as if it is haunted.’

Bridget’s face creased to laughter which, seeing my distress, she quickly controlled. ‘You must not let Ailsa scare you. She loves to spread mystery. You surely don’t think such things?’ And behind her kindness I detected a faint note of incredulity that I might have allowed myself to consider that the whistle could possibly have the power to do what it was made for.

‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘Ailsa unsettled me and it’s hard to think of a child in his grave, whatever his crimes.’

She laid her warm palm over my hand. ‘You are a kind soul.’ And I was shocked to see the glaze in her own eyes.

‘You asked me once if I had had children. I carried three, you know.’ The strength of her emotion pulled at me. ‘No, not to birth. I lost them, lost them early.’

‘I am sorry,’ I said.

‘We wanted them very much – Robert as much as I – oh yes, we wanted them.’

I held her hand tightly.

‘See,’ she said, ‘I have not spoken of this other than to my husband, but a burden shared is not always a burden eased. It doubles our agony, but you – something in you makes it possible to say what I have said.’ She leaned over and kissed my cheek. ‘You comfort my heart. And do not let Iskar unnerve you.

‘I think if I had to live there that I too might feel the same. It’s always been a place that summons a fertile imagination, all those dim corridors with creaking wood and wind in the chimneys. Too easy to imagine a sound or catch a shadow and turn it into something else. Iskar can feel very empty with so many unoccupied spaces.’

But all I could think of then was all the unoccupied spaces that did not feel so.

Not long after, I thanked her and left.

Outside the sun was beginning to sink on the horizon. The grasses bent against the wind and I shivered. My eyes found Iskar, where somewhere Mary’s young head would be bent over a book or a piece of work. A child who had lost everyone close to her. I pondered how those losses must feel. How little comfort she had received from the woman in whose care she had been left.