The first thing was to feed her, to get some color back into that pallid face. The most surprising thing about all this was not that Ana seemed to be looking after an infant and a demanding old man by herself, with few resources—I had visited sadder households by far—but that one of Geiléis’s perfect, unreadable retainers had suddenly turned into a real man. Evidently Donncha was a frequent visitor here. And Senach knew about it. Or did he? Nobody had said precisely where we were going today or whom we were to visit. I’d only been told it was farther away than before, and that there might or might not be someone who could tell me something useful. That would have covered a whole host of possibilities in the district. So maybe neither Senach nor Geiléis was aware of this rather different side to Donncha. If that was so, he had placed considerable trust in me.

I didn’t ask questions at first. I waited until Ana had eaten a good meal. She was hungry, but still doing her best to keep up appearances; she ate daintily, making the food last. The supplies we’d brought would be enough for several meals for her and her grandfather. Which led me to think that even if Senach was not in on the secret, Dau was. Donncha and I ate a little, to keep Ana company.

“Ana?” came the old man’s voice again. “Where are you, girl?” She’d taken him a share of the food before we sat down to our own meal; he had not been forgotten.

“I’ll go,” said Donncha, getting up.

“Don’t trouble yourself—”

“It’s no trouble, Ana. You stay there and have a chat with Mistress Blackthorn.”

But when he had left the room, Ana did not say anything. She looked down at her baby, who lay in her arms, still awake. I could hear his breathing, and I did not much like the sound of it. Perhaps I had come here only to deliver bad news. It happened that way sometimes, and it never got any easier.

“I don’t think the little one’s quite right, Mistress,” Ana said now, almost apologetic. “It’s that wheezy sound, like he can’t catch his breath. And he doesn’t feed long, though I’ve got enough milk. It’s like he gets tired of trying, but then he cries as if he’s still hungry. Maybe there’s something you can give him, a tonic? Something to get him strong again.” A pause, during which I listened to the rasp of the child’s breath, in, out, in, out. In the other room, Donncha was having a muted conversation with the old man. “He’s my only one,” Ana said. “My man’s gone.”

I did not ask what that meant. Her man wasn’t here to support her; that was all I needed to know. “What is your son’s name?” I asked.

“Fursa. Same as his dad. Born on Beltane night. My man never got to see him. They found him hanging from a tree, a few days before the little one was born. Do you want to hold him?”