His memory of her was different. Nothing obvious had changed, not her face, oval like the Madonna of Campin, nor her high forehead, nor the regular curve of her eyebrows, nor the slightly retroussé nose, nor the line of her mouth. Nor the expression of her face, deceptively childlike. Her eyes had changed. Or perhaps they hadn’t changed at all, perhaps what he saw in them now had always been there? A cool thoughtfulness hidden in a turquoise abyss, a thoughtfulness and an enigma waiting to be solved, a mystery waiting to be discovered. Things he’d once seen in almost identical blue and similarly cold eyes. The eyes of her mother. The Green Lady.

He rode even closer. The horses snorted, the steam from their nostrils mingling together.

“I’m glad to see you in good health, Reinmar.”

“I’m glad to see you in good health… Jutta. That’s a beautiful name. Shame you kept it from me for so long.”

“And did you,” she said, raising an eyebrow, “ever ask my name?”

“How could I? I took you for another. You deceived me.”

“You deceived yourself.” She looked him straight in the eyes. “Your dream deceived you. Perhaps you desired in your heart for me to be somebody else? During the kidnap, it was you who pointed me out to your comrades with your own finger as Biberstein’s daughter.”

“I wanted…” He reined in his horse. “I had to protect you from—”

“Exactly!” she cut in. “So what was I to do then? Contradict you? Reveal to your brigand friends who was really who? You saw Kasia; she almost died of fright. I preferred to allow myself to be kidnapped—”

“And to continue to deceive me. You didn’t bat an eyelid when I called you ‘Katarzyna’ on Grochowa Mountain. It served you better to be incognito. You preferred me not to know anything about you. You deceived me, you deceived Biberstein, you deceived everybody—”