She gave me a small smile, and kissed my cheek. “You must go,” she said. “Quickly. The high lord will be looking for you.”

I ran off, quickly gathered my things from Ridha’s tent, and hurried up the valley to the town. Kallai fluttered on my wrist, disturbed by my haste. I waited a moment or two outside the door of the house where we stayed, trying to calm my thoughts. The door was closed, but I could hear laughter inside, loud talking, and music.

I had longed for my lord’s return, yet now that he was here, I was terrified. My heart thundered, and guilt and fear tore over me because I had divined. He would know, surely. He would take one look at my eyes, my soul, and he would know.

I took a deep breath, and knocked on the door. The woman of the house answered. She looked beyond me and said, “We told him you had left, harsha, that you deserted this place and returned to your mine.”

“Then you lied,” I said, going past her into the house. The room was crowded. I could not see my lord at first. I went to my old corner, dropped my sleeping mat and bag on the floor, and put Kallai on his perch. He was unwilling to leave my fist, and I didn’t blame him. I was getting hostile looks already, and someone had spat on me. I realised that maybe they had believed I had deserted him. Or they wished I had.

I found my lord sitting on a finely carved wooden chair, and I went to him. The men stepped back, muttering, and some of them looked surprised. I dared not look on my lord’s face. I knelt before him and touched the floor at his feet. The whole crowd became silent, watching.

“Welcome, my lord,” I said, and stood up.

He, too, stood, and in front of all those people he bent and paid homage to me, touching the floor before me. When he rose again, he looked straight into my face, and said, “It is good to see you again, handmaid. I cannot say how good. I was told you had returned to Siranjaro.”

I looked directly at his eyes, and smiled. “I will never leave you, lord,” I said.

The musicians started playing again, breaking the shocked silence. Our host took my lord a cup of wine, and everyone started talking again. But somehow the laughter seemed forced, the celebration restrained.

Excluded, I got myself some wine in my own cup, and sat on a stool in my corner, and held my own private celebration at his return. And sometimes through that long evening I caught his eye, and he smiled at me. Later, when all the guests were gone and the house-owner and his family had gone upstairs to bed, I made up my lord’s bed for him, and spread my own sleeping mat and furs out by the fire, and we sat together, he and I, and talked.