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“You won’t kill a chicken for us,” Nan said firmly, looking abashed at this change in demeanor.

“And may God strike me down in my arrogance if ever I think myself too good to sit at your table.” She put a hand atop Mary’s and spoke gently.

“I am only Nan, Aunt Mary. And as for any good fortune I have had, it all started with you looking out for me.”

After that she turned briskly to business, asking Mary to tell her of her life in their years apart and instructing Gryff to bring in the packs from the mule that was tied outside.

She was a whirlwind. She took over the grinding of the millet in the bowl that Mary had set aside, and had the task done even before he finished bringing in the baggage.

She swept feathers from the floor and cobwebs from dark corners without pausing.

All the while Mary explained that after Nan had gone into service, she had married a widowed man and come to live here, then was widowed in turn.

Now she lived with her husband’s grown son, Edmer, whom they would meet when he returned from his day of work in town.

He was simple-minded, she told them, but a good boy whom she would have loved as well as her own, if ever she had had any of her own.

When Gryff brought the hooded falcon out of the cage and set up the perch just outside the only window, he almost regretted it. He must keep Tiffin near, as her value was too great to leave unwatched, but the sight of her caused Mary to become even more deferential.

“There’s a very fine bird,” she said, craning her neck through the window. “Not like them ordinary hawks I seen in town. This one is fit for a king, it is.”

Fit for a king. It’s what Baudry had said, his eyes full of greed and wonder, his hands still stained with the blood of the man he had killed. He had been reaching for Gryff and stopped when he saw the falcon.

It was not so bad, to think of that moment – to think of how he had been spared only because of the value of a bird.

He could not look squarely at the moments surrounding it.

Not yet. But he would do as she advised.

He would try, and if she was right then perhaps for the first time in his life he would not be ruled by shame.

He found the bag that held the woodcocks – Tiffin had brought down two this morning but there had been no time to spare for plucking them.

Nan began to rise from the mending she now bent over, but he waved at her to sit back down on the bench next to her aunt, who was asking to know everything of Nan’s life.

He sat just outside the door and methodically pulled feathers as he listened.

Nan said she had worked first for a weaver’s wife, and then went to serve in a kitchen in Chester.

“From there I served in other places, and now I am at Morency these four years past.” She made no mention of any of the things she had told Gryff last night, nor even that she too had been married and widowed.

When asked what her duties were at Morency if not in the kitchen, she did not say she could kill a man twice her size with a flick of her wrist. She only said her duties were to attend to whatever tasks the lady of Morency required, and went on to describe her efforts to learn from that lady about healing herbs.

He listened to them discuss the many and varied uses for swine-grass and wondered if Mary noticed that while every use she herself had for it was to treat digestion, every use Nan mentioned was to do with healing cuts and stopping bleeding.

It was a strange circumstance, that he knew more about her than this woman who loved her so well.

When he finished with the woodcocks, he brought them in and found that Nan had removed the linen fillet from her hair. She was holding it out to Mary, who protested she must wash her hands first before touching it.

“To learn physicking from a great lady and stitching too,” she marveled as she thrust her hands into a bowl of water and scrubbed vigorously with a cloth.

“My own sister’s daughter! She had fine looks but never such a fine manner as you have nor half the wit, and it’s sure you never got neither from your father, may God assoil him. ”

Nan flinched at the words, staring at her aunt’s back. She had not known her father was dead, it was clear. But just as quickly as the surprise had appeared, it was gone. She banished all feeling from that expressive face, casting a quick glance in Gryff’s direction.

“Come, Aunt Mary, you will scrub your hands bloody and that is worse than any dirt.” She crossed to take Mary’s hands from the bowl and dried them with her own skirt, ignoring Mary’s protests that she would ruin a gown so fine. “Sit you by the window so you have light to see.”

The old woman did just that, holding the embroidered fillet so close to her eyes that her lashes nearly brushed against it.

She sighed over it again and again, admiring the intricate detail, while her niece looked torn between pride in her work and embarrassment at being praised lavishly for so small a thing.

And so it went until the day was done. Nan cooked and cleaned as though it were her own house, so obviously comfortable here and yet made uncomfortable by her aunt’s awe of her.

Gryff would have left to find lodging for himself, afraid that Mary would ask him questions about his own life he was not prepared to answer, but both women seemed to expect him to stay.

In any case, Nan kept him too busy. She bade him build a fire in the hearth and find mud to mix with straw so that he might repair a crumbled wall of the house.

It pleased him to do the work, which he would never have expected.

It was evident Mary and her home had been neglected too long, and when the boy Edmer arrived it was just as evident that his mind was too feeble to be of much help to the old woman.

He had brought a bit of cheese home, as promised, but lamented that he had forgotten to bring water and would have to go back to the well to fetch it – an almost nightly occurrence, it seemed.

Gryff went with him, taking the mule and bringing back enough water and fuel to last days.

They ate the woodcocks and some porridge, a meal that Gryff thought modest but which they praised as bounteous beyond belief.

When he curled on the floor in a corner to sleep, he found himself almost grateful for some of the hardships he had endured these last months.

In his former life, he would have been appalled at all of this – the meager supper, the woodsmoke that stung his eyes, the hard earthen floor that served as his bed.

But though he had never been inside a home so poor and squalid, he could see it now as a great blessing.

It was far better, after all, than sleeping tied to a tree and wondering what villainy and brutality he would witness next.

H e had not slept more than an hour when he woke gently – not from a bad dream this time, but from the sound of their voices murmuring low.

He knew he should make it obvious he was awake and could hear them.

But he didn’t because, as he had told Brother Clement countless times, he was neither saint nor monk.

“...any message must go through the priest just as yours did, asking after me,” Mary was whispering.

“So I did not answer, for then he’d know about her and bring his sour face to me and Edmer to preach Hell and damnation at us every day.

And I could not think you would want your lady to know, and for shame I did not say it before so fine a guest as your Welshman. ”

“Tell me now,” came Nan’s voice. She spoke low, but did not whisper. When no answer came, she said, “I would know if she is dead, and no matter the shame of it, I would know the manner of her death.”

“May God forgive me, but it were better that she died years ago than become what she is.”

He could hear Nan’s sharp intake of breath, and the painful hope in her voice when she asked, “She lives?”

He knew that hope, how it pierced the heart, the anguish it brought. He had clutched it to himself desperately for a time, and sometimes still felt it prowling in the forgotten corners of his heart. It was the Fiend’s own torture, the terrible punishment for loving.

“Aye, she lives. In sin.” Mary’s whisper grew fainter, as though saying it aloud was another kind of sin.

“She is become a bawd, Nan. A common whore herself and keeping a brothel full of them.” She seemed to wait for some reaction, but she obviously did not know how long Nan could hold a silence. “It killed your father, it did.”

“He killed himself with drink,” came the swift reply. “And when he done it, he abandoned her to an evil fate. Haps he is redeemed now in death, if God is merciful. But I will not leave her redemption to chance.”

“Oh sweet Nan, you were ever too good-hearted. Will you not understand? She don’t want redemption, nor to be saved in any way.

I begged her to come away and live with me here.

But she said she would do as she pleased, and what pleased her was to open her legs for any man passing.

She spat full in my face, do you hear?” There was another long pause.

“You are so different from her that none would believe you were sisters.”

It was a very long time until Nan’s voice floated through the darkness, filled with a quiet conviction. “But we are. We are sisters.”

After that there was no more talking. There was only a hard silence that settled over the room. He could taste the anger and sorrow that filled the air all the sleepless night.