Women from the holdings sat with children in their laps. Boys carried pails of water and rough-cut bread. One of the maids had somehow managed to make even borrowed blankets look orderly. Tomas crossed the far end of the hall with Brennach and the carpenter behind him. Father Cillian bent over a pallet near the hearth, listening to an old woman speak.
And near the infirmary door, Reginald had risen at last.
He stood with Fintan now, listening while the farmer’s blackened hands cut the air with agitation and grief. Reginald did not interrupt him. Did not offer easy comfort. He only listened, head slightly bent, and then answered in that same low, measured voice.
Some of the violence went out of Fintan’s posture.
Étaín saw where Aingeal was looking. “He has been with the wounded since dawn.”
Aingeal said nothing.
“He has not once tried to come near you.”
“No.”
“Does that make it easier?”
Aingeal let out a laugh without humor. “No.” Nothing about Reginald was easier today. Not his silence. Not his distance. Not the memory of him riding out under his true name. Not the sight of him carrying Fintan’s daughter from the burning shed. Not the knowledge that he had done all of it with no claim left on the castle. “He lied,” Aingeal said at last.
Étaín turned to look at her fully. “Yes.”
“He let me love him under a dead man’s name.”
“Yes.”
Aingeal kept her eyes on the hall below. “And still I looked at him from the wall yesterday and prayed he would not die.”
Étaín said nothing.
“Then he rode back under his true name, and there was no Donal left to hide behind, and still…” She swallowed. “Still it mattered that he came back.”
Étaín rested her forearms on the rail. “That is because the lie and the man are no longer the same thing in your mind.”
Aingeal frowned. “He was a lie.”
“Yes,” Étaín said. “And he is also more than that now.”
Aingeal turned sharply toward her. “You say that too easily.”
“No.” Étaín’s face had gone grave again. “I say it carefully.”
Aingeal looked back toward the hall.
Reginald had moved now to lift a bucket from a boy whose arms trembled under the weight. He carried it himself across the hall to the farther hearth without being asked.
“He deceived us,” Aingeal said.
“He did.”
“He is FitzUrse.”
Étaín’s mouth tightened. “Yes.”
“He was one of the men who killed Becket.”
“Yes.”
Aingeal breathed once through her nose. “Then why does it feel as though if I call him monster and nothing more, I am the one refusing truth?”
