As Denys read a letter from Cristoforo Colombo, Valentine entered the solar.
“Look, Valentine!” She held it up as she took a sip of mead with grapes plucked from a bunch at her side table. “Cristoforo is returned from the Canaries, off Africa. Oh, the people there are such curiosities. He says they still live quite primitively. They paint their bodies, have no shipwrights, and are completely backward in every way.”
“What else did he find there?” Valentine plucked a few grapes and popped them into his mouth.
She detected an eager tone never displayed before in talk of the stalwart mariner. But she knew this tone—as demonstrative as when he gushed about battle or matters of state.
“Nowt to interest you.” She leant forward and placed a grape twixt his lips. “Plants and flowers never befor
