The hour was late when Irenya tossed her soiled apron over the edge of the stone trough and left the scullery.
Hedda’s thanks rang in her ears. ‘You saved my sanity tonight, I tell you plain. T’would have been me to do the work had you not been here, and that after hours answering to a cook’s bidding.’
Normally Irenya would have walked the inside courtyards and galleries, past tapestried walls and recessed doorways, up the stairs to the physicians’ apartment. To avoid late-night revellers she took instead the outside route that followed the curve of the citadel. Somewhere a man was singing, a slurred, joyless finale to the evening. She could have wished for the same freedom. Her thoughts were miserable enough, but minus the anaesthetising comfort of alcohol.
For hours, bent over the sto
