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Grandmother. Agnes had not said anything like “grandmother.” The word hadn’t even existed until the eighteenth century, but the interpreter was taking huge, disconcerting leaps now, though it left Agnes’s mispronunciation of Katherine intact and sometimes left blanks in places where the meaning should have been obvious from context. She hoped her subconscious knew what it was doing.

“Are you a daltriss, Lady Kivrin?” Agnes said.

Her subconscious obviously didn’t know what it was doing. “What?” she asked.

“A daltriss,” Agnes said. The puppy was trying desperately to squirm out of Agnes’s grip. “Grandmother says you are one. She says a wife fleeing to her lover would have good cause to remember naught.”

An adultress. Well, at least it was better than a French spy. Or perhaps Lady Imeyne thought she was both.

Agnes kissed the puppy again. “Grandmother said a lady had no good cause to travel through the woods in winter.”

They were both right, Kivrin thought, Lady Imeyne and Mr. Dunworthy. She still had not found out where the drop was, although she had asked to speak with Gawyn when Lady Eliwys came in the morning to bathe her temple.

“He has ridden out to search for the wicked men who robbed you,” Eliwys had said, putting an ointment on Kivrin’s temple that smelled like garlic and stung horribly. “Do you remember aught of them?”

Kivrin had shaken her head, hoping her faked amnesia wouldn’t end in some poor peasant’s being hanged. She could scarcely say, “No, that isn’t the man,” when she supposedly couldn’t remember anything.

Perhaps she shouldn’t have told them she couldn’t remember anything. The probability that they would have known the de Beauvriers was very small, and her lack of an explanation had obviously made Imeyne even more suspicious of her.

Agnes was trying to put her cap on the puppy. “There are wolves in the woods,” she said. “Gawyn slew one with his ax.”

“Agnes, did Gawyn tell you of his finding me?” Kivrin asked.

“Aye. Blackie likes to wear my cap,” she said, tying the strings in a choking knot.

“He doesn’t act like it,” Kivrin said. “Where did Gawyn find me?”

“In the woods,” Agnes said. The puppy twisted out of the cap and nearly fell off the bed. She set it in the middle of the bed and lifted it by its front paws. “Blackie can dance.”

“Here. Let me hold it,” Kivrin said, to rescue the poor thing. She cradled it in her arms. “Where in the woods did Gawyn find me?”

Agnes stood on tiptoe, trying to see the puppy. “Blackie sleeps,” she whispered.

The puppy was asleep, exhausted from Agnes’s attentions. Kivrin laid it beside her on the fur bedcovering. “Was the place he found me far from here?”

“Aye,” Agnes said, and Kivrin could tell she had no idea.

This was no use. Agnes obviously didn’t know anything. She would have to talk to Gawyn. “Has Gawyn returned?”

“Aye,” Agnes said, stroking the sleeping puppy. “Would you speak with him?”

“Yes,” Kivrin said.

“Are you a daltriss?”

It was difficult to follow Agnes’s conversational jumps. “No,” she said, and then remembered she was not supposed to be able to remember anything. “I don’t remember anything about who I am.”

Agnes petted Blackie. “Grandmother says only a daltriss would ask so boldly to speak with Gawyn.”

The door opened, and Rosemund came in. “They’re looking for you everywhere, simplehead,” she said, her hands on her hips.

“I was speaking with Lady Kivrin,” Agnes said, with an anxious glance at the coverlet where Blackie lay, nearly invisible against the sable fur. Apparently hounds were not allowed inside. Kivrin pulled the rough sheet up over it so Rosemund wouldn’t see.

“Mother said the lady must rest so that her wounds will heal,” Rosemund said sternly. “Come. I must tell Grandmother I found you.” She led the little girl out of the room.

Kivrin watched them leave, hoping fervently that Agnes wouldn’t tell Lady Imeyne Kivrin had asked again to speak to Gawyn. She had thought she had a good excuse to talk to Gawyn, that they would understand that she was anxious to find out about her belongings and her attackers. But it was “unseemly” for unmarried noblewomen in the 1300’s to “boldly ask” to speak to young men.

Eliwys could talk to him because she was the head of the house with her husband gone, and his employer, and Lady Imeyne was his lord’s mother, but Kivrin should have waited until Gawyn spoke to her and then answered him “with all modesty as fits a maid.” But I must talk to him, she thought. He’s the only one who knows where the drop is.

Agnes came dashing back in and snatched up the sleeping puppy. “Grandmother was very angry. She thought I had fallen in the well,” she said, and ran back out again.