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through the names of all those who were dear to him, pausing for a moment to think about what they might be up to and always finishing by sending an affectionate – or, for those closest to his heart, a loving – thought their way.
    He went through his own personal rosary in no particular order. This morning, it happened to be his son Geoffroi who came first, largely because Josse had belatedly realized he’d left the House in the Woods without saying goodbye. Not that it really mattered, for he wasn’t planning to be away long, and he doubted Geoffroi would even have noticed the lack of farewell. The lad was now twelve, and more like his father every day. To look at, anyway – for Josse, admiring and even awestruck at his son’s uncanny abilities with any living creature from a bull to a mouse, had to recognize that the boy didn’t get those skills from him. He smiled to himself. As any responsible parent would, he went on trying to encourage Geoffroi to lift his eyes above his own horizon. ‘There’s a big, wide world out there, son,’ he would say, ‘with all sorts of amazing things in it, and it would be most suitable for a boy like you to go and spend a few years in some knight’s household, where you’d learn a thing or two that nobody here can teach you.’
    Every time he made the suggestion, rephrased a dozen ways, the response would be the same. His son would look at him, smile and say, ‘But I’m happy here, Father.’
    He was; any fool could see that. And, deep in his heart, Josse would recognize that Geoffroi was his mother’s son too, and Joanna had abandoned the world and almost everything in it to live out in the wildwood. It was, he had to admit, not all that likely that her boy would truly find satisfaction or joy in training to be a squire.
    Josse’s thoughts progressed to his adopted son, Ninian – also Joanna’s child, but not by Josse. Ninian and his new wife Eloise – known as Little Helewise until Ninian had returned from his long travels in the Midi and renamed her – had taken to married life with touching delight, first in each other and then, quite soon after their marriage, in their baby daughter, born at midsummer. They had named the child Inana. Josse, never having heard the name before, said innocently to the proud new father, ‘Is that really a name?’ To which Ninian, with a flash of hard steel in his bright blue eyes, had responded, a touch defensively, ‘My mother used to speak of someone very powerful and beautiful named Inana.’
    The child – who was indeed very beautiful, like her mysterious namesake – was, after all, Joanna’s grandchild; great-granddaughter to old Mag Hobson, who, if all Josse had ever heard about her was true, had been one of the most powerful of the forest people. Josse had said no more; it seemed more than likely the name was highly suitable.
    Ninian and his new family had set up home in a newlybuilt extension to the House in the Woods, affording them both the security of living close to an established household, and a degree of privacy. It was interesting, Josse mused as he rode out of the woods and into the sunshine, that nobody had suggested the newly-weds might care to live either with, or near to, the bride’s family. Not that her father, Leofgar Warin, was the problem. Helewise’s elder son was a rich and powerful man now, moving, it was said, on the fringes of court circles. His daughter loved him dearly, and Ninian appeared to like him well enough; it was clear that he respected him. No: the problem would have been Eloise’s mother. Rohaise had not yet forgiven her daughter for having ‘allowed Ninian to have his way’ and, before wedlock, ‘behaving like a married couple’. Rohaise was good at euphemisms. Useless for Eloise to try to explain that it had been her will just as much as Ninian’s, or to protest that, with England still under the interdict, you couldn’t marry there even if you wanted to; Eloise and Ninian had