I do not often sleep in the cage, save when the heat is oppressive as now; it does not happen often in Scotland. It annoys the gawpers, who come to see a scowl of witch, not a wee auld wummin snoring. Constance stirred me, then begged me to come into the chamber to eat the meal she had brought and was so flustered and secretive that I did, wondering. She presented her daring gift – mother’s milk. Brought from a wet nurse whose wee charge died, she told me, greatly daring. I did not want it, especially from a wet nurse whose charge had died – who was to say it was not the milk?I did not say this, for I knew why Constance had brought it. She would say it was because it was the perfect food for the old and invalid and begging my pardon as she did so, for insinuations – but it was all because of Sister Petra of Cologne, whose story had just reached Constance’s ears. That nun, so the story went, had eaten nothing else, nor moved much. She closeted herself in a tower and drank the mother’s milk through a reed in the door, waiting – so it was said – for her lover to come for her and she would have the face of the girl of fourteen he knew when they parted and she was forced to the veil.
