“You leave us be!”
She went inside.
Four
As if a troubled thought that had slowly worked its way through her second sleep, with the first light of dawn Mary sat bolt upright in the bed, and said aloud.
“He’s not my brother.”
The old woman, who had apparently not slept at all, turned to her from her place by the fire, now lowered to glowering coals for cooking. She thought to reply harshly, then checked herself. Like a skilled surgeon or a patient general (or a bitter woman gnawed by hate), she knew that the matter of her daughter’s lost love must be handled with extreme care.
“Not your brother. Your cousin.”
“Then---” The realization scalded her. “We could have married! There was no sin, no shame in what I felt for him.”
Again, though it ran counter to all her designs for the girl, the old woman knew this was not the time to speak against the hopeless romance that she still carried like a torch in the Night. And also (the darkness had not yet swallowed her completely), she felt that her daughter deserved this much.
“There was no sin. Naivety perhaps.”