She smiled. ‘She was growing a dozen different species of aconite, in half a dozen colours, and her boy had a fresh spray of the flower in his hat. She was growing it at every window and every doorway – I’ve never seen such a collection, and in every colour that can bloom, from pink to white to purple.’

‘And so?’ Luca asked.

‘Do you not know your herbs?’ Ishraq asked teasingly. ‘A great inquirer like yourself?’

‘Not like you do. What is aconite?’

‘The common name for aconite is wolfsbane,’ she said. ‘People have been using it against wolves and werewolves for hundreds of years. Dried and made into a powder it can poison a wolf. Fed to a werewolf it can turn him into a human again. In a lethal dose it can kill a werewolf outright, it all depends on the distillation of the herb and the amount that the wolf can be forced to eat. For sure, no wolf will touch it; no wolf will go near it. They won’t let their coats so much as brush against it. No wolf could get into that house – she has built a fortress of aconite.’

‘You think it proves that her story is true and that she fears the wolf? That she planted it to guard herself against the wolf, in case it came back for her?’

Ishraq nodded at the boy who was skipping ahead of them like a little lamb himself, leading the way back to the village, a sprig of fresh aconite tucked into his hatband. ‘I should think she is guarding him.’

A small crowd had gathered around the gate to the stable yard when Luca, Brother Peter and the girls arrived back at the inn.