‘And we don’t live in a world that likes difference,’ Freize observed.

‘Now that’s true,’ said the girl who had been different from all the others from birth with her dark skin and her dark slanting eyes.

‘Now then,’ said Freize, sliding his arm around Ishraq’s waist. ‘You’re a kind-hearted girl. What about a kiss?’

She stood quite still, neither yielding to his gentle pressure nor pulling away. Her stillness was more off-putting than if she had jumped and squealed. She stood like a statue and Freize stood still beside her, making no progress and rather feeling that he wanted to take his arm away, but that he could not now do so.

‘You had better let me go at once,’ she said in a very quiet even voice. ‘Freize, I am warning you fairly enough. Let me go; or it will be the worse for you.’

He attempted a confident laugh. It didn’t come out very confident. ‘What would you do?’ he asked. ‘Beat me? I’d take having my ears boxed from a lass like you with pleasure. I will make you an offer: box my ears and then kiss me better!’

‘I will throw you to the ground,’ she said with a quiet determination. ‘And it will hurt, and you will feel like a fool.’

He tightened his grip at once, rising to the challenge. ‘Ah, pretty maid, you should never threaten what you can’t do,’ he chuckled, and put his other hand under her chin to turn up her face for a kiss.

It all happened so fast that he did not know how it had been done. One moment he had his arm around her waist and was bending to kiss her, the next she had used that arm to spin him around, grabbed him, and he was tipped flat on his back on the hard cobbles of the muddy yard, his head ringing from the fall, and she was at the open doorway of the inn.

‘Actually, I never threaten what I can’t do,’ she said, hardly out of breath. ‘And you had better remember never to touch me without my consent.’

Freize sat up, got to his feet, brushed down his coat and his breeches, shook his dizzy head. When he looked up again, she was gone.

The kitchen lad toiled up the stairs carrying buckets of hot water, to be met at the door of the women’s room by either Ishraq or Isolde who took the buckets and poured them into the bath that they had set before the fire in their bedroom. It was a big wooden tub, half of a wine barrel, and Ishraq had lined it with a sheet and poured in some scented oil. They closed and bolted the door on the boy, undressed, and got into the steaming water. Gently, Isolde sponged Ishraq’s bruised shoulder and forehead, and then turned her around and tipped back her head to wash her black hair.