When Constance enters the room, for a moment the activity stops. Harold, Mort, even Tristan; everyone looks up to see her, as strong and fragile as ice. Then she takes a seat beside Mort and takes up needle and thread. It is only once they are working on the hemming that she says, unprovoked, in the middle of an entirely separate conversation: “She professed her love.” She does not say the words loudly, but they cut through the room like a knife all the same. “As if I could,” she says, and then falters. “As if we were,” and again the words wither away in her mouth, dry and brittle like the dying crops, like the broken heads of corn, like the earth without rain. Constance’s folk were always closest to the land. Perhaps it is not so strange that she has suffered long over this past year. Perhaps Britain’s weakness is hers, in turn. Perhaps Britain does not know what to do with the love given it, either.