“I’ll be fine,” Rob promised.

Alinor took his arm and they started up the road together, turning away from the mire and the road to the mill, and heading towards the Chichester road.

“Godspeed, Nephew,” Ned called. “God speed you.”

They took a lift with a charcoal burner who worked the Sealsea Island forest, on his way to deliver to the kitchens of Chichester. He let the two of them sit on the wagoner’s bench beside him, rather than spoil their clean clothes on the sooty sacks. He let them off at the Market Cross and went to Eastgate for the needlemakers’ furnaces.

Alinor and Rob walked up North Street to the apothecary’s house. Like many of the tradesmen he used the front room of the house as his shop, with wooden shutters on the windows that were propped up to serve as an awning when the shop was open. At the back of the shop, behind the counter, he had a few little flasks, distillation glasses, and a drying oven for the herbs and spices. His wife, smart in a white coif and apron, served customers, calling her husband forward for consultations, and wrapping pills and pouring drafts herself. She made the cordials and dispensed drams. In a brewhouse in the backyard she made special flavored ales, brewed with herbs and spices to aid digestion, to increase heat, or prevent fatigue.

Alinor tapped on the door and stepped inside. Rob followed her, blinking as the interior of the house was so dark compared with the brightness of the street outside.

“Ah, Mrs. Reekie,” said the apothecary.

“Good day, Mrs. Reekie,” said his wife. “And this is your boy?”

Alinor stepped back, but she did not have to push Rob forward as she would have done last year. He stepped forward himself with the confidence that he had learned at the Priory and made a little bow to the mistress and to his new master. “I’m Robert Reekie,” he said. “Thank you for accepting me as your apprentice.”

Alinor saw Mrs. Sharpe smile at Rob’s good looks and manners as Mr. Sharpe stretched his hand out for Rob to shake. The shop doorbell tinkled and Mr. Tudeley, the steward from the Priory, stepped into the shop.

“Ah, good day, good day,” he said. “Glad you are punctual, Mrs. Reekie, Robert. Good day to you, Mr. and Mrs. Sharpe. Do you have Robert’s deeds of apprenticeship?”

“Right here.” Mr. Sharpe produced an apprenticeship deed from his guild, with Robert’s name and his own already written in clerkly script. He weighed down the corners of the parchment with the brass weights from the dry goods scale, so they could all see the imposing document, with red seals and ribbons at the foot. Rob stepped up to the desk and took the quill. Alinor watched, loving him as he signed his name without hesitation or a blot of ink, not scratching an “X” on the page like his illiterate father. Then Mr. Tudeley made his signature as Robert’s sponsor, and Mr. Sharpe signed his name as his master and the guildsman who would introduce Rob to the Apothecaries’ Guild of Chichester, when he had served his time.

Alinor stepped forward and signed her name as Widow Reekie, Rob’s parent and guardian, and signed her occupation as a midwife.

“It’s done,” Mr. Tudeley said. “Robert, I expect you to be a credit to the Priory and to your mother.”

“I will, Mr. Tudeley,” Rob said. “Please thank his lordship for giving me such a chance in life.”

“You’ll want to see his room,” Mrs. Sharpe said to Alinor.

“I’d be grateful,” Alinor said.

The mistress led Alinor and Rob up the staircase to the two rooms over the little shop. From the landing there was a loft ladder, which led upstairs to where the maidservant slept on one side, and the little room that Rob was to have, under the eaves on the other side.

The three of them crowded into the little space and Alinor bent down to look through the window to the street below.

“He’ll eat at our table,” the mistress said. “And one Sunday a month he has the afternoon off.”

“And may I come and see him?” Alinor asked. “When I come to Chichester for the market?”

“You can come in the shop if he’s not busy serving. But he can’t come out to meet you. We’ve had apprentice boys before. They’ve got to settle.”

“He’s lived away from home,” Alinor reassured her. “At the Priory for the last two quarters. But I’m grateful you’re letting him home this Sunday, for his sister’s wedding.”

“She’s to marry the Stoney boy, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” Alinor said.

“Mr. Tudeley told me, when he came for Rob’s apprenticeship. You must be proud of both your children!”

They went down the ladder, then down the stair and back to the little shop. Mr. Tudeley had already left, with a sachet of rose petals as a gift. Alinor curtseyed to Mr. Sharpe and kissed Mrs. Sharpe on both cheeks, and Rob went with her to the shop door and stepped outside to say good-bye.

Alinor faced her young son. His head was up to her shoulder, now. She thought that he was still her little boy, tied to her apron strings, wrapped around her heartstrings, and at the same time he was near to a young man: she could see the broadness of his shoulders and the confidence of his stance. Already he had book learning that she would never know, already he had manners that no one had taught her. He would rise in the world, away from her, and she should be glad to see him go. Her task as a mother now was not to keep him safe and hold him to her heart, but to release him and let him fly, as if she were a falconer, hacking a beautiful hawk into the wild.

“God bless you, Rob.” Her voice was choked with emotion. “You know to be a good boy, and let me know how you are. Send a message that everything’s all right?”

“Don’t you worry about me,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll be home on Sunday for the wedding!”

Rob was waiting and the Sharpes inside the shop were waiting for her to leave. Alinor knew she could do nothing but walk away. Still, her feet did not move.

Rob kissed her. “Go on,” he said, more like a man than her boy. “Go on, Ma. It’ll be all right. You’ll see.”

Alinor smiled shakily and turned and walked away.

The Market Cross was at the center of the town and the streets were crowded with townsmen and women, people delivering goods, and traders setting up stalls or just standing with baskets on their arms or pedlars’ packs at their feet and shouting their wares. Alinor, with her hood pulled up over her head, hiding her face, went to the steps of the cross and found James Summer at her side, appearing as if from nowhere.

He took her hand without saying anything and drew her into the front room of the nearby inn. She hesitated at the door.

“I can’t come in here,” she said, shocked. “What if someone saw me?”

“It’s not a tavern,” he corrected her. “It’s an inn. Lady travelers can dine here and drink. It’s perfectly—”

“Nobody would take me for an honest woman, seeing me in here with you.”

“Not at all! Look . . .” A family party climbed down from their traveling coach and walked through the hall to their private dining room, without glancing at her. “My own mother dines at inns,” he told her. “It’s perfectly all right.”