He nodded, measuring her reliability. “Not to your brother, eh?”

She met his gaze with complete comprehension. “Especially not him,” she confirmed.

“Then we understand each other. You can consider your son apprenticed to a Chichester apothecary.”

She bowed her head and clasped her hands. “I thank you, sir,” she said simply.

He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a handful of shillings. He made them into a little tower and slid them across the table to her.

“Your wages for nursing him. Ten shillings a day. There’s a pound. And my thanks.”

She picked them up with a little nod and put them into her apron pocket. “Thank you.”

He got up and came around the table. She stood before him and he put a hand on her arm. “You could come back tonight?” he said, unable to resist, looking down the front of her linen shift at the curve of her breast. “To visit me.”

He tightened his grip and drew her towards him, but to his surprise she did not move. She did not yield to him; but nor did she shrink back. She was as steady as if she were rooted to the spot.

“You know I can’t do that, sir,” she said simply. “If I did that, I couldn’t take my pay: it’d be whore’s gold. I couldn’t hold up my head, I couldn’t let you be a patron to Rob. I wouldn’t think of myself a good tenant to a good lord. I don’t want that.”

His grip felt weak, as if his fingers were powerless with cold. Still, she stood her ground, as if she were growing there, like a hawthorn tree, and he could not draw her closer. She stood like a stone, and looked at him coolly with a dark confident gaze until he felt awkward and stupid, and remembered the rumor that she could freeze a man’s cock with a look.

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose so.”

There was a little silence. She did not seem shocked; she was neither flattered nor fearful. She stood, waiting for him to take his hand off her arm, and let her go. He supposed that men desired her all the time and that she regarded a touch at her breast, a grab at her waist, as a regular inconvenience, like rain.

“Oh, well,” he said, letting her go, and returning to his seat behind his table, as if to restore himself to authority. “So: your lad. He can go to his apprenticeship when Walter goes to university.”

She nodded. “And when’ll that be, sir?” she asked as calmly as if he had not propositioned her, as if it was merely another thing that she had not heard and would not repeat.

Despite his own discomfiture, he smiled at her cool grace. “He’ll go in the Lent term,” he said. “After Christmas.”

Alinor walked quickly on the hidden paths across the mire from the Priory to her home. The tide was ebbing and, as she went deeper into the harbor on the hidden ways, she could hear the suck and hiss of the waves reluctantly leaving the land, like her fears dogging her quick footsteps. As she walked past the net shed she heard the roar of the tide mill starting up, and saw the spout of water burst out of the millrace, coming directly towards her.

She turned inland and climbed the path to her cottage, opened the door, and looked around. Suddenly the place seemed very small and poor compared to the groom’s loft at the Priory. Even the lowliest servants lived better than she did. She put the loaf of Priory bread under the bread cover, and saw that the fire was dark and cold in the hearth. She levered up the hearthstone and found her little purse of savings, safely buried. She took the twenty shillings for nursing James out of her apron pocket and added them to the purse with a satisfying clink of coins. Then she pressed the hearthstone back into place, and dusted the ashes over it.

She rose up, brushing down her gown, and went to the front door. For a moment, she looked around at the cramped room, the low ceiling, the beaten floor of mud. Then she turned away from her shame at her poverty, and went outside, closing the door behind her, and along the bank to the ferry.

The ferry-house door was closed, the ferry pulling at its mooring rope as the tide ebbed. The raised wadeway was nearly dry and Alinor lifted her skirt and paddled across in the cold water, and then walked down the lane to the mill.

Alys was crossing the mill yard, carrying a bucket filled with eggs. Now that harvest was over, she was working as a maid-of-all-work for Mrs. Miller, gardening in the vegetable and herb patch, feeding and keeping the hens, feeding the ducks, picking and storing the fruit, smoking hams and curing meat. She worked in the dairy too, and in the brewhouse. If they were shorthanded in the mill she would help to weigh and bag the flour. Mrs. Miller might order her to help with baking in the mill oven, and always there was the endless task of scouring and rinsing, scalding and drying the tools for the dairy, for the brewery and the kitchen utensils.

Alinor watched as Richard Stoney, Alys’s sweetheart, came out of the mill at a run and tried to take the bucket of eggs to carry them for her. She fended him off, but he caught her hand and kissed it. Alys looked up and saw her mother as Richard made a little nod of a bow and darted back to the mill. The girl came to the five-barred yard gate, dipped her head for her mother’s blessing, and rose up and kissed her.

“Not plague then,” she said, knowing that her mother would never have kept the clothes that she had worn while nursing a plague patient. When Alinor came home from a death she always washed her hands and trimmed her hair, so that the bad luck would not follow her.

“No, God be praised. They were pleased at the Priory. It was the tutor, James Summer, and they must have been afraid for Master Walter.” She smiled at Alys. “I see young Richard Stoney is eager to work.”

She had thought that Alys would laugh, but the girl blushed and looked down. “He doesn’t like to see me do heavy work here. He wants a better life for me. For us both.”

“He does?” Alinor asked. “Did you have a merry evening at his farm?”

“Yes, they were kind to me, and we were . . .” she tailed off, her face illuminated. “You know what I mean.”

“I understand,” Alinor said quietly.

“So, what was wrong with Mr. Summer?”

“Some sort of fever. It broke overnight. But, Alys . . .”

“Shall I come home tonight, then?”

There was no reason to keep her daughter from her home. Guiltily, she realized that never before had she wished to be alone in the cottage. “Yes, of course,” she said. “I’ve a loaf of bread from the Priory for your dinner.”

“I’ll bring some curd cheese,” Alys promised. “Jane Miller and I are making it, this afternoon. Mrs. Miller will give me a slice.”

“Is she here?” Alinor asked.

“In the kitchen, sour as crab apples,” Alys said under her breath.

“Is her back paining her?”

“Her bottom,” Alys said vulgarly, and Alinor gave her a little cuff around her cap.

“You’d better talk like a goodwife if you want me to go and see Richard Stoney’s parents.”

At once the girl’s face lit up. “Will you go to see them?”

“If he’s promised you, and you wish it, I’d better talk to his parents.”

“Oh, Ma!” The girl plunged into her mother’s embrace. “But why now? Why d’you think we can ask them? Did his lordship give you a great fee for nursing?”