“It is your faith that concerns us now,” Dr. Sean said firmly. “Meditate on that. Take it to our Father.”

“But she—”

“She does not concern us now. God bless you, my son.”

“Amen.”

TIDELANDS, OCTOBER 1648

Even with both of the women spinning, and both of them picking the last of the herbs that were still growing in the late October sunshine, even with Alinor selling her oils from the summer, attending every birth, and drying the herbs that were still growing green, even with Alys working all the hours they would pay her at the Millers’ farm, the money was slow to come in and hard to keep. The little household had always lived off its own—growing their own food, brewing their own ale, fishing, making and mending and never buying new. But as winter came closer the price of everything went up: tallow for soap and candles, meat of any sort, cheese and milk, wheat or rye. Even the things that they foraged—the teazels for felting, the willow twigs for sweeping—took longer to find. Alinor spent more and more time picking up driftwood for her fire, walking on the shore, which started to crackle with freezing dew, as the wintry days grew shorter, and the nights dark.

As if winter did not bring trouble enough, Alinor was ill, exhausted before she started her day, sick before she got out of their shared bed. She could not eat before midday, she could not bear the smell of cheese or bacon, and when Ned brought a boiled lobster over one evening, a payment for ferry fees from one of the Sealsea fishermen, she could not even sit at the table while he and Rob and Alys feasted.

“What’s wrong with you?” Alys asked irritably, her mouth full of lobster meat. Ned sat opposite Rob, who had come from the Priory to visit and had brought a loaf of white bread with compliments from Mrs. Wheatley. Alinor, opposite Alys, had a slice of the bread and a cup of small ale. Red, the dog, under the table, fixed his brown gaze on her, as if he thought she might slip him the crust.

“I don’t know,” Alinor said. “I thought it was the quatrain fever but I have no signs; I expect it will pass. Perhaps it was something that I ate.”

“It’s been weeks,” Alys pointed out. “Surely it’d be over by now if it was rancid cream or spoiled meat.”

“Don’t,” Alinor said, the back of her hand to her mouth. “Don’t even speak of them.”

Ned laughed shortly. “She was always sickish,” he said unsympathetically. “You should’ve seen her when she was breeding you.” He bent his head and cracked one of the claws. “Here, Rob,” he said. “Try this.”

The young man and his uncle picked at the meat. “It’s good,” Rob said. “The claw’s always the best.”

“D’you get lobster at the Priory?”

“No,” said Rob.

“Folk look down their noses at it, as poor man’s meat, but I like it better than beef,” Ned said, his speech muffled by a mouthful.

Alinor heard them as if they were far away. Her brother’s careless words echoed again and again in her head. She heard a noise in her head like the rush of the waters in the millrace as she looked up and saw Alys’s dark blue eyes on her, and heard a distant voice say: “Ma?” as she went down into the darkness.

She woke on the bed in the cottage, Alys at her side. She raised herself on her elbow and Alys held a glass of small ale to her lips. “Where’s Rob?”

“Uncle Ned’s walking back to the Priory with him. I said that you’d be fine. I said that you’d send to tell him tomorrow. I said it was women’s troubles.” Alys scrutinized her mother’s face. “It is, isn’t it?”

Dumbly, Alinor nodded.

“The worst kind? You’re with child?”

Alinor swallowed. “I think so.”

“You think so?” Alys was pale and furious in a moment. “You must know if you laid with a man or no. Or are you going to tell me you were forced by a faerie lord? God save us, have you been dancing with the faerie lords again?”

A deep shamed flush rose from Alinor’s belly to her hot cheeks. “Of course I know. What I don’t know is if I’m with child. I hadn’t thought of it till Ned said . . . what he said.”

“And you tell me to beware of the gallows!”

“I’ve done very wrong,” Alinor confessed to this new, authoritative daughter. “Very wrong.”

Alys rose from the bedside and stepped towards the door, flinging it open as if she would summon the icy sea breeze to blow the words from the little cottage. “You must be mad,” she said bitterly. “After all you’ve said to me!”

Alinor bowed her head in shame.

“How could you?”

“I know, Alys. Don’t scold me.”

“And you dare to let my uncle tell me that I must wait for months to be married? When you’ve not even waited a year since our da left?”

“It’s a year. It’s nearly a year.”

“Who is it? Mr. Miller?”

“No!” Alinor exclaimed.

“That horrible man who has the physic stall at Chichester market?”

“No, of course not.”

“Mr. Tudeley, who’s getting Rob his apprenticeship? Is that why Rob gets his chance?”

“No! No! Alys, I won’t be questioned like this!”

“You will be!” The girl rounded on her mother. “This is nothing! Don’t you think the parish will question you like this as soon as your belly starts to show? Don’t you think you’ll have to name the father and then stand before the congregation in your shift, in your shame? Don’t you think Mr. Miller will ask you, all the churchmen will ask you, they’ll demand that you say, and they’ll bring in a midwife from Chichester to put her dirty hands all over your belly, and peer at your privates like you were a whore suspected of the pox?”

Alinor shook her head, her golden hair falling around her white face. “No, no.”

“They’ll go on and on and on at you until you give them his name and then they’ll find him and make him pay his fine to the parish. And you’ll go to the workhouse, and when the bastard is born they’ll take him off you and send you back here as a named whore.”

“No,” Alinor said. “No, Alys, don’t say such things.”

“Back here!” Alys gestured wildly at the interior of the little cottage and the vast desolate mire outside. “Back here, as a named whore. Who’s going to give Rob an apprenticeship then? Who’s going to marry me? Who’s going to buy anything from you but magic and love potions?”

“I’m going to be sick,” Alinor announced. She stumbled to her feet and got to the open front door. She vomited on her own doorstep, sobbing at the pain of her empty belly heaving on nothing.

Like a blessing, she felt a cold cloth scented with lavender oil laid gently on the back of her neck. “Thank you,” she said, and wiped her face and hands. She stepped back and sat on the bed, looking up at Alys as if her daughter were her judge.

“Were you forced, Ma?” the young woman asked more gently. “Is that what happened?”

Alinor turned from the temptation of a lie. “No.”