“They won’t stop asking. You’ll have to tell. Did you not think of this?”

“I didn’t think . . . till this very moment . . . that I was with child. I hadn’t thought—” She broke off. There was no way to explain to this new challenging Alys that she had thought her sickness was heartache, that her inability to eat was pining for the man she loved, that she had embraced it, like a penance, as he too might be fasting as punishment for his love for her. She had thought the two of them were working their way to be together, he fasting in Douai, and she here, on the edge of the mire, aching for him too, eating only bread and small ale, sick for love.

“Well, think it now!” Alys flung at her. “Think now that you’re ruined. And I’m ruined too. You’ve ruined me. For Richard can’t marry me if my mother is a named whore. They won’t want our money, if they think you earned it on your back behind a haystack. They won’t stand for a missing father and a mother of shame. A deserted wife was a long stretch for them; a pregnant whore will be too much. You are ruined and I am ruined, too.”

“Alys, I would never do anything to hurt you,” Alinor said.

“You have destroyed me! You could have done nothing worse.”

“I won’t let this happen.”

“It’s happened already.”

“Alys, all my life I have lived for you.” Alinor stumbled over her words. “I tried to keep Zachary from you and Rob. I took blows so that he wouldn’t raise his hand to you. I wanted nothing but a good life for the two of you. I’ve done everything I could do to raise you up from this life. I’d never bring you down.”

“Well, you’ve brought me down.” The girl slumped on the foot of the bed, facing her mother, panting and desperate. “It’s even worse than you know. For I am with child, too. Unlike you, I can name my lover, and we are betrothed to marry. We did not lie together until we were handclasped. But that’s why I’m determined that we marry in January before the baby comes in May.”

“In May?” Alinor asked, shocked.

“Yes. There’s no shame in being with child at the altar. We were betrothed. We were going to tell his parents and the minister next month. But if you’re proved as a whore then Richard won’t be allowed to marry me, and his family will never accept me! Then I’ll be ruined, too.”

“Alys!” Alinor reached out to her beloved daughter, but Alys slapped her hand away and threw herself down on the bed, turned towards the wooden wall, and would not speak.

Alys cried herself to sleep as Alinor lay sleepless, the cottage door wide open to the clear night sky, the stars sparkling like ice. The tide was coming in with an east wind behind it, the coldest wind of all. The sound of the lapping water filled the cottage as if the tide would climb the bank, wash them both away, and make the whole world into tidelands.

At midnight Alinor got up, wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, ignored the protesting cluck of the drowsy hens, and went outside to sit on the rough bench against the cottage wall, closing the door on her sleeping daughter. She watched the moon high in the sky, shining a silver path on the water of the harbor, until she thought it was an invitation to her, a message from the old gods of the Saxon shore, who did not fear death but embraced it as their last voyage. She thought that perhaps the best thing she could do for her daughter, for her son, for herself, and for the man she loved was to walk down to the shore and fill her pockets with stones and follow that gleaming path, colder and colder, wetter and wetter, until the icy waters closed over her head and the sound of rushing water in her ears muffled the cry of the sleepless seagulls.

Quietly, she got to her feet and went through the garden gate, her hand lingering on the worn gatepost. She looked back at the shabby little cottage and then climbed the bank to the high path. Through the tunnel of thornbushes, she walked in moonlight and shadow, along the bank until she came to the white shell beach under the down-swinging branches of the oak tree. The bank had been built as a sea wall years ago, centuries ago, and the sea had worn it away at the foot and tumbled the foundation stones—river stones, rounded by water—on the white shell shore. Alinor lifted one and slid it in the pocket of her gown, and another, for the other side. She felt their weight drag her down. She picked up another—the biggest, the heaviest—to hold it tightly and walk into the icy water that lapped closer and closer. She thought that all her life she had been afraid of deep water and now, in her last moments, she would face that fear and not fear it anymore. She thought that it would drag at her poor skirt, chill her warm body, lap against her belly, her ribs, that she would shudder when it reached her warm armpits, her neck, but that finally she would dip her head and taste the brackish salt of it and know that she would go down into the muddy depths of it, without protest and without fear.

She did not move. She stood at the edge of the sea, the stone heavy in her grip, and watched the moon’s dappled reflection, silver on the dark water as the waves crept up the shore, closer and closer. She heard the water lap at her feet and she stood still as the tide turned, and listened to it recede. But she did not move. She did not step along the silvery path of the moon, she did not walk into the water. She stood silent among the quiet sounds of the night, and certainty came to her.

She did not weep for herself, not for Alys, not even for Rob. She did not yearn for James to rescue her, she did not think of him with anything but love. She had loved him and lain with him, she had trusted him and she believed in him still; but she did not expect him to help her in this dark night. She did not think that anything would be illuminated by the dawn, she did not pray to a forgiving God, for she did not expect Him to listen to a woman like her, in a place like this.

She had no faith in her purpose or in her courage. She had no faith in herself as the cold murky waters lapped at her feet. But slowly she found that she had one belief—only one belief: that she would last through this night, that she would last through any night to come. She knew that she would not drown herself. She knew that she would not be broken by this terrible misfortune any more than she had been broken by the cruelty of Zachary or by the loss of her mother. She thought that the one thing that she had learned in this life, which had so many troubles and so few joys: she had at least learned to survive. She knew she could endure. She thought that all her life—raised by a courageous woman in hard circumstances, abused by a violent husband, loving two children and bringing them up in poverty—had taught her this lesson: to survive. She thought it was the only thing that she truly knew to do. She thought that she had found, embedded in her heart, like a drowned field post in a mudbank, a great determination to live.

Alys woke in the morning, as fresh-faced as a child, her eyes clear and her beauty undimmed by the night of crying. She found her mother making gruel and setting out the bowls on the table as if it were an ordinary day.

“Ma?”

“Yes, Alys?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I am going to eat my breakfast and so are you.”

“But—”

“Eat first and then we’ll talk. You have to eat. Especially now.”

Alys pulled out her stool and sat at the table and ate as she was bidden. When she had finished and pushed back her bowl she said: “And now, tell me what you’re going to do. You can’t let anyone know your sin.”