“I hoped it would have a caul,” Mrs. Grace said. “All of us fishwives would like our babies born with a caul, to protect against drowning.”

Alinor nodded. “I know.”

“If you have a caul or even a part of one, I would buy it from you?”

“No, I don’t trade in such things.”

“I thought you were a wisewoman with herbs and secret things?”

“Just herbs,” Alinor said levelly. “No secret things.”

“Not faerie gold? I heard you had faerie gold.”

“I pick up little tokens and pretty shells when I see them. Nothing more than that. Just keepsakes, nothing with any meaning.”

“I thought a woman might come to you for all sorts of needs?”

“I’ve got a need. You could give my old man a potion!” someone interrupted, to bawdy laughter.

Alinor smiled as if she thought it was funny, though she was tired of the question. “I’m sorry, but I only have herbs for illnesses. I sell herbs and attend births, and sometimes I do nursing. I have to take care, Mrs. Grace. You will understand. I have to take care of my good name.”

The woman nodded, disbelieving. “But they say you can do all sorts of things. They say you speak to the other world. And they help you.”

Alinor shook her head. “I can do nothing better than this,” she insisted, looking once again at the girl lying back exhausted in the bed, her face alight with joy, and the baby suckling at her breast. “I think there is nothing finer than this in the whole world. This world—I know nothing about any other.”

“Is she well?” Lisa asked. “She’s feeding well, isn’t she?”

Alinor smiled at her. “She’s very well, and when your husband comes home, he will love you both. And now . . .” Alinor started to collect up the bottles of oil and the box of dried moss, and pack them in her sack. “Now I’ll go home to my cottage. And if you wish, I’ll come back tomorrow to see how you do.”

“Jem can go with you with a lantern,” Mrs. Grace offered, producing a sixpence. “And I will pay you another shilling when you come tomorrow. I am grateful, Mrs. Reekie. We both are. I hope we have your goodwill? I hope the baby has your good wishes?”

“It is my joy. Praise God,” Alinor said, hardly hearing the odd question. She said good night to the other women, hefted her sack, pulled her cape around her and put her hood over her head, and followed Jem’s wavering light up the narrow lanes of East Beach.

It was too dark to go across the harbor with the tide coming in, so they went the long way, up the Chichester road, north till they saw the light from the window of Ferry-house. Jem went all the way ahead of her, lantern held high at his side to light her path, as if he was afraid to walk abreast with a wisewoman. He only paused when they got to the brink of the rife and the reflection of the moon, silver on the water, made his lantern seem yellow and weak.

“I’m safe from here,” Alinor said. “I know the way, even in the dark. You can go home.”

He ducked his head and though she held out half a penny to him, he turned away.

“Here,” she said. “This is for you. Thank you for bringing me to Mrs. Auster and home again.”

“I don’t dare to take it,” he said, stepping back, whipping his hands behind his back.

“What d’you mean?” Still, she held out the coin.

“It’s faerie gold, I know it!” he burst out. “I’m glad you were pleased with my service, your ladyship. I’ll go now, if you will release me.” He looked ready to run.

“What did you call me? Boy—Jem—you know that I’m nothing but the widow of the fisherman Zachary Reekie,” Alinor said. “You know I work as a midwife. I don’t do anything else. I have no faerie gold. There’s no call to name me ladyship!”

He was walking backwards, without taking his fearful eyes off her, his face ghastly in the lantern light, hurrying to get away from her. “They told me,” he whispered, “that you know things that no mortal woman knows. That your boy lives like a lord at the Priory, and your daughter is to marry the richest farmer in Sussex.”

“Well, no—” Alinor started.

“Missis, did you whistle up a storm that blew your husband away?”

Alinor tried to laugh, but his fear was infectious. “This is nonsense,” she said, her voice unsteady. “And Mrs. Grace knows it’s nonsense, for she sent you for a good honest midwife and I came.”

“No,” he shook his head. “Not her. They were afraid to send for anyone else in case you ill-wished us. So I fetched you with my fingers crossed, and then you came to her on horseback like a queen, and you sent Sir William’s own son to do your bidding. Good night, Mrs. Reekie, your honor. Good night.”

Alinor let him go, too shaken to press the coin on him, too frightened by his wide-eyed fear to laugh him into common sense. When Zachary had accused her of being in league with powers beyond this earth, she had taken it as the exaggerated language of courtship when he first saw her, and part of his hatred, as the marriage soured. That he should sow such dangerous slander to his drinking companions and that it should flower into these envious fantasies was something she had never dreamed.

Of course, people would wonder at Rob’s good fortune and Alys’s betrothal, but she had not thought that people would weave Zachary’s superstitious hatred and her survival together into a faerie story of Zachary’s doom and her revenge. It was a dark note at the end of a day that had started with thoughts of drowning and dark water. She trudged along the bank, the mud crunching with frost beneath her worn boots, opened the door, and went in.

The cottage was in darkness, the fire under the cover, the candles snuffed out. Alys was asleep on her side of the bed and Alinor felt nothing but relief that she need not speak another word until the morning.

DOUAI, FRANCE, OCTOBER 1648

James spent a week in penitent silence, sleepless with the conflicting sense of guilt and desire. Every day he met with his confessor and step-by-step they went through his first encounter with Alinor, that she had saved him and without her he would have been lost on the unmapped tidelands. She had been a savior to him.

“But she is not your savior,” Father Paul said quietly as they knelt side by side in the chapel and looked up at the altar where the crucified Christ looked down on them, his painted face downcast. “She is no angel. She is an earthly woman and naturally disposed to sin.”

James bowed his head. He could not deny that she was disposed to sin. He spoke of the afternoon in the boat, he spoke of her desire. He spoke of the color of her hair and how a curl escaped from her cap and blew against her face. He spoke of her scarred hands and her rough linen.

“She was born into poverty, set in her place by God. It is not for you to defy God and rescue her. Did she ask to be baptized into the true faith?”

“No,” James said quietly.

“You have nothing else to offer her.”

His voice low and ashamed, James spoke of the feel of her mouth under his, of the strength of her body under the bulky clothes. He spoke of her smile and her little indrawn breath of desire. He said that when he touched her hand, her waist, her breast, he felt that he was, for the first time, a man. That he became himself, in loving her.