“Very well. Report to us. Daily if needs be. And get word to us the moment that you think it is going against him?”

“Oh, that I can do readily,” James said bitterly. “It’s now. It’s going against him now.”

TIDELANDS, JANUARY 1649

In the first cold days of January a fox got into the ferry-house barn and savaged three chickens before the anguished clucking of the flock brought Alinor running barefoot in her shift. As she flung the door open a streak of russet brown dashed out past her. One hen was dead on the floor, one beyond saving—Alinor picked her up and wrung her neck—but the third was bruised and bloodstained, and Alinor put her in a basket and took her into the house, washed the teeth marks on her breast, and kept her by the fireside in a basket. The hens were laying poorly in the cold dark days, so Alinor did not miss the income from the few eggs, but it was still a loss to the smallholding. Even if they could have afforded to lose three hens, Alinor would still have been grieved. She knew each bird by name and took pride in their glossy health.

“I know it’s stupid to weep for a hen, but I can’t forgive that fox,” she said to Alys.

“Tell the Peachey huntsmen where the earth is,” Alys said. “They’d be glad of a good run and a kill.”

“Oh, I couldn’t betray an animal to the hunt.”

Alys laughed. “Then until the resurrection and the life eternal you’ll always be sorrowing for something that’s been killed by something else. I can’t wait to eat her. Are you going to make chicken stew?”

“Yes, of course,” Alinor said. “I’m not such a fool as to not eat fresh meat in winter when it’s come our way. But you’re very hard-hearted for poor Mrs. Hoppy.”

“I’m hungry,” Alys said. “I’m hungry all the time. Aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Alinor said, noting that her daughter, for the first time in five months, was prepared to share signs of pregnancy. “And I need to piss every moment.”

The girl laughed. “I wish it was summer,” she said. “I was telling Richard that I wouldn’t mind going out to the midden if it wasn’t so cold.”

“He knows then?” Alinor asked. “You’ve told him?”

“I told him as soon as I was sure,” the young woman said. “He’s glad.”

“Will he tell his mother and father?” Alinor asked nervously, thinking of the formidable woman who would be Alys’s mother-in-law.

“He’s told them,” Alys said confidently. “And his father is one for the old ways.” She made a disdainful little face. “He jokes about it. He likes a fertile bride. She said that it was good to know that I’d continue the line—he said you only buy a cow in calf.”

Alinor laughed at Alys’s offended expression. “Well, at least they’ve no objection.”

“As long as I’ve got my dowry. That’s all she cares about.” She paused. “They said you’re to come and stay with me, when I’m near to my time. You’ll have to be with me, Ma, when I have my baby.”

“I hope so,” Alinor said slowly. “I pray for it, Alys. I am hoping and praying for us both, all the time.”

“Why don’t you send a message to this man? Why doesn’t he come and make everything right, if he loves you as you say?”

“He will come,” Alinor said steadily. “I don’t have to send for him. He will be coming as fast as he can.”

In the morning, Red, the ferry-house dog, did not get out of his corner and sit on the pier to watch the ferry, as he usually did.

“And we had a fox,” Alinor scolded him. “Are you getting lazy?”

The dog looked at her with his ale-brown eyes and turned away. Alinor put her hand on his head. “Oh, no, Red,” she said quietly. “What’s wrong?”

He sighed as if he would speak to her. Alinor took his broad head in both hands and looked at him as she would one of her patients.

“Won’t you wait till Ned comes home?” she whispered.

He stirred his feathery tail and then turned around three times and lay down. Alinor stroked his soft forehead where his frown wrinkled the fur, and let him stay in his bed.

Alys pulled the icy rope of the ferry as Alinor crossed the mire at low tide to go to work at the mill. It was bitterly cold, the ground slippery with frost. The sandbanks in the mire were white as snow.

“Get back in the warm,” Alinor said to her daughter. “And take care on the water.”

Alys’s face was white with cold, her mittened hands gripping the rope. “I’m fine,” she said. “You mind that you don’t slip.”

Mrs. Miller arranged the work of the farm and house so that she and her little boy, Peter, and daughter, Jane, stayed indoors in bad weather and sent her maid-of-all-work and Alinor into the cold. Alinor started in the barn where the cows were waiting patiently in their stalls. She took a three-legged stool down from the hook and set it beside the first cow, leaning her forehead against the warm flank, talking quietly to her, as she pulled on the udders, alternating her hands, and the milk hissed into the pail. It was so cold in the barn, the milk steamed and Alinor sniffed the rich creamy smell, longing to drink it. She carried the heavy pail to the dairy, and poured it into a bowl to separate for churning into butter later.

“I’ll thank you to check the dovecot for eggs.” Mrs. Miller poked her head into the icy dairy. “And after that, you can go home. I won’t need you for anything this afternoon.”

Alinor pulled her shawl over her head again, took the heavy basket, and went back out into the yard.

Richard Stoney, shoveling wheat into the dangling pan of the weighbeam in the barn, caught sight of her through the barn door as she was walking carefully across the frozen yard. “I’ll put down some straw so you don’t slip.” He hurried out to her.

She turned to him, the shawl over her head stiff with frost from her frozen breath. “You can’t,” she said shortly. “They never straw the yard. Only if the cows are coming out.”

“So the cows don’t fall, but you can!” he exclaimed. “Let me give you my arm then.”

She shook her head. “She’ll be watching from the window. Let me do my work, Richard. I won’t freeze and I won’t fall.”

“You’re never going up the ladder!”

Before Alinor could answer, the farmhouse kitchen door opened and Mrs. Miller shouted into the yard, “Richard Stoney, are you weighing grain or taking a stroll?”

“Go on,” said Alinor. “Back to work.”

“Can I come to Ferry-house on my way home? Is Alys well today?” he whispered urgently, as he raised a hand to acknowledge Mrs. Miller.

“She’s well. Of course you can come!” Alinor called, as she walked on towards the dovecot. Inside the circular tower she reached under her sheepskin jacket and rolled up the waistband of her skirt so it was hitched above her knees and she would not stumble on the hem as she went up the ladder.

She put her hands on the rung and looked upwards at the dovecot interior wall. It seemed like a long way up, and the ladder was old and rickety, but she could see a dove sitting on a nest. Alinor moved the ladder to the nesting dove, checked that it was firmly placed, hitched her basket on her arm, and started to climb. Each rung was freezing cold to the touch and slippery with frost. Up and up she went, step by step, not looking down, and paying no attention to the ominous creaking of the old wood. In some part of her mind she thought that a fall and a miscarriage would solve all her problems. Then she smiled to herself as she saw that at the thought of losing her baby she at once took a stronger grip on the ladder, and put her feet carefully on the rungs. She was as committed to her own life, and to the life of her child, as she had been that first cold morning when she had sworn that she would not be a victim of sorrows, but would bring this baby into the world and win a place for it.