‘What better to spend your wage on?’ she says. ‘A bracelet, perhaps, for your sweet wrist?’

There’s something about her gentle persistence, the toughened and chapped fingers that hold out the trinkets to me, that reminds me of Mam.

I pick out a polished leather case, perfect for John’s knife, and pendant in the shape of a fox’s head, the wood smooth under my finger, a light brown that is almost the right colour. ‘Look at this,’ I say, holding it out to Daniel.

‘You like it?’ he asks.

‘Annie will love it, she spends all day scampering around the woods looking for spadgers and foxes and squirrels.’

He smiles. ‘Anything else?’

I look again, head bowed over the frivolous objects laid out, fingers gliding over cool metal and hard stone. There’s another pendant, it looks like a hare, the ears too large to be a rabbit, that I’m drawn to again and again. I feel the woman’s eyes on me, feel she can read who this gift would be for, why the hare calls to me.

‘She’s a beauty, is she not?’ she says. Her voice soft, sibilant. Like Mam’s.

‘Aye.’ I take the pendant she holds out to me, staring so hard at the little hare that it seems to blur and shiver in my fingers, and I feel the spirit of Dew-Springer in it.

‘A special animal, the hare. You could make no better choice.’

The heat of the day dries my mouth and soaks the back of my neck, makes my head feel as though it’s about to float from my shoulders. In my palm the hare twitches and blinks.

The woman leans towards me, whispers. ‘It is the right choice for her. The perfect gift.’

I look up at her so suddenly that the sky tilts to the side, the grass slides up towards me.

‘Steady,’ Daniel says, arm around my shoulder. ‘You all right?’

I force myself to focus on his face. Shake my head a little. No whispers of mysterious understandings can be heard when he is here. ‘Aye. I lost my balance.’

‘All right.’ He rubs my arm. ‘Ox roast next, I think. You need to eat, yes? Shall you take these?’

I glance at the woman and her toothless smile. The fox and the hare, now perfectly still, a carved wooden pendant, no more. Yet I cannot leave without it. ‘Please,’ I say. Keep my voice light to show her this is nothing more to me than a pretty trinket.

‘I want to take something home for them,’ I say to Daniel. ‘Something they’d never have.’

I wait in the cart, skin smarting from the day’s sun.

Daniel returns at last from whatever business he left to take care of. He looks pleased with himself.

‘Here,’ he says, climbing up on to the cart and handing me a small parcel.

‘What is it?’

‘Something you would never have.’