‘But we are already wed, as good as, we have pledged to God and He knows it,’ he said. ‘I gave my mother’s ring.’

He heard voices from the barn, rising in a growing tide of anger and fear, an uproar that made the hairs on his arms rise.

Seth’s whisper quickened. ‘And God I am sure sees the purity of your feelings, but you must concede now that those marvels you dreamed cannot be.’ He took a breath and said, ‘You must part.’

Daniel reached for Sarah, and she for him, as she spoke. ‘We shall not.’

‘They will not discover her,’ Daniel said.

‘Eventually, they will. Someone will, and this venomous talk destroys any hope we had that your union be accepted.’

Daniel could not catch his breath. ‘We cannot part.’

‘You must.’

‘Nay,’ Sarah said.

They stood together, joined by hand and in purpose. Daniel’s heart kicked, his breath came fast and thin. He was afraid as he had never been, and sure as he had never been.

The villagers began to pour out. Parson Walsh started and was gone into the darkness, leaving them silent, and bound together.

Sewn

I lie a-bed, awake. Weeping hot, angry tears into the thick straw mattress and cotton sheet. Tonight more than any I am feared to my belly that my master will seek out Daniel and take him from me. Remove me from this new life and this house. I feel him so strongly, calling me to whisper a curse upon the hate-filled magistrate, and I long to, I imagine him cowering in fear before me, but I dread to let this power consume me. I must battle the shadow in my eye.

When at last I sleep, I dream of Annie, standing white and still, thicket of twig-filled hair and scraped, muddy knees. Whispered words spool out of her, fine and silver as spider’s web, and surround me until I am caught in their gossamer threads. I cannot move, cannot speak, cannot see, but I know she is gone and ever will be, and all because I stood and let it be so.

As I wake I hear through the floorboards Daniel persuade his father that I’m stricken with grief at Phyllis’s death. Mr Taylor is fond of me, I am a good dairymaid, and so looks with a soft eye and grants me leave for some hours of the afternoon.

First I must help Bett with the laundry, and we carry the basket of clothes and sheets to the beck. A task I usually like, but am not eager to be in the company of village women today.