The laughter weakened his stance, and Daniel was able to push him aside and pass into the bright outdoors. Only from Gabriel’s mouth could fall the suggestion that he revel in these, the worst of times. Through the cloth of his breeches he felt the stone that he still carried in his pocket. Unable, yet, to let it go.

Daniel worked as never before, until his hands bled and his tunic was soaked through and melded to his back. He watched young rabbits capering at the edge of the field, a sight that would once have soothed him. Still he could not quiet his mind.

He had crashed through the past months, destroying all he touched and leaving a trail of devastation. Planning to abandon his family and inheritance, involving the parson in a scheme that left him murdered, turning his back on Phyllis and then Molly, leaving her prey to Gabriel’s appetites and moral destitution. Taken in by the worst evil, willingly.

He scythed and weeded and ploughed and sowed. Still his boisterous mind persisted.

At the end of the day, faint with exhaustion, he had decided upon a path that would ease his conscience.

With Bett and Gabriel at last gone to their own homes the kitchen was quiet.

‘I must speak with you,’ Daniel said.

Father raised an eyebrow and drank from his flagon. Daniel sat. No anticipation this time, no fear, just a flat determination to say what he had to. To put right the one thing it was in his power to.

Now. Before he was once again seduced by Sarah’s bewitchment.

‘I must confess that, though you forbade my courting Molly Matthews, I have continued.’

The flagon stopped on its way to Father’s lips. ‘I thought you refused her?’

‘I – yes, I did but then she persisted and I was—’

Father nodded. ‘I see.’

‘I have lain with her.’

‘Oh.’

‘And she is—’

‘Oh, no.’

‘Yes.’

Daniel waited in the silence as Father took in the news. Once he would have feared an explosion of anger, a beating even. No longer. The fire crackled behind him.

‘I gather there are remedies for such a—’

‘They have been tried,’ Daniel said.

‘Oh. And no success?’

Daniel shook his head. Father swallowed the last of his ale, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Sighed. Stretched out a leg, brought it in again.

‘You have disappointed me, son.’

Daniel focused on the groove of the wooden table. ‘Myself also.’

‘You know where your mother’s ring is kept.’

‘Yes.’

‘’Tis not as I had hoped,’ Father said.

‘Nor I.’

‘But you love her? Son? To put you both at risk of this? You care for her as I cared for your mother, the ring will find its rightful place?’

Daniel hesitated. Molly was sweet, and silly, and manipulative, and frail.