‘Be off with you,’ she said, freeing herself and adjusting her petticoats. ‘Quick, before I remember those stains.’ She shook her head. ‘Too cheerful by far.’

‘Nathaniel’s a lucky man,’ he called, dodging the cloth she whacked him with.

An unfamiliar, twitchy vitality coursed through him. He was dead tired and yet he could not have slept, thinking only of the night before. Every beautiful detail of the world was magnified: the sweetness of birdsong, the softness of the calf’s eyes. Fresh leaves against weighty clouds in the sky. All was well, from first light to the evening meal.

At the dinner table Daniel gathered courage and announced to Father that he had refused Molly.

‘Can’t say I’m not pleased,’ Father said. ‘She’s a pretty lass, no doubt, and you have your fun if you will, but a blacksmith’s daughter? For courting?’ He laughed. ‘You, my only son, and her? They’d gain a whole farm, what would come to us? A new horseshoe each week? Eh?’ He laughed harder, an unease spilling out, raising his eyebrows and pointing at Daniel. Pleased with this joke that Daniel did not share. ‘A horseshoe, eh? For this whole farm?’

Father wiped his eyes, still chuckling. ‘I’d have had to forbid it. You did right, son.’

Daniel placed his spoon on the table, the bowl of rich herring pottage untouched. A blacksmith’s family would not do. What then his chance of presenting the ragged-haired daughter of a cunning woman? The daughter of a woman who had been present at his birth, his mother’s death, and had been held responsible by Father all the intervening years?

Bees

Mam has sent us down to the harbour to knock on doors and sell our wares. A task I do not relish, but I was not inclined to argue, my mood still sweetened by Daniel’s words.

‘Get away,’ the woman says, already closing her door on us. Behind her the house is small and dark, scented with fish and woodsmoke. ‘I need no enchanted flowers from you.’

‘Nay, it’s – white heather,’ I say. ‘They carry their own luck.’

Annie holds up the bunch of dried flowers.

‘Place them on the step so they may look out over your husband while he’s at sea,’ I say. ‘Or by the nets to bring a full catch.’

‘We are protected in this house.’ She points to a pattern scratched on to the wall, petal shapes in a circle. A witch mark. The first I’ve seen in many a year. My belly tightens. ‘I need none of your spells. Your clan do nothing but harm, Gabriel has told all of what you laid upon him.’

It’s all I can do to stop myself covering Annie’s ears. There is a shifting in the corner of my eye. I blink it away. Now more than ever we must not be accused. She looks up at me, curious.