“That is the way of things,” he explained to me at the time. “All creatures die when their time comes. No matter what we do, or how we may feel about it, nature always gets her prize in the end.”

Father is always so strong and wise. Sometimes I wish I were more like him. I wish I could accept that the way fate has arranged things is both right and good, and that living here alone with him, sewing and cooking and tending the garden, and perhaps, when I am old enough—perhaps, in my mind I can hear him say it!—learning to help him with his work, as I am beginning to do now with the belladonna seeds, is exactly the way my life was intended to be.

But, other times, the scent of bread baking, a remembered, loving smile, or an especially lonely winter night, with no one to sing me to sleep, leaves me weeping in secret for Mama, and filled with a kind of fury I cannot name.

It happens less often as the years go by, though.

2

16th March

The weather continues damp and cold; I built a strong fire in the morning and still could not get warm. Peeled potatoes and parsnips for soup. Cleaned and oiled all the boots. Changed the soaking water for the belladonna seeds.

Still no word from Father.

FROM THE TOWER WINDOW in my bedchamber I can see quite a distance: over the crumbling stone wall that encloses the courtyard and cottage, past the quilt pattern of farmers’ fields marked by hedgerows, to the narrow path that snakes through the hills to the main crossroads where the four directions meet.

Down the road to the south is the town of Alnwick, where the duke’s castle stands guard over Northumberland. To the north, the Cheviot Hills and Scotland. The westbound road will carry travelers to Newcastle, if they are not murdered by highwaymen along the way. To the east lies the sea.

If I happen to be looking out of my window when Father returns, I will be able to see him coming two miles away, a lone, stoop-shouldered figure walking from the crossroads down the winding footpath that cuts across the sheep fields.

Even when the need for his services is urgent, Father prefers to walk. He likes to stop and examine whatever grows by the side of the road. There he might find a rare type of wildflower that he covets for our garden beds, or some creeping plant whose properties are unfamiliar to him, or a strange mushroom growing on the back of a rotted stump.