There was a call from the yard outside, and she went to the window and opened it to find Stuart, the serving man, with linen and small ale, a bucket of hot water and some washing bowls, some linen towels and a box of herbs and oils chosen by Rob from the stillroom. There was a pulley and a rope above the window for raising sacks of grain. Alinor lowered the hook and Stuart sent up the basket loaded with a tureen of soup, and bread and cheeses on platters, then all the other things he had brought, until he said: “Will that be all, Mrs. Reekie?” as if Alinor were a guest and not a servant like him.

“That’s all,” she said. “Tell Rob to come here after breakfast. I’ll speak to him from here. But nobody is to come in until I know what ails the tutor.”

“Beg pardon, Mrs. Reekie, but d’you think it might be plague?” Stuart whispered fearfully.

“There are no signs now,” she said cautiously. “I will watch him today in case of the signs. There are no marks on him yet. Wait there.” She went to her basket of herbs and brought out a bunch of dried sage, and tossed it down to him. “Light this at the kitchen fire,” she said, “and then blow it out and bring it to me still smoking.”

He was gone only a few moments and brought it back, smoldering in an earthenware bowl. Alinor lowered the rope and he put it in the basket and she pulled it up.

“Does it summon spirits?” he whispered. “Are you calling them up?”

Alinor shook her head. “It cleanses the air,” she said firmly. “I do no work with spirits or anything like that. Just herbs and oils, like anyone else.”

He nodded, but he did not believe her.

“That’s all,” Alinor said, thinking that however often she denied the rumors of magic they clung to her, and to all the women of her family, like the mist from the mire.

“God bless us all,” Stuart gasped, and scuttled to the kitchen door.

Alinor took the stems of the smoldering sage and walked around the room, shaking the burning leaves so that the cleansing scent went into every corner. Then she set it back on the bowl and left it to smoke. She opened the sack of physic to see what Rob had sent her. There was a stick of cinnamon, a jar with a lemon bottled in oil, and a bottle of distilled holy basil from the Peachey stillroom. Alinor thought that James might have taken tertian fever, a sickness that lingered in the mire, striking visitors, and staying with them for life, coming back three times a year and so earning its name. The first bout of illness was always the worst, often fatal; the others wore the patient down, as he became feverish and delirious. Most of the Foulmire families took it as children: Rob had it as a child, and Zachary had quatrain fever every season. Alinor’s mother believed it came from the bites of the flies that whined noisily in your ear as you slept, and advised her daughter to plant marigolds and lavender at windows and doorways to keep them out. It was no surprise to Alinor that the man she loved had been poisoned by the flies that lived on the waters of her home. This proved he should never have come; and, once he had left, he should never have come back. It was a sign to them both.