“Is Da home?”

“No,” she said flatly. The perennial question no longer gave her a pang of grief for her son. “Not today. Get dressed.”

Obediently Rob sat on the edge of the mattress and pulled his jacket on over the linen nightshirt. He pulled up his breeches and tied them with laces to the jacket. He would go bare-legged and barefoot to his work today. He was crow-scaring at Mill Farm after morning school. He sat up at the table and she poured gruel into his bowl.

“No bacon?” he asked.

“Not today.”

He took up his spoon and started to eat, blowing on each mouthful and sucking it loudly. She gave him a cup of small ale; no one at Foulmire ever drank the water. She turned back to the bed, sat on the edge, and touched her daughter’s shoulder.

Alys rolled over and opened her dark blue eyes to look at her mother as if she were part of a haunting dream. “Did you go out?” she asked.

Alinor was surprised. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I heard you come in.” The girl sighed as if she were about to sleep again. “In my dream.”

“What did you dream?”

“I dreamed you met a cat in the churchyard.”

The two of them were intent. “What color?”

“Black,” the girl said.

“What happened?”

“Nothing. That was all. You stood before him and he saw you.”

Alinor thought of this, held it in her seer’s vision. “He saw me?”

“He saw you, he saw everything.”

Alinor nodded. “Don’t speak of this,” she said.

The girl smiled. “Course not.” She pushed back the covers of the bed and rose up, standing tall at her mother’s shoulder, her fair hair in a plait down her back, her skin Saxon-pale. She turned to her pile of clothes at the foot of the bed and pulled on her skirt of felted wool, dried mud crusted on the hem, and a patched shirt. She sat on her stool at the table to wash her face and hands and then took the bowl to the door and threw it over the herbs outside.

Alinor took her stool beside her children and clasped her hands. “Father, we thank thee for our daily bread,” she said quietly. “Keep us from sin forever and ever. Amen.”

“Amen,” they said in a chorus, and Alinor served her daughter and herself, leaving a portion in the pot.

“Can I have that?” Rob asked.

“No,” Alinor said.

He pushed back his stool and knelt on the floor for her blessing. She put her hand on his matted curls and said: “God bless you, my son.”

Without another word, he took his cap from a hook behind the door, pulled it on his head, and opened the door. The sound of seagulls crying and the salty morning air poured into the darkened room. He went out, banging the door behind him.

“He’ll be early for school,” Alys remarked. “He’ll be playing football against the church door again.”