“Six shillings,” Alinor insisted. “For the twelve bottles. And the bottles and corks returned to me.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” he conceded. “As a beautiful woman may do.”

Alinor unpacked the bottles onto his stall and he produced empty bottles from a basket at the back.

“Here, I’ll give you a couple of extra bottles and corks,” he said. “For the wolfsbane.”

“Thank you.”

“Bring me some more next monthly market,” he said. “And I’ll buy dried herbs by the ounce, also.”

“I have some drying now.”

He leaned towards her. “Can you make me something to restore manhood?” he whispered. “I have a customer who would be glad of it.”

“I don’t have a recipe for that,” she said, discouragingly.

“You will have, I know you will have. It’ll be horny goatweed and bull pizzle, ginger and something like that, boiled up together.”

She shook her head. “I don’t have a recipe. I can’t get hold of such ingredients and if I could, I would not,” she said. “I don’t do anything of that sort.”

He snorted disbelievingly. “Don’t tell me that you turn away good business?”

“I do,” she said steadily. “I make the herb remedies because I know what they do. The goodness, the God-given goodness, is in the plant, a gift from God Himself. But anything with charming and special words is halfway towards magic. My mother’d never have anything to do with it, and neither will I. She taught me to use the herbs that we all know, and not dabble in things that are mysteries—if they work at all.”

“And you a midwife!” he said nastily. “I don’t see why you would put yourself above the act. You pull the baby out, why don’t you help the father to put it in?”

“Because I need my license,” Alinor said. “And if the bishop ever comes back, he isn’t going to look kindly on some woman from Sealsea Island selling love philters and casting spells. I am a midwife and a herbalist, and I do nothing else. I have to guard my reputation: it’s my fortune.”

“Hardly a fortune, my dear. Your reputation is hardly a fortune! Look, I’ll get you the ingredients myself and pay you to come to my stillroom and make it up for me. You needn’t tell a soul. It can be just between you and me. Our little secret. I don’t believe that you’ll turn down five shillings.”

Alinor had a pang of guilt thinking of the five shillings towards Alys’s dowry, but she could not rid herself of a fear of anything that looked like magic. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “But I only work as a herbalist, with the herbs that I know. I don’t dabble in mysteries.”

He laughed to conceal his irritation and she realized at once that the remedy was for himself. He had the edgy laugh of a man without confidence; his bullying tone came from his weakness. All the talk about a customer was a blind for his own need. “Oh! If you want to turn down good business from an established customer. . . .”