“I am sorry,” she said kindly. “But I can’t help you.”

“It’s not for me,” he said quickly. “But I could sell it a dozen times.”

“Then you will surely find someone to make it for you,” she said.

He grimaced. “Your herbs are so good—they’re the best. I wanted yours. People always ask for the oils from the pretty witch of Foulmire.”

“I hope they don’t call me that,” Alinor said coldly.

“Only in jest.”

“It’s no jest to me.”

“So you say, so you say. I’ll give you good day, and if you have the sense to change your mind you can come back to me.”

Alinor accepted her dismissal, pocketed her money, and lifted her basket from his stall. He waved her away, and Alinor gritted her teeth, smiled, and said good-bye. He did not bother to reply but turned to a customer and let her go without another word. Mother and daughter made their way through the crowd to the north side of the Market Cross, to the wool merchant.

There was a little crowd around his table, women bringing back wool that they had spun and collecting their payments, women buying sacks of raw wool for spinning. Alinor bought a shilling’s worth of fleece in a small sack. He took the money with a word of thanks. “Good day, Mrs. Reekie. I can fetch the yarn from you myself, if you work quickly. I am coming to Sealsea Island next month.”

“I’ll leave it with my brother at the ferry-house,” Alinor promised him. “And if you’ll take the price of another sack off my wages and leave it for me, I’ll spin more.”

“Working hard?” he asked with a wink at her. “Saving up for something?”

“Nothing in particular,” Alinor said discreetly, though Alys smiled and blushed and looked down.

They turned from the stall, trying not to bump people in the crowded street with the bulky sack.

“What now?” Alys asked.

“I have to buy some salt, for salting down the fish,” Alinor said, looking around.

“What’s wrong with the salt that we make?”

“I can’t make enough for a barrel of fish,” Alinor said. “And it’s such hard work, stirring the boiling pans and keeping the fire in all day, for such a little result.”

She led the way to the stall where two rough men were shoveling from sacks of salt into smaller bags. “I’ll take two,” Alinor said, and handed over the pennies.

As she took the bags and turned away, Alys said: “There’s the lace maker.”

She was an old lady sitting on her own, on a stool with a piece of cloth spread on the ground before her to show her little pieces of lace. She had a cushion on her knee, and her swollen fingers were busy with the bobbins as the lace grew from the center of the cushion. She pulled out a pin and pressed in another, pricking out the pattern as the bobbins whirled and clicked against each other, as if they were a little army in battle on a snowy field.