“You can put me down here,” she said breathlessly. “The lad’ll guide me to the cottage.”

Walter pulled up his horse, jumped down, received her into his arms, and set her on her feet.

“Shall I come with you and see if you need me to fetch anything?” Rob offered.

“If Master Walter can spare you,” she said.

“Oh, we do nothing but amuse ourselves now,” Walter said. “Our tutor, Mr. Summer, has gone away and will come back to take me to Cambridge in the Lent term.”

“Gone?” Alinor asked with painful interest. “Is he not coming back before then?”

She realized that she was looking earnestly from one boy to another, that she was far too eager for the reply. Lent was dangerously late for her. She would be nearly six months pregnant by then.

“No,” Walter said lightly. “Not till February.”

“Are you all right, Ma?” Rob asked, looking at her pale face. “Are you ill again?”

“Oh, I have a touch of tertian fever,” she said carelessly. “But I’m well enough to care for a good woman in her time. Will you wait here, Rob, and I’ll send . . .”

“Jem,” he volunteered reluctantly as if he did not want this strange woman and these horsemen, who had appeared from nowhere, to know his name.

“I’ll send Jem back to you, if I need anything. If he doesn’t come within minutes you can go on with your ride.”

“Can we come out in your boat again?” Walter asked. “That was a merry day, wasn’t it?”

She felt her pale face flush warm at the memory. “It was a good day,” she said, keeping her voice level. “But we can’t go out now till the spring. The wind is up, and most days the harbor is too rough for me. And it’s cold. We’ll go again when it is sunny and calm.”

The two young men waited on their horses, as Jem guided Alinor through the narrow ways between the fishermen’s cottages. Each little home had a net shed attached, some had huts thrown up as sail lofts, some of them had lean-to hovels where a man might smoke his catch, or salt down fish in a barrel. Every now and then a straight track served as a rope walk, filled with cords snaking up and down, tied to a post at each end, being woven into three-strand or five-strand ropes. It was a jumble of dwellings. The houses were walled with driftwood and clay, the roofs a patchwork of old sails and nets thatched with dried bladder wrack. The smell of old rotting fish, the brine of the nets and the occasional foul breeze of a burning midden filled the air. Not even the wind from the sea could clear it. Jem led her to one of the better houses, set sideways to the sea, the waves sucking on the pebble beach below, with a little garden hedged with driftwood. It had a good slate roof and a chimney built of brick, and sturdy white-painted walls made from ship’s timbers and mortar.