“But she is not your savior,” Father Paul said quietly as they knelt side by side in the chapel and looked up at the altar where the crucified Christ looked down on them, his painted face downcast. “She is no angel. She is an earthly woman and naturally disposed to sin.”

James bowed his head. He could not deny that she was disposed to sin. He spoke of the afternoon in the boat, he spoke of her desire. He spoke of the color of her hair and how a curl escaped from her cap and blew against her face. He spoke of her scarred hands and her rough linen.

“She was born into poverty, set in her place by God. It is not for you to defy God and rescue her. Did she ask to be baptized into the true faith?”

“No,” James said quietly.

“You have nothing else to offer her.”

His voice low and ashamed, James spoke of the feel of her mouth under his, of the strength of her body under the bulky clothes. He spoke of her smile and her little indrawn breath of desire. He said that when he touched her hand, her waist, her breast, he felt that he was, for the first time, a man. That he became himself, in loving her.

“A woman cannot bring insight,” Father Paul corrected him. “You do not know yourself by knowing her. All she taught you is carnal knowledge, that is all she knows.”

“But that was everything!” James said simply. He did not speak of the loft over the stable, nor of her beauty in the morning light when she had been as naked as Eve and as innocent as Paradise. “I love her, Father. Sin or not.”

“It is sin,” the priest steadily replied. “Don’t call it ‘sin or not,’ as if you had not received instruction, as if God had not given you reason. It is sin and you must put it from you.”

James sat back on his heels, his face pale. “To abandon her would break my word. I have asked her to be my wife.”

“You are not free to ask her.”

“And she was not free to consent,” James conceded. “They speak against her . . .”

“What do they say?”

“Nothing, superstitious nonsense, malice, all malice. Her own husband said she was whore to the faeries,” James tried to laugh. “Ignorant nonsense, that foolish countrypeople—”

His confessor did not laugh with him. “My son, you and I, far away from them, don’t know what they are speaking of. You can’t say that it is nonsense, you don’t know what she has done. We would have to inquire. A witchfinder would have to visit and ask questions. This is very serious. Does she have marks upon her?”

“No!” James was horrified.

“Does she fear the word of God in church, or the works of God, like deep water or high cliffs?”

James hesitated, thinking of her horror of water.