“Does she have a familiar, an animal that communes with her?”

He thought of the hens that clucked around her feet and slept in the corner of the little cottage, of Red the dog, of the bees, of the robin in her garden: “But this is her life . . .”

“Is her husband not likely to know better than you, who has been seduced by her? What if she is beautiful because Satan has thrown a glamour on her? What if she makes spells as well as physic? You told me that she expected to speak with the dead? What if this is not a helpless poor woman but an evil one?”

TIDELANDS, OCTOBER, 1648

Alys woke to the familiar sound of the small ale being poured from the jug and the scrape of the wooden spoon in the bottom of the iron pot of gruel. She got up from the bed and pushed her tumbled hair out of her eyes, pulling on her shirt over her head, and stepping into her skirt, haphazard, without looking.

Alinor pulled up her stool at the table and bowed her head in grace as Alys sat down at the other side and said: “Amen.”

They ate in silence and then Alys got to her feet and fetched the comb for her hair. Without speaking she handed it to her mother and sat at her feet as if she were a little girl again. Alinor gently unbraided her daughter’s long fair hair and combed it, gently teasing out every tangle and picking out the occasional twig or piece of straw.

“What on earth have you been doing?” she asked as she tossed a leaf into the fire.

“Picking sloes,” Alys replied. “Since Mrs. Miller learned that Richard and I are to be married, she sends me out over the fields. As if she can stop us seeing each other! As if she gets any gain by putting me to humble work.”

Alinor combed the golden sweep of hair, watching the light fall on the thick waves, and then started to plait, starting from the front, so that it coiled around Alys’s pretty head.

“Have you decided?” Alys asked quietly, looking up trustingly into her mother’s face. “I came home early to help you, and Uncle told me you’d been called to East Beach. But I’ve told Mrs. Miller I was ill. She won’t expect me today. I can stay home today and help you be rid of this.”

“I have decided what to do.” Alinor drew a breath and told her. “It came to me yesterday almost like a vision, Alys, when I delivered Lisa Auster’s baby. I held her in my arms. She was no bigger than a kitten, and I saw how precious she was, such a miracle. Everything about her was perfect; she was a tiny person, her little eyelashes and her nails as small as the smallest shells on Wittering beach, and her eyes were dark blue, like yours were when you were born. I could see the light of the world in her. I can’t destroy such a perfect thing, Alys. It would be like breaking a blackbird’s egg. I understood what is sacred, for the first time in my life. This baby has come to me when I thought I would never have another. And I won’t kill it.”