Ned was felling an old apple tree in the garden at the rear of Ferry-house. The trunk was wide and knotted, and Ned had sharpened his axe and stripped to the waist to swing, and then hammer in the wedges so the spreading boughs fell away from the house. He raised his hand to Alinor as she came around the house and into the back door of the dairy.

“The copper’s boiling in the laundry room for you,” he called to her.

“Thank you!” she shouted back and went into the dairy.

The room was freezing cold, and the floor still damp from washing. Alinor poured one pail of milk and then another into the wooden trough, and then went to and fro from the laundry with earthenware jugs filled with boiling water from the copper. She put the jugs among the milk until it was warmed through, and then poured in a small measure of rennet. Outside, she could hear the regular thud of the blade into the wood and the occasional pause when Ned rested on the handle and drew a breath.

Slowly, the warmed milk was splitting into curds and whey, solidifying. Alinor took down a seashell, one of the cleaned clam shells that her mother had always used to test the thickness of the curds and whey. She spun it on the surface, and when it was steady, she rolled up her sleeves and drew her hands, her fingers outstretched like claws, through the thickening mixture. The curds were growing solid. It was time to drain them.

The stink of the milk and rennet turned Alinor’s stomach and she opened the dairy door to take a few breaths of cold air at the doorway. Red, the dog, sat up and looked hopeful that he might get into the dairy and steal cream.

“You sick?” Ned shouted from the yard. “Sick again? You’re white as whey!”

“I’m fine,” Alinor lied, and went back to her work.

From the front of the house she could hear the clang of the metal bar against the hanging horseshoe as a traveler on the far side of the rife summoned the ferry.

“Alinor, can you do it?” Ned asked her, gesturing at his nakedness, and the tree half felled. “It’s low tide. It’s dead calm.”

Alinor shook her head. “Forgive me, Brother,” she said. “You know I can’t.”

“You’re like a cat agauwed of water,” he complained, pulling his shirt over his head. “And you should be like a ship’s cat that learns to keep itself dry but can go to sea.”

“I’m sorry,” Alinor repeated. “But I stink of whey.”

Ned went round the house to the rife, Red at his heels, and Alinor could not resist trailing after him to see the traveler. She saw a saddle horse on the far side, and a man standing beside it. Alinor’s hand went to her belly, her other hand felt her speeding heart. But even as she breathed James’s name, she saw it was not him. It was an itinerant preacher in a shabby cloak, with a weary old horse that James would never ride—a godly man come to encourage the puritans of Sealsea Island. Silently, she turned and went back to the dairy. She did not allow herself to feel disappointment. She knew he would come when he could. She trusted him to come to her.