Alinor pulled her shawl over her head again, took the heavy basket, and went back out into the yard.

Richard Stoney, shoveling wheat into the dangling pan of the weighbeam in the barn, caught sight of her through the barn door as she was walking carefully across the frozen yard. “I’ll put down some straw so you don’t slip.” He hurried out to her.

She turned to him, the shawl over her head stiff with frost from her frozen breath. “You can’t,” she said shortly. “They never straw the yard. Only if the cows are coming out.”

“So the cows don’t fall, but you can!” he exclaimed. “Let me give you my arm then.”

She shook her head. “She’ll be watching from the window. Let me do my work, Richard. I won’t freeze and I won’t fall.”

“You’re never going up the ladder!”

Before Alinor could answer, the farmhouse kitchen door opened and Mrs. Miller shouted into the yard, “Richard Stoney, are you weighing grain or taking a stroll?”

“Go on,” said Alinor. “Back to work.”

“Can I come to Ferry-house on my way home? Is Alys well today?” he whispered urgently, as he raised a hand to acknowledge Mrs. Miller.

“She’s well. Of course you can come!” Alinor called, as she walked on towards the dovecot. Inside the circular tower she reached under her sheepskin jacket and rolled up the waistband of her skirt so it was hitched above her knees and she would not stumble on the hem as she went up the ladder.

She put her hands on the rung and looked upwards at the dovecot interior wall. It seemed like a long way up, and the ladder was old and rickety, but she could see a dove sitting on a nest. Alinor moved the ladder to the nesting dove, checked that it was firmly placed, hitched her basket on her arm, and started to climb. Each rung was freezing cold to the touch and slippery with frost. Up and up she went, step by step, not looking down, and paying no attention to the ominous creaking of the old wood. In some part of her mind she thought that a fall and a miscarriage would solve all her problems. Then she smiled to herself as she saw that at the thought of losing her baby she at once took a stronger grip on the ladder, and put her feet carefully on the rungs. She was as committed to her own life, and to the life of her child, as she had been that first cold morning when she had sworn that she would not be a victim of sorrows, but would bring this baby into the world and win a place for it.

There was a dove nesting in the pigeonhole; she did not move as Alinor climbed up within reach. Gently, Alinor put her hand under the warm soft breast. “I’m sorry, Goody Dove,” she said quietly. “But I am sent to get these. You lay more for yourself.”