Ignoring the bird’s indignant pecks to her cold hands, she lifted all the eggs but one from the nest, and put them carefully in the basket. They were small white eggs, warm from the mother’s breast feathers. Alinor climbed carefully down the ladder and looked upwards to see if another bird was nesting. Four times she moved the ladder and went up and down for eggs, and then she walked carefully back to the house with a dozen eggs in her basket. Mrs. Miller opened the door to her and managed a thin smile.

“I’d have thought you’d have sent Alys to do the work on a cold day like this,” she said. “Too grand for dove eggs now, is she? Now that she’s planning to marry so well? Playing the lady?”

“Oh, no,” Alinor said pleasantly. “But she’s still keeping the ferry for Ned.”

“Who’s going to cross in this cold weather? I hear the river has frozen in London and they’re walking from one side to another. You won’t get any fees if that happens here!”

“It feels cold enough to freeze,” Alinor agreed. “And the freshwater in the rife is frozen hard; but the tide still comes in.”

“And Ned still not home? I’m surprised he has the time and the money to go jauntering off to London.”

“It matters so much to him.”

“None of his business,” Mrs. Miller said sourly.

Alinor smiled. “Certainly, none of mine,” she said.

Mrs. Miller recovered a little good humor, unpacking the eggs from the basket and putting them in the crock. “Aye, I suppose so. You don’t take an interest in it?”

“I’m interested,” Alinor said carefully. “But I don’t take sides.”

“There’s not many that don’t think the king should be punished for his sins,” Mrs. Miller declared. “Making war on his own people! And the taxes! Would you like two eggs for your dinner?”

“Thank you,” Alinor replied, thinking that now there was no handsome stranger and noble party from the Priory, Mrs. Miller had reverted to being an envious roundhead. “Thank you very much for the eggs,” she said.

When she got to the rife, walking companionably with a Sealsea Island farmer’s wife, the ferry was waiting for her.

“Red’s missing,” Alys said as Alinor climbed cautiously aboard, the ferry rocking on the ebbing tide. “He didn’t come out to the pier this morning and he wasn’t in his corner at noon.”

“Yes, I know,” Alinor spoke unguardedly. “Poor Red. I said good-bye to him this morning.”

“You knew the dog would go missing?” the farmer’s wife demanded. “How did you know?”

“She didn’t know,” Alys interrupted rudely. “It’s just an old dog and he was lazy getting up this morning. She didn’t know.”

Alinor looked up, surprised at Alys’s harsh tone.

“Nobody could know such a thing,” Alys ruled.

The farmer’s wife remarked that sometimes she had premonitions herself, and her mother had been a terrible one for dreaming. “And of course your grandma had the sight,” she reminded Alys.