“I ill-wish no one,” Alinor said rapidly. “And I believe as my lord does. Whatever Sir William thinks right. It’s not for me to judge. I don’t want to judge. I brought him to you, so that you’d do the right thing, Mr. Tudeley. I brought him to you, for you to judge.”

Her pale earnestness reassured him. He got to his feet. “You’ve done very well.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a handful of pennies. He counted out twelve, a shilling in copper, two days’ earnings for a farm laborer like Alys. “This is for you,” he said. “For serving his lordship though you didn’t know, and you still don’t know what he wants. For being a good servant in the deepest of ignorance.” He laughed shortly. “For doing the right thing, though you don’t know what you do, as ignorant as a little bird!”

Alinor could not take her eyes from the pile of coins.

He reached into the drawer and pulled out a purse, opened the drawstrings, and put a small silver coin down beside the pile of pennies. “And look,” he said. “A silver shilling. To buy your silence. You’re a poor woman, but you’re no fool and you’re not a gossip. Not one word of this, Goodwife. It could not be more important. We’re still at war, and nobody knows who the victor will be.

“If anyone speaks of this it will be the worst for you. Not for me—I will deny it and nobody would listen to your word against mine. Not for his lordship, who is not even here. Not for the man who waits by the haystack—he will be far away, as fleet as a hare before the hounds. It will be you that they throw in the water for false faith, for false dealing, for false speaking. It will be you that they say is a spy, a traitor, or at least a gossip. You that they swim in the rife with your skirts dragging you down and the sea coming in. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Alinor croaked, her throat tight with fear. “Pray God it never happens. I swear I’ll say nothing. Yes, sir.”

“So we will say that you came to me today to see if I had work for your boy, and I said the two of you could come and weed the herb garden, pick what needs drying this summer, and tidy the stillroom. And we will pay him and you the usual rate: sixpence a day each. You will spend these pennies carefully, one at a time, and never tell anyone where they have come from, and you will save the shilling and never say it came from me.”

“Yes, sir,” she said again.

He nodded. “And I will forgive you your rent for this quarter.”

He turned the table on its central pivot till the drawer with the letter “R” was before him. He drew out Alinor’s rent book and put a tick beside her name. “There.”