“I’ve got a bite!” Rob said suddenly. He pulled up his line and there was a writhing shiny-scaled mackerel. Confidently, he unhooked it and dropped it into the woven reed basket in the bottom of the boat.

“Is that what they look like?” Walter demanded, peering in. “I’ve only ever seen them cooked.”

“There’s bound to be more,” Alinor assured him. “They travel together, like scoundrels. Bob your line up and down, Master Walter.”

James watched her as she feathered her oar to keep the boat steady, copying her, so the push of the inflowing water did not force them into the deep channel that ran towards the ferry-house.

“Now you can see my brother’s ferry,” she said, nodding towards the channel before them and the big raft moored before the ferry-house. “And farther up the channel, inland, is the wadeway. It’s underwater now so you can only see the cobbled bank that runs down to it.”

He saw the swirl and rush as the river flowing out past the ferry-house met the incoming sea.

“Is it very deep?”

“It rises more than six feet, and it’s fast. Everyone can cross at the lowest point, and people drive or ride. But everyone takes the ferry at high tide, or goes all the way round inland. You have to take the horses from the traces and take them across on the ferry and then take the coach across separately, so it’s a lot of work.”

“I’m surprised his lordship does not build a bridge.”

She shook her head and a lock of golden hair fell from the modest cap. “There’s no good ground for building,” she said. “It’s all sand till you get to the tide mill quay. And the mire moves in every storm. The wadeway gets washed away every spring tide, or in the winter storms. Master Walter’s father spends all his time rebuilding it, doesn’t he, sir? We’d never keep a bridge up. It’s all sand and silt.”

“So your brother is the gatekeeper to the entrance to the island?” James remarked. “Like a porter on a drawbridge to a castle.”

She smiled. “Yes. And our father before him, and his father before him.”

“Since when?”

“Since the Flood, I suppose,” she said irreverently, and then exclaimed: “Oh! Excuse me . . .”

“You don’t offend me,” he laughed. “I’m honored to be rowed by a daughter of Noah.”

“I think I’ve got one!” Walter exclaimed. “Like a pull?”

“That’s it,” Alinor confirmed. “Pull it out gently, gently, and swing it into the boat.”

He pulled too hard and the fish came flying out of the water, swinging into Alinor’s face.

“Watch out!” Father James said, catching the line and holding it away from her as the boy reached out to take the fish, and then flinched, as it writhed on the hook.

“I can’t . . .”

“If you want to eat it, you take hold of it,” Alinor advised him.

The tutor laughed. “She’s right. Take hold of it, Walter, and unhook it.”