He flushed. “Well, if I have to stay on the island, where can I hide?”

She thought for a moment. “You can lie in my husband’s shed till tomorrow evening,” she offered. “That’s the only place I can think of. It’s not fit. He kept his nets there, and his pots. But he’s been missing for months and nobody ever goes there now. I can bring you food and water in the morning. And when it’s light, perhaps you can go to the Priory, just over there. You could go in the morning privately and ask to see the steward. His lordship’s away from home, but the steward might take you in. I don’t know. I can’t say what they believe. I don’t know.”

He bowed his head in a thanksgiving. “God bless you,” he said. “I think God must have sent you to be my savior.”

“I’ll show you the net shed first, before you bless me for letting you sleep there,” she said. “It’s not for the likes of you. It stinks of old fish.”

“I have nowhere else,” he said simply. “You are my savior. Shall we pray together?”

“No,” she said bluntly. “We’d do best to get you into hiding. I don’t think anyone else will come here at this time of night, but you never know. Some like to think themselves very godly. They might come to pray at dawn.”

“You came here to pray,” he reminded her. “Are you godly? Are you one of the godly believers?”

She flushed at her own lie. “I didn’t really,” she admitted.

“Then for what?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

He ignored her embarrassment, assuming that she had come to meet a lover in some sordid village affair. “Where is the net shed, and your home?”

“At the top of the harbor, near the ferry-house, across the rife from the mill.”

“The rife?”

“Broad Rife,” she said. “The river that flows into the head of the harbor. It moves with the tide, ebbs and flows, but it never runs dry. It’s high now. It’s been such a wet summer, the wadeway’s not been dry for weeks.”

“Your brother’s ferry crosses the rife when the tide is full?”

“And there’s a wadeway at low tide for people to walk across.”

“I would not put you in danger. I can find my own way if you tell me the direction. You don’t need to lead me.”

“You can’t. The harbor’s like a maze of paths and there are deep pools and channels,” she explained. “The sea comes in faster than a trotting horse, and spreads across the land quicker than a man can run. You can get stuck in the mud or cut off on a path, or trapped by water. There are quicksands that you can’t see till your foot sinks beneath you and you can’t draw it out. Only us who were born and bred here ever cross the mire. I’ll have to take you.”

He nodded. “God will bless you for this. He must have sent you to guide me.”