“Sweet dreams,” Alinor said gently, and saw her daughter’s hidden smile.

Alinor twisted her own thick locks in a knot and tucked them under her nightcap, laid her shirt and gown over her stool, and got into bed in her linen shift. They lay side by side in bed together.

“I’m as tired as a dog,” Alys remarked, and fell asleep at once, like a child.

Alinor lay silent, her eyes wide open in the darkness. Perhaps tomorrow he would come back. Or perhaps the day after. Then she too fell asleep.

Just after midnight she started up at the loud knocking on the door. Her first frightened thought was that her husband, Zachary, had come home and was pounding on the door in a drunken rage, as he used to do. Then, as she jumped from the bed and went to the door and shot the bolt, she thought, confused by sleep, that the war had started again and the soldiers for the army, or the cavalry of the king, were knocking down her door. Her last thought, as she threw the door open, was that it was James, come for her; but there, on the doorstep, was Farmer Johnson of Sealsea.

“Thank God you’re here. It’s Peg,” he said shortly. “You must come, Mrs. Reekie. Her time’s come early, I think. We need you at once. I came as fast as I could. Come now! Can you come now?”

At once her dreams and fears vanished. “Farmer Johnson.”

“I’ve got a pillion saddle on my horse waiting for us at Ferry-house. Come! Please come!”

“One moment.” She closed the door on him and in the darkness pulled on her skirt and jacket that were laid on the stool. She found her cap, and pulled it on.

“What is it?” Alys asked sleepily from the bed.

“Mrs. Johnson’s baby, come early,” Alinor said pushing her feet into her boots.

“D’you want me to come with you?”

“No, you go to work in the morning. If it all goes well—God willing—I’ll meet you at gleaning and harvest home. If I’m kept overnight, you stay at Ferry-house.”

Alys nodded in the darkness, turned over, and went back to sleep immediately. Alinor picked up her sack, a box of dried herbs and some bottles from the cupboard, and stepped out into the cool nighttime air. The tide was coming in, seeping over the mud and climbing the bank towards the cottage and the sleeping girl.

“Quickly,” said Farmer Johnson. “What’s the safest way?”

“Follow me,” Alinor told him, and led the way, sure-footed along the top of the bank, the waves lapping in the darkness below them till she could see the ferry-house, her family home, as a dark bulk on the skyline. Her brother, woken by Farmer Johnson’s gallop up the road, held a lantern for the two of them to walk round the front of the house by the dark rife, to the road, and then led the farmer’s horse to the stone mounting block beside the track to Sealsea village.