“Soon you won’t be parted,” she told them.
“And then we’ll never be parted again,” Richard promised.
Alinor was cooking dinner, a fish stew made from Alys’s catch from Broad Rife, when there was a sharp bark from Red, and then a loud knocking on the back door of the ferry-house. Her first thought was of James, but when she threw open the door, it was one of the Sealsea Island famers standing on the stone doorstep.
“It’s my mother,” he said. “Granny Hebden. She’s sinking fast.”
“God bless her,” Alinor said at once.
“We want you to sit with her, and then . . . all the rest.”
“Is she sick?” Alys demanded over her mother’s shoulder. “Does she have a fever?”
“I’ll come,” Alinor said. She said to her daughter: “It’s the wrong time of year for plague, but I’ve got to go and see. She’s an old lady; she’s likely just slipping away.”
“I can’t have you bringing sickness back here,” Alys said stubbornly. “You know why.”
“I wouldn’t risk it for myself,” Alinor replied with a faint smile. “You know why!”
“I’ll get your basket,” Alys said, and while her mother put on a shawl and her cape around her shoulders, the younger woman picked up Alinor’s basket of herbs and oils. “I’ll leave you some of the stew.”
“I mightn’t get back tonight,” Alinor warned. “Shall you go to the Priory and get Rob?”
“Richard will stay with me,” Alys said confidently.
Alinor went out into the darkness. The young man had a horn lantern and he held it before them. As she closed the door, Red slipped through, determined to come with her.
“I’ve got the dog,” Alinor called. With the dog at her heels, her path illuminated by the dipping light, Alinor and the farmer hurried down the track running south. The road was frozen, the ruts were white with frost, the winter moon encircled by a yellow haze in the cloudless sky. They could easily see the way. They went at a brisk pace, their breaths coming in misty puffs, until they reached a gateway and the farmer said: “Here we are,” and guided Alinor through the orchard to the little house.
He opened the door and they went into the hall of the farmhouse. Alinor said, “Wait here, Red,” and the dog lay down on the threshold.
Alinor went towards the fireside where an old lady, bent double with age, shrunk to the size of a child, was seated on a stool beside the fire. The farmer’s wife rose up from her stool on the other side of the stone hearth.
“How is she?” the farmer asked his wife.
“Just the same.”
“Here’s Mrs. Reekie, come to see her.”
“I doubt she’ll know her.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Alinor said gently. “Let me talk to her.”
She knelt on the stone floor before the old woman and waited while the milky eyes turned to her and the old lady smiled. “Oh, Alinor, my dear. Why have they sent for you?”
“Hello, Granny Hebden. They tell me you’re not very well?”
The old lady reached out her hands. “Oh, no, my dear, they’re all wrong, as usual. I’m quite welclass="underline" just dying.”
“Are you?”
“Yes. But I want to go here, at the fireside, warm. I’ve lived in this house for more than eighty years, you know.”
“Have you?” Alinor asked gently. She could see that the old woman had no fever: her face was pale, her hands cool. But her breathing was labored, with a little catch in every pant.
“Or longer. They have no idea.”
“Course they don’t,” Alinor whispered. “I remember coming here with my mother to see you when I was just a little girl.”
“And your grandmother. She brought you when I broke my leg falling from the apple tree. Three generations of wisewomen in your family, and faerie blood, no doubt. Does your daughter have the sight?”
“We don’t speak of it now, in these days.”
A grimace showed what the old lady thought of the mealy-mouthed generation. “Faerie crafts are a great thing to have in the family. But these days—well, nothing’s allowed, is it?”
“The minister must guide us,” Alinor said tactfully.
The old lady shrugged irritably. “What does he know?” she asked. “It’s not as if he’s a proper priest. He doesn’t even read the Mass.”
“Hush, Grandmother.” Alinor gave her the courtesy title for an old woman. “You know, he’s the minister appointed to guide us. And the rest of it is against the law now.”
“I think I can say what I like with my last breath.”
“Does your breath hurt you?” Alinor asked.
“I’ve had something pressing on my belly for years,” the old woman said. “It’s been squeezing the life out of me.”
“Why didn’t you send for me before?”
“What could you have done, my dear?”
Alinor nodded. If the woman had a growth in her belly then nothing could be done. A physician might dare to cut a brave man or woman for a gallstone, a barber surgeon might cut a tongue tie, or slice the gum to pull out a rotting tooth. Alinor herself had once cut a live baby from the belly of a dead woman; but a growth deep in the belly of a living patient was untouchable.
“I could’ve given you something for the pain.”
“I take a little brandy,” the old lady said with simple dignity. “And then sometimes I take a little of the Scots usquebaugh. And sometimes—on bad days—I take them both together.”
Alinor smiled at her. “Would you like some herbs to ease the pain now?”
“I’ll take a little brandy,” she agreed. “In hot water. With your herbs. And you can ask the girl—what’s her name?—if the minister comes out these days, and if there are prayers for the dying, for I think I’m ready.”
“I’ll ask Mrs. Hebden, your daughter-in-law,” Alinor reminded her.
“Yes, that’s her.” The old lady nodded. “Ask her what the minister does for the dying, if he does anything these days? Or if that’s all changed as well?”
Alinor rose to her feet and found that William Hebden was hovering at the scullery door. “She wants some brandy in hot water,” she said.
“We’ve got a little keg of brandy,” he said. “It was a gift. Not bought.”
Alinor understood at once that it was contraband: smuggled brandy. “No matter to me,” she reassured him. “And she wants to know if the minister will come to say the prayers for the dying?”
“Not to the likes of us,” he said shortly. “We’re not grand enough for him. We don’t pay enough in tithes for him to come out to us. The chaplain at the Priory, that Mr. Summer, he’d have come for asking. He came out for free, came twice.”
Alinor flushed scarlet at his name. “Did he?” she asked. She thought that anyone would be able to hear the love in her voice. “Did he go to people for free?”
“He came and prayed with her.” William shifted his feet. “Old prayers,” he said. “Those that she likes. Probably not allowed now. But she was that ill . . .”
“Anyway, Mr. Summer has gone away,” Alinor said.
“Aye. But he left his Prayer Book here. He said she could hold it in her hand if there was no one that could read them. He said to keep it hidden, but she could hold it if it comforted her.”
“Did he?” She was swept by a longing to see anything that had belonged to James.
“He said anyone could read the prayers to her. You’re a midwife, you could say them, couldn’t you? It would be as good as a minister?”
“I can say them,” Alinor offered. “I could read them from his book. It wouldn’t be as good as him, but it’s his prayers.”
She went back to the fireside with some brandy in an earthenware cup, added a tincture of fennel, and topped it up with hot water from the pot that stood on a trivet by the fire.
Greedily, the old lady took it into her hands, wrapping her cold fingers around the cup. “Now,” she said. “Now I’m ready.”