25

The next morning, we set off with the risen sun behind us. It was a wrench saying goodbye to the Songbird and her crew, yet as much as I was tempted by Maira’s offer, I was still resolved to help Susannah and Bea. There was also the small fact of my own dear family who I was eager as anything to see again.

The horse, whom Susannah named Blaze on account of the white stripe on her face, came with us. We’d tried to turn her loose, but she followed us down the lane, so in the end Maira fashioned a halter from rope and begged us to take her.

‘What use have we for a horse on a ship?’ she said, which was a fair point.

Susannah wanted to ride Blaze, but I preferred to walk. It was a good arrangement for it meant we could both keep an eye out for anyone who might be following us or acting suspiciously. Despite the odd knee-deep stretch of lying water or thick mud, there was no need for anyone – girl or horse – to swim.

Bea, secure in a new sling across Susannah’s chest, loved it up on Blaze, and was talking and pointing at everything we passed. I felt in reasonable spirits too. Mother’s parcel had been safely returned to me and was tucked inside my shirt. And this morning’s brisk walk was so much easier in sailor’s breeches.

After another few miles with no sign of Dr Blood, my mind drifted to Jem, Mother and Abigail, and how much I’d missed them all. I couldn’t wait for them to meet Susannah and Bea, and I hoped they’d find a use for Blaze. Meanwhile, Susannah had gone very quiet.

In the end, I asked her what was wrong.

‘It’s your poor family I’m worried about,’ Susannah replied. ‘How can you be sure they’ve not been flooded when so many have?’

I explained that Fair Maidens Lane was sheltered from the sea by a steep hill.

‘The flood mightn’t have even reached them,’ I tried to assure her. ‘And if it did, it probably hasn’t done too much damage.’

We walked on. The heavy silence still hung over her, making me think the matter wasn’t closed. She’d also insisted on bringing Ellen’s gowns to return, and carried them in a bundle on her hip, which she’d started fidgeting with. Eventually, the bundle slid to the ground.

‘Shall I carry it?’ I offered.

‘I have to tell you something!’ she burst out.

I stopped and looked up at her.

‘When I sewed Ellen’s dress last night … the needle and thread … it happened again.’

‘Oh mercy!’ I muttered. ‘What was it this time?’

‘Terrible things happening to you, Fortune,’ she cried. ‘Something to do with water and drowning.’

But that couldn’t be right, could it? After what Maira had told me last night, then surely this was one prediction that wouldn’t come true.

‘Why are you smiling?’ Susannah said crossly.

I squeezed her dangling foot. ‘Because it’s all right, nothing bad will happen to me, I promise. Maira told me—’

‘Told you what?’

‘That parcel of mine she took? It was a caul. I was born with it covering my head.’

She blinked in surprise. ‘Oh, which means you’ll never drown, and you’ll bring good luck to sailors, isn’t that right?’

‘Something like that.’ I nodded. ‘So forget what your needle and thread told you. It won’t happen.’

‘I’m not a witch then, despite what Dr Blood might think?’

‘I don’t care what he thinks: do you?’

Susannah wiped her face. Shook her head. After a moment, she said, ‘What is a witch, anyway?’

I thought about it.

‘A clever woman,’ I decided, ‘who knows her own mind.’

‘You don’t believe it’s about magic?’

I shrugged. ‘Maybe. But doesn’t everyone have a bit of strangeness in them? Imagine how dull life would be if we could explain every single little thing.’

‘Yaaaaaa!’ said Bea, who agreed.

*

As the road took us further inland, we passed farmsteads where people were sweeping the last of the water out of their yards. Animals were feeding, a man was fixing a gate, two women were beating a carpet hung on a line. On the banks of the lanes, the first snowdrops were trying to appear. It could have been any winter’s day here in Somerset, and was all heartening evidence that normal life was returning.

Better still was when we reached a fork in the road. There on the milestone was the name of Nether Stowey, our nearest town. On recognising the symbols, I could’ve cried for joy.

We were only four sweet, easy miles from Fair Maidens Lane. We’d be home in less than a couple of hours.

I began to tell Susannah about my family – how Jem snored though insisted he didn’t, and that Mother made the most delicious oatcakes on the griddle over the fire.

‘You’ll find Abigail …’ I searched for the word, ‘disapproving, sometimes.’

Susannah listened closely, taking it all in.

Before long we were on the same road I’d travelled with Mother that night in December. It ran straight as a table’s edge, with banks of willow trees on either side: beyond it, the fields still lay underwater. Whether that was the result of the big flood or the usual winter rains I couldn’t tell, only that the ice had now gone, and the wind rippled across the surface, making the water dance like a little sea.

Everything was recognisable yet different: maybe I was too. I wondered what my family would think when they saw me. Would Jem say I’d grown? Would Mother and Abigail tut at my sailor’s clothes? Would they fall in love with Bea, as I had done? And what of Susannah? In a hamlet of strong-minded women, I hoped she’d find a way to fit in.

*

The town was busy when we reached it. It was market day, though there didn’t seem to be much selling going on. Most of the fare laid out on stalls looked pretty meagre – old turnips, sacks of damp flour, a few scrawny chickens, powder-dry herbs. The snowdrops might be coming up, but it would take weeks – maybe months – before the land recovered fully. That was the reality. In our family, Jem and Abigail were both big eaters and I dearly hoped they were managing all right.

Past the church, we joined the main street, which was choked with farm carts and knots of people gathered on the roadside to talk. It wasn’t anything unusual for a market day, where gossip was just something else to trade. It was when we stopped at the water trough for Blaze to drink that I overheard a man mention the king.

‘He’ll arrive from London in a couple of days, roads permitting,’ the man said.

‘Wants to see the flood damage, does he?’ replied the woman he was talking to. ‘He could come and stay at my house – if I still had one.’

Her friend laughed bitterly. ‘’Tis why there’s nothing decent on sale today. It’s all been kept back to feed King James.’

A dairymaid, carrying a yoke across her shoulders, agreed it was. ‘We had to save our best cheeses, and stamp our fresh butter with the royal crest.’

‘If we don’t make him welcome, it’s treason. That’s the law,’ the woman with no house pointed out.

These people looked unimpressed.

‘Who’s invited his Royal Highness?’ someone else asked.

‘That Dr Blood, the tooth-barber from Glastonbury,’ the man said. ‘The king wants justice, so he does, for those who’ve suffered from this flood.’

All the fear I’d felt yesterday came rushing back. Of course Dr Blood was involved – he was the local magistrate – and this sounded very like the plan I’d heard him speaking about on Twelfth Night.

‘So he’s putting the sea on trial, is he?’ the woman said.

‘No, mistress,’ the man answered. ‘They’re saying it’s all the work of a cunning woman. Dr Blood’s summoned a man from Essex – Mr Hopkins he’s called – who’s got a reputation for sniffing them out.’

The woman frowned. ‘Sniffing what out? Cunning?’

‘Witches.’

Susannah gave me a warning nudge with her foot.

‘That’s enough water, guzzle guts,’ I said, pulling up Blaze’s head.

As we hurried away, neither of us dared say a word.