What do you mean, Ffion?” Brighida asked, still full of good cheer from the pleasant evening. She filled cups with ale, then pulled out a chair for Ffion, took a long drink of her own ale, and sat at the table next to her. “Do you know about these two?”

Ffion took a long swallow and gave Brighida an appreciative smile. “You’ve a good alewife!” She wiped her lips with the corner of her apron. “Know about them? We all do out there. There’s a difference in age between them, but they’re like this.” She held up a hand with the first two fingers pressed tightly together. “From the day Tinker turned up in Aldestowe, just a boy, they were of one mind. Wherever we saw Michael, we could count on seeing Tinker as well.”

“But Tinker was born here,” Brighida said. “His father is the carter. Tinker lived in our village until after his father married Jenifer. Jenifer Gough. Michael Gough’s sister.” Having finished her ale, she refilled her cup, her eyes now bright and riveted to Ffion’s. “How did Tinker come to live in Aldestowe?”

She pronounced it Aldeshtowe. I wondered how much she had drunk at the Caerlins’ that night.

“Why, ’twas Michael’s mother herself, Agnes Gough, who brought him there after Jenifer married the carter. Seems that marriage enraged Agnes. Didn’t she talk as if she hated her own daughter.” Ffion finished her ale and held out her cup for more. When I had filled it, she took a long drink and went on. “Tinker couldn’t abide Jenifer either. It’s said that after his father married Jenifer, Tinker took his hatred of her out on animals. Rabbits, lambs—” She winced. “I can’t speak of it. But from what you told us, lady, you know it’s true.”

“Why, though, would Agnes take him in?” I asked. “He wasn’t her blood kin, and he was naught but trouble.”

“I believe Agnes saw something of herself in the boy. They might not have been kin, but they were kindred spirits, you might say. They both hated everything and everyone but themselves.” She took another long swallow. “Tinker was naught but a boy. No older than Kaatje was he when they met. ’Twas springtime. Beltane. She was to be crowned Queen of the May.” She took another sip of ale. “Sixteen years old that very day—the first of May.”

“My natal day is also the first of May,” Brighida said.

“Brighida wasn’t the May Queen,” I put in, “but she walked alongside Vivienne Penneck, Tinker’s half-sister, in the May Day procession the day she turned ten.”

Ffion drank the last drops from her cup, looked inside it, and set it aside.

Brighida filled it with mead, then filled her own cup to the brim and took a deep swallow. “Do you remember all the dancing that day, Megge?”

“I remember not dancing after Agnes Gough pinched Vivienne’s arm and made her keep us out of the dance.”

“She must have realized that Vivienne and I were,” Brighida leaned toward Ffion, eyes wide, and whispered the word, “related.”

Why is she saying this? I wondered. How much mead has she drunk?

Nodding now, eyebrows raised, she reached for her cup. I slid it away.

“How old are you now?” Ffion asked.

“She’s sixteen,” I said and motioned for Brighida to be silent.

“Six years ago. Tinker would have been in Aldestowe for . . . four years by then.” Ffion nodded slowly, the ale and mead no longer seeming to dull her eyes. She looked closely at Brighida. “’Twas about that time that Agnes began to repeat what Tinker had always said. That it was Claris’s fault that his father had been cuckolded. But Agnes went further.”

I watched Brighida’s cheeks go pale.

“Just what did she say?” she asked slowly.

“She said that your mother was . . .” Ffion winced. “I cannot say the word.”

“What did she call her?” Brighida leaned forward, her eyes dull but nonetheless steady on Ffion’s.

“You needn’t say more about this,” I said to Ffion. I pushed back my chair and reached for Brighida’s arm.

She shook me off and breathed the words, “A whore.”

“Aye.” Ffion let the word hang for a moment. “’Twas a terrible thing to say. And she lost what few friends she had, I’ll tell you, for saying it. For don’t we all hold the women of Bury Down in the highest regard.”

She sat back and looked at both of us, her face tight with indignation. “But not long after that, Tinker seemed to go mad. He yoked himself to Michael, and the three of them all swore vengeance against Claris: Michael and Tinker with their campaigns against your family, and Agnes at her cauldron, stirring the pot.”

Tinker, Michael, and Agnes Gough. An unholy threesome, I thought.

“I’ve long wondered how Tinker and Michael had come together against us,” I said. “We knew that Tinker had blamed Claris for what he called ‘her part’ in cuckolding his father.”

Ffion shook her hand. “I never believed it. What part could she have played?”

I wanted to tell her the truth. She knew so much already; perhaps she knew even more. But this was not for me to reveal.

I looked to Brighida. She nodded.

“You see, Ffion,” I began, “as a young woman, Claris had been in love with Michael Gough and he with her, or so she believed. At the same time, Michael’s sister, Jenifer, loved a young carpenter called Gregory Carver, and it seemed he loved her too.” I waited until Ffion nodded understanding. “But Claris’s grandmother, Gytha, explained to Claris that Michael did not love her. He wanted to wed her for . . . for her power. He only wanted the power of Bury Down. So, Gytha forbade Claris’s union with Michael and quickly negotiated with Gregory’s father a marriage agreement between Claris and Gregory.

Brighida interrupted. “My mother and Gregory were quickly wed; but by that time, Jenifer was already carrying Gregory’s child.”

“Ah.” Ffion sat back and nodded. “She needed a husband, so she married the carter.”

“Making Mister Penneck,” Brighida concluded, “in his son’s eyes, at least, a cuckold.”

So silent that I had forgotten he was there, Alf pushed himself off the door jamb he had been leaning on. Keeping his gaze on me and struggling, it seemed, to make sense of this, he pulled out a stool and sat next to me at the table. Ffion filled his cup.

He looked at her. “Does everyone in Aldestowe know of this?”

“Oh, not this,” Ffion said. “Even I never knew that Michael had ever loved—anyone. But from Aldestowe to Tintagel, and likely beyond, people all along the coast have heard Tinker rage against Claris, Jenifer, and his father, The Cuckold. For years.”

“And no one warned us?” I stood and stared at her. “Having heard him rage against my aunt, no one warned us? Not even when Jenifer and her daughters were burned at the stake, or when my mother was burned alive in her hut?”

Ffion put up her hands as if to fend off an attack.

“We live in a secluded place, lady. We knew naught of those terrible deaths until, as Kaatje told you, the earl’s men came searching for Michael.” She jerked her head toward Martyn. “’Twas Martyn and Hugh who told us. We all knew of Claris, the kind, wise seer of Bury Down, so we had never believed Tinker’s tales. And by the time Martyn and Hugh and the others came looking for them, Tinker, Michael, and a handful of other men from Aldestowe were gone. We’ve seen naught of them . . . until today.”

She lowered her hands and regarded me with an expression of pity mingled with awe. “We all know of the women of Bury Down. Why, don’t we all, out on the cliffs, know the tale of Murga, who summoned our own huntress, Anwen, to Bury Down to protect her apprentice and preserve her writings?”

I sat back down. “That was nearly a thousand years ago, Ffion.”

“Aye, lady, but the blink of an eye to one such as me. To many of us out there.” She pulled her chair closer to mine. “Anwen returned to the cliffs with Murga’s writings and tried to put an end to a terrible thing—the Sisterhood. Do you know of it?”

Brighida and I nodded, then sat very still and listened.

“She said we’d never bring back the great healer—the goddess they called the Lady of the Cliffs—by killing young virgins. She said that the goddess would return only when she deemed the time had come.” She leaned forward and looked from Brighida to me. “Ah, but it’s an ancient place and doesn’t change with time. The old ways are ever with us.” She looked at Martyn and then at Alf. “It’s the nearness of the sea, I suppose, that keeps the old ways alive. The north winds bring the new—new people, new notions—but the pounding surf pulses through us, and the sea breeze whispers of all that was.” Her voice, now dreamy, faded away.

“And did she, Ffion?” I asked. “Did Anwen put an end to the Sisterhood?”

“No.” Ffion shook her head sadly. “That’s why that May Day I was telling you about—the feast of Beltane, when Kaatje turned sixteen—was so hard for me. It’s why I took such pains to raise her spirits. To bring some color into that pale, pale face. It’s why I wept silent tears for that beautiful May Queen.”

“Why, Ffion?” I leaned closer.

“You see, on Beltane, the eldest virgin Sister is crowned Queen. Six months later, at Samhain, she gives herself up to bring back the goddess.”

“What does that mean?” Alf looked from Ffion to me and Brighida. “She ‘gives herself up’?”

“She gives up her life.” Ffion looked at each of us in turn. “And that year, Kaatje was the eldest virgin.”

We all went silent for a time.

“But Tinker Penneck changed that.” A wry smile brought a dimple to her cheek. “I saw it the moment their eyes met. Kaatje was standing at the head of the procession of six young girls, and Tinker stood at Agnes’s side. Agnes whispered something to him and then pointed to her daughter,” she paused, watching us now, “the May Queen.”

“Hold, Ffion.” I leaned forward, mouth agape. “Kaatje is Agnes Gough’s daughter?”

“Michael’s sister?” A shadow crossed Brighida’s face as she frowned and murmured to herself.

“She was more my daughter than ever she was hers,” Ffion muttered.

“But if Agnes was her mother—”

“Agnes gave birth to Kaatje,” Ffion said. “That—only that—made her Kaatje’s mother. And though I did my best to comfort the child, to give her what her mother could not, she felt the snub. She suffered from the neglect. But I don’t suppose you could find it in yourselves to pity her, for none of you would know what it is to be estranged from your own mother.”

That dagger pierced my breastbone. I thought of the years I had spent at Morwen’s side rather than at my own mother’s.

“But Kaatje knew. By the time she was crowned Queen of the May, why, she scarcely knew her mother. And her brother, Michael? A stranger. A grown man he was when she was born. At sixteen, she didn’t know him. And today? She’d see him hang.”

“You said that Agnes pointed Kaatje out to Tinker,” Martyn prompted. “At the May Day fair.”

“Aye. Wasn’t I watching them both that day. Kaatje noticed her mother pointing at her, and she quickly looked away. When she did, her gaze landed squarely on Tinker. The two of them locked eyes and—it was there for all to see—they fell under the spell of Beltane. By the next morning, Kaatje was no longer a virgin.” Ffion slapped the table and picked up her cup. “The priestess held her Samhain rite six months later, but without Kaatje. For in the eyes of the Sisterhood, Kaatje, by that time large with Tinker’s child, was well and truly wed.”