A settling came over me. Peace, I thought. For the first time in my life, I felt at peace.

I touched my font not in farewell, but in promise. There will once more be a healer here on these cliffs.

“Meg!”

Careful not to drop my books in the water that now lapped at the cave floor, I walked out into the sunlight and then waded through shin-deep water toward Alf and Martyn, who beckoned me to a rowboat tethered to a rock by a long rope attached to the bow. Ffion sat on one of the seats with Amice on her lap and that woolsack between her feet.

Ffion looked in the direction of my gaze. “Your belongings, lady. And a few of mine. I’ve left the rest behind for the friends who have provided for us these past days. The manor lord will see to the hut. Amice and I will need new clothes, but if you’ll allow the use of your spinning wheel and loom, Kaatje, Britlen, and I will make all the clothes any of us could ever need.”

“Britlen?”

“A fine nettle spinner,” she said as she moved over to make room for me. “Such clever, nimble hands. A fine apprentice she’d be for Brighida, I’m thinking. But let me warn you—once Brighida’s taught her how to spin fleece, it’ll be all she can do to keep the girl away from her wheel. And all we can do to weave all the beautiful thread she’ll make.”

Alf took my books so Martyn could help me into the boat. “What’s that on your face?” he asked as I leaned forward to hand them over.

I brushed my hand over my face then looked at my finger. No blood, no dirt. “Where? What does it look like?”

“This spot?” Martyn leaned close and touched my left cheek. “It looks like . . . like a stain from a drop of mulberry juice.”

“A stain?” I stepped into the boat and lowered myself onto the seat beside Ffion and Amice.

“Aye.” Alf bent down and squinted at it. “A stain shaped like a tiny eye.”

“Move away, please.” Ffion brushed Alf away and turned my face to her. “Martyn told me you climbed up that bluff as swiftly as ever Alf could. No doubt you scratched yourself on a stinging nettle. Let me have a look.”

When Alf and Martyn leaned nearer, intent on that mark, Ffion gave them a stern look I had only ever seen on Mother’s face. “Go on now, you two. Haven’t you something to do to this boat? Or are we to sit here on the beach all night?”

Alf laid my books in my lap and went around to the back of the boat with Martyn.

Ffion took my face in her hands and turned it from side to side.

“I was wrong,” she said. “’Tisn’t a nettle scratch.” Her tone went low and reverent. “It’s the true mark of the goddess Atropos, the Lady of the Cliffs.”

I stroked my cheek just under my left eye.

“Anwen spoke the truth,” Ffion said.

“Anwen?”

“Aye, when she taught that the Lady of the Cliffs—that you, lady—would return when you deemed the time had come.”

I could never explain all I now knew: that though I shared the lady’s spirit, I was, in this life, not the Lady of the Cliffs but Megge, now the Lady of Bury Down, as she had known me from the very first.

“Alf told me what happened in the tower, lady,” Ffion said quietly. “Agnes Gough. Imagine.” She shook her head slowly. “I never dreamed even she could do such a thing.” She brought her hands to her face and covered her eyes. “Taking girls. Torturing and murdering them. In your name. For that son of hers.”

“They called her a priestess, Ffion.” I looked at her steadily. “Had she once been willing to sacrifice even Kaatje, her own daughter?”

“Oh, no, lady.” Ffion shook her head fast and looked at me. “She wasn’t the priestess in those days. There was another. It was a true Sisterhood back then, with novices and rites and festivals. It must be that once the Sisterhood died out after all those girls followed Kaatje’s example, Agnes secretly stepped into the role of priestess. But she never had true novices, not to my knowledge or anyone else’s in the settlement. We all simply believed the old church haunted. I’d wager now that she and Tinker have been taking girls and hiding them in that tower for some time.”

We both looked down at Amice. She nodded solemnly.

I put my arm around her and spoke quietly. “One day, Amice, you may want to tell us. But though I hope you will, I shall never ask. And I shall never allow the Sisterhood to rise again. Never will there be another priestess.” I looked now at Ffion. “Though there will be a healer here. You’ve my word.”

“Meg, look,” Alf shouted and pointed beyond the cove to the great ship standing at anchor. Hugh waved from the ship’s bow.

“Tell me, Alf,” I asked as I waved back. “Why did you journey by ship rather than horseback?”

“We were making ready to travel on horseback, but when Tinker told Neville we’d find Gough in one of the caves in The Sorrows, and that we’d have to approach by sea if we were to take him unawares, Earl Edmund gave us his own ship and crew.”

“But this cove is dotted with caves. How did you know which to search in?”

“Do you recall my dream?” he asked. “The one in which I am standing aboard a ship awaiting the signal to make ready for battle?”

“Yes . . .”

“It happened just that way. As we neared the cove, Hugh stood at the bow searching the coast, muttering, “Where is he? Where is he?” All at once he seemed to be listening, straining to hear something over the rush of the waves. And then he nodded. He spoke to the captain while pointing to this very cave. And then he told Martyn, Neville, and me to make ready. He raised his arm, and the moment they dropped anchor, he ordered us to lower the rowboats.”

Alf looked to the ship, where Hugh stood gazing toward the cliffs, then turned back to me. “I know what happened, Meg. You sent him a dream. You showed him the cave.”

Neville joined Hugh at the bow, and both men waved to us. Amice stood on the seat and waved back, then brought her uninjured hand to her mouth and tried to whistle but blew out only air. Laughing, Alf put his fingers to his mouth and blew a high, wavering salute.

“Onward, then,” he shouted, smiling at Amice, “not stopping until we reach Lostwithiel!”

There’ll be a trial, Hugh had said. I remembered the note of resignation in his voice as he added, But it’ll take time.

Time, I thought.

Months, he had said.

The blacksmith wouldn’t live long enough to see the gallows, I knew. This man, who had never served another in his life, and who had murdered those who had—not at the urging of the unstill spirit, but to cure a disease which his victims themselves would have helped him endure—would never live to face punishment. Why, I thought, he would have died at his own hand this very day, when the tide had turned, had I not come upon him.

But now he’s headed for the gaol. I tried to summon vindication by imagining the dank cell that awaited him. The chains that would bind him to a stone wall as he struggled to breathe through his last horrific weeks of life.

But vindication would not come. Letting him rot in a gaol cell would be . . .

A waste, I decided. It would be a waste to allow the blacksmith, who had deprived an entire village of their healers, to languish in the earl’s gaol when he could be making recompense.

“We’ll stop once, Alf,” I said.

“Oh?” Martyn, poised to at the bow to loose the boat, straightened and looked at me. “Where?”

“The village. You can take Agnes on to Lostwithiel, where she can share a cell with Tinker for all I care. His crimes have earned him a swift trip to the gallows. Agnes may join him there, but there are . . . circumstances. Brighida and I shall counsel the earl before he decides her fate.”

“And Michael?” Ffion asked.

“I’ll see to the blacksmith,” I said. “We’ll take him to a house I’ve heard of just outside the village.”

Alf sucked in his breath. “The lazar house.”

Yes, I thought. The lazar house, where Michael Gough, who would never hang for his crimes, would make restitution. He would provide the village with a healer.

By working at Brother James’s side to tend this man, and by seeking Mother’s guidance from the ether, I would learn all I needed to know about this dread disease. From the blacksmith I would learn how it came on, how it worsened, and which remedies brought relief. From Brother James, how to tend a lazar’s wounds. And from Mother, the secret draughts and incantations that would relieve pain—and the ones that would ease the lazars’ way when the pain could no longer be stemmed and death was at hand.

Never could the blacksmith undo the sin of fornication. Nor would I—nor anyone—have desired such an end, for that sin had brought Brighida to this life. And never would he be cured. But for serving those he had wronged by restoring to the village a healer, the blacksmith would be spared the slow, unutterably painful death he otherwise faced.

He will not have gone to the gallows for his crimes, I thought, but he will have made amends.

Martyn studied my face for a long moment and then nodded.

“Alf,” he shouted. “Let’s be off!”

Alf waded around to the bow and helped Martyn shove the boat into hip-deep water. And then, as one, they climbed aboard, picked up the oars, and rowed us out to the earl’s great ship and the journey that awaited us beyond The Sorrows Cove.

END