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of her heart, until, suddenly, I didn’t.
    It was Father Clement, newly arrived in the parish, who gently coaxed me from Mother’s side, performed extreme unction, and held me as I wept. It was the good Father who allowed me to see Mother at peace, her body cleaned and wrapped, her face stripped of colour and life, her lips and eyelids forever closed. He’d been so calm, so capable that night. I knew if ever there were a crisis, he would be the one to have by my side. Once the body had been carried to the church, the servants and Father Clement had sat across from each other in the kitchen; the servants quietly weeping, the Father praying. I had stood out of sight in the corner, unable to cry, unable to think or speak. I was like the shadows into which I’d shrunk. Crossing himself, Father Clement raised his head and I was stunned to see tears staining his cheeks; I’d never seen a man cry before. He looked at Saskia and said: ‘Death too often chases birth and triumphs.’ His mouth trembled, but he lifted his eyes to the ceiling. ‘God forgive me,’ he whispered, but we all heard. ‘Why does our dear Lord make even good women pay for the sins of Eve? Surely,’ he dropped his chin and stared into a space over my shoulder, ‘surely, the debt has been repaid in full?’
    I’d never thought about God in terms of debits or credits before. If I had, I’d have believed my gentle, kind Mother would have earned, over and over, a place on earth and an eternal one in heaven. I once would have sworn that God owed her, not the other way around. But not any more. With Mother’s whispered words my eyes had been opened. My mother was as brazen as Adam’s wife and as great a sinner. Reproach coloured my cheeks but also pride that she’d trusted me with the darkest of confidences. I loved my mother with all my heart and I didn’t know how to reconcile what she’d told me with the woman who raised me, the woman I thought I knew. And what about the twins? Were they stained with her sin as well? Blessed Mother Mary knew Tobias was. What did these sweet little babes owe to God? Were they to continue to pay Mother’s debt by being denied her? What had I done to suffer such a loss?
    That night, I burned with hate for God and Eve, the original sinner. I imagined setting fire to the Garden of Eden and watching the Tree of Knowledge flame, wishing what I’d learned could be reduced to ashes and blow away on the winds. Instead, I pushed what I knew into the recesses of my mind and, determined that one day, when the time was right, I would seek the truth. Till then, I would keep what I knew as close to my heart as my mother had.
    All this crawled through the maze of my mind as I listened to Father Clement’s prayer for my father. When he finished, he reluctantly released my hand and administered what succour he could to the household. Cousin Hiske didn’t interfere but quietly thanked him. Later that day, he sat vigil in the church for those whose loved ones had died on the Cathaline . I attended briefly, offering words of consolation and receiving them. This wasn’t just our loss, but the entire town’s. That the ship bore my mother’s name made it all the more painful. Guilt attended my every word as if, somehow, I was responsible for these good people’s pain. But it was my father who’d christened the ship. Returning home after Mother died to find he had two more mouths to feed (as he put it) and no wife, he’d spoken to Lord Rainford and, within months, another ship was added to Father’s small fleet. Father chose to name it after his dead wife. If anyone thought the gesture ill-omened, they hadn’t spoken out … not then.
    In my mind, life was divided into two parts: before Mother died and after. There was another schism too, but I would only admit it in moments of weakness: before the secret and after. Between both was