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for a moment, and then, because she is young and the music has started again, I can see that she has forgotten all about it. In some discomfort, I feel the yellow coins are working loose inside my stays, and slide about.
    I tell her to take care and she takes no notice, but how could she know exactly what I mean? She is twelve years old, and has pronounced that she will not lie with any man till she is three-and-twenty. She thinks that I have drunk too much, no doubt, and am leaving because of it.
    I see my bootlace is untied. And, as I bend to tie it up, the coins slither in my stays and to my horror one bright round of gold tips out and falls spinning on the chaffy floor. Quick as a flash I snatch it up and push it back into my bosom.
    “Lucky find, Miss Agnes Trussel!” John Glincy’s voice booms in my ear. I clap my hand to my chest.
    “Don’t creep about like that,” I shout guiltily. My breath feels unnatural. “Sixpence, it was a sixpence and no more than that, none of your business.”
    “I’d say that it could well be my business what you keep in there. Nice and cozy, I’d say. Nice place for a good little sixpence to nuzzle up. And one so shiny. Any room left over?” He tries to bend into my neck. God, how he smells of liquor. I push his head away and wish that he would leave me be. Could he see the glint of metal of the coins against my skin? Surely not. John Glincy mistakes the grimace on my face for a smile.
    “You should ease up more, Agnes Trussel,” he slurs, encouraged by this. “I’ll show you how.” His hand sidles around my waist and he tries to pull me to him, so that I stagger.
    “Don’t touch me,” I hiss, looking about. I pray that no one sees him groping me like that.
    “Well, well, you are a bashful maid today, not like I have seen you be, with your legs spreading for me so readily,” he says. “Weren’t so bashful then.”
    “I’m warning you, John Glincy, get your hands off,” I say, and wrench myself free. Why can’t he just let me alone? His leery face is undeterred.
    “I wish you would drop down dead,” I say.
    God help me if I stay and my belly swells so that it is clear what my trouble is. They will make me swear the father before the parish men, and if I comply they will force John Glincy to marry me so that I and my unwanted bastard child will not prove a burden of charity upon the parish. If I keep my mouth shut tight and do not say they may find out anyway, as he will know, and besides the shame upon my family would be too much to bear. But I will not be made wife to that man. Not if my own life depended on it would I lie with him a second time.
    He presses his face close again so I hear him distinctly, and he pinches my thigh so forcefully it hurts.
    “You can only taunt a man’s cock,” he mutters thickly, “for so long.” And with that he leaves me there, and takes his empty jug back to the barrel for more. Though he has his back to me I can hear his coarse bellowing laughter even as I am doubled up and retching onto the damp grass outside the barn door.
    An owl hoots.
    “Oh God,” I say beneath my breath, “what have I done?” There is a shuffle of footsteps and Mrs. Peart, the cordwainer’s wife, is looming over me. Her shape casts a long, flickering shadow onto the path, onto the shifting fog out there, with the firelight behind her.
    “Don’t drink so swift,” she croaks in sympathy, when she sees who it is. She must have heard me whimpering. Mrs. Peart who always smells as if she were stuffed entirely full of loose tobacco, and with her fingers as yellowed as parsnips.
    “It’s a fearsome brew this year they have, fearsome strong,” she says, staring out at the night. “It will have done some men a deal of damage come a few hours’ time.” She puts her pipe back in the gap between her teeth to go on smoking. “Let’s pray that nobody sets hisself on fire this year at least,” she says, and gives a dirty chuckle. “After all, Mr.