‘Bingtown!’ Hetta was horrified. ‘That den of vice? Stay in the country, girl, where folks have hearts. No one will treat you well in the city.’

‘Stay,’ her husband urged me. His eyes decided me as he declared, ‘Live here, and I’ll treat you just like one of my own.’

And that night, he was as good as his word. As I slept on the hearth, I heard the scuff of his big bare feet as he came into the room. His children slept in the loft, and Hetta in their small bedchamber. In the past, he had done no more than stroke my buttock as I passed him, or casually brush my breast with the back of his hand as he reached past me, as if it were an accident. But I had never slept the night in his cottage. I smelled his sweat as he hunkered down beside me. ‘Cerise?’ he whispered in the darkness. I kept my eyes shut and pretended to be asleep. My heart was hammering as I felt him lift the corner of the blanket Hetta had given me. His big hand came to rest on the angle of my neck. I gritted my teeth but could do no more than that. Useless to resist. Hetta and the children might wake, and then what would I say? I tried to be as stoic as my long-enduring grandmother. Let him touch me. If I refused to wake, surely he would leave me alone.

‘Cerise, honey;’ he whispered again, inching his fingers along my flesh.

‘Faithless man!’ a whisper answered him. Every muscle in my body tightened, for it seemed to come from my own throat. ‘Touch me, and I’ll rake your face with scratches that Hetta won’t ignore.’

He jerked his hand back from me as if scalded, so startled that he sat down hard on the floor behind me. I lay still, frozen in silent terror.

‘And that’s how you’d pay back my hospitality, is it? Go to Bingtown, then, you little baggage. There the men will take what they want of you, and not offer you a roof nor a bed in exchange for it.’

I said nothing, fearing his words were true. I heard him get to his feet and then shuffle back to his marriage bed. I lay still and sleepless the rest of the night, trying to pretend that I had said those words. The pendant lay against my skin like cold toad; I feared to touch it to remove it.