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of yours.” Mother groaned and turned but did not wake.
    “Shut up, shut up, little monster,” growled father, rising from the bed and addressing the cradle. “ I’ll show you not to wake a workingman!” And he picked up the swaddled baby and gave it a hard shake. The wailing stopped.
    “There, that shows you. Now you’ll be a little more respectful, hah?” He shoved the baby down and climbed back into bed, where he pulled the covers over his head.
    Silence woke Mother Anne as noise had not. With one sleepy hand she felt for the cradle in the dark. Finding the baby displaced, she felt again and opened her eyes to lift it with both hands. The head bobbed unnaturally on the neck. She looked closer: there was a thin bloody froth on the baby’s colorless lips. She touched it with her fingers and felt the neck again.
    “Blessed Virgin and the saints!” She let out a howl. “What have you done, what have you done?”
    “By God’s body, woman, shut your trap! First one noise, then another. A man needs sleep!”
    “Hugh, the baby’s dead!”
    “S’not dead, it’s finally asleep, leave me alone.”
    “He’s dead, he’s dead, I say, and it’s you that’s done it!” she hissed. That woke father up properly. David’s eyes shone huge in the dark. We lay as still as death itself, for fear that father would notice us, and serve us the same way. Fully awake, father now took in the scene at last. Mother’s eyes started in her head with horror as she looked at the cold limp little body. Then she turned on father with such a look of loathing and disgust as I have never yet seen again.
    “Look, just look what you have done to your own son!”
    At that point something strange happened. Father’s face sagged and all the lines on it crumpled up as he said in a whining voice, “But I didn’t mean to do it, I didn’t mean to!”
    Mother extended the child silently, its head bobbing.
    “I swear before all the saints, I didn’t mean to. Don’t you understand, Anne, I didn’t mean to?” Whining and apologetic he fumbled and picked at the bedcover.
    From that very moment on our house changed absolutely, for mother ruled in all things. She had only to say, “And where is Martin?” or, “Give me back my son,” and father would quit blustering, look shamefaced, and agree to whatever she proposed. Little Martin had the finest linen shroud that was ever seen in the village, but aside from that, nothing was ever remarked, for many babies are buried in wintertime.
    It was that spring that mother decided to take up brewing, an art which she understood well. Father was becoming more useless all the time, and she thought that this would be a way to repair our fortunes. And father let her do anything now. Not only did he lack the will to oppose her, but all he thought of was ale anyway. So of course he agreed it was a good idea to have a large supply of it in his own house. The cooper made mother some good, large barrels, and when the first batch was ready, she hung the ale stake with its bush in front of the house, in token of its being a public house, and took to calling herself “Anne Brewster.”
    Her reputation spread quickly from the day that the abbot sent the ale taster to test the quality of her work. After a long belch that worthy said that it was the best he had tried in the last twelvemonth, and stayed to drink for the rest of the day. And mother gave good measure, flowing over. She wasn’t like those cheating brewsters you hear of, who get put in the stocks right next to their false-bottomed measures. Mother Anne soon did well enough to arrange for the enlargement of our house, with a large front room furnished with benches for the drinkers, another room at the back of the house, set on at an odd angle, and a loft over the central room, for us children to sleep in. With judicious gifts and flattery she won over Father Ambrose, who despised all such dens of sin, to the degree that he grudgingly said that if