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will miss you
. There is an odd moment when the words seem to hang in the air. The back of my neck prickles – someone is watching – but when I turn my head no one is there.
The next moment I am toppling over as Elizabeth shoves me into the grass, and I am laughing again, the strangeness forgotten.
    My laughter fades as I sit up, and I pluck a sprig of rosemary from the basket. One day Elizabeth
will
marry, I realize for the first time, drawing the rosemary under my nose so that I
can breathe in its fragrance. I love the smell of it, so clean, so true.
    Rosemary for remembrance. Strange to think that one day all this will be past, no more than a memory. No longer will we share the feather bed in the tiny chamber at the top of the Beckwith house
in Goodramgate. There will be no more whispering and giggling until Dick, our master’s apprentice, bangs on the wall and begs us in God’s name to be quiet so that he can get some
sleep.
    Of course Elizabeth will marry. She is a year older than me and she has a dowry. She is pretty, too, with bright-blue eyes and a sweet expression. Any young man would be glad to have her for a
wife.
    I twiddle the rosemary round and round between my fingers. ‘I will miss you,’ I say again.
    Elizabeth sits up and hugs her knees. ‘I don’t even have a sweetheart yet,’ she reminds me. ‘Nor am I likely to have one, when the Beckwiths keep us so close.’
    We brood for a moment on the strictness of the household.
    ‘Perhaps you will have to settle for Lancelot Sawthell after all,’ I say.
    ‘I think I’d rather stay with the Beckwiths.’ Elizabeth flops back into the grass. ‘You can have Lancelot.’
    ‘I thank you for your kindness, but I cannot look so high for a husband, I fear.’
    I am smiling, but it is true. It is common knowledge that my dowry has gone to dice and I do not even have any beauty to tempt a husband. I am dark and scrawny and sallow-skinned, and my eyes
are a strange, pale grey. Sometimes Elizabeth tries to comfort me by telling me they are beautiful, like silver, but I’ve seen how folk cross themselves surreptitiously sometimes when I pass.
Even Lancelot Sawthell could do better than me.
    I cannot see anyone wanting to marry me. But I don’t want to think about the future. I want to stay in this moment, with my friend beside me and the sun in my eyes, and the smell of
rosemary on my fingers and my ribs aching with laughter.
    Hap is still panting. ‘I shouldn’t have made you run so far,’ I say to him. ‘It must be hard with only three legs.’ He rolls over so that he is lying against my
leg, and when I rub his chest in apology, he closes his eyes with a little sigh of pleasure.
    I smile at the sight of him. Hap is not a handsome creature, even I can see that, but his expression is alert and he is clever, much cleverer than Mistress Beckwith’s pretty spaniel or our
master’s blundering hounds. I hardly notice any longer the withered paw he holds tucked into him.
    My hand resting on Hap’s warm body, I lie back and look up at the sky. It is blue and bright and the air is soft with summer. In the thorn tree behind us I can hear two blackbirds
chittering at each other.
    Above us, a flock of pigeons are swooping through the air. They turn as one, their wings flashing in the sunlight. I watch them enviously.
    ‘Don’t you wish you could fly?’
    ‘No,’ Elizabeth says lazily.
    ‘I do. Imagine what it would be like, to be up in the sky looking down on everyone!’
    A billowy cloud drifts past. It blocks out the sun for a moment, and for some reason the shadow passing over my face makes me shiver. But then it is gone and the sudden chill with it.
    ‘I’d be terrified,’ Elizabeth says without opening her eyes.
    ‘I think it would be wonderful.’ My fingers are still absently caressing Hap’s sleek coat, and he huffs out a sigh and wriggles into a more comfortable position against me.
‘You could see everything that’s going on, but