He warmed to his subject. I'd heard this lecture a hundred times before, usually delivered to impatient stableboys. "You don't shout at them, or make sudden moves that look threatening. You give them good feed and clean water, and keep them clean and give them shelter from the weather." His voice dropped accusingly as he added, "You don't take out your temper on them, or confuse punishment with discipline."

Molly looked shocked at his words. "Discipline comes from punishment. A child learns discipline when she is punished for doing something wrong."

Burrich shook his head. "I'd like to 'punish' the man that beat that into you," he said, and an edge of his old temper crept into his voice. "What did you really learn from your father taking his temper out on you?" he demanded. "That to show tenderness to your baby is a weakness? That to give in and hold your child when she cries because she wants you is somehow not an adult thing to do?"

"I don't want to talk about my father," Molly declared suddenly, but there was uncertainty in her voice. She reached for the baby like a child clutching at a favorite toy and Burrich let her take the infant. Molly sat on the hearthstones and opened her blouse. The baby sought her breast greedily and was instantly silent. For a time the only sounds were the wind muttering outside, the bubbling of the porridge pot, and the small stick noises of Burrich feeding the fire. "You did not always keep your patience with Fitz when he was little," Molly muttered chidingly.

Burrich gave a brief snort of laughter. "I don't think anyone would have been eternally patient with that one. When I got him, he was five or six, and I knew nothing of him. And I was a young man, with many other interests. You can put a colt in a corral, or tie a dog up for a time. Not so with a child. You can never forget you have a child for even an instant." He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "Before I knew it, he'd become the center of my life." An odd little pause. "Then they took him from me, and I let them… And now he's dead."

A silence. I wanted desperately to reach to them both, to tell them that I lived. But I could not. I could hear them, I could see them, but I could not reach them. Like the wind outside the house, I roared and pounded at the walls, to no avail.

"What am I going to do? What will become of us?" Molly asked abruptly of no one. The despair in her voice was rending. "Here I am. No husband, and a child, and no way to make my own way in the world. Everything I saved is gone." She looked at Burrich. "I was so stupid. I always believed he would come to find me, that he would marry me. But he never did. And now he never will." She began to rock as she clutched the baby to her. Tears spilled unheeded down her cheeks. "Don't think I didn't hear that old man today, the one that said he'd seen me in Buckkeep Town and I was the Wit-Bastard's whore. How long before that tale races through Capelin Beach? I daren't go to town anymore, I can't hold up my head."

Something went out of Burrich at her words. He slumped, elbow on knee, head in his hand. He muttered, "I thought you had not heard him. Had he not been half as old as God, I'd have made him answer for his words."

"You can't challenge a man for speaking the truth," Molly said dispiritedly.

That brought Burrich's head up. "You're not a whore!" he declared hotly. "You were Fitz's wife. It's not your fault if not all were privy to it."

"His wife," Molly said mockingly to herself. "I was not, Burrich. He never married me."

"Such was how he spoke of you to me. I promise you, I know this. Had he not died, he would have come to you. He would. He always intended to make you his wife."

"Oh, yes, he had many intentions. And he spoke many lies. Intentions are not deeds, Burrich. If every woman who had heard a man promise marriage were a wife, well, there'd be a spate less of bastards in the world." She straightened up and wiped the tears from her face with a weary finality. Burrich made no answer to her words. She looked down into the little face that was finally at peace. The babe went to sleep. She slipped her little finger into the child's mouth to free her nipple from the babe's sleepy grip on it. As Molly did up her blouse, she smiled weakly. "I think I feel a tooth coming through. Maybe she's just colicky from teething."

"A tooth? Let me see!" Burrich exclaimed, and came to bend over the baby as Molly carefully pushed down her pink lower lip to reveal a tiny half-moon of white showing in her gum. My daughter pulled away from the touch, frowning in her sleep. Burrich took her gently from Molly and carried her over to the bed. He settled her into it, still wrapped in his shirt. By the fire, Molly took the lid off the kettle and gave the porridge a stir.

"I'll take care of you both," Burrich offered awkwardly. He looked down at the child as he spoke. "I'm not so old I can't get work, you know. As long as I can swing an axe, we can trade or sell firewood in town. We'll get by."

"You're not old at all," Molly said absently as she sprinkled a bit of salt into the porridge. She went to her chair and dropped into it. From a basket by her chair, she took up a piece of mending and turned it about in her hands, deciding where to begin. "You seem to wake up new each day. Look at this shirt. Torn out at the shoulder seam as if a growing boy did it. I think you get younger each day. But I feel as if I get older with every passing hour. And I can't live on your kindness forever, Burrich. I've got to get on with my life. Somehow. I just can't think how to begin, just now."

"Then don't worry about it, just now," he said comfortingly.

He came to stand behind her chair. His hands lifted as if he would put them on her shoulders. Instead he crossed his arms on his chest. "Soon it will be spring. We'll put in a garden and the fish runs will begin again. There may be some hiring work down in Capelin Beach. You'll see, we'll get by."

His optimism reached something in her. "I should start now and make some straw hives. With great good luck, I might chance on a swarming of bees."

"I know a flowering field up in the hills where the bees work thick in summer. If we set out hives there, would the bees move into them?"

Molly smiled to herself. "They are not like birds, silly. They only swarm when the old hive has too many bees. We might get a swarm that way, but not until high summer or autumn. No. Come spring, when the bees first stir, we'll try to find a bee tree. I used to help my father hunt bees when I was smaller, before I grew wise enough to winter a hive over. You put out a dish of warmed honey to draw them. First one, and then another will come. If you are good at it, and I am, you can find the bee line and follow it back to the bee tree. That is only the start, of course. Then you have to force the swarm out of the tree and into the hive you've made ready. Sometimes, if the bee tree is small, you can simply cut it down and take the bee gum home with you."

"Bee gum?"

"The part of the tree they nest in."

"Don't they sting you?" Burrich asked incredulously.

"Not if you do it right," she told him calmly.

"You'll have to teach me how," he said humbly.

Molly twisted in her seat to look up at him. She smiled, but it was not like her old smile. It was a smile that acknowledged that they were pretending it would all go as they planned. She knew too well now that no hope could be completely trusted. "If you'll teach me to write my letters. Lacey and Patience started, and I can read a bit, but the writing comes harder to me."

"I'll teach you and then you can teach Nettle," he promised her.

Nettle. She named my daughter Nettle, after the herb she loves, though it leaves great rashes on her hands and arms if she is careless when she gathers it. Is that how she felt about our daughter, that she brought pain even as she brought enjoyment? It pained me to think it was so. Something tugged at my attention, but I clung fiercely where I was. If this was as close as I could come to Molly right now, then I would take what I could and cling to it.