half the priests fled or imprisoned, no infant could be christened How many months more would they have to call him the bairn? And all that time he would be unprotected from witches who could cast the evil eye on him and faerie folk, who might snatch him, and from demons and monsters who would devour his soul. If he died before he could be made a child of Christ, his soul would wander lost for ever; he would be buried at the crossroads or the hundred boundary where all the suicides, madmen and murderers lay.
Once, years ago, Joan had told her, a girl in the village had given birth to a boy and kept it hidden in mortal fear of her husband for he had been away at the Holy Wars when it was conceived, so he would know it was none of his getting. The poor little mite had died not long after. The sexton had found the mother trying to bury the tiny body in the churchyard, and had torn the corpse from her arms and buried it at the crossroads outside the village bounds, for he knew that if they did not take it out of Gastmere the soul of the unbaptized infant would wander through the village every night, rattling the doors and shutters trying to find a mother who would take it in.
Ever after travellers who had the misfortune to find themselves at that crossroads at night heard a baby wailing in great distress. If they were foolish enough to go closer to try to find the child, they saw a little infant white as bone, with large hollow eyes, burrowing out of the earth and crawling towards them on one leg and one arm, screaming so piercingly that horses and men alike were driven mad. Locals avoided the place after dark and if they had to travel that way always carried a sprig of rowan and a horse shoe to beat the creature away with, but many an unsuspecting traveller had been thrown from his horse, which had bolted at the shrieks.
Elena gazed down at the softly rounded cheeks, the tiny nose and pink plump lips wrinkling as if he still suckled in his sleep. She would never let them bury her son at some lonely crossroads in an unmarked grave. She would not have horses trample the ground above him or carts drive over him. She would not have them curse her beautiful angel or watch his decayed corpse crawling up out of the ground. But if she killed him, they would bury him there. They would drag his little body from her arms and bury him deep and alone in the cold, hard ground, without even a twig to mark where he lay.
As each day passed she loved him more and she knew it would only get harder to do what she must do. It had to be today. She could not wait for another. She must do it now, before it was too late. She must keep him safe — safe from them and above all safe from her, his own mother. Tying her baby tightly to her chest with her shawl, she slipped out of the house. The track was deserted. Everyone who was fit enough to walk was already at work in the fields or barns, but Elena was not making for the barn, she was walking as rapidly as she could in the direction of the forest.
A soft, warm breeze had sprung up with the setting sun. It rustled the leaves on the currant bushes and stirred the bright green shoots of the onions in their beds. Elena gently removed one of the two young pigeons from the little wicker cage hanging under the apple tree and carried the bird back into Athan's cottage. She sat down on a stool by the rough wooden table. The pigeon was struggling, flapping its wings fiercely in an effort to get away, but as she caught the wings and smoothed them back into a resting position with her fingers, the bird, calmed and lay passively in her grip. Its bright black eye looked sideways at her and blinked. She could feel its tiny heart thumping beneath its soft warm feathers.
'Hush now,' she murmured, 'I'm not going to hurt you.'
Outside in the small wicker cage, its mate cooed in the hot evening sunshine. For a moment or two, Elena stroked the bird gently, calming it almost to a point where it