Tidelands Read online

  “She could remarry?”

  Sir William closed one eye in a slow wink. “As long as no one has seen Zachary alive. You might remember that. If you want to do her a favor, you might remember that.”

  “No one has seen him,” James confirmed. He felt his spirits leap up at the thought that she might be free, that he might be released from his vows, that despite what she had said, they could have a future together. “No one has seen him at all. He’s dead, and she could declare herself a widow in six years.”

  “That’s the way,” Sir William said. “Pretty woman. Shame to have her wasted on the edge of the mire like that.”

  “I hadn’t really noticed,” James said cautiously.

  “You must have done!” his lordship exclaimed. “She’s known from here to Chichester as the most beautiful woman in Sussex. Some fool wrote a song about her a few years ago: ‘The Belle of Sealsea.’ I’d have tupped her myself if it weren’t for having Walter in the house, and his mother not long dead, and everyone in this damn island knowing everyone else’s business and turned so godly.”

  James felt his familiar sense of distaste at the trouble that seemed to follow Alinor even here, among her betters. “Better to leave her alone,” he advised rapidly, “and then she might make a good marriage and change her luck.”

  “Oh, aye,” Sir William conceded. “And her brother is an army man and as free with his opinions as a dog with his piss, and times so changeable. It’s not like the old days when you knew where you were. My father would take a tenant’s wife behind the haystack and no one would say a word but ‘Thank you, your lordship!’ ”

  “Yes,” James said repressively. “It’s not like the old days at all.”

  “Anyway, they say you can’t force her,” Sir William confided. “They say some fool tried to take her against her will, when she was coming home from market, and she whispered something to him that completely unmanned him. He said his cock went limp and his blood froze. He said she ruined him, before he ruined her.”

  “Really?”

  “Gossip. Sort of gossip that collects around a beautiful woman. Especially a cunning woman. They say she can do all sorts. They called her a cock whisperer after that; said that she could blast a man with ice or harden him like a rock. Must say, I’d like to know.”

  James was sickened by the repetition of Alinor’s uncanny skills. “It was probably nothing but that she spoke godly to him and he lost the will,” he said.

  “Who knows what she can do?”

  “Surely, she just knows the healing herbs,” James insisted.

  “Maybe. They believe all sorts of nonsense on this island. Her mother was half witch for sure. But she’s dead and buried in holy ground and nobody actually tried her. Her sister-in-law died in childbed; but of course the brother hushed it all up. Anyway . . . makes no difference to us. The woman, whatever she may be, has obliged us and we’ve paid her. And you know you’re welcome back anytime. You can stay on now, if you wish.”

  “I’ll go tomorrow,” James said, glad to change the subject. “I have to go to London, and then I’ll take a ship to France. I will go to my seminary and confess. If they release me, perhaps I will be able to come back to England. Perhaps next time we meet I shall have my old name and my old house back again.”

  “I hope you do, by God, I hope that you do. You deserve it,” Sir William said gruffly. “Remember that it wasn’t your fault. His Majesty chose his own path. Pray God that he chose rightly and it gets him to his throne. Pray God that both you and he get safe home.”

  Alinor and Alys soaked their best caps and their linen in a bowl of water and urine as soon as they got home from the ferry-house herb garden. They left them to bleach all evening, rinsed them in cold water from the dipping pond, and then pinned them on a string beside the herbs to dry.

  “I’m never going to be able to sleep,” Alys said.

  “You should,” Alinor warned her. “I don’t want to be taking a pasty-faced girl to her new in-laws.”

  “Pasty!” Alys objected.

  “With dark shadows under her eyes like old drunk Joan.”

  “All right, I’ll sleep, I swear it.”

  “I’m stepping up to Ferry-house to see your uncle. I won’t be long.”

  “All right,” Alys said. She took off her work skirt and jacket and laid them on top of the blankets. Wearing only her linen shift, and with her hair in a plait, she slid under the covers and drew them up to her shoulders. She looked like a little girl again, and Alinor stepped back to the bed to kiss her on her forehead. “Are you sure about this? You seem very young to be talking about your wedding?”

  Alys’s smile was radiant. “I’m sure, Ma. I’m absolutely sure. And I’m the same age as you when you married my da.”

  “It wasn’t a very good choice,” Alinor said quietly.

  “But I’m as old as you were then.”

  “Yes.”

  “D’you think he’ll come home?” she asked. “My da. If he hears from someone that I’m to be married, will he come home for my wedding day?”

  Alinor hesitated. “Alys, I don’t think he’ll ever come home.”

  At once, Alys clapped her hands over her ears. “Don’t tell me anything!” she begged her mother. “The Stoneys can only just about bear me if they think my da is missing and might come home wealthy. If I tell them he’s run off they’ll never consider me for Richard, I’ll be next to a pauper for them.”

  Alinor took Alys’s hands from her ears and held them in her own work-worn palms. “All right, I’ll say nothing. And you can say you know nothing for sure.”

  “And that’s true.” Alys nodded. “This is the tidelands, there’s nothing sure.”

  Alinor pulled on her cape, for the evening mist was blowing off the harbor, damp and cold, and she went out of the cottage garden and turned to the left, as if she were going to the ferry-house, as she had told Alys, but then, when she reached the top of the bank she turned again, and entered along the hidden footpath that ran behind the cottage towards the Priory and the sea. It was high tide and the smell of sea salt blew in with the ribbons of mist. When she looked to her right, inland over the low-lying fields behind the bank, she could see the white silhouette of an owl hunting along the hedgerow, silent as a ghost, its great eyes seeing through the darkness.

  Alinor stayed on the high-tide path, dropping down to cross the narrow strip of dry beach above the lapping waters, back up the muddy steps to the top of the bank, tracing her way across the gray stepping-stones where a marshy field oozed into the mire: gray stones set in gray mud under a gray sky. She skirted the headland where the bell tower stood like a warning fingerpost against the darkening sky, and then she turned inland at a sunken mooring post, its base in deep water, green with seaweed. She crossed the foreshore, her boots crunching on a drift of tiny shells, and mounted the bank to the Priory sea meadow. She lifted her gaze from the uneven steps and saw him at once. He was waiting in the shade of a hayrick, hidden from the Priory windows, facing the sea path, looking for her.

  Without a word, she went into his arms and they clung to each other.

  “Alinor,” was all he said, and then he kissed her.

  Alinor leaned back against the hayrick, her knees weakening beneath her as if she might fall to the ground. She made a little movement and he released her. “Not here,” was all she said.

  “Not here. Will you come to the Priory?”

  “I don’t dare.”

  “Can we go to your cottage?”

  “Alys is at home.”

  He was silent. “Is there nowhere we can go? You know the woods, the mire, the little pathways?”

  “I couldn’t lie with you on the mire.” She gave a little shudder and at once he put his arms around her and drew his cape around her. “Not with the tide high,” she said. “It’d be like drowning. Could we go to the chapel? We could sit in the porch?”

  He shook his head. “I have lost my faith, but that would be too much.