Tidelands Read online

  She had no faith in her purpose or in her courage. She had no faith in herself as the cold murky waters lapped at her feet. But slowly she found that she had one belief—only one belief: that she would last through this night, that she would last through any night to come. She knew that she would not drown herself. She knew that she would not be broken by this terrible misfortune any more than she had been broken by the cruelty of Zachary or by the loss of her mother. She thought that the one thing that she had learned in this life, which had so many troubles and so few joys: she had at least learned to survive. She knew she could endure. She thought that all her life—raised by a courageous woman in hard circumstances, abused by a violent husband, loving two children and bringing them up in poverty—had taught her this lesson: to survive. She thought it was the only thing that she truly knew to do. She thought that she had found, embedded in her heart, like a drowned field post in a mudbank, a great determination to live.

  Alys woke in the morning, as fresh-faced as a child, her eyes clear and her beauty undimmed by the night of crying. She found her mother making gruel and setting out the bowls on the table as if it were an ordinary day.

  “Ma?”

  “Yes, Alys?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I am going to eat my breakfast and so are you.”

  “But—”

  “Eat first and then we’ll talk. You have to eat. Especially now.”

  Alys pulled out her stool and sat at the table and ate as she was bidden. When she had finished and pushed back her bowl she said: “And now, tell me what you’re going to do. You can’t let anyone know your sin.”

  “But you can?”

  “It’s not the same. Richard and me were handfasted in the sight of God. He’s going to marry me. His parents will have no objection to me coming into their house with a new son and heir on the way. They’ll welcome me. In the old days half the girls in the parish used to be married with a big belly, you know that yourself. And only the strictest people mind, even now. Everyone’s glad to see that a bride is fertile. There’s no comparison to you and your adultery.”

  Alinor bowed her head. “You know for sure that his parents won’t object?”

  “They’re not puritans, and they know that I’m not loose. We were both virgins when we lay together and we were betrothed. They know we’ve been courting for months. My baby will have a good name and a beautiful farm for his home.” She broke off. “At least he would have done. Until now. Until this. Now, God knows what’ll happen. Nobody’ll let you work for them, nobody’ll dream of having you as a midwife. You’ll never get your license and no respectable place would have Rob as an apprentice.” She dropped her face into her hands and rubbed her eyes. “Ma! Think! Not even Uncle Ned will stand your friend or be your brother when he knows. He’ll deny you. And how will you manage here without his kinship? How will you even eat if you can’t use the ferry-house kitchen garden?”

  Alinor was silent.

  “You won’t be able to stay here! They’ll torture you. Mrs. Miller and all her friends, the parish council, the church court . . .”

  “I know,” Alinor said quietly.

  “Nobody will buy your herbs. They’ll come to you for nothing but love potions and poisons.”

  “I know.”

  As if Alinor’s stillness made Alys more determined, she rose to her feet and looked down at her seated mother. “It’s not possible for you to bear this child,” the girl said quietly. “You know the herbs to use, you know how it’s done. You’ll have to get rid of it. You know how. You’ll have to get rid of it.”

  Alinor looked up into her daughter’s stern face.

  “It’s not been long, has it?” asked the girl. “You’ve only been sick for a few weeks?”

  Alinor nodded. She found she could not speak.

  “Then it can be done and no one the wiser. I’ll go to work at the mill now. I’ll come home this afternoon early, saying I’m ill. You can take whatever you need to take at noon, and I’ll care for you. I’ll do whatever you need. I’ll look after you, Ma, I promise. You shall tell me what you need to eat and drink, and I’ll not leave you till it’s over. I’ll change your linen and care for you as it happens.”

  Alinor said nothing.

  “You have to be rid of this,” Alys pressed. “Richard can’t marry me if you are shamed, and that would break my heart and his, and our child would be born out of wedlock. You’ll have a bastard child, and a bastard grandchild. We can’t survive that. Your child is the ruin of us all: you, me, and Rob. You have to end it. I’ve never asked you for anything, Ma, but I am asking you for this.”

  Her mother sat silent, her face white.

  “Your shame is my shame,” the girl repeated. “When the Stoneys hear you’re with child they’ll throw me off. I’ll never see Richard again. Then we’ll both be stuck here, both of us, with our bastards, without husbands. Don’t you think they’ll turn us out, with our big bellies on us? Don’t you think Mrs. Miller, and all the goodwives like her, will have us out of the parish before we can make a charge on it? And every husband shouting that we should go, to show that it wasn’t him?”

  “Two babies,” was all that Alinor could say.

  “Two bastards,” her daughter corrected her. “Pauper bastards. They’ll die in the poorhouse together. No one will let us raise them.”

  “I’ll think about it.” Alinor drew a breath. “I will think about it today and tell you tonight.”

  “You should have thought before,” her daughter said crudely.

  Alinor flinched as if she had been struck. “I know,” she said, her voice very low. “I know how grave this is.”

  “If you don’t finish it here, today, then my life is ruined. Rob’s, too,” Alys loaded her mother’s guilt. “Nobody will take him as an apprentice if his mother is a bawd who keeps a bawdy house on the mire. Nobody’ll ever marry me with a bastard child and my mother with hers. We’ll be ruined whores. My uncle Ned won’t even let us on his ferry. We’ll never get off the island at high tide. And when they come to drive us out, nobody will save us. Rob will have to watch them throw stones and mud and fish guts at our backs.”

  Alinor nodded. She could imagine the reflection of torches in the water as the good people of Sealsea Island gathered at dusk to rid themselves of two friendless sluts. “I know.”

  “Get the herbs ready,” Alys ordered. “I’ll come home early and we’ll do it this evening.”

  She pulled on her jacket, and she took her distaff, her hank of fleece, and her spindle and she walked out of the door, spinning as she walked up the bank towards the ferry, to go to the mill where she would work as hard as any man, to earn the money for her dowry for the marriage that she was determined to make.

  Left alone, Alinor started work on the daily tasks: shooing the hens out of the door, picking up the eggs, sweeping the floor, washing the two wooden gruel bowls, and rinsing the ale mugs. She swept the embers under the earthenware fire guard and made the marks against fire in the ashes of the hearth. She tied her cape around her shoulders, and went outside to gather firewood. And then she stood, looking at the harbor as if she had never seen it before, gazing at the gray horizon, wondering if she would ever again see a ship coming up the deep-water channel and hope that it was bringing the man she loved.

  She had been so long in such a daze of missing James, and trusting him to return, that she could not now change the rhythm of her thoughts. She could not understand that she was no longer patiently waiting; now she was in crisis. She could not bring herself to face the problem and solve it. She sank down on the bench and, as the sky overhead darkened with a great flock of wintering geese and she heard their loud complaining cries and heard the beating of their great wings, without knowing it, under her cape her cold hand crept to her flat belly as if she would hold the tiny baby safe inside.

  Later that morning Alinor was raking over the barley in the malthouse at Ferry-house. As she leaned on her rake and in