Tidelands Read online

  Alys leaned against her mother’s knee and closed her eyes. “Of course not.”

  “D’you want to take a tanner’s needle and stab your unborn sister in the face as she grows inside me?”

  “Of course not,” the girl whispered as quiet as her mother.

  “Neither do I,” Alinor said. “I can’t do it. I can’t bring myself to do it.”

  “But what are we to do, Ma? This will ruin me, and you, and Rob.”

  “I know,” Alinor said. “And it’s my shame, not yours nor Rob’s. I’ll think of a way that I can take it, all to myself.”

  Alys leaned back against her mother’s knees. “There’s no way. Unless you go away, right away, right now, before anyone knows, and then what will become of Rob and me? We’re too young to lose both mother and father. You’ll make us orphans. And where would you go? And how can I be married without you? How can I have my baby without you?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Alinor said, humbled before her daughter. “I really am, Alys. I will pray for guidance, and I’ll do anything that I can. Anything but killing this baby.”

  “Whose baby?” Alinor turned and looked up at her mother. “Whose baby is it? Is it Sir William’s? Because he can pay for you to go away. Everyone knows he—”

  “It’s not Sir William’s,” Alinor interrupted her. “And I can’t say whose it is. It’s not my secret, Alys. I’ve done very wrong, but I won’t make it worse by betraying him as well as myself.”

  “It’s he who has betrayed you,” the girl said resentfully. “He’s ruined all three of us. He’s no better than my da.”

  She stopped as she saw her mother flinch.

  “Don’t say that, Alys. You don’t know—”

  “He is worse than my da,” she persisted. “We’d have been less hurt if he had beaten you, like my da used to do. You protected Rob and me from our da. I’ve seen you take a beating that I thought would kill you. You stood between Da and us. But you won’t save us from this. What does it mean—if you won’t save us from this?”

  DOUAI, FRANCE, NOVEMBER 1648

  James felt that he walked everywhere under a glass bell jar, observed but silenced, an echo in his head, breathing a strange air of faithlessness. He prayed that something pure and rare and potent was being exhaled from his constant daily ordeal; but he did not feel he was being purified; he felt he was being distilled into nothing.

  One morning Dr. Sean came to him in the little side chapel where James prayed after confession, and said: “I bring you news that will lift a burden from you, Brother James.”

  “I should be glad of that,” James replied, rising from his feet.

  “The king is to escape from his keepers. The proposals that the parliament has put before him are too small for his divine greatness and the pardons for his followers are too mean. He has told them that he cannot agree with them, and he has written secretly that he is ready to join the queen and his son Prince Charles in exile.”

  James felt the familiar sense of dread. “Do you want me to go to him?” he asked. “Am I to go again, and bring him away?” His voice did not falter, but he thought they would be certain to send him to his death this time.

  “No, no, a local man is to get him away. A man from Newport. The king is allowed to walk out, to take the air, even to go riding. They suspect nothing. They think he is considering their offer. But riders will meet him and gallop with him to the coast. A ship will be waiting for him. He will get to sea and sail to Cherbourg. With God’s grace he may be there already. My letter is days old. God have mercy on us, we might even see him here.”

  James crossed himself. “Amen,” he whispered. “Amen.” He was ashamed to find himself dizzy with fear. “But it’s not that easy. Are they sure of the ship? With a safe master? And will he take it? How many people has he told about the plan?”

  “The local man has made all the arrangements,” the professor repeated. “Thank God that the king is ready to leave at last.”

  “But they have to get a reliable ship and a safe meeting place at sea. It’s not easy to—”

  “The king has commanded it. He has chosen his ship’s master. God will guide him.”

  “Amen,” James said again, silencing his own doubts, knowing that his own fears were born from his own experience. Perhaps someone else would succeed where he had, so miserably, failed. Perhaps this time it would be quite different. “Amen.”

  TIDELANDS, NOVEMBER 1648

  Alys and Alinor walked together along the bank to Ferry-house, the ground iron hard and icy beneath their feet, and kissed good-bye without speaking at the pier. Ned pulled the ferry over for his niece, his face beaming, his dog standing beside him waving its feathery tail.

  “Good day,” he said joyfully. “And a good day it is for me and for all the friends of freedom.”

  “What’s happened?” Alinor asked as Alys stepped into the ferry. Alinor shook her head at Ned’s outstretched hand. “No, I’m not crossing. I’ve come to start chitting the barley.”

  “The army is going to capture the king, I swear it,” he said triumphantly.

  “Why? How do you know?”

  “The wool merchant came through—he left you some more wool for spinning; it’s in the store—told me that the news was all over Chichester. The parliament men have got nowhere near agreement with the king. And now it turns out His Majesty was about to break his royal word, break his parole, and run away. The governor of Carisbrooke Castle, Colonel Hammond, is recalled to headquarters to answer for it. The plotters have been arrested. The army has had enough, and now they will take the king for themselves.”

  “But how ever does a Chichester wool merchant know that the king was planning to escape?” Alys asked skeptically.

  “Who’s been arrested?” Alinor interrupted, breathless with anxiety for James. “Who was caught—helping the king?”

  “His guards at the castle; but the whole island knew of it,” Ned said contemptuously. “Half a dozen men were in the plot. He must’ve written a letter to everyone he knew, telling them that he could not agree with parliament and that he was ready to run away.”

  Dizzy with fear, Alinor leaned against the mooring post. “It was just his guards arrested?”

  “Yes, two of them. Alinor, are you all right?” Ned asked her.

  “Uncle, I’ve got to go to work,” Alys said, twitching the guide rope to distract him from her mother’s pallor. “Will you take me across? Ma, see you tonight. We’re baking at the mill today. I’ll bring home a loaf.”

  “Yes, yes, God bless,” Alinor said distractedly, and turned from her brother’s scrutiny to the malting house.

  The peace of the malthouse steadied her as she took up the barley rake, the handle smooth with decades of use. The low-ceilinged room was warm compared with the wintry chill outside, scented with the sweet smell of barley. The barleycorns were in a steeply shoveled pile, warming through and starting to split. Ned had left a bucket of clean water from the ferry-house dipping pond, out of the way of the overnight frost. She raked the barleycorns flat on the floor and stirred them round, mixing them together. Once they were spread out, she took a brush made from broom twigs and sprinkled them thoroughly with the water, raked them round again, and then took the blunt wide shovel, and piled them back into a heap. There was no way of telling that each seed was bursting with life, but she knew that the miracle of life was here in hundreds and thousands, in millions. Life in secret, a spark so small that it could live in every single barley seed, so powerful that it would split the seed and grow. She leaned on the handle of the shovel and thought that here she was: turning barley, picking herbs, attending a new-born baby, with the miracle of life like a candle flame, hidden inside her; and far away, somewhere, perhaps on the Isle of Wight, perhaps at his college in France, James was thinking of her, coming to her, with the miracle of his passion inside him.

  Once she had not known if he was a man to keep his word, if he would come back to her. But now she trusted him; she