Tidelands Read online

  Alinor had meant to divert Mrs. Miller to pride in her harvest home but she had accidentally summoned a vivid memory of James Summer standing before her, and her own flare of temper when he said she must not dance.

  She bowed her head as if she were giving thanks for her food; but in reality she was hiding a pain so sharp that she might almost think that her heart was breaking. She took a deep shuddering breath and turned her mind to the dairy and the work they still had to do. She had promised herself that she would not think about losing James, nor about how she would manage without him. She would not think of anything, until after Sunday, Alys’s wedding day. Only then, when Alys was married, and safe, would she allow herself to look clear-eyed at the ruin she had made of her life.

  “I always give a good harvest home,” Mrs. Miller said complacently. “Sir William always says so. Says he would rather be at my harvest home than anywhere in the county. D’you remember, he brought the tutor, didn’t he? Mr. Summer?”

  “Yes,” Alinor said steadily. “Mr. Summer. D’you want to see the butter before I set it into shape?”

  Mrs. Miller rose from the table and left Jane and Alys to clear up. “You can wash the plates,” she said over her shoulder, and went into the dairy with Alinor. She closed the door behind them to keep the dairy cool, though it was already as cold as the ice house at the Priory.

  “That’s doing well,” she said, looking into the churn where the butter was pale and creamy and starting to separate from the buttermilk. “It always comes so quick for you, Alinor.”

  Alinor smiled. She knew it was because she worked harder and churned faster than Mrs. Miller, but the woman would never say so.

  “I tell my husband, you must whisper a charm into the milk,” Mrs. Miller said. “A good charm, of course. I wouldn’t suggest other . . .”

  “It’s rich milk,” Alinor said easily. “There’s no need for charming. If you’re happy with this, I’ll make squares for market.”

  “Don’t make them too big,” Mrs. Miller said. “One pound each only. No point in giving it away.”

  “Exactly,” Alinor said patiently.

  “If it’s slightly underweight that’s better than over. They don’t weigh at the market.”

  “Certainly. And I’ll wrap them.”

  “And you’ll come Saturday morning to pack the cart for me?”

  “Yes,” Alinor said. “And Alys will come, too. D’you want us all the day?”

  “You can mind the farm and the mill while we’re at market. Low tide at dinnertime, but I won’t ask you to open the sluice and turn the wheel.”

  Alinor smiled at the weak joke, as the door from the kitchen opened. “Am I to check the hens’ eggs?” Alys asked.

  “Haven’t you done that already?” Mrs. Miller asked crossly. “Go and do it now, lazy girl.”

  Saturday morning Alinor was up at dawn to do the final strain and pour of the wedding ale. Alys helped her mother and they both sniffed the rich yeasty aroma.

  “It’s going to be good,” Alinor said with satisfaction.

  Ned put his head around the brewhouse door. “I hope it’s not too strong?”

  “It’s wedding ale,” Alinor replied. “It’s as it should be.”

  “I want no drunkenness, and no bawdy games,” Ned specified.

  “What sort of woman do you take me for?” Alinor demanded.

  “You’re one that loves the old ways, and you know it. But this is to be a godly, quiet, and temperate marriage.”

  “No wedding ale?” asked Alinor. “Shall I pour this in the rife?”

  “Well, no wines,” he specified. “And no strong waters.”

  “In that case,” Alinor said regretfully, “I shall have to beg Mrs. Stoney, for once, to stay sober.”

  Ned could not stifle a chuckle. Mrs. Stoney had already impressed him with her grim puritanism. “She’s a godly woman,” he reproved his sister. “She shouldn’t be mocked.”

  “I know!” Alinor replied, and gave the wedding ale a final stir, before putting on her cape to go to the mill.

  When Alinor and Alys walked into the mill yard the cart was at the door and clean straw in the bottom. A sprinkling of snow made it cold enough for the squares of butter to be loaded in their baskets without fear of them going soft. Alinor, Alys, and Jane loaded big round cheeses and eggs in baskets as well, until Mrs. Miller came out of the house, wrapped to her eyes in furs as if she was going to Russia, and took her place on the cart seat. Peter and Jane climbed up beside their mother.

  Mr. Miller hurried to take up the reins. He knew that his wife would not tolerate delay. “Good day!” he said to Alinor, with a smile for Alys. “You’re in charge, you know! We’ll be home by dinnertime!”

  Working at the mill without the constant critical commentary of Mrs. Miller and the hangdog eyes of her husband was like working in their own yard. Richard and the miller’s lad cleaned out the barn where the plowing oxen were stabled, and Alys and Alinor fed and watered them. The women turned the horses out into the frozen pasture for a few hours while the young men mucked out the stables. Alinor pumped the buckets of water and Alys carried them. They raked out the kennels and the henhouses, the pen for the geese and the cows’ stalls. The two women milked the cows and carried the pails to the dairy. They collected hens’ eggs from the henhouse and looked in the little warm nooks around the barns where the hens sometimes laid away; but Mrs. Miller had gone around at dawn and taken every one she could find to market. Every time anyone went past a fallen branch they carried it back to the yard and piled it up for the boy to break it into kindling or split it for logs.

  They fired up the baking oven for those villagers who would bring their bread or homemade dinners to use the big oven at sunset, and Alys kneaded dough for their own breadmaking. They worked all day until the sun started to sink over the western mire and Alinor said with relief, “Time to go home.”

  “Not without our wages,” Alys said. “I need them for tomorrow.”

  “Alys, how much of your dowry do you have, exactly? Because we can’t be short tomorrow. They won’t call it off for the want of a shilling, but we don’t want to look like we’re robbing them on the church doorstep on the very day of your wedding.”

  “Richard will give me whatever is missing. But I’d like to do as much as I can. I want my wages for today, since we’ve worked so hard. And Richard will give me his.”

  Alinor was about to reply when they heard a shout from the gate and the rumble of wheels. Alys ran to open it and then she called to her mother: “Look who they’ve brought from Chichester!”

  For a moment Alinor’s head bobbed up in the certainty that it was James Summer, come to claim her before them all. “Who?”

  “It’s Rob!”

  Alinor hurried out to the gate. “Oh, Rob! Oh, Rob!”

  “Now then,” said Mr. Miller kindly. “You would think he’d been gone to Afric and back. He’s only been away a week.”

  “But I didn’t think he’d come till tomorrow morning for his sister’s wedding!” Alinor exclaimed. “How are you, son? How was your first week?”

  Rob, smartly dressed and grinning, bounded down from the mill wagon and hugged his mother, ducked down for her blessing, and kissed his sister. “Mrs. Miller came into the shop and bought some ratsbane, asked them if she could give me a lift home, and they were happy to let me go early,” he said. “I’m to be back at work Monday morning at eight o’clock, so I can stay for the wedding and overnight.”

  “How kind of you.” Alinor turned to Mrs. Miller, her face glowing with happiness. “Neighborly indeed. I thank you.”

  “Ah well,” the other woman said with unusual generosity. “He’s a fine young man and a credit to you. Is all well here?”

  “Oh, yes,” Alinor said. “And we made a meat pie for your dinner. I didn’t know what you would get at market.”

  “He dined well enough.” Mrs. Miller nodded towards her husband, whose red face and merry smile indicated a long s