Tidelands Read online

  She repeated the words so often to herself that they came to lose their meaning. What was a woman “like her”? What was this place like, that her living here struck him as incongruous? Was there any sense that he meant the place was fine and she was not fit for it? But then she remembered his brown gaze on the neck of her gown, the warmth in his eyes, and she knew exactly what he meant and she felt the joy of his words over again.

  It never occurred to her that his words were wrenched from him, that it was a sin for him to voice them, even to think them. She had been baptized into a church where ministers were allowed to marry: there had been no celibate priests or monasteries in England for a hundred years. She did not understand that it was a sin for him to even look at a woman, let alone to whisper to her with desire. She heard the words forced from him as if he could not help but speak them; but she had no idea that he would have to confess them when he returned to his monastery; he would have to tell his confessor he had fallen into a mortal sin: he had felt desire.

  She did not know herself, what she was feeling. She had been married young and given birth to two children, feeling nothing but pain. She did not know what it was that made her whisper his words as if they were an invocation, what kept the words in her mind as if it were a phrase of music that sang to her, over and over.

  Her son, Rob, came back from crow-scaring with three pennies for the day’s work, and her daughter, Alys, contributed her week’s wages of two shillings and sixpence. They both handed over their earnings without complaint, knowing that the household had to pay cash for goods: fleeces for spinning, butter and cheese since they had no cow, bacon and lard since they had no pig, a fee for baking bread in the mill oven, a payment to the miller for grinding a peck of wheat, a fee to the Priory for the right to gather driftwood from the shore and terns’ eggs from the beach, a fine for failing to dig the harbor ditches last spring. Rent, when it next fell due, the tithes to the church every month, new soles for Alys’s boots.

  “I’m going to buy a boat,” she told them. “If I can.”

  TIDELANDS, SUNDAY, JULY 1648

  On the first Sunday in July, all the parish attended church and looked at the blank white walls while the preacher prayed in the austere words that were all that was left of the Prayer Book since parliament had pared it away. He preached for more than two hours, that they should all become saints and witnesses to the coming of the Lord. He told them that the king, at Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight, was mortified by his sins, and that God would bend his stubborn heart to submit to a parliament of saints. They could be assured that God would never permit the Scots to march south—though the wicked king had summoned them, and they were mustering, even now, to plunder and ravish innocent English towns. God would prevent them, and God would especially smite the Irish, if they too invaded in support of the king. The parishioners need not fear. Alinor, covertly looking around at her neighbors’ faces, noted that this assurance made them particularly uneasy. These were simple people: when someone told them that they had nothing to fear they knew that they were in trouble.

  It was true, the minister told them, “verily true” that traitors were taking arms all over the country, royalist uprisings were happening in every county and two foreign armies invading; but the godly army of parliament would defeat them, the royal cavaliers could not win against solemn men, good men, saintly men. There would be no more papists at court. The king would beg forgiveness and be restored, and his papist queen would learn to be godly, forbidden from bringing in heretic priests. Her chapel, which had been the very center of heresy and misrule, would close, and the king would turn aside from his temptations and accept the rule of honest advisors. The royal family would be reunited, like a godly family should be. The father ordering the mother and the children, the sons obeying him; the little prince and princess, who had been abandoned by their parents, restored to them. Nothing could stop this, the preacher promised, though there was bad news from Essex and from Kent, where royal traitors were taking towns for the king. Worst of all, the whole fleet had gone over to the king, and now the prince his son commanded the ships, and would invade England deploying England’s own navy. But despite all this, despite these increasingly bad odds, the godly would prevail. The battle had been fought and won, the king was defeated, and he must learn he was defeated. He was honor bound to surrender.

  Alinor was conscious of Sir William Peachey, newly arrived from London where he had been demonstrating his newfound devotion to parliament, seated in his big chair, very still and attentive, his household ranged behind him. He never shook his head, no shadow ever crossed his weary face, he never even blinked. She would have thought that he was a parliament man heart and soul, he sat so still and quiet while their victory was predicted as God’s will.

  The minister recited the closing prayer and reminded them: there was to be no play in the churchyard, there were no Sunday feasts or sports anymore. The Sabbath was to be holy now, and holy was quiet and reflective—not church ales and dancing at saints’ days. Ill behavior by any parishioner was to be reported to the church wardens. Women especially must be obedient and quiet. A godly victory demanded a godly people. They were all soldiers in the New Model Army now, they were all marching in step to the promised land.

  As they filed out, sluggish with boredom, Mr. Tudeley, the steward, was standing behind Sir William at the lych-gate, naming the tenants as they went past dropping their bows and curtseys. Alinor waited her turn, her children behind her. As a deserted wife living on the very edge of the mire, on the very brink of poverty, she came behind nearly everyone. She curtseyed to the lord and to his steward in silence. His lordship looked her up and down unsmiling, nodded, and turned away, but Mr. Tudeley beckoned her with a crooked finger.

  “Sir William is to appoint a chaplain to serve in his private chapel and teach his son,” he told her.

  Alinor kept her eyes on the ground, saying nothing.

  “Your boy is the same age as Master Walter Peachey, isn’t he?”

  “A bit younger,” she said, moving her hand to indicate her son standing stock-still behind her.

  “What work does he do, besides helping you with the herbs?”

  She answered him calmly, hiding her surprise at the sudden interest in Rob. “He goes to school in the mornings, and after school he works at Mill Farm: crow-scaring and weeding. He’s a clever boy. He can read and write. He will come with me next week to the Priory stillroom, as you ordered, and it’ll be him who writes the labels on the bottles. He knows the names of the herbs in English and Latin and he writes fair.”

  “Ever in trouble?”

  Alinor shook her head.

  “He will serve in the household,” Mr. Tudeley announced. “He will take lessons with Master Walter, and be his servant of the body, and his companion here at the Priory until Master Walter goes to Cambridge. He will be paid fifteen shillings a quarter, five shillings in advance.”

  Alinor could hardly breathe.

  “The tutor requested a companion for Master Walter,” he went on urbanely. “I suggested your boy. This comes to you as a favor from his lordship, to help you since your husband is missing. This is what it is to serve a good lord. Remember it.”

  She dropped a deep curtsey. “I’m very grateful.”

  He gave her a hard look. “If anyone asks, you will tell them that his lordship is generous to poor tenants.”

  She dipped a curtsey again. “Yes, sir. I know, sir.”

  She turned and walked to the lych-gate with Alys on one side of her, Rob on the other. The two women, mother and daughter, kept their eyes on the ground, and their white-capped heads bowed, the picture of submissive obedience.

  “He doesn’t know about the rabbit then,” Alys said with satisfaction.

  TIDELANDS, JULY 1648

  Rob did not have clothes fit to wear to the Priory and stubbornly resisted the preparations, saying that he did not want to go into service with the Peachey son and heir. He said that he di