Tidelands Read online

  But there had never been a choice for her: she was a woman and had to marry, as all women do, and she was a poor woman who would never go anywhere, however bright her face and breathless she might be. Their mother, knowing that her own death was coming near and nearer, had insisted that Alinor marry, hoping to leave her safe, not knowing that Zachary himself was a wandering haven, no more trustworthy than the shore, vagrant as the tidelands.

  “You’ll never get Alys married if she’s inherited your wildness,” he said sternly.

  “Ah, she’s a good girl,” Alinor said, immediately defensive of her daughter, sleeping inside the cottage. “She works so hard, Ned. She wants a better life, but you can’t blame her for that! And—see—I only dream.”

  “Dreams are worthless,” he ruled. “And anyway, how are you finding the boat?”

  The smile she turned on him was so dazzling, it could be nothing to do with the boat. “Rob came over from the Priory two weeks ago with Master Walter and his tutor, and we all went fishing.”

  He could see nothing in this to make a woman look as if the world was opening up before her. “Catch much?”

  “Yes.” She gestured to the bank. “We made a fire. We ate together. We were just there.” She laughed.

  Her joy was a mystery to him. He finished his cup of ale and got to his feet with a grunt at the twinge of pain from the rheumatism that twisted his joints from a childhood of hauling on the damp rope of the ferry and working in all weathers at every high tide.

  “Don’t be foolish,” he warned her, uneasy at the thought of her dreams and the light in her eyes. “Don’t forget where you are, who you are. Nothing changes here but the waters. The rest of the country can run mad, turn upside down, but here only the sea changes daily and only the mire goes where it will.” The rumble of the mill, as ominous as thunder rolling over the flat drowned land, emphasized his warning.

  “I know,” she reassured him. “I know. There is no hope; nothing can happen.” But the light in her face denied her words.

  “If your lad would only work the ferry for me till the end of the summer, I’d go and volunteer for Oliver Cromwell in the North,” Ned said. “They say he’s marching men to meet the Scots. A hard march, from Wales, a long march. He’ll need men who know how to do it. General Lambert is holding the Scots at bay, but he can’t do it alone.”

  “Rob can’t take the ferry,” she said quickly. “He’s bound to the Priory until Walter goes to Cambridge.”

  “Hasn’t the tutor gone away?”

  “A few more days, Rob tells me. The tutor’s left them lessons.”

  “I’d give my eyeteeth to be on the road with my troop, to be beside my brothers for another battle, to defeat the enemies of the country and bring the king to justice,” Ned said. “King Charles has to answer for this now. He’s called the Welsh to rise against us, and now he’s summoned the Scots down on us. God knows what he’s promised to the Irish. He uses them all against us, against us English, his own people. He has to be finished, once and for all.”

  Alinor compressed her lips on contradictions. “I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t speak ill of him.”

  “Of him?”

  “Of the poor king.”

  “Then you understand nothing,” he said with brotherly contempt. “You may be very learned in your flowers and your herbs and your healing, but you’re a foolish woman if you don’t know that Charles is a man of blood and has brought nothing but grief to us. He never means peace when he says he wants peace. He never thinks that he is defeated when his own sword has been taken from his hand. He has to stop! I swear to God I think we will never make him stop.”

  She rose to her feet as he became angry. “I know, I know,” she soothed him. “It’s just that I don’t want Rob going to war, or Alys trapped in a country at war. I don’t want you going away again, and of course I don’t know where Zachary is this evening.” She felt that tears were burning behind her eyes. “There are good men in danger, going into danger—” She broke off, unable to speak of James and the secret conspiracy that she knew was taking him away from her. “I don’t know what to pray for,” she said in a sudden rush of honesty. “I don’t even know what to wish for, except for peace . . . and that it was all over . . . and I was free . . .”

  “Ah,” he said, his anger leaving him at the sight of her tears. “Ah, you pray for peace, you’re right. And there’s nothing for you to fear. Colonel Hammond will have the king safely mewed up at Carisbrooke. Parliament and the army will agree what must be done with the king, and even if parliament are such fools as to come to an agreement with him, they won’t let him raise troops to shed our blood again. We’ve won against the king, and we’ve probably won against the Scots, too, and even now the news of the battle is coming south as we sit here. It might be all over already, and it’s me who is a fool, pining to march north, thinking I could return to the days when I was among my comrades, led by Cromwell and commanded by God. It’s probably all done already.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I can pray that it’s over.”

  Alys was slow to wake, her arms and back aching. The two women had the rest of the white loaf for breakfast with Ned’s cheese.

  “So delicious.” Alys dabbed up every crumb. “I think I shall marry the miller and eat wheat loaf every day of my life.”

  “You’ll have to get rid of Mrs. Miller,” her mother pointed out. “And I think you’ll find that she won’t make way for you.”

  “How I’d love to be rid of her!” Alys remarked. “I should throw the two of them—her and her helpless husband—off the quay, and marry their son, and inherit the mill.”

  The miller’s son was a little boy of six years old named Peter. Alinor had delivered him herself. “And Jane could be your sister-in-law,” Alinor smiled. “That’d be a happy house.”

  “I’d marry her off somewhere,” Alys asserted. “But nobody’d have her.”

  “Oh, the poor girl,” Alinor said. “Don’t be unkind, Alys. Anyway, have they nearly finished the harvest?”

  “Nearly, just one field to go. I was binding and stacking all day. Will you come this afternoon for gleaning?”

  “Yes, I’ll bring your dinner,” Alinor promised.

  Alys bowed her head in a prayer of thanks and rose from the table. “It’s funny Rob not being here,” she remarked. “Aren’t you lonely all the day?”

  “I’m so busy I don’t have time to be lonely.”

  “Because you look as if you’re listening for something.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. A footstep?”

  Ashamed of herself, Alinor remembered watching James run along the sea-bank path, jumping the wet puddles like a boy running to his lover. “I’m not listening for anyone,” she lied.

  “I didn’t say for anyone, I said for something.”

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t think that you missed my da anymore?” the girl asked gently. “We don’t—Rob and me. You needn’t worry for us.”

  “I don’t,” Alinor said shortly.

  “D’you just wish sometimes that everything was different? Aren’t you sick of everything? Not the king and the parliament—because I just don’t care for either of them—but something different for us. Something real, not preaching.”

  “I wish I could see your future,” Alinor replied seriously. “I know you shouldn’t be stuck here, on the side of the mire, and no chance of marrying anyone but a farm lad or a fisherman, and no chance of earning more than pennies. But I haven’t the money to apprentice you to a trade, and I don’t know where you’d go into service. I don’t think you’d suit service—I’d be afraid for you, in service.”

  Alys laughed. “You’re right there! I don’t want to be a servant to anyone. Not to a husband nor a master.”

  “Alys, I do so wish for more for you.”

  “You wish more!” the girl exclaimed. “Dear God, I pray on my knees for more! Has there been all this fighting and shoutin