She flushed a little under his attention. “It’s not easy for me,” she reminded him. “Everything that I have, whether it is respect, or hams in the chimney, I have worked for. Every penny of my little savings I’ve worked for. Years of money I have saved up. Jane’s dowry is ready, for the first good husband to offer for her. You don’t find me without a penny to my name! But where does Goodwife Reekie get her money from? Her own husband swore she had faerie luck; perhaps he spoke true for once. How can she buy a boat if not by some double dealing? I tell you one thing: whenever she has something to sell, my husband buys a dozen of them—as if he needs lavender bags!”
James managed a false laugh, as if he thought the Millers’ grudging generosity to Alinor was funny; and unwillingly, Mrs. Miller smiled too. “Ah, well,” she said, recovering her temper. “No one is more charitable than me to our poor neighbors. I pride myself on my Christian spirit.”
James nodded his head approvingly. “It does you credit,” he praised her. “A woman so great as you in the neighborhood must show compassion to those who have less.”
“Was it Mr. Tudeley who chose her boy to be server to Master Walter?” she lowered her voice. “I thought it must be him.”
“I really don’t know.”
“But why would a man like him, his lordship’s steward, give a boy like Rob such a chance?” She slid a sideways glance at him. “I trust and pray that she has not played tricks on Mr. Tudeley. They say she can . . .”
James maintained a discouraging silence.
“. . . summon,” she said: an odd ambiguous word.
“Rob was chosen for his skills in the stillroom,” James repeated. “And because he’s a very clever boy.”
She hesitated. “I know she’s a good woman. I had her myself to the birth of my boy. But times are changing and if she can’t get a license for midwifery what is she to do? She might be an honest woman now, but what of the future?”
James glanced up and found Alinor’s dark gaze was steadily fixed on the two of them, watching them as if she could hear every spiteful word. He could not smile reassuringly while Mrs. Miller was pouring poison into his ear.
“Surely the only reason she cannot get a license from the bishop is because there are no bishops in the new parliament?”
“Aye, that’s what she says,” Mrs. Miller said grudgingly. “But everyone knows she’s lost more than one poor woman, dead in childbed. Her own sister-in-law . . .”
“She would get her license if they were being issued?”
“But they’re not! And so she has no license! And anyone can say anything against her.”
“Does anyone actually speak against her?” James asked. He longed to have the courage to add: “other than jealous wives and women with half her looks?”
“It’s only natural that they should. With men being such fools, and her in and out of the house when a wife is laid up. And her looking—” she broke off. She could not bring herself to acknowledge Alinor’s luminous beauty. “Like she does,” she said lamely.
“I hadn’t noticed,” James said firmly.
“You had not? I thought you went fishing with her?”
James was horrified that he was part of the gossip whirling around Alinor. “No, I took Master Walter in the boat with Robert,” he corrected. “She rowed.”
“And the rest of it,” she said coarsely.
He looked at her, his eyes cold, thinking that he must silence this woman at once. She must be stopped from gossiping, or sooner or later the parliament spies would hear of his stay at the Priory, and they would suspect him, Sir William, and the whole ring of conspirators. “There is no rest of it.”
“I know full well that she cooked your catch on the beach.”
So he had been spied on; but he could not know how much this woman knew about him and his cause. “She did,” he said levelly. “Just as Mrs. Wheatley would cook our dinner at the Priory. I don’t think Master Walter and I could undertake to be our own cooks.”
She recoiled from the familiar scorn of a gentleman silencing a vulgar woman. “Yes, of course, excuse me, of course, I understand.”
“Sir William would not like any sort of gossip about Master Walter’s companion,” he said.
She nodded, but she could not resist going on: “But you understand that she’s a poor woman; she’s not fit company for the lord’s son, nor for you. How did you even meet her?”
“We hired her when Master Walter wanted to go fishing,” he said, denying her to protect his own secrets.
“Because her own husband said she had faerie luck, and that her children were born beautiful and without pain.”
“He said that?”
“Born, like faeries, in silence and laughed with their first breaths. I wish the best for her, poor thing,” she said. “I don’t begrudge the lavender bags. It’s a pity that she has fallen so very low. But you have to remember that she is a cottager, little better than a pauper, and from a long line of wisewomen.”
“Midwives and herbalists,” James corrected her.
“Who knows what they do? And I can’t stand the daughter.”
James took a slice of ham as the platter was returned to him, keeping his eyes down so that he did not look at Alinor. He felt nothing but nausea at the feast, and revulsion for the Millers.
“No, I imagine you can’t.”
As soon as dinner was done, all the women helped carry the dishes to the farm kitchen and scrub them clean, while the men lifted the heavy table from the trestles and cleared the yard for dancing. A couple of barrels and a door made a raised dais for the fiddler and the tabor player, and they played for the old circle dances, men on the outside, girls inside, dancing slowly one way and then another, a little pulling this way and that, as boys and girls positioned themselves so that they were opposite their desired partner. Alys took hands with Richard Stoney and they processed through the archway of upraised arms as if they were dancing on their wedding day. He was a lanky brown-haired boy with a merry smile, and he never took his eyes from the tall blond girl at his side.
Alinor watched him and glanced over to see the proud beam of his mother, and thought that next week, or the week after, she should walk over to the Stoneys’ farm and see what dowry they were wanting from a daughter-in-law. Richard was their only son—they had no other children—the farm would be inherited by him. They could look for a far wealthier bride than Alys, but they would not find a prettier girl in all of Sussex. They were indulgent parents, and if she was Richard’s choice, then they might agree to a down payment now on betrothal, and more over the next few years as Alinor earned it.
James was trapped with the Millers, watching Master Walter and Rob as they joined in the circle. The dancers laughed and twisted and turned as the fiddle ripped out an irresistible tune. Alinor knew that it was impossible for James to break free from his hosts and dance like his pupils. All the godly men and their wives had gone home as soon as dinner was over—a minister of the reformed Church should do nothing more than watch the first dance and then leave—but she could not stop herself thinking that perhaps he would come to her. For a moment, she fell into a dizzy imagining of him taking her hand and leading her into the circle. She thought of the swell of envy that would follow them, of the familiar flush of jealous rage on Mrs. Miller’s cheek, of how the young women of the parish would whisper behind their hands that of all the girls he could have chosen, of all the young wives he could have honored, of all the plump matrons who would have swooned as they took his hand for a country dance—of everyone—he led out Alinor Reekie, the tall, willowy, excessively beautiful Alinor Reekie, who cast down her eyes like a modest woman and then looked up and smiled at him like a woman in love.
Alinor was so absorbed by this reverie of social triumph that she had a little jolt of surprise when she saw James standing before her. The coincidence of daydream and reality overwhelmed her. She was certain that he had come to ask her to dance, that despite everything he would take her han
ds and, deaf to her whispered refusal, his hand would come around her waist and their steps would match. She gave a little gasp of delight and stepped towards him, her hand out, her eyes bright, her lips smiling a welcome.
But he was cold. “I will take Master Walter and Robert home now,” was all he said.
“You . . . don’t dance?” she stammered.
“Of course not.” He sounded stern. “And neither may you.”
“But I never do!” she protested. “I was never going to! I just thought . . .” She stepped a little closer. “You won’t stay?” she whispered. “Stay a little longer?”
He frowned at her and stepped back. “No. I certainly won’t.”
She was astounded. “What have you been hearing?” she demanded. “I know you were talking about me with Mrs. Miller. What has she been saying to you?”
He was wrong-footed, caught gossiping like one of the spiteful neighbors. “Nothing! She said nothing but what I knew already: that your husband has left you, that you find it hard to manage.”
“If she told you that I am unchaste it is a lie!” she said fiercely. “If she told you that her husband, Mr. Miller, favors me, then it is another. I never speak to him but in the yard before everyone! He never says a word but what everyone could hear. Is that what she said that makes you so . . . so . . .”
He was mortified that she had seen him listening, and had guessed what was being said. “She could have no influence on me. I wasn’t listening. I have no interest in village gossip.”
“She fears I will fall on the parish, but she is afraid of everyone falling on the parish,” Alinor said rapidly. “Her husband is church warden: he has to raise the funds for poor relief. It is her terror that they will have to provide for the poor wretches, the poor women—”
“Calm yourself. It doesn’t matter what she says—”
“It does matter! It does! It matters to me! She doesn’t care for anyone’s reputation but her own but if she told you she fears a pauper bastard from me then she is slandering me!” The tears started in her eyes, and she gave a little choked sob. “I have known her since I was a girl and she’s never had a kind word for me—”
“Hush!” he begged her. “Everyone is looking!”
He wanted to catch her in his arms and say there was no shame that could touch her. But far more he wanted to get away from her before she openly cried out. He wanted to be far away from this woman, engaged in some pointless fishwives’ squabble with her neighbor, weeping in public at a harvest home. A poor woman, with dirty fingernails, in a mud-stained gown, his friend’s meanest tenant, perhaps the chosen bawd of the manor’s steward, surrounded by her equally poor neighbors, who were all staring at him. Only the young people ignored them, whirling in a circle dance, Walter Peachey hopping about with somebody’s unsuitable daughter, as if there were no degree and order in the world anymore, as if the defeat at Preston had killed the proper distance between masters and men, between gentlemen and wretches, as well as the last hope of the royalists.
It was unbearable: “For Christ’s sake, be quiet!”
She froze at his oath, and shot him a horrified glance from under her drenched eyelashes.
“I cannot be watched,” he whispered urgently. “You know I must not be observed. I have to serve my cause. I cannot have people noticing me. I am going now. I cannot be seen with you while you are in this state. Everyone is looking at us. I cannot have you draw attention to me.”
She changed in a moment, her beauty suddenly pale and contemptuous, her tears frozen. “You go,” she advised him. “I don’t care. Go at once. I don’t care for your cause. I cared for you and I was a fool. But I won’t be a fool again.”
Without another word, with the disdain of an offended queen, she turned on her heel and walked away from him, walked to her brother, and left James all on his own, hopelessly exposed to the inquisitive stares of the mill yard, all of them wondering how Alinor Reekie—the poorest woman at the harvest home—dared to snub him: the greatest guest.
He could not sleep. He turned around and around on the smooth linen sheets of his luxurious bed in the Priory, getting more and more restless until he welcomed the fever in his pulse and the heat under his skin, and he went down to the private chapel barefoot, and laid himself down on the cold stone before the bare altar in the position of penitence: feet together stretched out, facedown, arms spread, like a prone crucifixion. He felt his desire for her like a pain in his belly. He pressed his hands to the cold stone floor and imagined the curve of her cheek against his palm. He pressed his cock, which was hard as iron, into the icy limestone and felt the relief as it shriveled against the cold. He was forbidden to think of her as a lover by his oath to his God, to his king, to his conspiracy, to his class, and to his own honor. But as the cold seeped into his hot skin he knew that he was faithless to his God, to his king, to his conspiracy, to his class, and to his honor. All he could think of was the brilliance of her eyes and the flush of her cheek when she swore that she had cared for him once, but she would not care for him again.
Even in his heat and his distress he felt a little gleam of triumph that she had told him that she cared for him. He knew it—he had known it when she came so willingly into his arms off the rickety pier—but he was a scholar and he loved words; he loved that she had said: “I cared for you.”
That was where he must leave it, he thought. He ought to feel relieved that she had confessed her love and said it was gone. He should be glad that she had dismissed him, even though her pride was impossibly misplaced—she had forgotten the social order that placed her far below him. A woman like Alinor Reekie could not complain of the behavior of a gentleman like him. But better for him, in these dangerous times, that she turned from him, than if she betrayed them both with a foolishly adoring gaze. Better that he never saw her. She might come to prayers at the Priory and present herself at the communion table, but he need do nothing but serve the communion as the minister in the private chapel. If he did not seek her out, they would never meet again.
Of course, he must see her at St. Wilfrid’s Church the very next morning, as it was Sunday, but he would be far at the front, first in the church behind Sir William, and she would be where she belonged—far behind, in the gallery with the other poor women, the faint scent of sweat and fish rising from their damp shawls. She would never dare to approach him; he would not look for her. He would never again speak to her privately and, in time, this ache of longing would pass. Men on both sides in this war had lost their limbs, were crippled for life having fought for their beliefs. He thought that he—whose war had been so privileged, so hidden—had finally taken a wound as grave as theirs.
He would recover. His war was elsewhere: his duty was across the Solent with the king in Carisbrooke Castle. He should never have thought of her. He had been mad to look at her just because she was beautiful, to feel tender towards her because she risked her own safety to rescue him. He would confess the sin of desiring her, and be forgiven for having gone so close to temptation. He must take Mrs. Miller’s spiteful slander as a timely warning and pray that the madness was over, and this greensickness of love would pass quickly too.
“You’re so white—are you sick?” Alys asked her mother.
“Something I ate at the Millers’,” Alinor replied.
“Envy? She serves a lot of that,” Alys suggested. “Is that why you left early?”
Alinor nodded. “I’m fine now.”
“But wasn’t it the most wonderful harvest home ever? Not even she could spoil it. Richard said . . .”
“Richard said?”
Alys flushed. “He said I am as beautiful as a real queen.”
“Nothing but truth! You looked beautiful, and you danced beautifully.”
Alys beamed. “And it’s nice to see Rob.”
“Yes.”
“They were all mad for his tutor, Mr. Summer, weren’t they? Mary couldn’t eat her dinner for making eyes at him. Jane Miller couldn’t speak a
word.”
Alinor forced a smile. “He’s a handsome gentleman. And a novelty. Did you dance with Richard Stoney again, after I left?”
Alys ducked her head down. “I didn’t dance with anyone else. I just couldn’t. And he wouldn’t ask anyone else. I love him, Ma, I really do.”
Alinor took a little breath. “My little girl in love?”
“I’ll always be your girl, but I do love him. And he loves me.”
“He’s said so?”
The girl flushed a dark rose. “Oh, Ma, he’s spoken to his parents. Weeks ago, he spoke to them. He wants to marry me! He asked me last night, Ma. He’s given me his promise.”
“He should’ve spoken to me before he said anything to you. You’re not yet fourteen. I was thinking of meeting his parents and asking for a long betrothal and—”
“He’s been courting me for weeks,” the girl said proudly. “That’s long enough for me to be sure. And I liked him from the first. But anyway, they want a girl who’d bring them some land, who has furniture, her own pewter plates, who’s got an inheritance. Things I’ll never have.”
“We can save up,” Alinor said bravely.
They both looked around the little cottage, the sparse worn goods, the wooden trenchers on the plain cupboard, the table and stools that Alinor had inherited from her mother, the hanging bunches of drying herbs, the treasure box containing the tenancy paper, and the red leather purse, filled with nothing but old tokens.
“We have no savings but dried leaves and faerie gold,” Alys pointed out.
“I could talk to them,” Alinor said.
“My father should go,” Alys said resentfully. “It shouldn’t be you, on your own.”
“I know,” Alinor said. “We’re unlucky in that.”
Tidelands Page 13