Tidelands

by Philippa Gregory

  The spit boy rose up from his truckle bed by the fireside. “Who’s there?”

  “Sssh, it’s me,” James said familiarly. “I didn’t know if anyone had remembered his sops in wine?”

  “What?”

  “The king. He takes bread and wine at midnight. Has anyone taken it up?”

  “No!” the boy exclaimed. “Lord! This is always happening. And his servers have gone to the inn, and the cook gone to bed.”

  “I’ll do it,” grumbled James. “I do everything.”

  “D’you have the key to the cellar? Shall I wake the groom of the servery: Mr. Wilson?”

  “No. The king doesn’t drink from your cellar. He has his own wine, in his own room. I have the key. You go back to sleep. I’ll serve him.”

  He took a glass and a decanter from the cupboard in the hall and walked up the stairs. The door to the king’s room was locked on the inside, but as he approached it across the creaking floorboards of the landing he heard the clock on St. Thomas’s Church strike midnight, and at the same time the sound of an oiled bolt sliding back. He felt a sense of complete elation. He was on the threshold of the king’s bedchamber, the king was opening the door, the boat was waiting. “This is triumph,” James thought. “This is what it feels like to win.”

  The king opened the door and peered out.

  “Clarion.” James said the password, and dropped to his knee.

  “Rise,” the king replied indifferently. “I’m not coming.”

  James turned an incredulous face up to the king. “Your Majesty?”

  The king stepped back into his room and beckoned James in, nodding that he should close the door. His lined face was bright: a cornered man getting the last laugh. “Not tonight.”

  “The porter is gone from the door. Your son, His Royal Highness, is waiting for you with his fleet. I’ve got a man under your window and another on the quay, a ship to take you to the prince. We’re safe to go now . . .”

  His Majesty waved it all aside. “Yes, yes. Very good, very good. But we’ll do it another day, if needs be. I have them on the run, you see. They’re bringing me an agreement.”

  James felt his head swim with dismay, and then he remembered the frightened man waiting under the king’s window. “I have to send some men away,” he said. “Men in danger, waiting for you. I can’t stay myself, if you’re not going to come. But I beg you to come, sire. This is your chance—”

  “I am making my own chances.” The king had already turned away. “You can go.”

  “I beg you,” James repeated. He heard his voice quaver and he flushed, shamed before his king. “Please, Sire . . . Her Majesty the Queen sent the money herself, for me to hire the ship. She commissioned me to rescue you. I am under her orders.”

  The king turned back, his smile vanished. “I don’t need rescuing,” he said irritably. “I am the best judge of my actions. I know what is happening. Her Majesty has nothing but a woman’s wit: she cannot know. They are coming to me on their knees with handsome proposals. The Scots’ invasion taught them that they have to make terms with me or next I will bring the Irish down on them. They have seen that the country rises up for me. They begin to understand my power; it is never-ending, it is eternal. They can win a thousand battles—but I still have the right. The parliament knows they cannot rule without a king. Without me.”

  James felt the rise of a treasonous rage. He wanted to lay hold of the man and drag him to safety. “Before God, Your Majesty, I swear that you should come now, and then you can negotiate from a place of safety, with your wife and son at your side. Their future depends on you, as does all of ours. However good the offer, whatever parliament promises you, you would be safest talking to them from France.”

  The king drew himself up. “I will never leave my kingdom,” he said firmly. “My kingdom can never leave me. God ordained I should be king. That cannot be set aside. We will come to an agreement, my subjects and I. I shall return to London and Her Majesty the Queen will join me there, at my palace at Whitehall. I shall not steal away like a thief in the night. Tell her that.” He nodded James to the door as if to dismiss him.

  “I cannot go without you! I swore!”

  “It is my command.”

  “Your Majesty, please!”

  Charles made a little gesture with his hand, a little cutting-off gesture. There was nothing James could do but leave: stepping carefully backwards as royal protocol demanded, never turning his back, going steadily until he felt the brass ring latch of the door press into his back, and he checked.

  “Your Majesty, I have risked my life to come for you,” he said quietly. “And a loyal man is waiting on the quayside to go with you to France. He has said good-bye to his own family and his country. He will go into exile with you and not leave your side till you are in safety. We have a boat, we will take you to your own son. He is waiting for you with his fleet on the high seas. Your safety and freedom are waiting. Your future—all of our futures—depends on you coming away now.”

  “I thank you for your service.” But the king had already seated himself and turned to his letters. “I am grateful. And when I come to my own again I will reward you. You can be sure of that.”

  James, thinking wildly that he would never be sure of anything, ever again, bowed low and went out of the room. As he stood on the shadowy landing he heard the door close quietly behind him and the bolt slide shut. He thought it was the most final noise he had ever heard, like the dull thud of an executioner’s axe through a neck and onto the block.

  Downstairs, in the street, the nameless man flinched like a frightened dog when he saw the figure come from the darkened doorway. “Your Majesty,” he breathed, and dropped to his knee.

  “Get up, it’s me.” James pushed up the brim of his hat to show his face. “He won’t come.”

  “Mother of God!”

  “Come on,” James whispered. “Back to the inn.”

  They went swiftly, by a circuitous route, down the dark alleyways and then along the quayside to fetch their comrade from his hidden doorway. The three of them slipped in the unlocked front door, and into the dining room. As soon as the door was shut, James pulled off his hat and threw down his cloak. He flung himself into a chair and buried his face in his hands.

  “Why didn’t you make him come?” one of the men demanded.

  “How?”

  “Christ! You should have told him!”

  “I did.”

  “Doesn’t he know the danger he’s in? That we’re in? How could he let us go through all this for him, and then not come? We’ve been planning this for weeks!”

  “Months. He thinks they will make an agreement.”

  “Why didn’t you insist?”

  “He’s the king. What could I say?”

  “When parliament comes, what if they can’t agree?”

  “He’s sure they will,” James said through his clenched teeth. “I begged him to come. I warned him. I did everything that I could. He was determined. I pray to God that he’s right.”

  “But why not come? Why run away from imprisonment at Hampton Court, breaking his word of honor, his parole, but not run from here? When we’ve got a ship waiting and his son at sea?”

  “In the name of God, I don’t know!” James swore, driven to despair. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think it was the right thing, the safest thing, the only thing for him to do. But how could I make him come! How could I?”

  The second man had not taken off his hat, nor even unfastened his cloak. “I’m off,” he said savagely. “I won’t do this again. Don’t try to find me or invite me. Don’t call on me for help. This has been a night I won’t repeat. This is my last time. I am finished in his cause. He has lost me. I cannot serve him. They warned me he was changeable and talkative as a woman. But I would never have thought he would let his friends, men sworn to his cause, stand in the street in mortal danger while he chose not to bother.”

  James nodded in silence as the man let him
self out of the door and they heard his footsteps go quietly across the hall and the front door open and close.

  “Shall you come back?” the first man asked unhappily. “Try again?”

  “If I’m ordered, I must obey. But not like this again. Never like this again. Forcing men to serve him, swearing them to his cause. I even brought two boys into this danger to hide the plot. I put my life at risk, yours, even the villain on the Jessie. I have been a mortal fool for a man who does not want my service, who didn’t even ask my name, who didn’t even give me a message for his wife, who sold her jewels to pay for this. I shall have to go back to her and tell her he would not come. I have failed. I have failed him, and I have failed her because of him.”

  “Good night,” the man said abruptly. “I pray to God that we never meet again. I will swear that we never met, and I will never speak of it. If I am captured I will deny all this, and you will do the same.”

  “Amen,” James said, slumped in his chair.

  The man paused at the door. “Even if they burn you, I trust you not to say my name, and I will not speak yours. I don’t want to die for nothing.”

  “Agreed,” James said bitterly, as if it was all nothing, as if loyalty was nothing, as if death by burning was nothing. The man let himself out into the night.

  James sat in silence by the dying fire, sick with the draining away of his courage. He found his hands were shaking and that all he could see, as he watched the embers, was the triumphantly gloomy face of the king with his dark sorrowful eyes. James thought himself to be a fool to have given his life to such a man and such a fanciful web of plots. The king he had sworn to serve wanted none of his loyalty, and the woman he desired was a whore to the faeries and had murdered the wife and baby of a mortal man. He thought he was very far from God, and very far from grace, and a long, long way from his home.

  At dawn in the morning when a man might reasonably be up and about, James went down to the quayside. The air was cool and smelled of salt in the light breeze. The sky was peach pink. It was going to be a beautiful day. If they had sailed overnight as they had planned, they would have had a good wind homeward and the sun on their backs. They would have moored on a peaceful quayside, paid off Zachary, and gone their own ways to their homes. No one would have known that the king was gone until they served his breakfast, late in the morning. The king would have been breakfasting in France, the Stuart monarchy safe in exile, certain to invade; Cromwell’s rebellion doomed. James looked to pink clouds at the east and thought that never in his life had he seen a sun rise and felt such darkness.

  Zachary was asleep, curled up under a sail in the stern of the little trading ship. He opened his eyes and sat up as he heard the sound of James’s riding boots on the stone quay.

  “Miscarried,” he observed. “Like the babies she says she will deliver that come out blue. Unsatisfied—as she always is.”

  “Yes,” James said shortly. “But I know nothing about any babies.”

  Zachary hawked and spat over the side. “Her hands are stained with them,” he said conversationally. “She smells of them: dead babies. Had you not noticed? But—anyway—what happened to you? Nothing good. Were you caught? Doing whatever you were doing?”

  “No.”

  “Probably half the island knows anyway,” Zachary said pessimistically. “He’s not famously discreet, your master. Everyone I know has taken a letter from him and learned his ever-so-secret code.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, you’ll pay me the forty crowns for my silence,” he observed.

  “Twenty,” James said flatly. He took the purse from his pocket and tossed it over. Zachary caught it neatly, and it disappeared into the folds of his tattered jacket. “So you failed,” he said spitefully. “Your mission was a failure and so are you.”

  “I failed,” James said. “But no one the wiser, and no harm done.”

  “But I am wiser. I know of you and where you came from. Who you came from. Where you live. I think you’ll find that is harm done.”

  “You know,” James agreed. “But I know of you, so we are equal in that. Will you come to have breakfast at the inn and see your boy this morning?”

  Zachary shook his head. “Not I.”

  “What am I to tell him?”

  “Tell him I went out last night and drowned.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Then tell him whatever lie you can stoop to. For clearly you are not wedded to truth. You have broken your vows and you lie to those who trust you. You lie to your hosts and to their servants. If you have a lover, and I think we both know her name . . .” he paused and leered at the thought of Alinor, “. . . then, for sure, you lie to her, for she’s no royalist. She can’t be faithful to any cause or mortal man. You’re no better than me. In fact, you’re worse than me, for I ran for my life from a witch, but you are running back to her. And she will eat your lying soul and steal your child.”

  “I am not running back to her!”

  “Then you’re lying to yourself as well.”

  “And there is no child.”

  “There will be if she wants one.”

  James paused and gritted his teeth on hatred. “I will not help her to find you in any way, and I will tell your son that you took a message for me and have not yet come back.”

  Zachary nodded indifferently. “I sail on the morning tide anyway,” he said. “I’ll be gone for days, weeks. If the boy comes looking for me, he won’t find me.”

  “Good-bye,” James said shortly.

  “Godspeed, Priest,” Zachary said, getting a threat into the last word as James turned and walked away.

  James went through the day in a daze. The boys wanted to watch the king go to church, but James could not bear to see that mournful face again, so he sent them on their own and they came back full of excitement that the king had saluted the crowd of well-wishers, that someone had raised their voice against him, that some cavaliers had started a brawl, that the king had laughed and gone back to his house, then waved to the crowd from his window, and that everyone said that the parliament men were coming in the next week to give him his crown back.

  “D’you want to ride over to Cowes?” James asked. He found that every minute in Newport was unbearable. “We could take a ship to Portsmouth from Cowes, and then hire horses to ride home.”

  “Can we?” Walter was exuberant. He cuffed Rob around the head. “Say yes!”

  “Yes! Yes!” Rob exclaimed. “But did you say my father was coming to breakfast? Can I see him before we go?”

  “He took a message for me to Southampton and he’s not returned,” James lied smoothly. “He said that he might be delayed. We might see him at Cowes. We might not. But I am afraid that he’s not coming home to your mother, Robert. He said he wouldn’t come home. I am sorry.”

  “But what is she to do?” Rob demanded. “What if he never comes home? She can’t live off the herbs and the midwifery. Did he say he would send money? And there is Alys to be provided for. She needs a dowry. Her father should give her a dowry, sir.”

  James swallowed his own sense of despair. “I will talk to your mother,” he said. He knew that he longed to talk to her. “If we can get you an apprenticeship, then you will earn good wages. You could do well, Robert. You could be her support. If your sister marries well, then your mother can live more cheaply at home. She’s got the boat now; she can earn her own keep. She does not depend on your father. She is skilled, and when she can get work she is paid well.”

  “The women won’t use a midwife who is neither a wife nor a widow,” Rob said, flushed to his ears. “They think it’s unlucky.”

  “I didn’t know,” James said quietly, realizing how much he did not know about Alinor and her life. “Perhaps she could go and live inland, where people don’t know her, where she could pass as a widow?”

  “Why can’t he come home, and make everything right?” The cry came from the boy as if it were wrested from him.
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br />   James could not meet his eyes. “These are troubles between a man and a wife,” he said lamely. “I am sorry for you and for your mother. But if your father will not do his duty, I cannot make him. Neither can you, Robert. It’s not your fault.”

  “The church wardens would make him!”

  “They would, but he won’t come back to face them.”

  “She will be shamed,” the boy said bleakly. “And they will call me a bastard.”

  They rode to Cowes, Walter in buoyant spirits but Rob was very quiet. Then they spent the night at an inn on the quayside, and took a ship across the Solent. It was a calm crossing and when they landed in Portsmouth they hired horses and took the coast road, riding east, through fields and little villages with pretty waterside churches. They stayed overnight at Langstone in an old fishing inn. James woke to the smell of the sea and the cry of seagulls, and thought that for the rest of his life he would hear that mournful calling as the sound of defeat. Then they rode on, east through the marshy tidelands of Hampshire and across the county border to Sussex. When they came down the road that led south to her brother’s ferry and the wadeway, James narrowed his eyes against the low sun, looking for Alinor, where he had seen her before.

  The tide was on the ebb, the water was dazzling in the rife. He almost thought that she would be waiting for him, her pale face bright with joy at seeing him. The light on the water was so bright, and he was so certain that she would come to meet him, that he saw her, her hood pushed back from her white cap, looking over the mire towards him. But it was a mirage, a false seeing in the haze of the waters, a chimera. It was her brother who came from the ferry-house, his dog at his heels, and he pulled the ferry over to them, and helped to load the hired horses.