Tidelands

by Philippa Gregory

  “You can go along the bank and see your mother if you like,” James said quietly to Rob as Ned hauled the ferry, hand over hand on the rope. “Walter and I will go on to the Priory. I can lead your horse.”

  Rob nodded.

  “Why, what’s the matter with you?” Ned demanded, hearing the dullness in James’s voice and seeing Rob’s drooping head. “Are you sick, Rob? Is there something wrong, Mr. Summer?”

  “Just weary,” James said. He had not known that the despair he felt in his belly was showing in his face. “I think we’re all weary.”

  “So the sight of the king did not cheer you?” the ferry-man remarked. “His touch did not cure you of all ills?”

  James reminded himself that nobody here knew that he had failed in his mission and the purpose of his life was wasted. “No. The boys liked to see him.”

  “You a royalist now, Rob?” his uncle demanded, as the ferry grounded on the bank.

  “No, Uncle,” Rob replied quietly. “But I was glad to see the king in person.”

  “And his coat!” Walter interpolated. “You should have seen his hat!”

  The boys led their horses off the ferry onto dry land.

  “Looks like he’s going to haggle on and on with the parliament men,” Ned said to James. “But I reckon the army will have something to say about any deal. He won’t wrap the army round his little finger, whatever tricks he plays on parliament. The soldiers won’t forgive him for starting the wars again, after we all thought we were at peace. The country’s turned against him like never before, for that. No one will forgive him that.”

  “I don’t know,” James said wearily, stepping ashore and pulling at his horse’s bridle. “God knows what they will come to, and what it will cost us all.”

  “You don’t take in vain the name of our Lord on my ferry,” Ned reproved him.

  “I apologize,” James said, through cold lips, leading his horse up to the mounting block, climbing into the saddle, and taking Rob’s reins. “My good wishes to your mother, Rob.”

  Alinor was striding along the bank path to Ferry-house garden to pick blackberries when she saw the silhouette of her beloved son against the afternoon sky, as he walked from the rife. He did not bound like a colt in the field, but walked as if his feet were heavy, his head down as if he were hurt.

  “Holloah!” she shouted, and ran towards him. As soon as she took him in her arms, she knew that there was something wrong. She sniffed at him like an animal scenting ill health: the different houses where he had lodged, smoke from different kitchens in his hair, a different starch in his collar, the smell of the sea and the salt of the harbor on his coat. Then she stepped back and looked into his face and saw how his shoulders were hunched, and his face turned down. “What is it, son?” she asked him gently. “What ails you?”

  “Oh, nothing, nothing,” he said dully.

  “Come home, come inside.” She led the way back to the cottage without another word, dimly understanding that he would not speak under the arching sky with the gulls crying and the sea lapping at the bank as if it were flowing inshore and would make all the world into tidelands.

  “Were you going somewhere?” he asked her.

  “Just to pick blackberries. I can go later.”

  She did not close the front door on the little room, but kept it open so that she could see his face in the bright afternoon light. He dropped onto his stool. He had sat there when he was a boy and cried for some small hurt. She wanted to hold him now, as she had done then.

  “Where’s Alys?” he asked.

  “She’s having her dinner at Stoney Farm with the Stoney family, and staying the night there. She’s fine. But what is it with you?”

  “I . . . It is . . . We met . . .”

  Inwardly, she cursed the priest who had taken her boy from his home, over the seas, and brought him back speechless with distress. “Are you hungry?” she asked him, to give them both time.

  “No!” he exclaimed, thinking that she could not waste her bread on him, that it would be hard for her to earn it when everyone knew that she was an abandoned wife.

  “Have a cup of ale, then,” she said gently, and went to the jug and poured them each a cup. Then she sat beside him, and clasped her hands in her lap to keep herself still. “Tell me, Rob. It’s probably not that bad. It’s never as bad—”

  “It is bad,” he insisted. “You don’t know.”

  “Tell me then,” she said steadily. “So that I do know.”

  “I saw my da,” he said quietly, his face downcast. “At Newport, on the island. He had a ship, he’s master of a coastal trader. It’s called the Jessie.” He snatched a quick look at her face. “Did you know?”

  “No, of course not, I’d have told you.”

  “He could’ve come home to us months ago,” he said. “But he didn’t.”

  She gave a little sigh. “This doesn’t shock me,” she promised him. “Nor hurt me, neither.”

  “I saw him, and I called his name, and he saw me and he ran,” Rob said, his voice quavering a little. “I didn’t think it at the time, but now I think that he knew me at once, and ran from me. But I went after him like a fool, and Walter and Mr. Summer after me.”

  Now she flushed, a deep humiliated blush that rose from her neck to her forehead. “Master Walter and Mr. Summer were there, too?”

  “Course they were! They met him.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “Awful. We all went with him into an inn, a small dirty place where he had a slate. I think Mr. Summer paid foreverything. And he said he’d been pressed by the navy, the parliament navy, and escaped from them when they went over to the prince, and then he got a passage on a coastal trader. He said he’d come to breakfast with us the next morning, but he didn’t. He went on an errand for Mr. Summer and never came back. We thought we might see him in Cowes, but though I went down to the quayside he wasn’t there, and they hadn’t seen his boat. Mr. Summer says that he won’t come back here.”

  With one hand shading his eyes so he did not see her face, he stretched out his other hand and she gripped it tightly.

  “I don’t even know there was an errand,” he said, his palm clamped over his eyes. “It may be that they lied to me, thinking I was a child, thinking I am a fool. Maybe he just ran away, and Mr. Summer lied for him.”

  “This isn’t your fault.” She felt that she could wail with pain that anyone should turn from Rob, that his own father should run from him. “This is the fault of the man that Zachary is, not the boy that you are. He can’t live with me: p’raps that’s my fault. But it’s nothing that can be blamed on you. You’ve been a son that anyone would be proud of, and Alys a daughter that anyone would love. Zachary cannot live with me, nor I with him. But that’s our fault. It doesn’t fall on the two of you.”

  “Did you ever think he’d come back?”

  “I didn’t know,” she confessed. “As the months went on, I thought it less and less likely, but I didn’t know. Just this Midsummer Eve I went to the graveyard in case his ghost was walking, so that I’d know for sure that he was dead. God forgive me, Rob, I was hoping he was dead so that we wouldn’t have to think of him anymore. When I didn’t see his ghost, I knew he must be alive, and was choosing not to come home to us. But it’s still not your fault, Rob.”

  She felt a pulse of shame that she had met the priest in the graveyard when she should have been undertaking a vigil for the ghost of her husband, and now he had met Zachary, and they had spoken together of her. She could not imagine what Zachary might have said. If he had repeated the wild accusations he used to make—of her taking faerie gold for whoring in the other world, of her witchcraft and unmanning him—she would be shamed before James Summer forever. If he had convinced James that Ned’s wife had died because Alinor was negligent or worse: murderous; then she might face questioning. She closed her eyes at the shame and the danger that Zachary could still bring her. They sat side by side, both blinded with distre
ss for a moment.

  “It’s not your fault, Rob,” she repeated steadily. “And much of it’s not my fault either.”

  “What’ll we do?” Rob asked anxiously. “If he doesn’t come back? You’ve got the boat now, but you can’t sell fish to fishermen, and when Walter goes to university I’ll have to find other work, and nothing’ll pay as well. And Alys can’t marry without a dowry.”

  “I don’t rightly know what we’ll do,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. “But I have the herbs and the babies. I’ve been paid by Farmer Johnson. Everyone will go on having babies, God bless them. And if peace comes, and the bishop comes back to his palace, then I’ll get my license from him, and I’ll be able to charge more and I’ll be called out to more homes.”

  “Not when they know that Da’s left us,” Rob contradicted her. “Not when they know you’re not a widow nor a wife. You’ll never get your license then. Even if the bishop comes back. You won’t be a woman of good repute. They won’t even let you into church; you’ll have to stand in the porch. They won’t let you in for communion.”

  “Perhaps people won’t mind too much. Nobody liked Zachary.”

  “They’ll call me a bastard!” he choked.

  “They’ll be wrong,” she said steadfastly. “And you need not answer to it.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Should we move away?” he asked. “Somewhere that you could call yourself a widow, and Alys and I could find work, and people wouldn’t know?”

  “No parish would have us!” She tried to smile but he could see the pain in her face. “No parish would admit a widow woman with two children! They’d be too afraid that we’d fall on the parish and cost money. Mrs. Miller is afraid already, and we were born and bred here and have paid our tithes for generations. And besides, you know, gossip’d follow us, and it’d sound worse to strangers, people who didn’t know Zachary, and don’t know what he’s like.”

  “I can’t face it here.”

  “Yes, I understand. I do understand, Rob. But, at least here we have the garden and the boat and your uncle. I have my stillroom and my dairy and the brewhouse in Ferry-house. I work the garden with your uncle. There’s always work at the mill. They think well of you at the Priory, and Mrs. Wheatley, the cook, is a good friend to me. We’ll just have to make up our minds to tell everyone that Zachary has left me, so there’s no more talk of whether or not he’s dead. It’ll be bad for a month or two; but then something’ll happen and everyone’ll become accustomed.” She tried to smile at him reassuringly. “You’ll see. Some poor woman will hop over the stile and be shamed in church before us all. They’ll find something else to gossip about; they’ll talk about someone else.”

  “They will blame you and they will look down on you, and you’ve done nothing wrong!” he said fiercely.

  She nodded grimly. “Yes, maybe. But I have a good reputation as a hardworking woman with some skills, and that won’t change. Zachary was not well loved and nobody’ll miss him. I didn’t even miss him, but for the boat and his earnings.”

  He nodded. “You’ll have to live without a husband for the rest of your life. And you’re—I don’t know—thirty?”

  She smiled. “I’m twenty-seven years old. Yes, I’ll be a single woman for the rest of my life; but that’s no hardship for me. I have you and Alys, and I want for nothing more.”

  “You might find someone you love,” he said shyly. “Someone might find you.”

  “Nobody will ever find me here.” She gestured to the open door and the stretches of mud and slowly receding brackish water outside, as the low rumble of the tide mill started up like thunder, and there was a sudden gout of green water in the rife. “Nobody will ever find a woman like me in a place like this.”

  James met with Sir William in the library after Walter had gone to bed. The candles were burned down in their sconces and the deerhound slept before the fire. Sir William was in his great chair by the fireside, James on the other side in a smaller chair. Both men had glasses of French brandy, smuggled by the hidden traders who came to the tide mill quay on the high tide dark nights, and left without showing a light. James was wearily explaining the king’s plan to trick the parliament and his refusal to leave.

  “He wouldn’t come? Not even for the password?” Sir William repeated incredulously.

  James shook his head. “No, sir, he would not.”

  “You warned him of what might be?”

  “I warned him, and I told him that it was his wife’s own plan and his son was waiting in his ship offshore. I begged him. He wouldn’t come.”

  “God save him, this is a damnable mistake.” Sir William held up his glass in a toast. James clinked glasses and sat back in his chair.

  “Are you sick?” Sir William cocked an eye at the younger man’s pale face.

  “Perhaps a little fever. Nothing important.”

  “So d’you think there’s any chance he might be right? That parliament will come to an agreement with him?”

  “Newport is filled with royalists who boast that it doesn’t matter what he signs. They say he will sign anything, and once he’s back in his palace he’ll avenge his advisors that parliament executed, restore the queen, and bring the royal family back to London. He’ll take back his power and destroy his enemies. Everyone says that it doesn’t matter what he signs now—he will restore himself.”

  “I doubt it. I really doubt it. The parliament men aren’t fools. It has cost them dear to get here. They’ve lost sons and brothers, too. They won’t throw it away on an empty agreement when he has given them every reason never to trust him. My own ferry-man doesn’t trust him! Anything they offer would have to be binding. They’ll tie him down with oaths. They won’t just hand him the treasury and the army for a handful of promises.”

  “I was told that he will consent to nothing less,” James said wearily.

  “Impossible!” Sir William said scathingly. “Besides, it’s not his army anymore. This is the New Model Army, they’re all Cromwell’s men. They’ll never serve under a king; they have their own ideas! They’re a power to themselves, they think for themselves. Not even the parliament can control them—how ever would he?”

  James clenched his hands on the carved arms of his chair, trying to master a wave of dizziness. “Yes, sir. But that’s the very reason that parliament will have to agree with him: to avoid the demands of the army. Some parliament men hate the army worse than they doubt the king. Some would rather have a tyrannical king than a tyrannical army—who wouldn’t? They’re divided among themselves, whereas he is determined . . .”

  The older man nodded. “It’s a gamble,” he said. “A royal gamble. You have to admire him for taking it.”

  James, very far from admiration, took a sip of brandy. “I don’t know where it leaves us,” he said. “I don’t know where it leaves me.”

  “I’ll wait until I’m summoned again to serve him,” Sir William spoke for himself. “But I’ll never put my son in danger again. It’s hard to accept that he would let us come to his door before refusing. Did he not think of the danger to us? And what about you? Will you have to go back to your seminary for your orders?”

  “I suppose so.” James put a hand to his forehead and found it was wet with sweat. “They’ll never understand how I failed. I was told to set loose a lion; I never thought it would stay in its cage. Of all the things that I feared might go wrong, I never thought of this. I’m at a loss. I was to see him safe on his son’s ship, and then go to London. I am ordered to report to London as soon as he was safely away. I suppose now I shall go back to them and say he has stayed, and I have failed. I will have to go to the queen and tell her that I have spent her fortune for nothing.”

  “You’re very welcome to stay here. The chapel needs a chaplain. Walter needs a tutor. Nobody doubts you. You’re safe here.”

  “I’d be glad to stay overnight, but I am under oath. Tomorrow I must ride to London.”

  “You don’t look fit for it.”

/>   James felt his very bones ache. “I have to report. There’ll be another plot. There’ll be more journeys along hidden ways. There will be another task for me: and I am sworn to obedience.”

  “Well, please God they don’t ask more of you than to lie low and wait for better times. You’ve been living on the brink of danger for months, and you look as sick as a dog.”

  “It’s been weary work,” James conceded.

  “What if they send you back to him, to do it all over again?”

  “I am sworn to serve,” James repeated, feeling the words sour in his mouth and his heart hammering. “I pray for peace.”

  “So do we all,” his lordship said. “But always on our own terms. Shall we pray now?”

  “Matins?” James offered, looking at the French clock that ticked on the stone chimney breast. It was past midnight.

  “Yes,” Sir William said, getting to his feet. “And will you leave tomorrow?”

  “At dawn,” James said, thinking of the two boys in his care, of his plans for them, which would not now happen, and of the woman that he had sworn he would never see again, and now he never would.

  James, in his white shirt and riding breeches, but with his holy stole around his neck, went quietly around the private chapel lighting candles. Sir William knelt before his great chair, his eyes closed, his face buried in his hands. Turning his back on his congregation of one, James prepared the bread and the wine for the Mass at the old stone altar at the east end of the church and spoke the prayers in Latin, his voice never rising above a quiet monotone. Sir William did not need to hear clearly. He joined in the confession and the preparation of the host in Latin, knowing every word from his childhood in a family that had never surrendered their faith, not during the years of Elizabeth, not during the years of Edward, not during the years of Henry.

  The sense of despair that James had felt when he realized that he had spent months preparing an escape for a king who would not leave drained from him as his hands moved deftly among the goblets and the pyx, turned the page, poured the wine, broke the bread. He turned to find Sir William kneeling on the chancel steps and gave him the holy bread and a sip of the sacred wine. He knew, without any doubt, that at that moment Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, was in the bread and in the wine, that it was His body and His blood, that James and Sir William had dined at the table of the last supper, and that they had defeated death itself. He knew himself to be a sinner and he knew himself to be mired in doubt; but still he knew that he was redeemed and saved.