“She could remarry?”
Sir William closed one eye in a slow wink. “As long as no one has seen Zachary alive. You might remember that. If you want to do her a favor, you might remember that.”
“No one has seen him,” James confirmed. He felt his spirits leap up at the thought that she might be free, that he might be released from his vows, that despite what she had said, they could have a future together. “No one has seen him at all. He’s dead, and she could declare herself a widow in six years.”
“That’s the way,” Sir William said. “Pretty woman. Shame to have her wasted on the edge of the mire like that.”
“I hadn’t really noticed,” James said cautiously.
“You must have done!” his lordship exclaimed. “She’s known from here to Chichester as the most beautiful woman in Sussex. Some fool wrote a song about her a few years ago: ‘The Belle of Sealsea.’ I’d have tupped her myself if it weren’t for having Walter in the house, and his mother not long dead, and everyone in this damn island knowing everyone else’s business and turned so godly.”
James felt his familiar sense of distaste at the trouble that seemed to follow Alinor even here, among her betters. “Better to leave her alone,” he advised rapidly, “and then she might make a good marriage and change her luck.”
“Oh, aye,” Sir William conceded. “And her brother is an army man and as free with his opinions as a dog with his piss, and times so changeable. It’s not like the old days when you knew where you were. My father would take a tenant’s wife behind the haystack and no one would say a word but ‘Thank you, your lordship!’ ”
“Yes,” James said repressively. “It’s not like the old days at all.”
“Anyway, they say you can’t force her,” Sir William confided. “They say some fool tried to take her against her will, when she was coming home from market, and she whispered something to him that completely unmanned him. He said his cock went limp and his blood froze. He said she ruined him, before he ruined her.”
“Really?”
“Gossip. Sort of gossip that collects around a beautiful woman. Especially a cunning woman. They say she can do all sorts. They called her a cock whisperer after that; said that she could blast a man with ice or harden him like a rock. Must say, I’d like to know.”
James was sickened by the repetition of Alinor’s uncanny skills. “It was probably nothing but that she spoke godly to him and he lost the will,” he said.
“Who knows what she can do?”
“Surely, she just knows the healing herbs,” James insisted.
“Maybe. They believe all sorts of nonsense on this island. Her mother was half witch for sure. But she’s dead and buried in holy ground and nobody actually tried her. Her sister-in-law died in childbed; but of course the brother hushed it all up. Anyway . . . makes no difference to us. The woman, whatever she may be, has obliged us and we’ve paid her. And you know you’re welcome back anytime. You can stay on now, if you wish.”
“I’ll go tomorrow,” James said, glad to change the subject. “I have to go to London, and then I’ll take a ship to France. I will go to my seminary and confess. If they release me, perhaps I will be able to come back to England. Perhaps next time we meet I shall have my old name and my old house back again.”
“I hope you do, by God, I hope that you do. You deserve it,” Sir William said gruffly. “Remember that it wasn’t your fault. His Majesty chose his own path. Pray God that he chose rightly and it gets him to his throne. Pray God that both you and he get safe home.”
Alinor and Alys soaked their best caps and their linen in a bowl of water and urine as soon as they got home from the ferry-house herb garden. They left them to bleach all evening, rinsed them in cold water from the dipping pond, and then pinned them on a string beside the herbs to dry.
“I’m never going to be able to sleep,” Alys said.
“You should,” Alinor warned her. “I don’t want to be taking a pasty-faced girl to her new in-laws.”
“Pasty!” Alys objected.
“With dark shadows under her eyes like old drunk Joan.”
“All right, I’ll sleep, I swear it.”
“I’m stepping up to Ferry-house to see your uncle. I won’t be long.”
“All right,” Alys said. She took off her work skirt and jacket and laid them on top of the blankets. Wearing only her linen shift, and with her hair in a plait, she slid under the covers and drew them up to her shoulders. She looked like a little girl again, and Alinor stepped back to the bed to kiss her on her forehead. “Are you sure about this? You seem very young to be talking about your wedding?”
Alys’s smile was radiant. “I’m sure, Ma. I’m absolutely sure. And I’m the same age as you when you married my da.”
“It wasn’t a very good choice,” Alinor said quietly.
“But I’m as old as you were then.”
“Yes.”
“D’you think he’ll come home?” she asked. “My da. If he hears from someone that I’m to be married, will he come home for my wedding day?”
Alinor hesitated. “Alys, I don’t think he’ll ever come home.”
At once, Alys clapped her hands over her ears. “Don’t tell me anything!” she begged her mother. “The Stoneys can only just about bear me if they think my da is missing and might come home wealthy. If I tell them he’s run off they’ll never consider me for Richard, I’ll be next to a pauper for them.”
Alinor took Alys’s hands from her ears and held them in her own work-worn palms. “All right, I’ll say nothing. And you can say you know nothing for sure.”
“And that’s true.” Alys nodded. “This is the tidelands, there’s nothing sure.”
Alinor pulled on her cape, for the evening mist was blowing off the harbor, damp and cold, and she went out of the cottage garden and turned to the left, as if she were going to the ferry-house, as she had told Alys, but then, when she reached the top of the bank she turned again, and entered along the hidden footpath that ran behind the cottage towards the Priory and the sea. It was high tide and the smell of sea salt blew in with the ribbons of mist. When she looked to her right, inland over the low-lying fields behind the bank, she could see the white silhouette of an owl hunting along the hedgerow, silent as a ghost, its great eyes seeing through the darkness.
Alinor stayed on the high-tide path, dropping down to cross the narrow strip of dry beach above the lapping waters, back up the muddy steps to the top of the bank, tracing her way across the gray stepping-stones where a marshy field oozed into the mire: gray stones set in gray mud under a gray sky. She skirted the headland where the bell tower stood like a warning fingerpost against the darkening sky, and then she turned inland at a sunken mooring post, its base in deep water, green with seaweed. She crossed the foreshore, her boots crunching on a drift of tiny shells, and mounted the bank to the Priory sea meadow. She lifted her gaze from the uneven steps and saw him at once. He was waiting in the shade of a hayrick, hidden from the Priory windows, facing the sea path, looking for her.
Without a word, she went into his arms and they clung to each other.
“Alinor,” was all he said, and then he kissed her.
Alinor leaned back against the hayrick, her knees weakening beneath her as if she might fall to the ground. She made a little movement and he released her. “Not here,” was all she said.
“Not here. Will you come to the Priory?”
“I don’t dare.”
“Can we go to your cottage?”
“Alys is at home.”
He was silent. “Is there nowhere we can go? You know the woods, the mire, the little pathways?”
“I couldn’t lie with you on the mire.” She gave a little shudder and at once he put his arms around her and drew his cape around her. “Not with the tide high,” she said. “It’d be like drowning. Could we go to the chapel? We could sit in the porch?”
He shook his head. “I have lost my faith, but that would be too much.
I couldn’t—forgive me, my love—I can’t.”
“Of course,” she said, and thought what a loose slut he must think her to even suggest it. “I didn’t mean . . .”
“I want you so much I think my heart will stop,” he said. “Anywhere, anywhere!”
“I don’t think there is anywhere for us,” she said quietly, and then she was struck by the words. “Oh, it’s true. D’you see? There’s nowhere for us, not on Sealsea Island, not in all the tidelands, not in the world.”
“There must be!”
“And besides, aren’t we here to say good-bye?”
“I can’t bear to say good-bye to you in this meadow again!”
“Last time you came back, as you had promised,” she reminded him shyly.
“Last time I was ordered to come back. Next time, I will come back a free man. I will come back for you.”
“I don’t think that can ever be.”
“It will. I will be freed of my vows. I will go and see my parents, I will buy back our house in Yorkshire, and I will come for you.”
Her hands twisted in his and she tried to pull away. “You know—”
“No, listen to me. I can confess my sins and be released from the priesthood.” He tightened his grip as she shook her head. “That is my choice. It is what I want.”
“But you were risking your life for your faith! You told me that it came before everything.”
“I did. But that was before Newport. My love, I failed in my mission and I lost my faith. I lost my faith in everything: king and God. I will leave the priesthood whatever happens, and I will never again come to England as a spy. I will not serve the king again—God bless him and may he have better servants than I. I have failed him and I cannot bear to fail again. That part of my life is over.”
“Even so . . .”
“Alinor, I won’t change my mind. I have lost my faith, I have lost everything. I can’t tell you, but there is a darkness where once there was a burning light. The only thing I care about now is you.”
“Oh, my love,” she whispered. “That’s not how to choose a wife.”
“But the thing that you don’t know and that I have just learned—it is good news—you will be free of your husband. I will never say that I saw him. Robert must be silent, too. I’ve told Walter. In six years, if nobody sees him, and nobody tells the parish that they saw him, then your marriage is dissolved as if it never was. He passes for dead and you are a single woman.”
She had not known this. She raised her eyes, clouded with doubt. “Is this true? Really? Can it be true? Six years and I am free?”
“It’s seven years by law, and the first year has nearly passed.”
“This is the law?”
“It is. Sir William told me himself. You will be free, Alinor, I swear it. You will be free to marry me. And I will be free to marry you.”
“We only have to wait six years?”
“Will you wait?” he demanded.
“I’d wait sixty!” She pressed herself against him. “I’d wait six hundred years. But you should not . . .”
He wrapped himself around her, he pressed her back against the rick and, with his mouth on hers for silence, he made her moan with pleasure until his head dropped into the crook of her neck and she heard him gasp: “I swear. I swear it.”
Alys and Alinor rose early, at first light. Alys was determined to look as smart and as clean as a town girl, and the two women took a jug of soapwort tincture, and some lavender oil, and walked up to Ferry-house before sunrise. Red, the dog, bounced to the door to greet them and sniffed the jug.
“You’re up early,” Ned remarked, seated at his kitchen table, a loaf of bread beside him and a mug of ale to hand.
“We’ve come to wash. We’re visiting the Stoneys,” Alinor explained. “Before we go to Chichester market.”
“And why do they deserve a wash?” Ned glanced, smiling, at Alys and saw her deep blush. “Oh, I see. I’ll get the copper out.”
He rose to his feet and went to the scullery for the big iron pot for the Ferry-house monthly laundry. He slid the worn pole through the two carry loops at the top of the pot and he and Alys lifted it onto the kitchen hearth, while Alinor took two buckets and went to the well at the back door. When they’d set it on the little fire she poured bucket after bucket of water into it, going back for more.
“Will you have some breakfast while it heats up?” Ned offered, cutting two slices of bread.
“I couldn’t eat a thing!” Alys said, though she took a slice and ate it while watching the water.
Ned raised an eyebrow at his sister. “Greensickness,” she whispered. “Please God we can agree on a dowry. She’s set her heart on him.”
He nodded. “He’s walked her to the ferry every evening since harvest home. They sit on the pier, talking and talking like there was any news here. He doesn’t go till I tell her it’s the last crossing of the day.”
“It’s hot enough,” Alys interrupted. “Surely that’s hot enough!”
Alinor and Ned threaded the carry pole through the loops again, took the heavy pot out to the scullery, and set it down on the brick floor.
“I’ll see you later,” Ned remarked. “You can leave the water in the copper for me. I can’t recall when I last had a proper wash, and your water is always so sweet.”
He closed the door on the two of them and they both stripped naked, washed each other’s hair, and then took it in turns to pour jug after jug of water over each other. The tincture of soapwort made the water as cloudy and as slick as soap, and the oil of lavender scented the whole room. They were both shivering when they dried themselves, standing on the cold brick floor, and then they toweled their heads, dressed themselves in their clean linen and brushed gowns, and went out through the kitchen with their damp hair tumbled down over their shoulders.
Ned was on the bench outside the door, smoking his pipe and watching the bright water lapping at the pier. The tide was coming in fast, washing over the cobblestones of the wadeway, foaming in the rife against the outflowing river water. “Going to be a nice day,” he remarked. “You two look as fresh as daisies.”
Alys and Alinor, holding their skirts bunched up so that not a speck of mud should mark the hems, walked gingerly back along the bank and down the steps to the cottage. Their linen caps were dry and pressed smooth on top of the earthenware fire cover. They plaited each other’s damp hair and then pinned the caps on top.
“How do I look?” Alys asked, turning towards her mother.
Alinor looked at her daughter, the perfect skin of a girl tinged with a rising blush, her golden hair hidden by the white cap, her wide blue eyes and her mischievous smile. “You look beautiful,” she said. “I don’t think anyone could resist you.”
“It’s his mother I’m worried about. His father’s very kind to me; but she’s hard-hearted. Ma, we’re going to have to talk her round. Can’t you take a potion, or something?”
“A love potion?” Alinor laughed at her daughter. “You know I don’t do such things.”
“She has to agree we can marry,” Alys said again. “She has to.”
“He’s an only son: they’re bound to want the best for him. But everyone says he can wrap them round his little finger. Will he have told them that we’re visiting today?”
“Yes, and he’ll have told them why. He said they’ll give us breakfast. We can’t be late.”
“We don’t want to arrive at dawn. We don’t want to look too eager.”
“I am eager!” Alys insisted.
Alinor had a sudden flash of memory of James’s touch, and the taste of his mouth, the thudding of his heart as he pressed her against the hayrick. “I understand eagerness,” she said, turning away. “I do. But first we’ve got to put out the herbs and the oil, and feed the hens and cover the fire.”
“I know!” Alys said impatiently. “I know. I’ll do the hens.”
As Alys shooed the hens out of the door, took two eggs from their nests, an
d put them in the crock, Alinor poured flaxseed oil from the jug into a big glass pitcher packed with the last of the fresh basil leaves, and corked it tight. She made another pitcher filled with comfrey and put the two of them on a shelf outside the cottage where the rising sun would strike them, and warm them all day long till the spirit was drawn from the herbs and into the oil. Alinor went to the corner cupboard where she distilled her oils and dried her herbs, and she took a dozen little bottles and put them in her basket.
“Are you ready?” Alys demanded. “D’you have everything? Can we go now?”
“Is the fire covered?”
“Yes, yes!”
“And the marks against fire?”
Alys bent to the hearth, took up a twig of kindling, and drew the runes against house fire. “There!”
“We want it nice . . .” Alinor began.
Alys completed the phrase, laughing: “to come back to.”
“I know! I know!” Alinor admitted her predictable instruction. “But it’s what my mother always said, and it’s always true.”
“It’s perfect to come back to. Mrs. Miller herself would admire it. Let’s go.”
The two women walked in single file back along the bank to Ferry-house. The tide was high, and a farmer was leading his big cob horse off the ferry and climbing into his saddle off the mounting block.
“Going to Chichester market, Goodwife Reekie?” he greeted Alinor.
“Yes. Are you keeping well, Farmer Chudleigh?” she called up to him.
“I am,” he said. “But I’ll thank you for that goose grease of yours when the cold gets into my old knees.”
“I’ll bring you a jar,” she promised him.
“You two look like you’ve been new-minted,” Ned complimented them. “So clean you’re shiny.”
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