Tidelands

by Philippa Gregory

  She had no faith in her purpose or in her courage. She had no faith in herself as the cold murky waters lapped at her feet. But slowly she found that she had one belief—only one belief: that she would last through this night, that she would last through any night to come. She knew that she would not drown herself. She knew that she would not be broken by this terrible misfortune any more than she had been broken by the cruelty of Zachary or by the loss of her mother. She thought that the one thing that she had learned in this life, which had so many troubles and so few joys: she had at least learned to survive. She knew she could endure. She thought that all her life—raised by a courageous woman in hard circumstances, abused by a violent husband, loving two children and bringing them up in poverty—had taught her this lesson: to survive. She thought it was the only thing that she truly knew to do. She thought that she had found, embedded in her heart, like a drowned field post in a mudbank, a great determination to live.

  Alys woke in the morning, as fresh-faced as a child, her eyes clear and her beauty undimmed by the night of crying. She found her mother making gruel and setting out the bowls on the table as if it were an ordinary day.

  “Ma?”

  “Yes, Alys?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I am going to eat my breakfast and so are you.”

  “But—”

  “Eat first and then we’ll talk. You have to eat. Especially now.”

  Alys pulled out her stool and sat at the table and ate as she was bidden. When she had finished and pushed back her bowl she said: “And now, tell me what you’re going to do. You can’t let anyone know your sin.”

  “But you can?”

  “It’s not the same. Richard and me were handfasted in the sight of God. He’s going to marry me. His parents will have no objection to me coming into their house with a new son and heir on the way. They’ll welcome me. In the old days half the girls in the parish used to be married with a big belly, you know that yourself. And only the strictest people mind, even now. Everyone’s glad to see that a bride is fertile. There’s no comparison to you and your adultery.”

  Alinor bowed her head. “You know for sure that his parents won’t object?”

  “They’re not puritans, and they know that I’m not loose. We were both virgins when we lay together and we were betrothed. They know we’ve been courting for months. My baby will have a good name and a beautiful farm for his home.” She broke off. “At least he would have done. Until now. Until this. Now, God knows what’ll happen. Nobody’ll let you work for them, nobody’ll dream of having you as a midwife. You’ll never get your license and no respectable place would have Rob as an apprentice.” She dropped her face into her hands and rubbed her eyes. “Ma! Think! Not even Uncle Ned will stand your friend or be your brother when he knows. He’ll deny you. And how will you manage here without his kinship? How will you even eat if you can’t use the ferry-house kitchen garden?”

  Alinor was silent.

  “You won’t be able to stay here! They’ll torture you. Mrs. Miller and all her friends, the parish council, the church court . . .”

  “I know,” Alinor said quietly.

  “Nobody will buy your herbs. They’ll come to you for nothing but love potions and poisons.”

  “I know.”

  As if Alinor’s stillness made Alys more determined, she rose to her feet and looked down at her seated mother. “It’s not possible for you to bear this child,” the girl said quietly. “You know the herbs to use, you know how it’s done. You’ll have to get rid of it. You know how. You’ll have to get rid of it.”

  Alinor looked up into her daughter’s stern face.

  “It’s not been long, has it?” asked the girl. “You’ve only been sick for a few weeks?”

  Alinor nodded. She found she could not speak.

  “Then it can be done and no one the wiser. I’ll go to work at the mill now. I’ll come home this afternoon early, saying I’m ill. You can take whatever you need to take at noon, and I’ll care for you. I’ll do whatever you need. I’ll look after you, Ma, I promise. You shall tell me what you need to eat and drink, and I’ll not leave you till it’s over. I’ll change your linen and care for you as it happens.”

  Alinor said nothing.

  “You have to be rid of this,” Alys pressed. “Richard can’t marry me if you are shamed, and that would break my heart and his, and our child would be born out of wedlock. You’ll have a bastard child, and a bastard grandchild. We can’t survive that. Your child is the ruin of us all: you, me, and Rob. You have to end it. I’ve never asked you for anything, Ma, but I am asking you for this.”

  Her mother sat silent, her face white.

  “Your shame is my shame,” the girl repeated. “When the Stoneys hear you’re with child they’ll throw me off. I’ll never see Richard again. Then we’ll both be stuck here, both of us, with our bastards, without husbands. Don’t you think they’ll turn us out, with our big bellies on us? Don’t you think Mrs. Miller, and all the goodwives like her, will have us out of the parish before we can make a charge on it? And every husband shouting that we should go, to show that it wasn’t him?”

  “Two babies,” was all that Alinor could say.

  “Two bastards,” her daughter corrected her. “Pauper bastards. They’ll die in the poorhouse together. No one will let us raise them.”

  “I’ll think about it.” Alinor drew a breath. “I will think about it today and tell you tonight.”

  “You should have thought before,” her daughter said crudely.

  Alinor flinched as if she had been struck. “I know,” she said, her voice very low. “I know how grave this is.”

  “If you don’t finish it here, today, then my life is ruined. Rob’s, too,” Alys loaded her mother’s guilt. “Nobody will take him as an apprentice if his mother is a bawd who keeps a bawdy house on the mire. Nobody’ll ever marry me with a bastard child and my mother with hers. We’ll be ruined whores. My uncle Ned won’t even let us on his ferry. We’ll never get off the island at high tide. And when they come to drive us out, nobody will save us. Rob will have to watch them throw stones and mud and fish guts at our backs.”

  Alinor nodded. She could imagine the reflection of torches in the water as the good people of Sealsea Island gathered at dusk to rid themselves of two friendless sluts. “I know.”

  “Get the herbs ready,” Alys ordered. “I’ll come home early and we’ll do it this evening.”

  She pulled on her jacket, and she took her distaff, her hank of fleece, and her spindle and she walked out of the door, spinning as she walked up the bank towards the ferry, to go to the mill where she would work as hard as any man, to earn the money for her dowry for the marriage that she was determined to make.

  Left alone, Alinor started work on the daily tasks: shooing the hens out of the door, picking up the eggs, sweeping the floor, washing the two wooden gruel bowls, and rinsing the ale mugs. She swept the embers under the earthenware fire guard and made the marks against fire in the ashes of the hearth. She tied her cape around her shoulders, and went outside to gather firewood. And then she stood, looking at the harbor as if she had never seen it before, gazing at the gray horizon, wondering if she would ever again see a ship coming up the deep-water channel and hope that it was bringing the man she loved.

  She had been so long in such a daze of missing James, and trusting him to return, that she could not now change the rhythm of her thoughts. She could not understand that she was no longer patiently waiting; now she was in crisis. She could not bring herself to face the problem and solve it. She sank down on the bench and, as the sky overhead darkened with a great flock of wintering geese and she heard their loud complaining cries and heard the beating of their great wings, without knowing it, under her cape her cold hand crept to her flat belly as if she would hold the tiny baby safe inside.

  Later that morning Alinor was raking over the barley in the malthouse at Ferry-house. As she leaned on her rake and in
haled the warm scent of the barleycorns, a young lad put his head in the door and said: “Are you the wisewoman?”

  Alinor, feeling far from wise, replied: “Yes. Who asks?”

  “An oyster fisherwoman,” he said. “Down at East Beach.”

  “Did her husband send for me?” Alinor asked, shoveling the barley grains rapidly into a pile so that they could continue heating.

  “He’s at sea. His mother sent me for you. She gave me this.” The boy handed over a silver sixpence.

  “I’ll come at once,” Alinor said, reassured that there would be money to pay her fee. East Beach fishermen were notorious: on a poor island they did poorly. “I’ve got to fetch my things.”

  “I’m to come with you and help carry,” the youth said. He was pale with fright at having to serve a wisewoman. Alinor was known on East Beach to be a mistress of unknown arts. The fishermen of East Beach had drunk with Zachary when he had boasted about his wife’s strange powers. And then Zachary was gone, and his ship was gone, for no reason, on a clear day, and one or two said that she had sent him down with his ship and her faerie lover had danced like St. Elmo’s fire, in the rigging.

  “We’ll walk across the mire to St. Wilfrid’s and then to East Beach,” Alinor decided.

  He gaped. “Through the waters?”

  “It’s low tide. I know the paths.”

  The boy gulped down his fear and followed in her footsteps as she closed the door on the malting floor, shouted an explanation to Ned, who was plaiting a new rope for the ferry on the pier, and headed along the bank to her own cottage to collect the herbs and oils that she would need, putting them in the bag that she always took for childbirth. Alinor walked ahead of the boy along the bank, down to the white shingle shore, and then deep into the harbor, following the hidden paths, hearing him pattering along behind her, sometimes splashing in the puddles left by the receding tide.

  They cut the corner by the church, crossing through the churchyard, and went past the big iron gates of the Priory. Alinor, glancing down the drive, saw Rob and Walter riding up the broad sweep. She waved at them but did not check her stride, and was pleased when Rob clicked to his horse and rode up to catch her up.

  “Ma!”

  “God bless you, my son.”

  “Are you called out?” he asked, recognizing her sack of goods and her determined march.

  “Yes, to East Beach.”

  “We can take you up,” he said at once. He looked at Walter. “Can’t we? We can take my mother and this lad to wherever they need to go?”

  “Why not?” said Walter easily. “Here, Mrs. Reekie, will you come up with me?”

  Alinor was reluctant to ride with Walter, but her son was already pulling up his horse and putting a hand down to the boy.

  “I don’t know that I can get up there,” she said, looking at Walter’s hunter.

  “I’ll come over to this wall here,” he said. “And if you will climb up to the top, then you can step on. He’s a good horse, he won’t shy.”

  Alinor could not say that she did not want to jolt the child in her belly. “I’ve got my bag of physic. Is he steady?”

  “I promise you he has smooth paces. You can come behind me and hold tight to me.”

  Alinor clambered up and then balanced on the top of the knapped flint wall as Walter brought his horse alongside. She stepped into the dangling stirrup and swung a leg over, to ride astride behind him.

  “All aboard?” Walter asked as Alinor gripped his waist, the precious sack of oils held tightly between them.

  “Yes.”

  “And now we can go onward,” he said, and put the horse into a gentle walk.

  “Do you want to go faster?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “Not too fast,” Alinor said nervously.

  Walter put the horse into a smooth controlled canter. Alinor clung on as the big-boned hunter plowed up the lane, onto the track to Sealsea, and then turned a sharp left down a sandy stony path to the hamlet of East Beach.

  “You can put me down here,” she said breathlessly. “The lad’ll guide me to the cottage.”

  Walter pulled up his horse, jumped down, received her into his arms, and set her on her feet.

  “Shall I come with you and see if you need me to fetch anything?” Rob offered.

  “If Master Walter can spare you,” she said.

  “Oh, we do nothing but amuse ourselves now,” Walter said. “Our tutor, Mr. Summer, has gone away and will come back to take me to Cambridge in the Lent term.”

  “Gone?” Alinor asked with painful interest. “Is he not coming back before then?”

  She realized that she was looking earnestly from one boy to another, that she was far too eager for the reply. Lent was dangerously late for her. She would be nearly six months pregnant by then.

  “No,” Walter said lightly. “Not till February.”

  “Are you all right, Ma?” Rob asked, looking at her pale face. “Are you ill again?”

  “Oh, I have a touch of tertian fever,” she said carelessly. “But I’m well enough to care for a good woman in her time. Will you wait here, Rob, and I’ll send . . .”

  “Jem,” he volunteered reluctantly as if he did not want this strange woman and these horsemen, who had appeared from nowhere, to know his name.

  “I’ll send Jem back to you, if I need anything. If he doesn’t come within minutes you can go on with your ride.”

  “Can we come out in your boat again?” Walter asked. “That was a merry day, wasn’t it?”

  She felt her pale face flush warm at the memory. “It was a good day,” she said, keeping her voice level. “But we can’t go out now till the spring. The wind is up, and most days the harbor is too rough for me. And it’s cold. We’ll go again when it is sunny and calm.”

  The two young men waited on their horses, as Jem guided Alinor through the narrow ways between the fishermen’s cottages. Each little home had a net shed attached, some had huts thrown up as sail lofts, some of them had lean-to hovels where a man might smoke his catch, or salt down fish in a barrel. Every now and then a straight track served as a rope walk, filled with cords snaking up and down, tied to a post at each end, being woven into three-strand or five-strand ropes. It was a jumble of dwellings. The houses were walled with driftwood and clay, the roofs a patchwork of old sails and nets thatched with dried bladder wrack. The smell of old rotting fish, the brine of the nets and the occasional foul breeze of a burning midden filled the air. Not even the wind from the sea could clear it. Jem led her to one of the better houses, set sideways to the sea, the waves sucking on the pebble beach below, with a little garden hedged with driftwood. It had a good slate roof and a chimney built of brick, and sturdy white-painted walls made from ship’s timbers and mortar.

  “Goody Auster,” he said. “In there,” and pointed to the front door.

  Alinor went in. The house had two downstairs rooms at the front, one for eating and all the household work, and the other one, divided from it by a wall of thick decking planks, was the bedroom. A lean-to room at the back was the scullery and a ladder led up to the upper story where other members of the family slept in the storeroom. Coming down the ladder was Mrs. Grace.

  “You’re here very quick,” she said approvingly.

  “My son brought me on his horse,” Alinor said. “He’s waiting to fetch anything extra that I need.”

  “You’ll want to see her,” the older woman said, and opened the little door so that Alinor could go into the downstairs bedroom.

  The young woman was leaning against the wall, her hands over her face, her big belly straining against her nightgown. She did not turn her head as Alinor came in, but she winced at the creak of the door. “I want Joshua,” she whispered.

  “Here’s Mrs. Reekie come to help you in your time.”

  “I want Joshua,” was all the young woman said. “Ma, I feel sick as a dog.”

  Alinor felt a reassuring sense of her own competence. Here, she was not a frighten
ed woman who had ruined the lives of her children and herself; here, she was the only one who knew what should be done, who had witnessed and helped at many births. She went quietly up to the young woman and put the back of her cool hand against the girl’s flushed forehead, noting how stiffly she held herself.

  “Does your head ache?” she asked her. “Your neck?”

  The girl’s eyes with dark dilated pupils flicked once at her and then she closed her eyes, leaning her head to the plank wall. “I can hardly bear it,” she said.

  Alinor went quietly from the room and found Jem waiting outside the front door. “Go to my son and tell him to pick me some feverfew,” she said. “A big bunch. And then tell him that I can manage the rest, and he can go.”

  Jem nodded and took to his heels down the dirt track. Alinor went back inside, smiled at Mrs. Grace, and took the girl’s icy hands.

  “Now,” she said reassuringly. “Let’s get you comfortable.”

  All through the day, other young wives and older women came and went with gifts of ale and bread, apples and cheese, with swaddling bands and birth caps that they had laid away in lavender, staying to gossip at the fireside and send in their best wishes to the birthing chamber, each hoping to be allowed inside. Alinor kept the door shut against them and kept Lisa Auster quiet. She gave her sips of tea made from dried raspberry leaves, and salads of feverfew to eat. Only when her fever had cooled and her headache was soothed did Alinor admit the gossips who had come to see her, and then only two at a time until her pains started to come often, and Alinor judged that her time was coming. Then with her mother and her mother-in-law and two best friends to hold her hands and praise her courage, Lisa walked around the room and finally settled on the bed as they lit the smoking oil lights. The heavy stink of fish oil scented the room. Alinor washed her hands.

  “Washing?” Mrs. Grace watched anxiously.

  “Yes,” Alinor said quietly, and then she came to the girl, who was kneeling against the bed, and persuaded her to squat over the bowl so Alinor could wash her with clean water brewed with lavender and thyme.