Tidelands Page 12

  “A middling good harvest,” her husband supplemented quickly. “A lot of blight this year from the rain . . . terrible rain. And that’s before the rats get at it.”

  “So I see,” James said pleasantly, glancing through the granary doors.

  “And Alys Reekie is Harvest Queen,” Mrs. Miller said begrudgingly. “The young people chose her. They wouldn’t have any other, though there were girls with better claims, God knows.”

  James, looking at the beautiful girl with interest, could see that there was no contest for the title of queen of the harvest. With her regular clear features and her dark blue eyes, she was far and away the prettiest girl among the gleaners. They had taken off her modest white cap, and her golden hair was tumbled down over her shoulders. They had thrown an embroidered white smock over her working clothes, and placed a crown of wheat on her fair hair, gold against the gold.

  “And Richard Stoney is Harvest King.”

  “Are we ready?” Mr. Miller demanded as the last cart rumbled in. As the men hurried to unload it, Richard Stoney came from the stables and received a crown of plaited wheat on his brown curly head.

  Mr. Miller ceremonially closed the barn doors, the young women gleaners, Jane Miller among them, and the young men reapers lined up before it, as if to block entry, and Alys and Richard went to their places on the far side of the yard with the lads catcalling and the girls singing out Alys’s name. His lordship, knowing the harvest games, waited for the young couple to stand side by side, and called to them: “Ready?”

  “Aye!” Richard answered for them both.

  Sir William shouted: “Go!” and the young couple dashed across the cobbled yard towards the barn doors, dodging and twisting as their friends sprang towards them, pelting them with jugs of water and handfuls of chaff, trying to prevent them entering the barn. They fought their way through, pushing and ducking, swerving and gasping. Richard grabbed Alys’s hand to pull her from a mob of boys as the adults cheered them on, until finally each of them got a hand on the great iron ring of the barn door, pulled it open, and declared that the harvest was safely home.

  Everyone cheered. Alinor saw the bright looks that the young couple exchanged, and the way they immediately turned away from each other to return to their friends, Richard exuberantly bouncing towards the harvest lads, who jostled him and pulled at his straw crown, as Alys ran to the girls, flushed and giggling. Mrs. Miller served the harvest ale, first cup to Sir William, and the thirsty harvesters gathered around for their cups as Alinor turned to find James at her side.

  “Your daughter is a very beautiful girl,” he observed.

  “She is,” she said quietly.

  They were painfully tongue-tied in company. They wanted to speak nothing but secrets; and they could not be seen to whisper. “You got home safely from your travels?” was all she could say.

  “Yes,” he said awkwardly. “Yes, I did. Did you go back to the young mother? Is she well?”

  “I went this afternoon, and I will go again tomorrow,” she confirmed. “I like to visit a young mother with her newborn baby, even if she has her own mother at her side.”

  He was about to ask if he might come to see her at the cottage tonight, after harvest home; but he broke off. Her brother was coming down the track from the ferry to the mill yard, his old dog, Red, winding around his feet.

  “I have to see you,” James said urgently. “Not here. Not in front of all these people. Alone.”

  “I know, I know,” she breathed.

  “Can I come tonight?” he whispered; but before she could answer Ned walked up to his sister, and acknowledged James with a brief nod.

  “Good day, sir,” Ned said abruptly. “I see you came to visit the poor people of the parish. I suppose you like the old ways: Harvest Queen and Harvest King.”

  “As long as the harvest games are modest.” James tried to steady himself.

  Ned turned to Alinor and demanded: “I take it you won’t be dancing?”

  “No. But Alys can, can’t she?”

  Ned frowned and was about to refuse.

  “There can be no objection to dancing at harvest home,” James interrupted. “Oliver Cromwell himself does not object to a glass of wine and godly merriment.”

  “Not pagan dances,” Ned said stiffly. “And harvest home with the Harvest King and Queen is both pagan and monarchical.”

  James tried to choke back a laugh but Ned was red to his ears and looked angry. “My sister’s situation is awkward.” Ned turned on him. “You wouldn’t know, Mr. Summers, but this is a small island, and nobody has anything to do but gossip.”

  “No one says anything against me,” Alinor argued. “And everyone knows that Alys is your niece and a godly child. She can dance with her friends, Brother. Surely she can!”

  “As you wish,” he said sulkily. “But you should both leave before the harvesters get drunk.”

  “Of course. You know I always do.”

  They had set up trestle tables laden with dishes in the mill yard. Sir William stood at the head of the table and the miller and his wife stood at the foot. “Will you say grace, Mr. Summer?” he invited.

  James had to leave Alinor without another word, take his place, put his hands together, and say a prayer.

  Ned listened suspiciously for any old-fashioned doctrine, but James Summer recited the grace in simple comprehensible English, as plain and unvarnished as any army preacher.

  “Amen!” said everyone, and seated themselves all in a jumble, on the benches and the stools, except for Sir William, who took the great Carver chair, brought from the house, at the head of the table. The miller sat on one side of him and James Summer on the other. Rob was seated farther down the table opposite Walter, Mrs. Miller at the foot with her daughter at her right hand. Sir William drank a glass of the Millers’ ale, but did not dine. He sat for a little while and then nodded to his groom for his horse. “So, you have my good wishes, and I will leave you,” he announced. He glanced at James Summer. “The boys can stay to dance if they like,” he said.

  “I’ll bring them home in good time,” James promised him.

  Sir William closed one eye in a knowing wink. “Let them have a cup of ale or two and a dance with a pretty girl,” he said. “Maybe a kiss and a romp behind a haystack if the fathers are looking the other way!” Some of the nearby men guffawed at the bawdy suggestion, but most were coldly silent.

  James did not dare look towards Ned, who was bristling with indignation. “No, no, they will behave themselves,” he said repressively.

  His lordship laughed, as if to say that he did not care about good behavior at harvest home, and stepped up on the mounting block to wait for his horse. His groom brought his charger to the block and held it while his lordship heaved himself into the saddle, gathered up the reins, and nodded to the Millers and the diners in the yard. “Good Harvest!” he said, and smiled when they raised the cups and mugs and repeated the toast. Then he turned and rode away, his groom following him.

  Alinor felt her brother’s eyes on her. “What’s the matter?” she demanded.

  “It makes my blood boil, how he speaks,” Ned exclaimed. “He lost the war, his king is in our keeping, and yet still he rides around as if he owns the place—because he does still own the place! How can everything change and nothing change? How can he say that Master Walter can take a girl behind the haystacks, as if the girls are at his bidding! As if they are as light as that old goat’s mistress in London town?”

  “Hush,” Alinor said swiftly. “Don’t spoil it.”

  “It’s spoiled for me already,” he said furiously.

  “Why the long face, Ned?” the blacksmith from Birdham called to him. “I’d have thought you’d have been pleased with the news from the North?”

  Ned’s head went up like a hound hearing the hunting horn. “I’ve heard no news from the North,” he said. “What’ve you heard?”

  A number of men turned to the blacksmith. “And how d’you know anyway?
” someone demanded suspiciously.

  “Because I shod the horse of a man carrying the newspapers, and he gave me one. He was carrying the Moderate Intelligencer for sale. Showed it to me and read it to me. Gave it me in payment.” He brandished an ill-printed twice-folded paper.

  “Read it!” someone exclaimed.

  “I don’t read so very well,” he confessed. “But he told me it was good news for parliament.”

  “I’ll read it,” Ned said impatiently. “Give it here.”

  The men gathered round him as he spread it flat on the table and, ignoring the dishes as they were brought from the mill kitchen, spelled out the words.

  “From Warrington, 20th August,” he said slowly. “A godly victory.”

  “Victory to the army?” someone asked.

  “God be praised. Wait, wait, I’m reading it. Yes. It looks like a true report. Someone reporting from the battle. It says that Oliver Cromwell joined with John Lambert’s Horse—they mean his cavalry—in time to catch the Scots at Preston and split them in two. It’s a victory. God has saved us: the Scots are broken.”

  “God bless us: we’re safe?”

  “Does it say how?”

  “Many dead?”

  “Bad weather, hmm hmm, listen . . . I’ll read it . . .”

  After a tedious and weary march, enduring many difficulties and pressures, through the unseasonableness of weather and extreme badness of ways: Lieutenant General Cromwell joining with the Northern Brigade, came on Thursday, very early in the morning, our army marched towards Preston, where the enemy lay all about, both Scottish and English. The enemy was sufficiently alarmed by the resolute going on of our men who thereupon drew up on a Moor two miles Eastward from Preston. Our forlorn—

  “What?” demanded one of the women reaping gang.

  “Our ‘forlorn hope,’ our men in the front, with the hardest job to do,” Ned explained, and went on reading:

  . . . with gallant courage, notwithstanding the deepness of the ways and the enclosures which were much to our disadvantage, still pressed on, charged several of the enemies’ bodies, routs them and gains their ground.

  “They were fighting alone?”

  “Desperately,” Ned said, his brow knotted.

  Our forlorn had several encounters and behaved themselves gallantly, and about 4 of the clock in the afternoon, as soon as the narrowness of the lanes and passages would permit, our Infantry comes up to the relief of our forlorn and to the heat of the battle with an extraordinary cheerfulness.

  “At Preston?”

  “So it says.”

  “Isn’t that a long way south for the Scots to come?” someone asked nervously. “Isn’t that far south? Nearly to Manchester?”

  “Yes,” Ned answered dourly. “It’s dangerously far south. We can all thank God that He sent General Cromwell to stop them there. Before they got even closer.”

  “He did stop them? It says, for sure, that he did stop them?”

  “I’ll read you the rest . . .”

  The contention was sore and desperate, some of our men being wounded and the horses slain, for we gained hedge after hedge, which they had strongly manned and one part of the lane after the other with abundance of hazard as well as gallantry—

  Ned broke off again. “It sounds as if it was deep lanes and thick hedges, difficult for an army to advance, and the enemy had manned the hedgerows against us. But listen . . .”

  The enemy still gave ground, our horses forced them through the Town of Preston and cleared it.

  “Preston?” someone asked again.

  “Preston,” Ned confirmed.

  “God save us!” said one of the women.

  Ned read on. “It’s a victory,” he said. “Against great numbers. We pursued them to Warrington and put them to the sword.” His face was shining. “It says here . . .”

  Our word at first was Truth, in the middle of the fight, an addition was made Truth and Faith. It was Truth we acted in and it was Faith we acted by.

  He raised his head. “I wish to God that I had been there. But just hearing about it makes me closer to the Lord . . . Truth and Faith the watchwords of the battle, General Cromwell in command!”

  “Mr. Ferryman, I’ll thank you to take that dirty paper off my table,” Mrs. Miller interrupted him sharply. “And not to make a fool of yourself and spoil the harvest home with war news. And send that dog of yours out of my yard.”

  Nothing could wipe the joy from Ned’s face but he took up the paper as he was ordered and told Red: “Go bye. It’s great news for the parliament and the army,” he muttered.

  “It’s more news of war, and some of us have had plenty of that,” she overruled him. “Besides, we have guests. And they might not care for your great news.”

  Walter flushed and looked awkward, but James Summer was completely bland. “At least, there will be no fighting here,” he said smoothly. “All good men must want peace. Perhaps, Mr. Ferryman, you would read the newspaper in full to those who want to hear after dinner? I should be glad of news myself.”

  “You don’t know already, sir?” Ned demanded sharply. “When you’ve been away for weeks, and just came down the Chichester road yourself? Nobody mentioned it to you, on your way here, from wherever you have been? They didn’t know there? Whoever they were? Wherever it was?”

  “No, I hadn’t heard anything,” James lied. He had been told the disastrous news of the Scots’ defeat at a safe house in Southampton. His host had been white with shock: “The Scots have turned back. They won’t save him. God save the king, God save the king, for now I think he is lost.”

  James had cursed the bad luck of a king mustering such unreliable allies as the Scots, but failing to launch his own son’s fleet. Led by a competent general, this invasion could have turned the course of the war. But the best royalist generals were dead or dismissed, and the king was not on the field under his standard, but in prison, sending streams of contradictory orders.

  “Actually, I came along the coast, not from London,” James said smoothly, hiding his chagrin. “I knew that the army had marched north to meet the Scots; but this victory is news to me.”

  “And no reason that a gentleman should explain himself to the ferryman,” Mrs. Miller interrupted. “Mr. Summer, Your Honor, would you be so good as to carve the meat, sir?”

  An enormous ham was placed in front of James, as the principal guest, and he took up the knife and carved it while the miller broke into a great game pie, Mrs. Miller spooned out chicken broth into the wooden bowls and passed them around, and Jane, her daughter, went to the dairy to fetch more butter.

  “Not too thick,” Mrs. Miller instructed, keeping a jealous eye on the portions.

  “It’s a good-sized ham,” he praised the meat.

  “My own,” she said. “And I’ll have another four of them in the chimney this winter. I take great pride in my hams.”

  James fought to keep his face straight. He did not dare to glance down the table to see if Alinor had heard this boast. “You have a very handsome farm,” he recovered, passing the platter with the slices cut thin.

  “There are some that will taste meat this evening at my table that won’t have it again till Christmas,” she said complacently. “I believe in the old ways. Low wages but a well-spread board: that’s how you run a good farm.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” he agreed, knowing that the wages would be cut to the bone.

  “Some of our neighbors—well, I don’t know how they get by,” she confided. “Scraping a living from the hedgerows, feasting like birds on berries and raw herbs.” Her envious gaze drifted down the table to Alinor and her daughter.

  Around them everyone was helping themselves to food, passing bread, meat, the broth, cooked vegetables, and pouring the specially sweetened harvest ale.

  “Hard times,” James said generally.

  “Take Mrs. Reekie for one . . .”

  Despite his sense that he should silence the gossiping woman, James
could not help but lean forward.

  “On the edge of starving last winter, I swear it. Knocking on the yard door and asking for work, anything. It was charity to buy her herbs. But now, from nowhere she has a boat, her son is in service at the Priory, and her daughter is making eyes at Richard Stoney and him a farmer’s son, the only son, and certain to inherit the farm! How’s that come about? For I know for a fact that her brother has nothing but the ferry and whatever was left of his army pay, and her husband has been gone for months.”

  “Robert is my pupil,” he said cautiously. “He’s a good companion to Master Walter and paid for his service. Mrs. Reekie is well liked at the Priory.”

  “By who?” she exclaimed as if scoring a point. “Who likes a common cottager so much that her son is suddenly Master Walter’s companion? Two months ago, the lad was bird-scaring for me after school, and glad of the work. Barefoot half the time. So where did she get the money to buy the boat? When she couldn’t afford shoes?”

  James, knowing very well that it was a bribe for her silence about him, muttered that perhaps she had savings.

  “Savings?” She snorted. “She has none! I say to my husband, please God that she does not fall on the parish, for we’re a poor church, and can’t support everyone, especially women who are neither widows nor wives, with a son and a daughter to keep. We can’t support a woman who may have beauty but not enough wit to keep her husband at home.”

  “She has her craft and her boat and her herbs,” he protested. “I am sure she can keep herself.”

  “She has no business keeping herself!” Mrs. Miller protested. “She’s neither a widow nor a wife, and when she walks across the yard, the work stops dead as if the Queen of Sheba was dancing on my cobbles. If her husband is gone, she should declare herself a widow and remarry—if anyone will have her, given what they say about her. If he’s alive, she should get him home. Then we’d all know where we are. She’s nothing but a worry as she is. Nothing but a worry to good wives. Who would give her money for a boat? And why? It’d better not be Mr. Miller, that’s all I can say!”

  James finally understood the objection to Alinor. “She can’t be a worry to an established housewife like yourself,” he said soothingly. “There can be no comparison. Look at the dinner you put on today! Look at where you are in the world! The respect you are shown! You are blessed indeed. Mr. Miller must know that in you he has a helpmeet appointed by heaven.”