Tidelands Page 14

  The two women put on their capes and their wooden pattens and started the walk to church. Behind them on the bank path came Alinor’s brother, Ned, his dog at his heels, and behind him a few farmers with their families from farther inland. The women waited for Ned to catch up, and walked three abreast with him, dropping into single file when the thorns of the path closed in.

  “You’ll be happy with the news from Preston, Ned,” Alinor remarked. “It sounds like a great victory.”

  “Praise God,” he said. “For if the Scots had got past Cromwell I don’t know where they would’ve stopped. We could have lost all of England to them, and they would have put the king on the throne again. But, God be praised, we won, and they are driven back and the king will know that he has no friends left in the world.”

  “A friendless king,” Alinor said wonderingly, as if she were sorry for him.

  “He’s never had any friends,” he said harshly. “Only courtiers and paid favorites. Some of the most wicked and vicious men in England in his service.”

  Together they paused and looked towards the sea, where the waves were breaking white at the mouth of the harbor.

  “Just over there,” Ned said wonderingly. “Think of him, so close, just a few hours of sailing time, on the Isle of Wight. And he must know by now that no one’s coming for him. His son’s fleet can’t land, the Scots are running back to Edinburgh, his wife can’t raise the French for him, the Irish haven’t landed. He’s going to have to beg our pardon and rule with our permission.”

  “What if he were to be rescued?” Alinor asked.

  “There’s nobody who can rescue him and get him to his son’s ships,” her brother ruled. “There’s not one of them with the courage or the wit to break him out.”

  “It’s hopeless for him?” Alinor said, thinking of James Summer, the friend of a friendless king.

  “Forlorn,” Ned replied, condemning the king, ignorant of his sister’s thoughts. “He’s a real forlorn hope.”

  They climbed over the stile in the church wall and walked in silence along the path past the graves of their parents, their grandparents, and generations of Ferryman. The porch, where Alinor had waited for the ghost of her husband, was filled with bright sheaves of corn, though some of the godly men of the church complained that this was paganism. The old black door of the church stood wide open. Red, Ned’s dog, lay down where he always lay, outside the porch, and lolled out his pink tongue. The villagers went without speaking to their usual places: Ned to stand at the back on the left with the men, behind the prosperous families, Alinor and Alys up the stairs to the gallery with the other poor women. Nobody bowed to the altar, nobody ever crossed themselves anymore.

  Sir William and his household entered the church, and all the men doffed their hats and all the women curtseyed, except the very godly one or two who would not bow to a temporal lord. Alinor looked for her son, saw his quick smile, ignored his tutor, whose brown gaze was steadfastly directed downwards on his well-shined boots. The Peacheys entered their pew and Mr. Miller, the church warden, closed the door on them with exaggerated respect. The St. Wilfrid’s minister stepped behind the plain communion table and started the new authorized service with a long extempore prayer, thanking God for giving His forces the victory against the misguided Scots in Lancashire.

  The service was long, the sermon unending. Alinor and Alys, on the hard benches of the gallery at the back of the church, kept their heads down and hid all signs of impatience. From the shelter of the wings of her cap, Alinor glanced down only once from her seat in the gallery to the Peachey pew and saw James’s head bowed low, his hands clasped before him. He was either in deep prayer, or in the posture of a man enacting godly piety while his head was filled with heretical and dangerous thoughts. She did not even wonder which was the case. She felt that he had gone far from her, as if he had already set sail to an unknown destination, to take part in a secret plot. He had told her—and she had believed him—that his cause was more important than their newly discovered desire. Alinor, abandoned by her husband, was familiar with rejection, accustomed to coming in second place, third place, last place. She bowed her head and prayed for the pain to pass.

  At the end of the sermon, while the more devout of the congregation exclaimed “Praise Be!” and “Thanks be to God!,” the minister stepped forward towards the Peachey pew, waited for Sir William to rise to his feet, and from that moral high ground, the two of them turned to scold the congregation, one of them representing the temporal powers, the other, spiritual authority.

  “And on this Sabbath day, which the Lord has demanded that we keep holy, we have to call a sister to the altar and remonstrate with her,” the minister said. “It is our duty, and the order of the church court.”

  Alys turned one swift sideways glance on her mother. Alinor showed her ignorance with widened eyes. Both of them stiffened and waited for what was coming next, wondering who would be named as guilty.

  “A woman who has been the complaint of her neighbors, whose own husband has said that he cannot rule her,” the minister intoned. “Her trade has been uproar and some allege that she has been unchaste. Who gave evidence against her at the church court?”

  “I did.” Mrs. Miller stood up from the middle of the church, where the prosperous tenants had their seats, her daughter and little boy either side of her.

  “Course she did,” Alys breathed to her mother. “She’s got a bad word foreverybody.”

  “Mrs. Miller, of the tide mill,” she announced unnecessarily to the neighbors who had known her from childhood.

  “And what did you allege before this court?” the minister asked her. “Briefly,” he reminded her. Everyone knew that Mrs. Miller, once started, was hard to halt.

  “I said that I had seen her at gleaning go behind a hedge with a man of this parish and come out with her dress disordered and her hair down.”

  There was a mutter of speculation around the church as to who might be the “man of this parish,” but clearly his identity was going to be kept secret. The sinful woman would be denounced, her partner would maintain his reputation. Besides, it was hardly a sin for a man; it was his nature.

  “And before that,” Mrs. Miller continued, “she traduced her husband, calling him an old fool, and on market day at Sealsea market she took his purse from him and gave him a buffet and told him that she would learn him.”

  “Did anyone else speak against her in court?” Sir William asked.

  “I did.” One of the Sealsea Island farmers’ wives stood up. “She came to my house on my night for spinning with my friends, and she called me a doting fool for letting my husband keep my money from my spinning. She slapped my face and she pulled off my cap when I said that her child was not of her husband’s begetting, which everybody knows.”

  “I spoke against her, sir.” The Peachey cook, Mrs. Wheatley, rose to her feet from behind the Peachey seats. “She came to the Priory door and she was four eggs short of her tithe, and she said if there was no king, and no bishop, then there was no lord either, and she need pay no tithes and you could do without your eggs.”

  “And then there was the ride,” a voice called out from the back of the church, from where the poor tenants stood. “Don’t forget that!”

  “There was a skimmington ride,” Mrs. Miller explained to Sir William. “The boys rode a donkey backwards, past her house, with a lad wearing a petticoat over his head, to show that she was unchaste and a disgrace to our village.”

  Sir William looked so grave that anyone could have believed that he did not keep an expensive mistress in rooms near the Haymarket in London. “Very bad,” he said.

  “And so the church court sentenced her to stand before this congregation in her shift holding a lighted taper to show her repentance for the rest of this day till sunset,” the minister said rapidly, bringing the summary of the trial to an end and moving to sentence.

  The church wardens, Mr. Miller among them, opened the door of the church and
Mrs. Whiting came in from the porch, in her best linen shift, holding a lit candle in her hand, barefoot and with her hair down to show her penitence. She was a woman in the middle of her life, broad at the hips and the belly and her long hair was streaked with gray. She was ashen-faced with misery.

  “Ah, God keep her,” Alinor whispered, high above her in the gallery. “To shame her so!”

  “Isabel Whiting, you are brought before your neighbors and this congregation to expunge your disgrace. Do you repent?”

  “I do,” she said, her voice very low.

  “Do you swear to be neither lustful nor violent in future?”

  “I do.”

  “And obey God, and your husband, who was set by God Himself above you to be your master and guide?”

  Almost, they heard her sigh at the weary drudgery that he would exact. “I do.”

  “Then you must stand here, inside the church till sunset, when the church wardens will come to release you. Stand barefoot and shamed, as your candle burns down, while anyone may come to reproach you, but you may not reply or speak any word. Look into your heart, sister, and do not offend God or your neighbors again.”

  The minister turned to the congregation, spread his arms, and gabbled the bidding prayer. The woman stood before him, facing the neighbors who had denounced her, her face set and bitter, the light trembling in her hand, while somewhere in the church her husband, who had beaten her, and the man who had taken her behind the hedge shuffled their feet and waited for when they might leave.

  After church Sir William paused in the churchyard as his tenants came up and bowed or curtseyed. Alinor and Alys followed Ned to pay their respects and Sir William waved Rob to step aside to kneel for his mother’s blessing and rise up for her kiss on his forehead. Alinor was pale and distracted, thinking of the woman, named as an adulteress left to do penance barefoot in the church behind them, wearing only her shift, holding her candle in a shaking hand. Alinor was well aware of the power of the Millers and the community when they moved as one, and she knew that they moved as the mood took them, against whoever they despised, and a woman could not speak for herself.

  “We’re going to go sailing!” Rob announced to his mother. “Across the sea.”

  She could not stop herself looking towards James, but she turned her eyes quickly on the steward, Mr. Tudeley.

  “Sailing?”

  “Mr. Summer is taking the boys for a visit to the island next week,” he announced. “Sailing to the Isle of Wight.”

  “Oh.” Alinor turned back to her son, who was bobbing with excitement.

  “We’re going first to Newport,” Rob exulted. “We’ll stay the night. Maybe two nights.”

  “But why?” Alinor asked. “What for?”

  “Geography,” Rob said grandly. “And mapmaking. Mr. Summer says we might even see the king! Wouldn’t that be a sight to see? Sir William knows him, but Walter has never been presented. We can’t speak to him, of course. But we might see him in the streets. Mr. Summer says that he walks out.”

  “I thought he was at the castle at Carisbrooke,” Alinor remarked, fixing her gaze on her son’s bright face and looking neither at her brother nor at James Summer, knowing that both of them were listening intently. “I thought he was imprisoned.”

  “His Majesty is being released to a private house at Newport, to meet the gentlemen from parliament and reach agreement with them,” Mr. Tudeley told her.

  “And we’ll probably see him!” Rob added.

  “I’d rather you didn’t go,” Alinor said urgently, putting her arm around Rob’s shoulders and turning him away from the circle around Sir William. “You know, your uncle Ned won’t like it at all!”

  “I have to go with Walter,” Rob pointed out. “I’m his companion. I have to accompany him!”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And it’s not as if the king’s still at war. He’s in Newport to meet with the men from parliament. It’s all at peace now. They’re meeting him at Newport to make peace and he’ll be released. I’d like to see him, now it’s all over. Think of me, seeing the King of England!”

  “I’d still rather you didn’t,” Alinor repeated.

  Rob was suddenly attentive. He looked up at her pale face. “Why? What’s the matter? Is it the sight, Mam?” he asked quietly.

  She shook her head. “No, nothing like that. It’s just that . . .”

  “What?”

  “Oh, poor Mrs. Whiting, and having to stand before the church . . .”

  “That’s got nothing to do with us,” he rightly said.

  “I know her, and yet I said nothing in her defense,” she said.

  “There was nothing to say.” Alys came up quietly to the two of them. “Everyone would have turned on you, and on the three of us, if you’d spoken up for her. And besides, she did go behind the hedge. I saw her.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “How’s this got anything to do with me going to the Isle of Wight?” Rob demanded.

  “It hasn’t!” Alinor owned. “You know how I feel, Rob . . . it’s just—”

  “Is it the sea?” he guessed. “The deep water?”

  “The sea,” she said, grasping at the word as if her fear of the ocean could explain the sense of dread that she felt at her son going to Newport to see the defeated king. Going to Newport in the company of his tutor—the king’s spy.

  TIDELANDS, SEPTEMBER 1648

  James Summer, Rob, and Walter took ship from the mill quay in a coastal trader bound for the Isle of Wight, Southampton, and westerly. Richard Stoney, Alys, and a couple of the mill girls watched them go. Rob waved as extravagantly as if he were leaving for the Americas and might never return as the two-masted ketch went slowly down the deep channel, with the crew on either side watching for sandbars and shouting the depth.

  James went to starboard to look for the little cottage perched on the harbor bank, as ramshackle as if it had been washed there by a high tide. The door was standing open and he wondered if Alinor was watching the ship from the dark interior. He guessed that she was unhappy at Rob sailing to the island, but she had not asked him not to take the boy. She had not spoken to him at all. Not even after church when she made her curtsey to Sir William and rose up to find James’s brown eyes on her face. She had behaved—just as he had prayed that she would—with icy discretion. She had withdrawn from him as if she had never known him, as if she had never held him, as if she had never opened her lips to his demanding mouth. He had prayed to be released, and she had let him go at once, as if she had never whispered that she wanted to be with him, that she wanted to be with him alone. Even as she curtseyed to him, she looked beyond and away from him. He would have thought that he was nothing to her, that he had never been anything to her. He would have thought that he was unseen.

  And of course, as soon as she withdrew from him, he wanted to catch her hand, to say her name, to make that gray gaze turn back to him. As the poorest tenant on the estate, a woman that he had stooped to notice, she should have been alert for the least sign of his forgiveness. But it was as if he were invisible to her. He had to stand at Sir William’s shoulder and let this woman, this nobody, walk away from him as if he were nothing.

  Now, as the sails of the ship caught the wind and the craft moved a little forward, he looked for the poor cottage that was her home, which she had opened to him as a refuge when he had nowhere else to go. He could see a trail of smoke from the chimney, he saw that the door stood open, he could even see a movement in the dark interior: the glimpse of her white cap. Then, as he watched, she came out of the doorway and stood on the cracked stone of her front step so that he could see her. She raised her hand, her scarred worn hand, to shade her eyes. He could hardly believe it: but she was looking for him. She saw him; she saw the ship that was taking her beloved son into danger, using him as a shield against inquiry, as an alibi in the incredible treason that he was about to commit. He thought she must be ill-wishing him, as he did the one thing that she mus
t dread—taking Rob into deep waters. But then he saw her raise her hand to his ship, in a blessing, as any sailor’s wife would wave to a sail and whisper, “Godspeed! Come safe home!” He saw her stand, watching him. It was unmistakable. She loved him, she had a love deeper and wider than his, for she forgave him for his stupidity and his unkindness, and she was wishing him Godspeed on a journey, even though he was serving the king and taking her boy across the deeps.

  He leapt up to balance on the rail of the boat, he gripped the rigging, he leaned outwards over the dark water rushing under the prow. He could hear the ominous hushing of the receding tide as it sucked them towards the harbor mouth, but he wanted her to see him. He stretched out his arm to wave to her. He wanted her to know that as he left Foulmire, the one thought in his mind was not his cause, which he had put before her, nor his king, who should come before everything, but her: Alinor.

  NEWPORT, ISLE OF WIGHT, SEPTEMBER 1648

  The town of Newport was as busy as a fair day; nothing like this had ever happened on the island before. The arrival of the king to the house of the wealthy townsman Mr. Hopkins gave the provincial street the status of Whitehall Palace. When the parliamentary negotiators arrived, Newport would be at the plumb center of the affairs of the kingdom—“of the world”—according to the dizzied Newport royalists. All the gentry flocked in from the outlying towns and villages to stay with friends and cousins, to dawdle through the narrow streets in the hope of seeing the king. They attended St. Thomas’s Church; they scrambled for the front pews to kneel behind His Majesty at prayer; they sent their servants round to the Hopkinses’ kitchen door to learn what was cooking for the royal dinner. Noblemen, with their ladies, sailed from the mainland on their own ships, or chartered passages to pay their respects to the king who, though defeated, could never be vanquished. All the royalists who had attended the king at London, at Oxford, in victory and facing defeat, now reappeared, learning that he was set free again. Whatever anyone might say, whatever he himself might do, the king was the king, and it was apparent to everyone that sooner or later he would return to London and to his throne.