Tidelands Page 19

  He muttered the final prayer in Latin: “Abide with us, O Lord,” and heard Sir William whisper the response: “For it is toward evening and the day is far spent.”

  “As the watchmen look for the morning . . .”

  “So do we look for Thee, O Christ.”

  “Come with the dawning of the day . . .”

  “And make Thyself known in the breaking of bread.”

  James had a sensation under his ribs, which he thought must be his heart breaking, just as Christ’s heart broke on the cross. He had given up the woman he loved for the king that he must save, and he had failed to save him and learned to doubt her. He would never see his king again; he would never see her. He would leave her in poverty and the king in imprisonment. He was only twenty-two and he had failed in everything his duty and his heart had prompted him to do. “God forgive me,” he said, and without another word, sank to the floor as his knees buckled beneath him, and he lost consciousness.

  They sent Stuart the footman to fetch Alinor, three miles round by road, as he did not know the tracks across the harbor and was fearful of the tide coming in and drowning him, and of the ghosts of drowned men swimming after him. But when he hammered on the door of the cottage he found Alinor and Rob in the half-light of the smoldering fire, hours after good Christians should have been in bed. He recoiled in fear at the sight of the wisewoman, waking in the dark hours, with her son beside her.

  “Not abed?” he asked fearfully. “Up all night?”

  Alinor rose. “Is someone sick?”

  “It’s the tutor,” he replied. “Sir William said to come at once.”

  Rob handed Alinor her physic basket, already stocked with oils and herbs, pulled on his cap and jacket, and led the way across the mire to the Priory, by shore and bank and hidden path, lit by the half-moon gleaming on the rising water. They were at the Priory sea meadow as the moon came from behind a bank of cloud to make the eastern waters of the harbor shine, and they crossed the kitchen garden in the eerie light.

  The chapel was closed and quiet, all the gold and candles hidden away by Mr. Tudeley and his lordship. They had dragged James back into the library, stripped him of his stole, and left him on the rug before the fire, fearful of lifting him up the stairs.

  “Did he say anything before he fainted?” Alinor could not look at him, so deathly pale; sprawled on the hearthrug, just as he had sprawled in her net shed, when he had slept beneath her roof and she had thought him as beautiful as a fallen angel.

  “He said, ‘God forgive me,’ ” Sir William said. “But he could not be possessed by devils. He is a godly man and he was in . . . in a state of grace.”

  One swift glance from her gray eyes told him that she understood what he and the exhausted priest were doing at midnight. “Did he complain of fever or chills?” she asked, putting her warm rough hand on his cold sweating face.

  “Yes, and he was weary,” Sir William said. “And melancholy.”

  She had a very good idea why he was tired and sad. “May I use the goods from your stillroom?”

  “Of course. Take whatever you need. You know what’s there. But, Mrs. Reekie: you don’t think it is the plague?”

  It was the one question that Alinor dreaded, worse than whether a baby might be breech or malformed. If it was the plague it was almost certain to be fatal for everyone in the room, for half the household, for most of the village. Their death sentence had already been written and could not be recalled. There was nothing she could do against plague. She was likely to be the first to die. That was how it was. Everyone knew it.

  “I can’t tell,” she said. “Not till I search his body for the marks.”

  “But could it be?” Sir William demanded. He had retreated behind his chair. “He was at Newport. Dear God, he took my son, Walter, to Newport and to Cowes.”

  “And mine,” Alinor reminded him.

  “They could have met with anyone. He could have taken the plague from a ship. They could all three have taken it. They came home by ship to Portsmouth.”

  “I’ll need to examine him,” she repeated, hiding her own dread. “I can’t say yet.”

  Sir William would not take the risk of the man staying in his house another moment. “Get him carried over to the stables.” He turned to Mr. Tudeley. “Carry him on the rug so he’s not hurt. Leave the rug there. We’ll lock him in to be on the safe side until we know.” He turned to Alinor. “Mrs. Reekie, I have to ask you, will you go in with him and nurse him till he is well?”

  “I can’t,” Alinor said flatly. “I have a son and daughter of my own. I will examine him, but if he has the signs I can’t be shut in with him. I’ve never been a plague nurse.”

  “I beg you,” he said. “I will pay you well, very well. Go in with him now and examine him. If he has it—God forbid that he has it—I will get a plague nurse from Chichester to come and be locked up with him and you shall come out, before she arrives, before we declare it, and go to your own cottage and not stir until it is over. If he does not have it I will still pay you three shillings a day to nurse him until he is better.”

  She hesitated.

  “You don’t want him to be put into his bed in the boys’ room,” he reminded her. “Not with your son and mine. Better for us all, if you nurse him in the stable loft.”

  She looked at James’s white face, at the fall of his dark curling hair, his black eyelashes lying on his pale cheek, the darkening of his chin and upper lip that marked him as no angel but a mortal man. She saw the rapid rise and fall of his chest and how the cold sweat darkened the curls on his forehead. She knew she could not bear to leave him. She could not bear to hand him over to the rough care of a strange woman.

  “Ten shillings.” His lordship raised his bid for the safety of his household. “Ten shillings a day, till the plague nurse comes. Every day.”

  “I’ll do it,” she decided. “Rob can fetch what I need from your stillroom, but then he must stay away.”

  The rooms above the stable, hastily vacated by the grooms, were light and airy with dappled windows not of glass but of thin cut horn set at each end into the eaves. Down below, the hunters stirred and snorted in their stalls and the room smelled comfortingly, of clean straw and hay and the warm oaty smell of horses. Stuart and two of the grooms lugged James, still wrapped in the hearthrug, up the ladder and laid him on the bed.

  “I’ll send over food,” Mr. Tudeley said, keeping his distance, halfway down the ladder. “You can pull it up on the rope.”

  “And a bucket of hot water for washing and a pitcher of cold water. A big jug of small ale and some little dishes for mixing. I’ll need fresh bread, cheeses, and meat for when he wakes, and at noon someone must bring breakfast,” Alinor instructed. “I’ll need a pail for a chamber pot, and strewing herbs.”

  “Of course, he’ll be served as an honored guest, and you too, Mrs. Reekie,” Mr. Tudeley said. “Shall your boy come and sleep here with you?”

  “No,” she said firmly. “He’ll stay in the house with Master Walter. I’ll sit up tonight with Mr. Summer and if he is well tomorrow, God willing, he can come back to the house and I will go to my own home. This is just for a night.”

  “You will tell us at once,” the steward said nervously. He would not mention the word “plague.”

  “I’ll tell you the moment that any marks show, and you’ll call another nurse and I’ll hand over to her,” Alinor assured him.

  “I’ll send over everything,” Mr. Tudeley promised, then descended the ladder and closed the hatch behind him. Alinor waited a moment and then went over and bolted it from her side, so that no one could come up the stairs unexpectedly. She and James were quite alone.

  She went to where they had left him, limp as a corpse in the rug, and she unfolded him, as if she were unwrapping a precious parcel. As the carpet fell away, he sighed and seemed to gasp for air. Alinor lifted his head and shoulders a little and slid a bolster behind his head. He seemed to breathe easier and a little col
or came into his cheek. She found she was looking at his pale mouth and remembering how he had kissed her.

  She unbuttoned his fine lawn shirt. The buttons were made from mother-of-pearl. She touched each one, seeing the sheen on it, and then opened his shirt so that she could see his chest and his belly.

  His shoulders were broad, his chest and belly flat. He was well muscled as a man who rides and runs every day. A dark trace of hair ran from his belly down towards his breeches and Alinor, who had undressed her drunken husband more than once, unlaced his breeches without hesitation and peeled back the flap. For the first time she saw him naked. She saw the darkness of his thick hair, the strength of his sleeping cock, the muscled line of his haunches. She looked at him for no more than a moment and felt her desire like a fever of her own. Carefully, she eased the breeches from under him, bending over him and smelling the clean warm male scent of him; she had to stop herself dropping her head to kiss his belly and laying her cheek against his hot skin.

  She peeled the riding breeches off him, down to his boots, and then she unlaced the boots and slipped them from his feet, then the fine hose. He lay before her naked, except for his open shirt and jacket.

  There were no red spots of smallpox. She lifted one arm and then another and felt in his armpits. There were no swellings of the buboes that were a certain sign of plague. There was no sign, on any part of his smooth creamy skin, that anything was wrong with him except the heat of him: he was burning up with fever.

  Gently she raised him higher on the bolster, and felt him nestle towards her and groan a little as if he were in pain. She buttoned up his shirt again to protect him from cold, and she felt a passionate tenderness as she did so, as if she were tending to Rob or Alys when they were babies. She left the rich carpet underneath him, and she covered him with one of the blankets from the other bed. Most physicians would heap blankets on a feverish patient and add a warming pan to burn out the fever. Alinor treated her patients as she had treated her children, keeping them cool and still. Again, she put her hand against his forehead. She could almost feel the heat pulsing through the blue veins at his temples. She put two fingers inside his shirt collar on his neck and felt the drumming of his heartbeat.

  There was a call from the yard outside, and she went to the window and opened it to find Stuart, the serving man, with linen and small ale, a bucket of hot water and some washing bowls, some linen towels and a box of herbs and oils chosen by Rob from the stillroom. There was a pulley and a rope above the window for raising sacks of grain. Alinor lowered the hook and Stuart sent up the basket loaded with a tureen of soup, and bread and cheeses on platters, then all the other things he had brought, until he said: “Will that be all, Mrs. Reekie?” as if Alinor were a guest and not a servant like him.

  “That’s all,” she said. “Tell Rob to come here after breakfast. I’ll speak to him from here. But nobody is to come in until I know what ails the tutor.”

  “Beg pardon, Mrs. Reekie, but d’you think it might be plague?” Stuart whispered fearfully.

  “There are no signs now,” she said cautiously. “I will watch him today in case of the signs. There are no marks on him yet. Wait there.” She went to her basket of herbs and brought out a bunch of dried sage, and tossed it down to him. “Light this at the kitchen fire,” she said, “and then blow it out and bring it to me still smoking.”

  He was gone only a few moments and brought it back, smoldering in an earthenware bowl. Alinor lowered the rope and he put it in the basket and she pulled it up.

  “Does it summon spirits?” he whispered. “Are you calling them up?”

  Alinor shook her head. “It cleanses the air,” she said firmly. “I do no work with spirits or anything like that. Just herbs and oils, like anyone else.”

  He nodded, but he did not believe her.

  “That’s all,” Alinor said, thinking that however often she denied the rumors of magic they clung to her, and to all the women of her family, like the mist from the mire.

  “God bless us all,” Stuart gasped, and scuttled to the kitchen door.

  Alinor took the stems of the smoldering sage and walked around the room, shaking the burning leaves so that the cleansing scent went into every corner. Then she set it back on the bowl and left it to smoke. She opened the sack of physic to see what Rob had sent her. There was a stick of cinnamon, a jar with a lemon bottled in oil, and a bottle of distilled holy basil from the Peachey stillroom. Alinor thought that James might have taken tertian fever, a sickness that lingered in the mire, striking visitors, and staying with them for life, coming back three times a year and so earning its name. The first bout of illness was always the worst, often fatal; the others wore the patient down, as he became feverish and delirious. Most of the Foulmire families took it as children: Rob had it as a child, and Zachary had quatrain fever every season. Alinor’s mother believed it came from the bites of the flies that whined noisily in your ear as you slept, and advised her daughter to plant marigolds and lavender at windows and doorways to keep them out. It was no surprise to Alinor that the man she loved had been poisoned by the flies that lived on the waters of her home. This proved he should never have come; and, once he had left, he should never have come back. It was a sign to them both.

  His fever did not break all night. She sponged him down with water and her own lavender oil. She added the oil of lemon to the soup, and she grated cinnamon over it as she spooned it down his throat, but he remained half conscious, in a fevered sleep, turning his head from side to side, and speaking words, Latin words, that she could not understand but that she feared were heresy or magic, or both.

  He was only still when she held him, one arm around his shoulders, as she helped him to drink small ale, which she dosed with more lemon oil. Only then was he quiet, as if her touch cooled him, and so, as the night wore on till dawn, she held him, leaning back against the rough wooden wall, his hot head on her shoulder, her arms around him. He nuzzled his head into her neck as if he wanted the cool of her skin against his face, and he slept.

  When the thick horn windows showed a cloudy light, he groaned with pain, staggered to his feet, and crammed his fists against his belly. She knew what was coming and tucked the pail beneath his buttocks as he voided himself, doubled over in agony.

  “There,” she said, “there,” as if he were one of her sick children, and washed him with Beard-Papa water that she had brought from her home. She lowered the stinking pail on the pulley, and called to the stable boy to tip it in the midden and wash out the pail and return it. Then she washed her hands in the Beard-Papa water and made herself as comfortable as she could against the planking of the wooden wall, and once again took him in her arms and laid his head on her shoulder.

  Alinor dozed, dreaming incoherent dreams of love, of a man who spoke of “a woman like you in a place like this,” of a world where women were not condemned in church before the men who were sinners like them, who had sinned with them. She dreamed of Alys and her sweetheart, Richard Stoney, of Rob and the life he might live if they were not poor and born to be poor, of Zachary sailing far away and saying into the wind of the dream, as he had once said so bitterly to her: “Your trouble is that nothing real is ever enough for you.”

  She woke in daylight, cramped, with a sense of defeat. All her pride in her passion of the night was gone. She thought Zachary was right and that she had misled herself and misled her children, and he had spoken the truth—not when he said that she danced with faeries, but that she longed to be with them. All her life she had wanted more than the life she was born to; but this morning she knew she had sunk very low: a poor woman, about to be disgraced before her neighbors, working as that lowest of beings: a plague nurse, almost a layer-out, only one step above a porter of a plague cart heaped with dead bodies, calling for people to bring out their dead. She knew no work lower than a plague nurse, and her folly and her love had brought her down to this: locked up with a dying man, who was foresworn, and who had never said that he l
oved her.

  Still, she held him; knowing herself to be a fool, and ashamed of her folly. But then she realized James was warm in her arms, not cold and stiffening, not sweating and dying. He was warm and sweet-smelling, like a man who would live, and his eyes were opening and his color was good.

  “Alinor,” he croaked, as if he was saying her name for the very first time.

  “Are you better?” she asked incredulously.

  “I can hardly speak. I don’t know. Yes.”

  “Don’t speak. You were very ill.”

  “I thought I was going to die.”

  “You’re not going to die. It’s not the plague.”

  “Thank God. I thank God.”

  “Amen,” she said.

  Blearily, he looked around. “Are we in the net shed again?”

  “No! The hayloft at the Priory. You fell sick. D’you remember?”

  “No. Nothing.” He frowned. “I brought the boys home from Cowes.”

  “You did. They’re safe. Then you had a great fever.”

  He struggled with the memory of the lies that he had to uphold, but he could not remember them. He could not be sure anymore what was true and what was false. “I’m so thirsty.”

  She offered him small ale and he drank it gratefully, but she allowed him only one cup. “Slowly, slowly, you can have more later.”

  “I’m not sure what I said, what I may have spoken in my sleep . . .”