Tidelands Page 21

  “Not yet,” he said, moving slowly above her. “That’s moonlight.”

  “No. It’s dawn. And I have to go back to my home today, and we have to tell Sir William that you are well.”

  He rested his head on her shoulder as he moved within her. “I can’t bear it.”

  “Can’t bear the pleasure or can’t bear the parting?”

  “Both. Can’t we say that I am still ill? Can’t we take another day? Alinor, my love, can’t we steal another day together?”

  “No. You know we can’t. Neither of us can come under suspicion.”

  “I won’t let you go.”

  She raised herself up to his kiss and her rich hair tumbled back from her face. “Let me kiss you once,” she said, “and then I’ll get up and get dressed.”

  He wanted to hold her, but she shook her head and he rolled away and lay back, gripping his hands behind his head so that he should not snatch at her, as she leaned over him and kissed him passionately on the mouth and then rested her forehead on his chest, inhaling the scent of him as if he were a rose beneath her lips. Then she peeled herself off him, as if she were shedding her own skin, and turned away, to pull her linen shift over her head so that the stiff fabric fell, concealing her.

  “I can’t do this,” he said quietly. “I really can’t be parted from you.”

  She said nothing, but stepped into her skirt and tied the laces at her waist with meticulous care, and then sat on a bench at the side of the room to pull on her woolen hose.

  “Alinor,” he breathed.

  “Let me dress!” Her voice was choked. “I can’t dress and speak. I can’t hear your voice and think. Let me dress.”

  He sat up in the bed in silence while she twisted her hair into a knot at the back of her head and pulled on her white cap, crumpled as it was. When she turned to him she was, once again, the respectable midwife of Sealsea Island; and the tranced lover of the night was hidden under the shapeless bulky clothes.

  “Now you,” she said.

  He started towards her and she put out her hand to fend him off. “Don’t touch me,” she begged him. “Just get dressed.”

  He pulled on his linen shirt. For the first time in his life he noticed what fine linen he wore, and he thought that the first thing he would do, as soon as he was well, would be to go to Chichester and buy her some beautiful shifts, as smooth as her flawless skin. He pulled on his hose, heaved up his breeches, stamped his feet into his riding boots, and turned to her.

  “I’m dressed,” he said. “Are you satisfied?”

  Her dark eyes in her pale face were huge. “No,” she said quietly. “I am longing for you again, already. But we have to be ready to face the world and the day.”

  He heard the echo of Zachary in the back of his mind: that she was a woman that no man could ever satisfy. He shook his head. “Where will you go?” he asked, as if she had anywhere to go but the poor fisherman’s cottage.

  “Home.”

  “I shall stay here for a few days and then I will have to go to London and then to my seminary,” he told her, trusting her with his secrets as he had trusted her with his sin. “But, Alinor, my love, it is all changed for me. I have lost my faith and failed in my mission. I have to go and tell them that, and I will have to confess, and then, I suppose, I shall have to leave. I will have to beg them to release me.”

  She looked alarmed. “You have to confess? You have to speak of this?”

  He grimaced. “These are mortal sins. I have broken so many of my vows. I have to confess. My loss of faith is worse than this, but I have to confess this too and face my punishment.”

  “Will they punish me too?” she asked.

  He could have laughed at her ignorance. “I won’t say your name,” he assured her. “They won’t even know where you live. They cannot report you.”

  “D’you have to speak of us?”

  “I have to make a full confession, great sins and lesser.”

  She wondered which was the greater sin and which the lesser. But she did not ask. She would not have claimed her own importance. “If you confess to them, mightn’t they keep you there?”

  “I don’t think they will want me,” he said desolately. “I have failed in everything they sent me to do. And I have lost my faith as well.”

  “But even so, mightn’t they keep you? Can they keep you? Can they make you stay there? Can they lock you up?”

  “They would not keep me against my will, I know that. But they will make it very difficult to leave. They will have to be convinced that I am sure. I can never go back, you see. If I leave, I can never return. They will see this as a betrayal of my duty and of my faith. And they have been father and mother and schoolmaster to me as well as my way to God. They will be sorry, as I am sorry.”

  She looked very grave. “You are sorry?”

  “But I will come back to you.”

  The flush on her face told him what that meant to her, but she shook her head. “Don’t come back for me,” she said quietly. “This has been everything to me, but you can’t come back here for me. I’m not fit for you. I couldn’t live in your world, and you’d never live in mine.”

  “But we have been lovers as if the world was ending!”

  “But it’s not ending,” she said reasonably. She found a little smile. “Outside, everything goes on. I’ve got to go back to my life, you’ve got to return to yours, whatever it turns out to be. Faith or no faith. King or no king. And even if everything’s changed for you, nothing changes for me. Nothing ever changes for me.”

  “Have I not made a change for you?” he demanded. “Are you not a woman of desire, as you said? Will you go back to stone?”

  She turned her head from him. “I won’t be dead to myself again,” she promised. “I won’t turn back to stone. But I wouldn’t survive long in my world as a woman of desire. I have to harden, or someone will destroy me.”

  “My family are in exile,” he told her, his voice very low. “My mother and father are in exile, our lands and houses sequestered—do you know what that means?”

  She shook her head.

  “My father was appointed by the king to advise the Prince of Wales,” he said. “When the prince went into exile, my father and mother went with him. Our lands were sequestered—that means taken by parliament, to punish us. My father and mother are now at the queen’s court in Paris. But if we left the royal courts, made an agreement with parliament, surrendered to them and paid a fine, just as Sir William has done, we could get our lands back, just as he has done. I could live in my family house. It’s in Yorkshire, a long way from here—a beautiful house and good farmlands. I could get it back; my mother and father could return to England.”

  “Would they want to?” she asked. “Would they want to live with a new minister in their church, and new men in power? Under a parliament, not a king?”

  He waved away her objection. “What I’m saying is that I could get our house back, I could return home. I’d be in England again, not an exile, not a spy, not in hiding.”

  She tried to find a smile. “I’d like to think of you living in your house with your lands around you. I’d look at the moon and know it was shining on you, as it was shining on me. I’d like to think of you at the water’s edge as the tide ebbed, while I stood on the tidemark in Foulmire.”

  “It’s a different tide, and anyway we’re inland,” he said, distracted by her ignorance. “But that’s not what I mean. I mean to say: I won’t leave you here. I would not return to my house without you. I will take you there, to my home.”

  She looked at him as if he were speaking Latin, as if he were quite incomprehensible. “What?”

  “Would you come with me to Yorkshire? Will you marry me?”

  “Marry?” she asked wonderingly. “Marry?”

  “Yes,” he said steadily. “Why not? If there is no king on the throne and no bishops in their palaces, if there is no royalty nor church, if all degree is leveled and there is neither master nor
man as the radicals say, then why should I not marry you?”

  She held out her hands to show him the roughness of a workingwoman’s palms. She spread her tatty brown skirt caked with foul mud at the hem. “Look at me,” she said bleakly. “You will see that the radicals are mistaken. There is still master and man. You can’t take me to your mother and ask her to accept me as a daughter-in-law. I can’t go with you and be a lady in your house. The woman who is to be your wife is far above me. You can’t put me in her place.”

  He was about to argue but she went on: “And you’ve forgotten? I can’t marry anyway—I’m married to Zachary, and we both know he’s still alive. We couldn’t stand before an altar and take vows. I’ve two young children and they know their father. I couldn’t go to your home as an honest woman, a widow. I’m not an honest woman. I’ve been your slut here, I’ve been your whore. I’ve lain with you without a promise. I don’t demand one now. I couldn’t even be your mistress. I’m not even fit for that.”

  He flushed as if he was scalded with her shame. “Don’t say such things! You’re no slut! You’re no whore! I’ve never loved anyone as I love you! This has been sacred! Sacred! This is a first and last for me.”

  “I know! I know!” The first words of love calmed her. For a moment, he saw a glimpse of her smile. “For me too. Oh, James—me too. And that’ll be a joy to me when you’re gone and I’m left here.”

  “I can’t leave you here,” he said. “I have to be with you.”

  She shrugged as if the world were full of incomprehensible disappointments, and this was another. “I wish it was different,” was all she said. He came closer and she stretched out her hand to him, but she was not reaching for him, she was gently fending him off. She touched his cheek with the back of her fingers. He caught her hand and pressed it to his mouth.

  “Don’t hold me,” she said very low. “I can’t leave you if you take hold of me. I can’t pull away from you. I think I’ll die if I have to push you away. Please let me go. I’ve got to leave you now.”

  “I’ll come to your cottage tonight,” he whispered. “We can’t say good-bye like this.”

  “I’m not for you. Our worlds are very far apart.”

  “I’ll come to you. I’ll come tonight.”

  “Then we’ll only have to say good-bye again.”

  “I want to say good-bye again. This cannot be the last time that I see you.”

  “Tonight, when it is dark,” she agreed reluctantly. “But I’ll come to you. It’s high tide, the path isn’t safe for you. I’ll meet you in the sea meadow outside the Priory. Where we said good-bye before.”

  “Tonight,” he said again as she turned, unbolted the hatch, and made her way down the ladder to the stable yard, where the grooms were sleepily watering the horses, and brushing them down.

  He watched her go, the basket on her arm, the neat white cap on her head. He saw her speak a pleasant “good morning” to the grooms, and saw them turn and watch her as she walked across the yard to the house. Behind her back one lad made an obscene gesture pumping his buttocks to mimic lust, but the other did worse: he gathered spittle in his mouth and he spat on her tracks, and clenched his thumb inside his fist, in the old, old gesture of guarding against a witch.

  “His lordship wants to see you,” Mrs. Wheatley said to Alinor as she came into the kitchen. “Good Lord! Mrs. Reekie! I’ve never seen you in such good looks. You’re glowing!”

  “Your good cooking,” Alinor said lightly. “I’ve eaten better these last two days than I have for weeks. I shall come to nurse at the Priory again if I can.”

  “Pray God we’re spared illness,” Mrs. Wheatley said.

  “Amen,” Alinor answered correctly. “His lordship is well?”

  “Yes, but he asked you to go to his gun room before you leave this morning. You can go now. Stuart will show you in.”

  “Why does he want to see me?” Alinor hesitated.

  “It can only be to thank you,” the cook replied. “You saved us all from great worry, and perhaps you saved the island from sickness. Go, you’ve got nothing to fear.”

  “Thank you,” Alinor said, going to the door into the house.

  “Come back this way and I’ll give you a loaf of bread to keep that bloom in your cheeks,” Mrs. Wheatley said.

  Alinor smiled and followed Stuart down the corridor towards the garden door and his lordship’s gun room.

  Sir William was seated at the table, cleaning his flintlock rifle. He glanced up and nodded when Alinor knocked, came in, and stood before him.

  “Goodwife Reekie, I’m grateful to you,” he said, looking down the barrel. “Thank God it was no worse than a fever.”

  She nodded. He took care to pay attention to his gun and not to look at the curve of her breasts under the bulky jacket.

  “Your son, Robert, found his way round the stillroom. He’s a bright lad. He fetched all the things you needed?”

  “Yes, he knew what was wanted for a fever,” she said. She thought her voice sounded thin, as if the light was too bright and Sir William was too loud.

  “Nobody told him what to get. He picked out the things himself?” He took up a piece of wadding and polished the beautiful enameled stock.

  “He’s watched me since he was a baby. He’s got a gift with herbs and their use.”

  “James Summer said some time ago that he was fit to be a servant to a physician, or apprenticed to an apothecary.”

  Alinor bowed her head. “I think so, but we couldn’t afford his entry fee.”

  His lordship put the cleaning cloth and the oil to one side, racked the gun, and sat back in his chair. He looked her up and down, and felt again the regret that she was a respectable woman and the sister of a pious man. “I tell you what, Goodwife, I’ll do it for you. He’s a good lad, a credit to you. He’s been a merry companion for Master Walter and you’ve been a great help to me and my house. Just now with the tutor falling sick . . . and I know about earlier.”

  For a moment, she could not speak. “Your lordship!”

  He nodded. “I’ll get Mr. Tudeley to arrange for him to go as an apprentice, an apprentice to an apothecary, so he can get a training and a trade. Chichester or perhaps Portsmouth, I suppose.”

  She was breathless with shock.

  “Aye,” he nodded, thinking again that she was a beautiful woman. If only Sealsea Island had not been such a center of gossip, and so damnably godly, he might have brought her into his household, called her a housekeeper, and used her as his whore.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t accept. I can’t afford even the clothes he would need,” she said. “I don’t have the savings—”

  “Tudeley will take care of that,” he said, waving away her objection. “How’s that? We’ll give him a suit of clothes, and buy him his apprenticeship as payment for your . . . help. How’s that?”

  Her face lit up. “You would do that?”

  His lordship thought that he would do much, much more, if she were willing. But he merely nodded.

  “He’ll be so glad. I know he’ll work hard.” She stumbled over her thanks. “We’ll owe you a debt of gratitude . . . forever . . . I can’t thank you—”

  “I’ll get it done,” Sir William concluded. “These are difficult times for all of us, you know.”

  She nodded earnestly, wondering what he meant now.

  “Dangerous times for some.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I suppose in his fever, the tutor didn’t speak out at all?”

  Alinor checked her breathless thanks and stole a quick look at her landlord from under the brim of her white cap, knowing that this question was the most important moment in the whole of this interview.

  “Speak out? Sir?”

  “In his fever. Men say odd things when their minds are affected by illness, don’t they? He didn’t say anything, did he? Anything that I’d not want widely known? Or known at all? Anything that I wouldn’t want repeated? Not even here?”

 
“He didn’t say anything that I heard.” She picked her words with care, knowing that this was important, feeling perilously ill prepared to deal with a powerful man like her landlord. “Sir, people in fever often say fanciful things, things they wouldn’t say in waking life. I never take notice, never repeat them. I wouldn’t speak of things that I see and hear in the sickroom. Being deaf is part of the craft. Being dumb is part of being a woman. I don’t want any trouble. The day I spent nursing him, I won’t speak of, not to anyone.”

  He nodded, measuring her reliability. “Not to your brother, eh?”

  She met his gaze with complete comprehension. “Especially not him,” she confirmed.

  “Then we understand each other. You can consider your son apprenticed to a Chichester apothecary.”

  She bowed her head and clasped her hands. “I thank you, sir,” she said simply.

  He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a handful of shillings. He made them into a little tower and slid them across the table to her.

  “Your wages for nursing him. Ten shillings a day. There’s a pound. And my thanks.”

  She picked them up with a little nod and put them into her apron pocket. “Thank you.”

  He got up and came around the table. She stood before him and he put a hand on her arm. “You could come back tonight?” he said, unable to resist, looking down the front of her linen shift at the curve of her breast. “To visit me.”

  He tightened his grip and drew her towards him, but to his surprise she did not move. She did not yield to him; but nor did she shrink back. She was as steady as if she were rooted to the spot.

  “You know I can’t do that, sir,” she said simply. “If I did that, I couldn’t take my pay: it’d be whore’s gold. I couldn’t hold up my head, I couldn’t let you be a patron to Rob. I wouldn’t think of myself a good tenant to a good lord. I don’t want that.”

  His grip felt weak, as if his fingers were powerless with cold. Still, she stood her ground, as if she were growing there, like a hawthorn tree, and he could not draw her closer. She stood like a stone, and looked at him coolly with a dark confident gaze until he felt awkward and stupid, and remembered the rumor that she could freeze a man’s cock with a look.