Tidelands Page 26

  “Ours. St. Wilfrid’s.”

  “Well, what a catch for you!” she said with unintentional rudeness. “The Stoney boy! And that beautiful farm. Just as well she inherits your looks, as you’ve got nothing else to offer.”

  “I think they’ll be very happy,” Alinor said repressively. “It’s a love match.”

  “Best sort,” the man said.

  “I daresay Mrs. Stoney’s not too pleased. She’s had a rich match in mind for her boy from the day he was born.”

  “She was very welcoming,” Alinor said, praying that Alys, in the back among the sheep fleeces, could hear none of this. “We’re all very happy.”

  They got to Chichester within the hour and jumped down from the wagon with thanks.

  “Ridiculous old woman!” Alys said, smiling and waving as the wagon rumbled away from them on the cobbles. “And now I stink of sheep.”

  “Hush,” Alinor said.

  Alys laughed. “Who cares what she thinks? Shall we buy lace first?”

  “No, first I’ll sell my oils.”

  Alinor led the way to a stall specializing in dried herbs, crystal stones, oils, ointments, and charms. She knew the stallholder well and he greeted her with a leering smile. “Ah, Mrs. Reekie, I was hoping to see you today. Have you brought me something good?”

  “A dozen bottles of mixed oils,” Alinor said.

  She put her basket on the stall and looked at his stock while he lifted out each bottle and read the handwritten label. “Very good, very good. I didn’t know that you had wolfsbane? You’ve never brought me any before.”

  “I found some growing wild,” Alinor said. “And I thought I’d make some oil. It’s a useful physic, but I doubt that there’s much call for preventing wolves on Tidelands!”

  “It’s a very potent poison,” he remarked. “Strange to see a wisewoman selling poison in the broad light of day!”

  “It’s a cure for fever too. One drop in a big beaker of ale is a mild treatment against fever. And you can use it on a scorpion bite.”

  “We don’t suffer from many scorpions in Chichester,” the man said sarcastically.

  Alinor shrugged. “I’ll take it back home if you don’t want it. I can use it for treating fevers.”

  “No, no, I’ll buy it. It’s good to have it in stock, even if there is little call for it. What shall I give you for the water of aconite and the other oils?”

  “Six shillings,” Alinor said boldly.

  “Now, now, I have to pay rent on my shop, and a servant to keep the shop. I can’t spare that. But I will give you four shillings for them all.”

  “Six shillings,” Alinor insisted. “For the twelve bottles. And the bottles and corks returned to me.”

  “You drive a hard bargain,” he conceded. “As a beautiful woman may do.”

  Alinor unpacked the bottles onto his stall and he produced empty bottles from a basket at the back.

  “Here, I’ll give you a couple of extra bottles and corks,” he said. “For the wolfsbane.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Bring me some more next monthly market,” he said. “And I’ll buy dried herbs by the ounce, also.”

  “I have some drying now.”

  He leaned towards her. “Can you make me something to restore manhood?” he whispered. “I have a customer who would be glad of it.”

  “I don’t have a recipe for that,” she said, discouragingly.

  “You will have, I know you will have. It’ll be horny goatweed and bull pizzle, ginger and something like that, boiled up together.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t have a recipe. I can’t get hold of such ingredients and if I could, I would not,” she said. “I don’t do anything of that sort.”

  He snorted disbelievingly. “Don’t tell me that you turn away good business?”

  “I do,” she said steadily. “I make the herb remedies because I know what they do. The goodness, the God-given goodness, is in the plant, a gift from God Himself. But anything with charming and special words is halfway towards magic. My mother’d never have anything to do with it, and neither will I. She taught me to use the herbs that we all know, and not dabble in things that are mysteries—if they work at all.”

  “And you a midwife!” he said nastily. “I don’t see why you would put yourself above the act. You pull the baby out, why don’t you help the father to put it in?”

  “Because I need my license,” Alinor said. “And if the bishop ever comes back, he isn’t going to look kindly on some woman from Sealsea Island selling love philters and casting spells. I am a midwife and a herbalist, and I do nothing else. I have to guard my reputation: it’s my fortune.”

  “Hardly a fortune, my dear. Your reputation is hardly a fortune! Look, I’ll get you the ingredients myself and pay you to come to my stillroom and make it up for me. You needn’t tell a soul. It can be just between you and me. Our little secret. I don’t believe that you’ll turn down five shillings.”

  Alinor had a pang of guilt thinking of the five shillings towards Alys’s dowry, but she could not rid herself of a fear of anything that looked like magic. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “But I only work as a herbalist, with the herbs that I know. I don’t dabble in mysteries.”

  He laughed to conceal his irritation and she realized at once that the remedy was for himself. He had the edgy laugh of a man without confidence; his bullying tone came from his weakness. All the talk about a customer was a blind for his own need. “Oh! If you want to turn down good business from an established customer. . . .”

  “I am sorry,” she said kindly. “But I can’t help you.”

  “It’s not for me,” he said quickly. “But I could sell it a dozen times.”

  “Then you will surely find someone to make it for you,” she said.

  He grimaced. “Your herbs are so good—they’re the best. I wanted yours. People always ask for the oils from the pretty witch of Foulmire.”

  “I hope they don’t call me that,” Alinor said coldly.

  “Only in jest.”

  “It’s no jest to me.”

  “So you say, so you say. I’ll give you good day, and if you have the sense to change your mind you can come back to me.”

  Alinor accepted her dismissal, pocketed her money, and lifted her basket from his stall. He waved her away, and Alinor gritted her teeth, smiled, and said good-bye. He did not bother to reply but turned to a customer and let her go without another word. Mother and daughter made their way through the crowd to the north side of the Market Cross, to the wool merchant.

  There was a little crowd around his table, women bringing back wool that they had spun and collecting their payments, women buying sacks of raw wool for spinning. Alinor bought a shilling’s worth of fleece in a small sack. He took the money with a word of thanks. “Good day, Mrs. Reekie. I can fetch the yarn from you myself, if you work quickly. I am coming to Sealsea Island next month.”

  “I’ll leave it with my brother at the ferry-house,” Alinor promised him. “And if you’ll take the price of another sack off my wages and leave it for me, I’ll spin more.”

  “Working hard?” he asked with a wink at her. “Saving up for something?”

  “Nothing in particular,” Alinor said discreetly, though Alys smiled and blushed and looked down.

  They turned from the stall, trying not to bump people in the crowded street with the bulky sack.

  “What now?” Alys asked.

  “I have to buy some salt, for salting down the fish,” Alinor said, looking around.

  “What’s wrong with the salt that we make?”

  “I can’t make enough for a barrel of fish,” Alinor said. “And it’s such hard work, stirring the boiling pans and keeping the fire in all day, for such a little result.”

  She led the way to the stall where two rough men were shoveling from sacks of salt into smaller bags. “I’ll take two,” Alinor said, and handed over the pennies.

  As she took the bags and tu
rned away, Alys said: “There’s the lace maker.”

  She was an old lady sitting on her own, on a stool with a piece of cloth spread on the ground before her to show her little pieces of lace. She had a cushion on her knee, and her swollen fingers were busy with the bobbins as the lace grew from the center of the cushion. She pulled out a pin and pressed in another, pricking out the pattern as the bobbins whirled and clicked against each other, as if they were a little army in battle on a snowy field.

  “Good day, mistress,” Alinor said politely.

  “Good day to you,” she replied, not glancing up from her work.

  “I’m looking for some lace for a collar for Mrs. Miller at the tide mill,” Alinor said.

  “Everything you see is for sale,” the old woman said. “And I should be glad of your custom, my dear. I keep myself off the parish with my work, you see.”

  Alys suppressed a giggle at the old lady’s piping voice, and Alinor frowned at her. The two of them knelt down and turned over the pieces of handmade lace until Alys said: “This is the prettiest, Ma. Look at this.” She held up a wide ribbon of lace that could be used to trim a collar. It was worked with a design of butterfly wings, a repeating motif. “Pretty,” Alys said and then added under her breath: “Far too pretty for her.”

  “How much is this?” Alinor asked the old lady.

  “That is two shillings for the yard,” she said.

  “Could you let me have it cheaper?” Alinor asked. “I am not commissioned to spend if it is too dear.”

  “My dear, all that stands between me and the parish is a yard of lace,” the woman confided. “You’re too beautiful to know what it is to be a poor woman and a burden on your neighbors. But within a week of me selling nothing they won’t open their doors to me for fear that I’ll beg a loaf of bread, or a quart of milk, though they have a whole herd of cows. Within a month they’re wondering if they can move me on to another parish. They ask after my children, and why I don’t go and visit them. They hope to force me to be a burden on them. It’s a bitter thing to grow old and poor. Pray that God spares you.”

  “Amen,” whispered Alinor.

  The lace maker turned to Alys’s shocked face. “Believe me! They can take against you in a moment. One cross word, and then they call for the witchfinder, and name you as a witch so as to be rid of you once and for all! It’s a crime to be poor in this county; it’s a sin to be old. It’s never good to be a woman.”

  Alinor felt a cold shiver down her back at the words. “I have only three shillings for lace,” she said hastily. “I am sorry for your troubles.”

  “I’ll sell you two yards for three shillings,” the old woman said. “And you will oblige me if you buy from me again.”

  She took the ribbon of lace and folded it gently, over and over, and tied it with a thread of pink silk. “Fine work,” she said. “Two weeks’ work and I get three shillings for it. Pray God that you are never left on your own and have to earn your own living. It’s a hard world for a woman alone.”

  “Amen,” Alinor said again. “I know it.”

  They walked away from the stall. “Miserable old thing!” Alys said carelessly. She looked more closely at her mother. “Don’t listen to her! You earn well enough. You’re nothing like her. With your herbs and the midwife business, and now your boat, and the fishing. And you have the work you do at the mill, and your own work in the garden and at Ferry-house. If they have you back to the Priory to work in their stillroom they’ll pay well. And soon I shall be a rich young farmer’s wife and Rob’ll be an apothecary. We’ll both send money home to you!”

  “And she earns well enough with her lace for now,” Alinor said. “But what about the week when she’s too old to work anymore? You saw her hands—what happens when she can’t bend her fingers? What happens the week that she falls sick? What does she eat then? Where does she get her firewood then? From her neighbors, as she said, and they’ll turn against her just for asking.”

  She had to raise her voice against the gathering swell of noise and the two of them looked around to see what was causing people to shout and heckle. It was a young royalist supporter, standing defiantly on the steps of the Market Cross, with a rowdy crowd gathered around him.

  “We will have peace and the king back on his throne by Christmas!” he shouted.

  “Then we’ll have war again by Easter!” someone rejoined. “Because your king is a liar!”

  There was a cheer and a laugh, but most of the crowd wanted to hear what the young royalist would say.

  “Let’s go,” Alinor said nervously, as Alys dawdled to listen.

  “The parliament men know that they have to agree with the king, and they are going to the Isle of Wight to meet with him,” the young man declared. “He will not be coerced, he will be returned to his throne.”

  “Free ale for all!”

  “They will demand that he give up the royal militia and accept the rights of the New Model Army.” The young man paused impressively. “He will never agree to this. They will demand a church without bishops. You know what comes of that!” Again, he glared at the crowd. “Where is the Bishop of Chichester today?”

  “Slough,” someone said helpfully. “Did you want him? Because he ran away as fast as his feet could carry him.”

  Grandly, the young man ignored the heckler. “This is the church of Henry VIII,” he declaimed over the laughter. “The church of Queen Elizabeth. Their true heir, King Charles, will never abandon it. He will restore the House of Lords, the bishops . . .”

  “Don’t forget the Bishop of Rome!” someone shouted from the back. “Because the queen obeys him rather than her husband!”

  “Come on,” Alinor said to her daughter. “There’ll be fighting soon.”

  “Our king will never agree to these demands!” The young man raised his voice, as the two women hurried away. “They cannot force him and we should defend his right to be king. We should say to our member of parliament . . .”

  “Can they really force the king to give everything up?” Alys asked her mother as they went down South Street towards the road to Sealsea Island.

  “I don’t know,” Alinor replied. “I suppose so. Since he’s in their keeping. But perhaps you can’t keep a king in prison.”

  “My uncle says the king should be tried for treason. For starting the war again and calling in the Scots. That was treason against the people of England.”

  “Easy to say,” Alinor observed, “but other people say that a king cannot be wrong, since he is the king.”

  “Who thinks that?”

  Alinor thought of the man she loved. “Some people say it.”

  “Well, it’s rubbish!” Alys declared stoutly.

  The two walked home, taking it in turns to carry the sack of wool and the bags of salt. A carter on his way to the tide mill overtook them on the road, and let them sit in the back of his wagon on the sacks of grains. The sky was golden with the afternoon light as the wagon turned down the lane to the mill. The waters were lapping at the quay, a breeze picking up the waves in the haven, making the waters look like shirred gray silk.

  Alys jumped down to open the yard gate for the cart, and then walked ahead of him into the yard. The sluice gates of the millpond were open, the tide pouring in to fill up the pond, the little birds darting around the pond edge, feeding from the incoming waters. Mr. Miller came out from the barn at the sound of wheels on the cobbled yard and Mrs. Miller came from the kitchen door to see Alinor climbing down from the wagon.

  “Here you are,” she said to Alinor. “And home without the trouble of a walk, thanks to one of our customers.”

  “Yes,” said Alinor. “We were lucky.”

  “Oh, there’s always some man ready to help you out,” Mrs. Miller said.

  “Well, we were lucky today,” Alinor agreed. “And look what I bought for you.”

  The miller and the wagoner unloaded the sacks of corn, piling them at the foot of the granary doors, ready to be hoisted upwar
ds when the pond was full and the water released to turn the wheel and work the hoist. Alinor handed over the package of lace and watched Mrs. Miller unroll it.

  “Now this is very fine,” she said with rare satisfaction. “Very good. Never tell me that you got all this for three shillings?”

  “I did!” Alinor said with pleasure. “I hoped you would think it a good bargain. I believe that it really is. Look at the delicacy of the pattern!”

  “Chichester market!” Mrs. Miller said. “Who knew there was anything as good as this to be found at Chichester market! I would have thought to go to London for such work.”

  “She was an old lady. She was lace making, sitting on a little stool in the middle of the market. She didn’t even have a table,” Alinor said. “But all her things were beautiful.”

  “Well, I’m grateful to you,” Mrs. Miller said with unusual warmth. “And did you sell your oils?”

  “I did,” Alinor said, showing her the basket with the empty bottles. “And I bought a sack of wool for spinning, and some salt for salting down the fish, so I’ve had a very good day.”

  Alys suddenly appeared at her mother’s elbow, and dipped a curtsey to Mrs. Miller. “And you’ve had a fine day!” the woman scolded at once. “Jauntering off all the day and strolling round the market on a workday.”

  “We went to Stoney Farm first,” Alinor said, knowing that Mrs. Miller would have to know, and would resent it bitterly if they delayed the news and she heard it from someone else. “Alys and Richard are betrothed. They will marry at Easter.”

  “Never!” the woman exclaimed, her mood darkening at once.

  “I was sure that you would be pleased,” Alinor prompted. “Since they met while working for you, and were king and queen of the harvest at your harvest home. I knew you would be pleased for them.”

  Mrs. Miller was struggling with her envy of anyone else’s happiness. “No reason not to be pleased,” she said irritably. “It’s not as if I put any obstacles in their way. It’s not as if I had him in mind for Jane.”

  “No, exactly,” Alinor confirmed. “There is no reason for you not to be happy for her.”