Tidelands Read online

  “No. My father is a baronet. Not that it matters.”

  “But I’ve thought of you all this time as James Summer. Is your given name not James? How shall I call you anything else?”

  She was so ridiculous, so frivolous, that he grabbed her by the shoulders and at once, she jerked back to avoid a blow, following an old lesson that a shaking was followed by a blow, and if she let herself be knocked to the ground she would get a kick to the belly or in the face. At once he released her, horrified, dropping his hands from her shoulders and spreading them wide as if to show that he had no weapon.

  “Don’t!” he said. “For Christ’s sake, don’t! I’m not that brute. I wouldn’t hurt you. Forgive me, forgive me! But I can’t make you hear me! Alinor, you must listen to me.”

  “I’m listening,” she said, recovering herself faster than he could do. “I’m listening. But I can’t do what you ask.”

  “Forgive me . . .” He was trying to calm the furious thudding of his heart. “It has been a terrible month, a terrible year. The very moment that I met with my parents—and they were so angry—we learned of the arrest of the king. So I couldn’t leave my seminary, as I was preparing to do, but had to go back into royal service. Since then I’ve been in London and The Hague, and then to London again, trying desperately—you have no idea—meeting with men who had no hope, asking for money from paupers, asking for them to act when they dared not, sending messages and getting no reply and now—God forgive us—now he is dead, and it is all over, and we have lost worse than we ever lost before, and I have to listen to your brother taunting—”

  “Ned didn’t taunt you.”

  “He did. You don’t understand. It was between men. It was about our country, our war.”

  “My war, too,” she observed. “My country, too.”

  He took a swift step away from her to the gate as if he would fling himself out of the gate and down the road, in a rage. “This is not the point! You aren’t listening to me!”

  She stood as still and silent as a deer when it scents danger but does not know what is coming. She stood as innocent as a deer, as intent as a deer scenting the wind. He stepped back towards her, his fists clenched at his sides, and fought to find the words to explain. “You have given me a terrible shock. I don’t know what to say.”

  A barn owl with a great spread of white wings flew along the hedgerow of the lane towards them, lifted clear of the bushes, and disappeared into the field on the other side of the garden. James saw how she watched it, as if it was warning her of something, and he thought that it was impossible for a man like him—an educated man, a spiritual man—to understand a woman like her, in a place like this.

  “What?” he demanded, and she turned her gaze back to him.

  “I was just watching the owl,” she said quietly, knowing that he was irritated but not knowing why. “I was attending to you. I was just watching her.”

  “You’re cold,” he said, but it was he who shivered. “And Ned will be wondering where you are.”

  “He knows where I am. I told him I was shutting up the hens.”

  He had to bite his tongue on his irritation. “What I mean is, we can’t talk now. We can’t talk here. We must talk tomorrow. We must meet tomorrow somewhere and talk. Where will you meet me?”

  “I have to take Rob to Chichester tomorrow.”

  Again, he bit the inside of his mouth and tasted blood. “Can’t Edward take him?”

  “Oh, no!” She was shocked that he would suggest it. “I want to see Rob’s master and his home, and where he will work. Mr. Tudeley will pay over the money. I have to sign Rob’s indentures. They will accept a woman’s signature. I have a good name in Chichester.”

  He tried to be calm. “Yes, indeed. Then I will come to Chichester and meet you there.”

  She nodded without speaking, and opened the garden gate for him to leave. He was astounded by her calmness.

  “Alinor, we must be together, we must be lovers again. I will make you my wife. I will give you my name—my real name. You will become accustomed! I love you, I want you. More than anything in the world. You are all that I have left! I have lost everything else. You are all that is left for me.”

  She nodded, saying nothing.

  He thought her unnaturally serene while he was sweating with a mixture of anger and frustrated desire. “Where shall we meet?”

  “The Market Cross?” she asked. “Before noon?”

  “I’ll be there. Nobody knows of this, do they?” He jabbed towards her belly with his hand. “You’ve not told anyone?”

  She lied to him, for the first time, before she had even thought of it. “Nobody,” she said.

  “Then it will be all right,” he tried to reassure her, though it was he who looked panicked. She was as cool as the sickle moon.

  “It will be all right,” she agreed through pale lips, and she closed the gate on him and turned back to the frozen garden. As he walked away he heard her speak softly to her hens, in the same gentle tones as she had used to soothe him.

  Alys wanted to walk to Chichester with her mother and Rob, see Rob’s new employer, collect some more wool for spinning, and perhaps even buy a ribbon to trim her wedding dress.

  “It’s only the Monday market,” Alinor said discouragingly. “The ribbon stall is far better on Saturday. And the wool merchant is bringing wool and leaving it here, when he comes next week.”

  Alys made a face. “Anyway, I suppose I should go to work at the mill,” she said.

  “You should,” Alinor agreed.

  “I’d almost rather work the ferry than spend the day with Mrs. Miller.”

  “You could ask your uncle Ned to take his turn in the dairy?”

  Unwillingly, Alys laughed.

  “Ah, she’s not so bad,” Alinor told her daughter. “And it’s baking day today. The other women will be there for the firing of the oven and you can bake us a loaf.”

  Alys wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and tightened her apron at her broad waist. “I’ll go to Stoney Farm when I’ve finished work. I’ll have my dinner there, and walk back here later,” she said.

  “Yes, yes,” Alinor said absently. She went to the foot of the stairs and called Rob and heard his answering shout.

  “Help me with the copper into the scullery for Rob.”

  The two women slid the pole through the carry rings and lifted the copper filled with hot water to the center of the room, then Alinor kissed her daughter and saw her out of the front door, turned to the foot of the stairs, and shouted for Rob again.

  He came downstairs in his shirt and stripped naked, and washed himself, using the gray soap as Alinor poured jugs of hot water over his shoulders and over his head.

  He stepped, long-legged as a calf, out of the water onto a little mat that Alinor put before him, and rubbed himself down with a linen sheet. He sat, wrapped in the sheet on a stool before the fire, as Alinor trimmed his thick brown hair and rubbed it dry with her own mixture of olive oil and apple vinegar and then combed it through with a lice comb. Rob dressed himself in the clean linen that they had given him at the Priory, and a pair of breeches belonging to Walter Peachey.

  “Eat some breakfast,” Alinor urged him, and put some bread and small ale before him on the kitchen table.

  When he had finished, he lifted the copper with her and carried it back to the scullery. “Shall I pour it away?” he asked her. “It’s heavy for you.”

  “I’ll wash down the floors with it later,” she said. “Leave it there.”

  Alinor had bought him good secondhand hose in Chichester market and he could still get into the shoes they had given him for Christmas at the Priory, though they were tight across the toes. He had a secondhand jacket which once belonged to Walter.

  Alinor stroked the thick wool of the sleeve. “It’s very fine,” she said.

  “It’s nothing. It’s his old one, his second-best. He wore velvet to go to university.”

  “I am sorry . . .” sh
e started to say.

  Rob grinned at her. “Sorry that I don’t have a velvet jacket? Sorry that I can’t eat my dinners at Cambridge? Ma, it is me that’s sorry that my earnings are stopped from the Priory, and Alys can’t get enough for her dowry, and you have to work all the hours of daylight. I know how lucky I am. I know how blessed we’ve been. And as soon as I earn my first wages you shall have them all.”

  Alinor reached for him and he bowed his head and allowed her to embrace him, but he no longer clung to her as he used to do, when he was her little boy.

  “You’re growing up,” she said mournfully.

  “I’m an apprentice lad!” he said proudly.

  “I feel like I’m losing you,” she said. “Like you’re slipping away.”

  “It’s Chichester,” he reminded her. “I’m not going to sea.”

  “No, and I thank God for that at least,” she said. “I’ll look in to see you when I come to market, and you’ll come home for Alys’s wedding on Sunday, and then Lady Day.”

  Gently he detached himself from her embrace. “Of course. You’ll see me within the week.”

  “Are you ready to go?” she asked him, half hoping he would say no and they would have more time together.

  “I’ll get my sack,” he said.

  He ran up the ladder to his loft bedroom and came down again carrying his little sack with some clean linen, his spoon, his cup, his knife, a change of hose and—a gift from Sir William—a notebook with blank pages for him to start his own book of recipes and remedies that he would learn from the apothecary. He had his own pen, a knife to trim it, and a small pot of ink from the Priory schoolroom.

  “Everything?” Alinor asked him.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, if you need something, you can always send a message.”

  They went out of the house, closing the door carefully behind them. Ned was rehanging the horseshoe that served as a chiming bell on the far side of the mire, but when he saw them he pulled the ferry over and held it steady as Alinor got on board.

  “All ready?” he asked Rob. “You’re the first of us Ferrymans to have an apprenticeship. The first to be headed to clean work. The first to work indoors.”

  “I’m ready,” Rob said.

  “Our mother would have died of pride,” Ned said to Alinor. “Just shows you what study can do . . . and favor,” he added.

  “Rob was always bright, even as a baby,” Alinor said. “Mother saw that in him, though she would never have dreamed of today. And he’s earned the favor of the Peacheys, fair and square. He learned enough at school to be able to study alongside Master Walter. And they made friends, real friends.”

  “Born to be a lord?” Ned teased her, as he made the ferry fast and took her hand to help her out.

  “Of course not,” she said. “But it tells you something that he and Master Walter were studying side by side and now Walter is fit to be a lawyer, or at any rate a gentleman.”

  “It tells you that there are always places for placemen, and nothing changes,” Ned said.

  “Everything is changing,” Rob said surprisingly, leaping from ferry to pier and helping Alinor to dry land. “Everything is changing. We have a parliament instead of a king. We can speak to our masters on our own two feet, we don’t have to kneel. I am going to earn a wage, not be paid in pennies. We’re never going to go hungry again.” He turned to his uncle and the two men embraced. “Thank you, Uncle Ned,” Rob said. “I’ll be back on Sunday.”

  “Have this in the meantime,” his uncle said, pressing a sixpence into his hand. “Take it, you might need it. They might not feed you well and then you can buy yourself a pie or a loaf of bread. And if they don’t treat you well, you must tell us, you know. You’re right: we aren’t so poor that anyone can do anything to us. And we don’t take a beating from anyone.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Rob promised.

  Alinor took his arm and they started up the road together, turning away from the mire and the road to the mill, and heading towards the Chichester road.

  “Godspeed, Nephew,” Ned called. “God speed you.”

  They took a lift with a charcoal burner who worked the Sealsea Island forest, on his way to deliver to the kitchens of Chichester. He let the two of them sit on the wagoner’s bench beside him, rather than spoil their clean clothes on the sooty sacks. He let them off at the Market Cross and went to Eastgate for the needlemakers’ furnaces.

  Alinor and Rob walked up North Street to the apothecary’s house. Like many of the tradesmen he used the front room of the house as his shop, with wooden shutters on the windows that were propped up to serve as an awning when the shop was open. At the back of the shop, behind the counter, he had a few little flasks, distillation glasses, and a drying oven for the herbs and spices. His wife, smart in a white coif and apron, served customers, calling her husband forward for consultations, and wrapping pills and pouring drafts herself. She made the cordials and dispensed drams. In a brewhouse in the backyard she made special flavored ales, brewed with herbs and spices to aid digestion, to increase heat, or prevent fatigue.

  Alinor tapped on the door and stepped inside. Rob followed her, blinking as the interior of the house was so dark compared with the brightness of the street outside.

  “Ah, Mrs. Reekie,” said the apothecary.

  “Good day, Mrs. Reekie,” said his wife. “And this is your boy?”

  Alinor stepped back, but she did not have to push Rob forward as she would have done last year. He stepped forward himself with the confidence that he had learned at the Priory and made a little bow to the mistress and to his new master. “I’m Robert Reekie,” he said. “Thank you for accepting me as your apprentice.”

  Alinor saw Mrs. Sharpe smile at Rob’s good looks and manners as Mr. Sharpe stretched his hand out for Rob to shake. The shop doorbell tinkled and Mr. Tudeley, the steward from the Priory, stepped into the shop.

  “Ah, good day, good day,” he said. “Glad you are punctual, Mrs. Reekie, Robert. Good day to you, Mr. and Mrs. Sharpe. Do you have Robert’s deeds of apprenticeship?”

  “Right here.” Mr. Sharpe produced an apprenticeship deed from his guild, with Robert’s name and his own already written in clerkly script. He weighed down the corners of the parchment with the brass weights from the dry goods scale, so they could all see the imposing document, with red seals and ribbons at the foot. Rob stepped up to the desk and took the quill. Alinor watched, loving him as he signed his name without hesitation or a blot of ink, not scratching an “X” on the page like his illiterate father. Then Mr. Tudeley made his signature as Robert’s sponsor, and Mr. Sharpe signed his name as his master and the guildsman who would introduce Rob to the Apothecaries’ Guild of Chichester, when he had served his time.

  Alinor stepped forward and signed her name as Widow Reekie, Rob’s parent and guardian, and signed her occupation as a midwife.

  “It’s done,” Mr. Tudeley said. “Robert, I expect you to be a credit to the Priory and to your mother.”

  “I will, Mr. Tudeley,” Rob said. “Please thank his lordship for giving me such a chance in life.”

  “You’ll want to see his room,” Mrs. Sharpe said to Alinor.

  “I’d be grateful,” Alinor said.

  The mistress led Alinor and Rob up the staircase to the two rooms over the little shop. From the landing there was a loft ladder, which led upstairs to where the maidservant slept on one side, and the little room that Rob was to have, under the eaves on the other side.

  The three of them crowded into the little space and Alinor bent down to look through the window to the street below.

  “He’ll eat at our table,” the mistress said. “And one Sunday a month he has the afternoon off.”

  “And may I come and see him?” Alinor asked. “When I come to Chichester for the market?”

  “You can come in the shop if he’s not busy serving. But he can’t come out to meet you. We’ve had apprentice boys before. They’ve got to settle.”


  “He’s lived away from home,” Alinor reassured her. “At the Priory for the last two quarters. But I’m grateful you’re letting him home this Sunday, for his sister’s wedding.”

  “She’s to marry the Stoney boy, isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Alinor said.

  “Mr. Tudeley told me, when he came for Rob’s apprenticeship. You must be proud of both your children!”

  They went down the ladder, then down the stair and back to the little shop. Mr. Tudeley had already left, with a sachet of rose petals as a gift. Alinor curtseyed to Mr. Sharpe and kissed Mrs. Sharpe on both cheeks, and Rob went with her to the shop door and stepped outside to say good-bye.

  Alinor faced her young son. His head was up to her shoulder, now. She thought that he was still her little boy, tied to her apron strings, wrapped around her heartstrings, and at the same time he was near to a young man: she could see the broadness of his shoulders and the confidence of his stance. Already he had book learning that she would never know, already he had manners that no one had taught her. He would rise in the world, away from her, and she should be glad to see him go. Her task as a mother now was not to keep him safe and hold him to her heart, but to release him and let him fly, as if she were a falconer, hacking a beautiful hawk into the wild.

  “God bless you, Rob.” Her voice was choked with emotion. “You know to be a good boy, and let me know how you are. Send a message that everything’s all right?”

  “Don’t you worry about me,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll be home on Sunday for the wedding!”

  Rob was waiting and the Sharpes inside the shop were waiting for her to leave. Alinor knew she could do nothing but walk away. Still, her feet did not move.

  Rob kissed her. “Go on,” he said, more like a man than her boy. “Go on, Ma. It’ll be all right. You’ll see.”

  Alinor smiled shakily and turned and walked away.

  The Market Cross was at the center of the town and the streets were crowded with townsmen and women, people delivering goods, and traders setting up stalls or just standing with baskets on their arms or pedlars’ packs at their feet and shouting their wares. Alinor, with her hood pulled up over her head, hiding her face, went to the steps of the cross and found James Summer at her side, appearing as if from nowhere.