Tidelands Page 41

  He took her hand without saying anything and drew her into the front room of the nearby inn. She hesitated at the door.

  “I can’t come in here,” she said, shocked. “What if someone saw me?”

  “It’s not a tavern,” he corrected her. “It’s an inn. Lady travelers can dine here and drink. It’s perfectly—”

  “Nobody would take me for an honest woman, seeing me in here with you.”

  “Not at all! Look . . .” A family party climbed down from their traveling coach and walked through the hall to their private dining room, without glancing at her. “My own mother dines at inns,” he told her. “It’s perfectly all right.”

  “I’ve never set foot in such a place,” she resisted him.

  He realized that a poor woman from the country would never have seen the inside of a coaching inn, would not understand the distinction between a grubby village alehouse and the respectable coaching inn of a small town like Chichester. He realized that he must learn to be patient with her—and introduce her slowly to his world. “Alinor, please, we have to go somewhere that we can talk. Come. I promise you that nobody will see you, and it is quite all right if they do. You have to trust me. I will judge for you now, and in the future.”

  He took her by the hand and led her to where he had reserved a table in the corner of the dining room, with a jug of mulled ale for both of them and a plate of bread and meats.

  She sat nervously on the edge of the chair that he drew out for her and peered around her. He repressed his irritation that this Alinor was not the fey stranger that he had met in the churchyard, nor the free countrywoman who had cooked fish on sticks. Here, she was a poor woman afraid of the judgment of others.

  “Has Robert started work? Were you happy with his place?” He realized he was speaking loudly as if to someone hard of hearing, or simple.

  She took the cup of warm ale and wrapped her cold hands around it. “Yes, yes,” she said. “I think he’ll do very well there. They’ve a good trade and the mistress brews her own . . .” She trailed away as she saw the darkness in his face and realized that he had no real interest in Rob’s work. “You don’t want to know about that.”

  “We have to decide what we are going to do.”

  She nodded, put down her cup, and folded her hands in her lap. She had not taken so much as a sip, and he thought his indifference about Rob had hurt her, and now she was putting on serenity as if she were drawing a cape around her shoulders.

  “You are determined not to be worried?”

  “Of course I’m worried.” She found a faint smile. “I’ve been thinking of you day and night. If I could’ve sent you a message, I would’ve done. I’ve been sleepless wondering what you’d think. I didn’t mean to spring this on you, but what else could I do? I’ve been waiting and hoping that you’d come back.”

  “My love, beloved . . .” Now that he was faced with her luminous beauty, shining against her poor clothes, as out of place here as in the tidelands, he lost the words that he had assembled overnight, in the sleepless hours when he had prayed for guidance, knowing that his own prayers were a sin. “I can imagine my future with you; but not with a child. It can’t be.”

  He saw her slowly inhale the meaning of his words. For a moment she made no answer. Her dark gray gaze went down to her worn shoes and back to his face. “No child? Then what would you have me do?”

  He felt strangely awkward. “Is it not possible for you to take something that would make it disappear?”

  “No,” she said simply. “There is nothing in the world that can make a baby disappear.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I know I won’t pretend with words.”

  He took up his cup of ale and took a sip of the hot sweetness to hide his rising temper. “I don’t mean to pretend with words. It’s just—”

  “It’s a terrible thing to speak of. Worse to do,” she said, as if agreeing with him.

  “But it’s not too late to do something?”

  Gravely, she shook her head. “It’s never too late to do something.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Some women smother the baby as it’s born and say it was a stillbirth. Is that what you want me to do?”

  “No!” He had raised his voice, and he looked around, embarrassed. Nobody had noticed them. “But would you do something now? For us? For our life together?”

  “If I did it, we would have a life together?”

  He could not believe that he had won so quickly. “I swear it. I will go with you now into the cathedral and swear it.”

  “You want it dead.”

  He looked at her set face. “Only so that I can be with you.”

  She drew a shuddering breath, and then slowly she shook her head as if her pale lips could not speak. “That is a terrible bargain. No. No. I could not.”

  “Because you think it is a sin? I can explain—”

  “No,” she interrupted him. “Because I could not bear it. Whether it’s a sin against God or not. Whatever you could say. It would be . . .” she sought for the word “. . . it would be an offense to me.” She shot him a swift glance. “It would be a deep offense to me, against myself.”

  “It doesn’t matter—”

  “It matters to me. I matter: in this, I matter.”

  “We will have other children.”

  “We would not,” she contradicted him. “No child would come to my womb if I had poisoned his brother.”

  He tried to laugh. “This is superstition and nonsense! This is folly!”

  His barking laughter died away when she did not reply, and they sat in silence, waiting for the other to speak.

  Then, he used the worst threat against her that he could do: “You know what you’re saying? You will not come to me, and be my love and be my wife? You chose this—this nothing—over me? Over the life we would live, and what we could do for Rob and for Alys? You will let them be spoken of as children of a missing father, or worse. When they could be stepchildren to a baronet? You favor this nothing over them? As well as over me?”

  He thought she would faint, she had gone so white, but he thought he must be cruel to her, to save them both.

  He underestimated her. When she spoke, her voice was steady, she was far from fainting: “Yes, if I have to.”

  They were both silent at the enormity of what she had said. He thought that not even when the king had died had he felt this disbelieving misery. “Alinor, I cannot take a child that goes by your husband’s name into my honorable home. Even if I wanted to do so. I could not own you as my wife.”

  She nodded. He saw her reach for the cup of ale and realized that she was blinded with tears, but she kept her head down so he could not see. Her grief only made him harder.

  “I will regain my home, and go and live there without you, and I will never see you again. You condemn me to being alone, where I had thought we would be happy together. Where you should be my wife.”

  Her hand found the cup and she held it. Even her scarred fingers were white.

  “I have loved you more than anything in the world and I will spend the rest of my life without you,” he said.

  Speechlessly, she nodded.

  “And I will marry someone so that my name continues, so that I have a son. But I will never love her as I have loved you, and I will spend the rest of my life missing you.”

  Her hand was shaking so hard that the warm ale spilled onto the skirt of her gown.

  “Is this your wish?” he asked incredulously. “Is this what you want for me? This misery?”

  The maid of the inn came up to them. “Everything all right here?” she asked very loudly, breaking into the spell he was weaving around her. “Want another jug of ale?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” James said, waving her away.

  “Tell me that you will marry me,” he whispered. “Tell me that you love me as I love you—more than anything else in the world.”

  Finally, Alinor looked up
at him and he saw that her eyes were darkened with unshed tears. “I wouldn’t stoop to marry a man who’d kill his own child,” she said simply. “It’s not an honor that you offer me. If you’re the man who’d destroy his own baby in the womb then you’re not the man that I thought you were, and you’re not the man for me.”

  He was as shaken as if she had slapped his handsome face. “Don’t you dare to judge me!” he burst out.

  She shook her head, quite unafraid. “I don’t judge you. I’m just telling you that I agree with you. You won’t have me with the baby that I carry; I won’t come to you without it. We’re both losers, I think.”

  She rose from her chair, and at once he got to his feet and put his hand on her arm. “You can’t go like this!”

  “I can’t stay,” she replied quietly.

  “I mean . . .” He meant that he could not believe that she could defy him, that she could turn down his wealth and name and love. He could not believe that she could refuse him, and prefer such a little thing—not even a baby yet—a homunculus that had barely quickened. It was a nothing, it was a nothing, less than a hen’s egg that he might eat for his breakfast, and yet she was putting it between them. It was not possible to imagine that she should choose a life of poverty and shame with a fatherless child over the comfort and wealth that he could offer her, and his name, his pride and his name.

  “But I love you!” he burst out.

  There was a world of sadness in the smile that she turned on him. “Oh, I love you,” she replied. “I always will. And I’ll take a comfort in that, when you’re gone away to your beautiful house and I’m here alone.”

  Without another word, she turned and walked away from him, just as if he were not a young gentleman, and the son of a great man, just as if he were not the greatest prospect of her life: a husband of unimaginable wealth and position, and her savior from shame. She walked away from him without looking back. She walked away from him as if she were never coming back, and she left him alone at the table laid with breakfast in the best coaching inn of Chichester.

  Alinor went home in a dream, setting one foot before the other. She did not hail any passing cart for a lift. There was only one that went by her, and she did not see or hear it. As she walked, it started to snow, little specks of white snow like a dust that whirled around her, and she pulled up the hood of her cloak and let it settle on her head and her shoulders. She could not feel cold; she did not know that it was snowing.

  She watched her feet in her worn boots going steadily south down the road, through the village of Hunston, through Street End, and she felt the familiar rub of the ill-fitting left boot against her heel. She held her cape tied tightly around her waist and changed her basket from one frozen grip to another, hardly noticing the weight on one side or the other, nor how her back ached.

  She sat on a milestone to catch her breath after an hour’s walking, and watched the snow fall on her gown, a speckle of white against the brown wool. When she got to her feet she brushed herself off and shook out her cape, gathered it around herself again, and walked on. She did not notice that her hands were so cold that they were white as the snow and her stubby fingernails were blue.

  Ned’s ferry was tied up on the far side of the rife, outside the house, so Alinor clanged the dangling horseshoe with the new bar and saw him open the top half of the ferry-house door and then come out, a piece of sacking over his head and shoulders. He went hand over hand till the ferry was at her side and held the raft against the ebbing tide as she stepped in.

  “You brought the snow with you,” he remarked.

  “All the way,” she said as she stepped into the gently rocking ferry.

  He noticed that she did not grasp his hand or cling to the side as she usually did. He guessed that she was distressed at Rob going away.

  “How’s our lad? Was it all right there?”

  “Fair,” she said. “They’re good people.”

  “Did you leave him gladly?”

  “Fair,” she said again. She gave him a small rueful smile. “He didn’t cling to me and beg me not to go.”

  “Good lad,” he said. “He’ll do well.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  Hand over hand on the frozen rope, Ned pulled the ferry back to the island side and held it against the pier as she stepped lightly out of the boat. He tied up, and together they went through the half-open door. She took off her cape and shook the snow and the wet out of the door, and then hung it on the peg. She put down her basket and warmed her hands before the little fire. Every action was so familiar that she moved without thinking, as if she had decided not to think.

  “Shall I mull you some ale?” he asked, looking at her composed face, and wondering if she would break out in tears, or if she was truly as serene as she seemed.

  “That’d be good,” she said. “I’m chilled through.”

  “Could you not get a lift?” he asked, thinking she might be exhausted by walking.

  “No. I saw nobody going my way.”

  “You’ll be tired then.” He invited her to comment, but still she told him nothing.

  The poker hissed as he dipped it into the jug of ale, and he poured her a cup and took one for himself. “This’ll put some color in your cheeks,” he said uncertainly.

  She did not reply, but wrapped her cold hands around the cup and took a sip, her eyes on the leaping flames of the fire.

  “Alinor, is anything wrong?” he asked.

  She sighed, as if she would tell him everything. But all she said, as she smiled at him through the steam from the ale, was: “I’m well enough.”

  Richard and Alys walked home late Monday evening from Stoney Farm, and on Tuesday morning Alys was sleepy when Alinor called her. She sat in silence, her head bowed over her bowl of gruel at breakfast time and scowled at her uncle when he said that he hoped she had not missed the early tides when she had been ferryman.

  “Are you coming with me to the mill today?” she asked her mother. “She’s doing the laundry.”

  Laundry days at the mill were notorious for Mrs. Miller’s bad temper. “Lord,” Alinor said smiling, “I’m not surprised you want a companion.”

  “Also, she’ll pay us for eggs. She’s not got enough. Not even her hens can bear her.”

  Ned sat down on his stool at the head of the table. “And do you have your dowry?” he asked.

  “Most of it,” Alys said.

  “I have the five shillings I promised you,” he offered. “And I’ll add another.”

  “I’ll take it!” she smiled. “And on Saturday we’ll have this week’s wages.”

  “You’re taking your mother’s wages as well as your own?”

  “Uncle, I have to,” Alys said seriously. “And besides, she’ll get it back. When I am Mrs. Stoney of Stoney Farm I’ll give her a present every day.”

  “Oil of roses,” Alinor named the one ingredient that she could never afford to buy from the herbalist at Chichester market. “I shall bathe in oil of roses.”

  “Ah, you’re each as mad as the other,” Ned said. “Come on, I’ll ferry you across.”

  On Wednesday, the lad who was hedging was taken ill, and the two women clipped and laid the hedge, standing for most of the day in thick mud or in the briny cold ditch, bending and breaking the stubborn stems, their hands bleeding from a hundred scratches.

  Alys straightened up, grimacing with pain. “My back aches,” she said.

  “Have a rest,” Alinor urged her. “I can finish the last bit.”

  “Aren’t you tired?”

  “No,” Alinor lied. “Hardly at all.”

  “I’ll finish,” Alys said grimly, and bent again hacking and twisting the stems.

  Friday was cheese-making day at the tide mill and Alinor spent the day in the icy dairy, churning the butter, skimming the cream, and pressing the cheese while Alys did the hard work outside. Everything was to be ready for Friday night, and Mrs. Miller would take it herself to Chichester market on Satu
rday morning.

  When Alys had finished the morning chores she came inside and worked alongside her mother in the dairy, their hands red and raw with cold. At noon, when Mrs. Miller rang the bell in the yard, they went into the kitchen and sat at the table to eat: bread from the mill oven and curds from the cheese. They both pressed their hands together and tucked them in the warmth under their arms to bring the feeling back to their numb fingers while Mr. Miller gave thanks for his own good dinner. Richard Stoney and the other mill lad sat opposite them, their faces pinched with cold. Mrs. Miller, seated at the head of the table, had fine white bread to eat and soft cheese, her daughter Jane on one side, little Peter on the other. Mr. Miller sat in silence at the end of the table before a solitary leg of ham. He went out as soon as he had eaten to make sure that the outside workers did not take too long over their break. Richard winked at Alys, nodded his head to Mrs. Miller and Alinor, and followed him with the other lad.

  “You’ll be brewing wedding ale?” Mrs. Miller asked Alinor.

  “I’ll strain it and pour it tomorrow,” Alinor said. “I think it’ll be very good. Mr. Stoney is picking it up when he drives to church on Sunday morning.”

  “They set a good table at Stoney Farm. You’re a lucky girl,” Mrs. Miller said to Alys, who forced herself to smile and nod. Mrs. Miller turned to Alinor. “I doubt they’d even have allowed the wedding if she hadn’t worked here so long. They know I’ve taught her well.”

  “Never even have met if she hadn’t worked here,” Jane chimed in.

  “Yes.” Alinor leaned her shoulder gently against Alys to make her keep silence. “We’re both grateful.”

  “The Stoneys wouldn’t have trusted anyone else with their Richard,” she added. “There’s not another mill in Sussex that would be good enough for them.”

  “I’ll always remember your harvest home,” Alinor said, turning the conversation. “When the two of them brought in the harvest together? That was a merry day.”