Tidelands

TIDELANDS, NOVEMBER 1648

Alinor knocked on the door of the Mill Farm dairy and entered on Mrs. Miller’s irritated shout. Richard Stoney was carrying in extra pails of milk, the maid ahead of him with the yoke on her shoulder.

“I’ve come for two pails of milk, if you’ve any for sale,” Alinor said.

“We’ve more than we can use today,” Mrs. Miller said. “Bessy’s calf fell into the ditch and broke her neck. Bessy’s still in milk.”

“Oh, poor thing,” Alinor said. Mrs. Miller looked at her askance.

“Poor me,” she said. “I’ve lost a good calf. I’ll have to have it butchered for veal.”

“Yes,” Alinor agreed, who had never tasted the luxury meat in her life. “I thought I’d make cheese for Chichester market.”

“I’ll carry the milk to Ferry-house for you, Mrs. Reekie,” Richard said politely.

Mrs. Miller scowled at him. “She’s not your mother-in-law yet,” she said coldly. “And you work for me.”

The young man flushed. “I beg pardon,” he said shortly.

“I can manage, if I may borrow the yoke,” Alinor said. “Will you take it off Alys’s wages?”

“You’re asking for credit?” Mrs. Miller said nastily.

“I can pay you now, if you prefer,” Alinor said steadily.

“No, no, you can keep your ha’pennies. I’ll take it off her wages at the end of the week.

“Thank you.” Alinor smiled, and put the well-worn wooden yoke on her shoulders, lifted the two brimming pails, and set her shoulders to find her balance. Richard opened the dairy door for her.

“You get yourself into the mill,” Mrs. Miller ordered Richard. “He’s milling this morning and the tide won’t wait, not even for such as you.”

Richard ducked his head and trotted across the yard. As Alinor walked slowly with the yoke across her shoulders, watching the milk slopping in the pails, she heard the miller shout to Richard to open the sluice. She stood for a moment at the yard gate to watch the lad lightly running along the pond wall to turn the great iron key to open the sluice. The water from the pond poured into the millrace, and slowly, the mill wheel started to turn. There was a roar of creaking wood as the rush of waters forced the wheel round and round, and then the tumble of water on the other side of the tide-mill quay as the millrace gushed like a waterfall out into the harbor, bursting like a tide of green foam into the muddy rife. Alinor walked towards the wadeway, her head turned from the raging water of the millrace as the miller engaged the grinding stones inside the mill and there was a deafening rumble of stone against stone. Alinor crossed on the wet cobbles of the wadeway, stepping around the puddles of icy water, to the ferry-house on the other side.

Ned was felling an old apple tree in the garden at the rear of Ferry-house. The trunk was wide and knotted, and Ned had sharpened his axe and stripped to the waist to swing, and then hammer in the wedges so the spreading boughs fell away from the house. He raised his hand to Alinor as she came around the house and into the back door of the dairy.

“The copper’s boiling in the laundry room for you,” he called to her.

“Thank you!” she shouted back and went into the dairy.

The room was freezing cold, and the floor still damp from washing. Alinor poured one pail of milk and then another into the wooden trough, and then went to and fro from the laundry with earthenware jugs filled with boiling water from the copper. She put the jugs among the milk until it was warmed through, and then poured in a small measure of rennet. Outside, she could hear the regular thud of the blade into the wood and the occasional pause when Ned rested on the handle and drew a breath.

Slowly, the warmed milk was splitting into curds and whey, solidifying. Alinor took down a seashell, one of the cleaned clam shells that her mother had always used to test the thickness of the curds and whey. She spun it on the surface, and when it was steady, she rolled up her sleeves and drew her hands, her fingers outstretched like claws, through the thickening mixture. The curds were growing solid. It was time to drain them.

The stink of the milk and rennet turned Alinor’s stomach and she opened the dairy door to take a few breaths of cold air at the doorway. Red, the dog, sat up and looked hopeful that he might get into the dairy and steal cream.

“You sick?” Ned shouted from the yard. “Sick again? You’re white as whey!”

“I’m fine,” Alinor lied, and went back to her work.

From the front of the house she could hear the clang of the metal bar against the hanging horseshoe as a traveler on the far side of the rife summoned the ferry.

“Alinor, can you do it?” Ned asked her, gesturing at his nakedness, and the tree half felled. “It’s low tide. It’s dead calm.”

Alinor shook her head. “Forgive me, Brother,” she said. “You know I can’t.”

“You’re like a cat agauwed of water,” he complained, pulling his shirt over his head. “And you should be like a ship’s cat that learns to keep itself dry but can go to sea.”

“I’m sorry,” Alinor repeated. “But I stink of whey.”

Ned went round the house to the rife, Red at his heels, and Alinor could not resist trailing after him to see the traveler. She saw a saddle horse on the far side, and a man standing beside it. Alinor’s hand went to her belly, her other hand felt her speeding heart. But even as she breathed James’s name, she saw it was not him. It was an itinerant preacher in a shabby cloak, with a weary old horse that James would never ride—a godly man come to encourage the puritans of Sealsea Island. Silently, she turned and went back to the dairy. She did not allow herself to feel disappointment. She knew he would come when he could. She trusted him to come to her.

DOUAI, FRANCE, DECEMBER 1648

James’s parents were leaving the guesthouse at Douai. Their horses, waiting outside in the damp cold of early December, stamped their feet and blew out clouds of breath on the freezing air. Lady Avery came out of the house, wrapped in a traveling cloak with a fur-lined hood, and her son helped her up the steps of the mounting block and onto her steady horse. She was riding sidesaddle, and she arranged her green wool riding habit so it fell over her leather boots. He climbed up on the block himself, so that they were level, head-to-head and she could hear his penitent whisper.

“I beg you to forgive me, Lady Mother,” he said, but she would not even meet his eyes. She turned her head away and stroked her horse’s mane. “I cannot withdraw from this woman. She holds my heart. She truly does. I am going back to see her and I will marry her when she is free. I beg that you forgive me, and let me bring her to you as your daughter.”

She turned her face to him and he could see from her pale pinched face and red eyelids that she had endured a sleepless night. “I shall pray for you and for me,” was all she said. “But I did not bring you into the world, and give you to the Holy Church for you to bed a fishwife.”

He bowed his head for her blessing and he barely felt the light touch of her hand on his thick hair.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I am promised to her.”

“You are promised to the Church,” she said flatly. “You are promised to be obedient to me and your father, and we forbid this.”

“I shall write to you,” he offered.

“Not if you write of her,” she said steadily.

The door of the abbey guesthouse opened and Sir Roger came out quickly, his thick cloak heavy on his shoulders. Dr. Sean hurried behind him, a sheet of paper in his hand.

“Something’s happened,” Sir Roger said shortly to his son. “Changes everything.” He stepped to his wife’s horse, took hold of her bridle, and said quietly to her: “We can’t leave now. Get down and come in.”

“Is it the king?” she asked, dismounting at once.

He nodded, but his dark look warned her that it was not news of a successful escape from the Isle of Wight that Dr. Sean held in his hand. At once, without another word, she gave her hand to James, stepped down from the mounting block, and they hurried inside.

“What now?” she demanded as Dr. Sean closed the door behind the four of them.

“The army has taken over parliament,” he said. “I have this from one of our spies in London. One of the most radical wicked colonels captured the door of the House of Commons with his regiment, and only admitted those members of parliament who are sworn to Cromwell, bought and sold, wholly his. Such a house will never make an agreement with His Majesty. The true members are thrown out, the army has captured the House of Commons.”

Lady Avery turned to her husband. “Is this to force an agreement on the king?”

“God knows what wickedness they plan!” Dr. Sean exclaimed.

Sir Roger nodded. “My dear, we’d better get back to court. The queen and the Prince of Wales won’t allow the king to fall into the hands of the army. This is worse than when he ran away from Hampton Court. Then the army had him, but at least parliament could defend him. Now there is no one to speak for him. Nothing like this has ever happened in the world before. A parliament to rule a king? It’s like the end of days.”

“It might be worse. They may be thinking of a trial,” James warned.

His father turned on him. “A trial? What d’you mean?”

“When I was in Sussex I met a man, a veteran from Cromwell’s army, who said that the radicals among them, levelers and men of that sort, believed that the king should answer to them for making war.”

“It can’t be done!” his father said, frowning. “How would men like that ever bring a charge against a king?”

“Who was this man?” his mother demanded acutely. “One of her friends?”

James flushed with shame.

“Will you return to England and report for us?” Dr. Sean asked bluntly. He gestured to the paper in his hand. “The young man who sent this is already on his way back here. He was in hiding with one of the members of parliament who has been barred from his seat. He’s left London already, this came from”—he broke off—“another port. He’ll come back to us as soon as he can get a passage.”

James felt a deep sense of dread. He looked from his mother and father to his tutor. “You know I have lost my faith,” he said. “I can’t go.”

“This is a matter of the king, not of God,” his father said bluntly. “You can do your duty to the king. These are—Lord knows—earthly troubles. We have to know what they plan. If you’re right—if there’s any possibility of a trial—then we have to get him away.”

“I couldn’t make him come last time,” James reminded them. “I failed. He refused me.”

“He’ll come now,” Dr. Sean predicted. “He knows he must not fall into the power of the army. Besides, all you have to do is to take our young man’s place: deliver some money, a letter, and report back.”

“Is it safe for him to go back to England?” Lady Avery turned to her son. “What if that woman betrays you?”

“She doesn’t come to London. She never leaves Sussex.”

“You’re only to go to London, deliver the money and the orders, find out what is happening, and report to The Hague,” Dr. Sean said.

“Don’t go to her,” his mother added. “Not when you’re on the king’s business, not when you’re in danger. I don’t trust her.”

“I’ll get you the letters, the address of the safe house in London, and the gold.” Dr. Sean hurried to his private room. “I’ll have it all ready within the hour.”

“You can take my horse,” James’s father said. He stepped towards his son and hugged him tightly. “Leave him at the inn at Dunkirk. Here, take my cloak as well. It’s a cold day, and it will be worse at sea. Go, my son, I am proud of you. Do your duty to the king and then we’ll see what is ahead of us. You’re a young man, and these are times that change with every tide. Don’t promise anything to anyone. We don’t know where we will be next year! Come back safely.”

James felt his father’s heavy cloak swung around his shoulders like an extra burden to carry, saw his mother’s anguished face.

“Come back,” was all she said. “Don’t go to her.”