Tidelands

Alys shook her head. “We don’t know what ship he’s on. He might be on the ships that stayed loyal to parliament. My father’s a parliament man, like my uncle Ned. You know my uncle Ned!”

“We’re a parliament household too.” Alinor struggled to join the conversation, tried to drag her eyes away from the old red leather purse.

“Then shouldn’t they delay marrying till he returns?” Mr. Stoney turned to Alinor. “If he’ll come home when there’s peace, and the parliament are talking to the king right now?”

“Perhaps—”

“No!” Alys said quickly. “That wouldn’t be right at all. My da gave me his savings to use for my dowry so that we didn’t have to wait for him! He told me not to delay my wedding. And there’s no way of knowing when the king will agree to peace.”

Alinor nodded, but found she could not speak.

“So is it enough?” Richard pressed his father. “If we both work without pay on the farm, and give you our wages from everything else? It is enough with the dowry? Zachary Reekie’s dowry?”

The farmer looked at his son, and decided in his favor. “It’s enough,” he ruled. He picked up the purse, hefted it in his hand, judging the value from long experience. He pulled open the drawstring and peered inside at the coins of gold and silver. “Sixty pounds—I didn’t expect it; but yes, it’s enough.”

“We could have got more,” Mrs. Stoney reminded him stiffly.

“We could.” He smiled at his son. “But I’d rather see you happy.” He handed the purse to Alys with a warm smile. “I’ll give you this back now,” he said, “as I should. And you give it to Mrs. Stoney at the church door on your wedding day, with your mother’s savings, and with your wages between then and now, and Richard will give you a ring and his word. It’s agreed. You’ll have your share of the farm on his death, and your seat at this fireside for all your life. And your son will have the farm after Richard, and his son after him.”

Alys burst into tears as Richard pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Mr. Stoney rose to his feet and kissed first Alinor and then the weeping girl. Mrs. Stoney put her hand on her son’s head in blessing and then kissed Alys.

“So that’s that,” she said to Alinor begrudgingly. “He’d set his heart on her, and she pulled a dowry out of her pocket that no one would ever have dreamed. You’d think he was enchanted.”

“Yes, yes . . .” Alinor was lost for words, still stunned at the sight of Jane Miller’s dowry purse in Alys’s hands. Alys palmed it back into her pocket without looking at her mother.

“And your son doing so well!” Mrs. Stoney said, allowing herself some warmth. “Apprentice to an apothecary in Chichester! What a start for a young man!”

“Yes,” Alinor said. She realized she was nodding, still speechless. “Yes.”

“How ever did he get a place like that?” Mrs. Stoney invited her to explain.

“They like him at the Priory.” Alinor found her lips were so stiff that she could hardly form the words. “He’s been companion to Master Walter and they paid for his apprenticeship. He’ll start when Walter begins at the university. They call it the Lent term.”

“Shall we have a glass of wine? And will you take your breakfast with us?” Mr. Stoney urged hospitably. “Now we’re to be family? And I’ll show you round the barns and the orchards, Mrs. Reekie, and I daresay you’ll want to see the herb garden.”

“Yes, please,” Alinor said faintly. “I would like that. I would like that. Thank you.”

The two women waved good-bye to the Stoney family, and walked together in silence up the road to Chichester. Alinor felt a gripping pain in her belly, which she thought was fear, and had the taste of sickness in her mouth, which she knew was dread.

The farm was half a mile behind them and out of sight before Alys spoke. “Say something. Please say something.”

“Are you mad, Alys?”

“I know! I know! I must be!”

They walked a few more steps in silence, then Alinor felt Alys’s cold hand creep into her own.

“Help me, Ma.”

“How can I? This is a hanging offense. This is theft.”

“I know. I know.”

“It’s Jane Miller’s dowry, isn’t it? In her mother’s red leather purse?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“What’re you going to do?”

“Put the purse back. I just had to show it. I’m not going to steal it. I’ll earn what I need for my wedding day. I’d never steal for it.”

“It’s only six months away! We’ll never earn enough. We wouldn’t earn enough in six years. And if Mrs. Miller goes to her hiding place and finds Jane’s dowry missing, she’ll turn the mill upside down and accuse everyone. You and me first. Alys, how could you!”

“I’ll get it back in hiding before she misses it. But I have to marry him.”

“Because you’re lovers already?”

The girl gave a little gasp, which was a confession in itself. “Because I love him so much. I’d rather be hanged as a thief at Easter than lose him now.”

“I would not!” Alinor cried out. “I’ve spent my life trying to keep you safe and now you’ve lain with a man before marriage, and stolen—” She cut off her cry and dropped into a whisper though they were alone under the wide sky, and the empty track stretched north ahead of them.

“I haven’t stolen. I’ve borrowed. He loves me. And she won’t catch me. It is worth the risk.”

“You think that now . . . you’ll think differently later.”

“I do think this now. So I acted now.”

“You’ll change. You’ll look back and this’ll seem like madness to you. And you’ll think I was mad not to stop you. I was wrong not to stop you. I should’ve taken the purse off you, the moment you brought it out.” Alinor choked on the rising bile in her mouth. “I thought it was my purse! My red leather purse filled with nothing but my little coins! I thought I was going mad.”

“Then I would have lost him. You heard them.”

“Even so. Better to lose him than—”

“I knew you wouldn’t go against me, Ma. I knew you’d never let me down.”

“I shouldn’t have gone along with you. This is a hanging matter, Alys. If you’re caught with that purse on you, they’ll hang you for a thief.”

“They won’t catch me. I’ll put it back. But I swear to you, that if I can’t marry him, I will die. If you forbid me, I’ll run away. If he were to leave me, I’d drown myself in the millpond.”

Alinor thought that she was the last woman in Sussex to argue against a desire that was more than life itself. How could she blame her daughter for doing nothing worse than she had done? Alinor had risked her life, going into the locked room above the stables with James, and since then she had lied to everyone.

“We’d better go back now to the tide mill, and put it back at once. If I call her into the yard, and you hurry into the house—”

“No. I know how to do it, really I do. I know when. She always goes out at dusk, every evening, to shut up the hens. She likes to shut them up herself. She’s afraid that I’ll steal the daytime eggs. She’s so mean. She goes out at dusk, and there’s never anyone in the kitchen then. I can put it back then.”

“How d’you know her hiding place?”

“I was in the yard when the corn merchants came, and she sold them corn that should have gone to the poor of the parish. They paid twice the price and the poor went hungry. It’s dirty money, Ma. Every time she does a deal that she knows Mr. Miller wouldn’t like, she keeps the money from him, and puts it into Jane’s dowry purse. Now and then, she sneaks it out to buy herself something special, or something for Jane’s bottom drawer. Once, she asked me to buy some gilt chains from the pedlar at the gate and the coins were hot and she had sooty fingers. I didn’t know where she kept the purse, but I knew it must be in the chimney. I just jiggled the bricks till I found the loose one.”

“This is a terrible risk.”

“I know. But I had to take it, Ma. I had to stop the Stoneys from saying no today. They won’t go back on their word, even if I can’t get the money. Richard will help me, and Mr. Stoney loves me—he’ll let me off. I’ll put the purse back, Mrs. Miller will be none the wiser, and when we get to market I’ll get some more wool for spinning. I’ll earn as much as I can before my wedding day, and I’ll give them all that I have at the church door. It won’t be sixty pounds, but it’ll be too late by then. They’ll never cancel the wedding. I’ll tell them then that I’ll owe the rest.”

Alinor shook her head at this solution. “It’s false dealing. Alys, it’s bad for us to be seen as cheats. If you cheat them on your wedding day, they’ll throw it in your face every quarrel you have. They’ll never trust you again.”

“Richard’ll never throw it against me.”

“His mother will.”

Alys shrugged. “Who cares? Once we’re married, she can say what she likes. I don’t care. It’s him I’m marrying, not her. And he’s worth stealing for, and cheating for. He’s worth anything.”

Alinor put a hand over her eyes as if the morning sun was too dazzling to bear. Vividly, in her mind’s eye, she saw Alys at the church door offering an underweight purse, the Stoneys’ white-lipped resentment, and her own shame.

“It’s no way to start a marriage,” she said miserably. “It’s not how you should be on your wedding day.”

Alys hugged her arm. “Ma, I know this is terrible for you, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but I can’t be stuck here, getting nowhere. I have to marry Richard. I have to be with him. I’m young, I want my life! I can’t be patient under misfortune like you. I can’t wait and wait for our da to come home, as if that would ever make anything better, when we know it’d be worse! I can’t creep about all humble, and hope that the neighbors are kind to my face while calling me a pauper and a faerie bastard behind my back.”

“They don’t say that!”

“It’s exactly what they say. Look how you have to fawn on Mrs. Miller. Look how you bow to Mrs. Wheatley. Look how you cringe to Mr. Tudeley, and that horrible tutor! We’re on the edge of charity all the time. We’re always leaching off someone’s goodwill. I can’t stand it. I’d rather be a thief than a beggar. I’ve got to take my chance now. I’ve got to live my life now!”

“Oh, don’t say that of him!”

“Mr. Tudeley is a monster!”

Alinor silenced her response, shamed by her own daughter, looked at Alys but could not find the words to reprimand her. “I’m not craven,” she said, her voice very low. “I don’t cringe. I don’t leach.”

“Yes, you do,” Alys said mercilessly. “Anyone can say anything to you, if they’ll only buy a bottle of plums.”

“I didn’t know you felt like this.”

“I’ve always hated being poor.”

“Rob, too?”

“Rob doesn’t matter!” Alys exploded. “This is not about your precious son, for once.”

Alys’s jealousy and her resentment stretched before Alinor for the first time, as if she was seeing the waste of Foulmire for the first time, in its vast emptiness, and smelling its mud.

“I can’t afford to offend anyone,” Alinor said quietly, the words forced from her. “If I want to earn enough to put food on the table for the two of you, I can’t afford pride.”

“I know,” Alys said.

“And Rob is not more precious than you.” She choked on her words. “Nothing in my world is more precious than you.”

“I know,” Alys repeated. She put her arm round her mother’s shoulder and held her closely. “I know what you’ve done for us. I don’t know half of what you’ve suffered—for us. You’ve been mother and father to us, I know. And it was too much for any woman to do on her own. I’m grateful, I am—really. But I’m only saying that I can’t be like you. I can’t do what you do. I can’t bend under the wheel. I can’t stand it. I’d rather risk everything than settle for a poor life, like you have.”

“You think I’ve settled for poverty?”

“Yes,” said Alys with the blunt cruelty of the young.

“I understand,” her mother said quietly. “I do understand wanting to be proud, being in love, being reckless.”

“Do you?”

She nodded, pressing her lips closed on her secret. Only last night she had been proud of her desire, entranced by lovemaking, and reckless. “I do know,” she repeated.

They stood for a moment, holding each other close, then they turned and walked side by side up the road to Chichester.

“I’m sorry,” Alys said quietly. “You know I love you. I didn’t mean to say all that.”

“I know.”

They walked a few minutes in silence then Alinor spoke: “This life isn’t what I intended for myself. It isn’t what my mother wanted for me. She thought Zachary was a man with his own boat, who’d do well. She thought we’d be neighbors, and she and I would work together, and he’d make a better life for me. She thought Ned would inherit the ferry, and have a good wife and a child of his own, and I’d have money coming in from Zachary and we’d live next door to my brother in our home. She couldn’t foresee that Mary would die, and that your father’d turn out bad.”

They walked in silence for a while until they heard a shout from behind and turned to see a farmer with a wagon piled high with fleeces, his wife sitting up beside him with baskets of cheeses.

“Going to market?” he asked as they paused on the side of the road and turned to him. “Ah, Mrs. Reekie, I didn’t recognize you, out of your way, on the Birdham road. Are you going to Chichester market?”

“Yes,” Alinor said, smiling brightly. “And this is my girl, Alys.”

“Grown like a weed,” he said. “I remember you when you were a little tot. Would you like a lift?”

“Come up and sit on the bench beside me,” his wife said to Alinor. “Alys can go in the back on the fleeces if she doesn’t object.”

“Thank you,” Alinor said gratefully, as the goodwife leaned down and offered a hand to help Alinor up to the driver’s bench and Alys put one foot on the hub band, the other on the spokes, and clambered up.

“Are you selling some of your oils?” the woman asked, looking at Alinor’s basket.

“Yes,” Alinor said. “And buying some lace for Mrs. Miller, if there’s anything good to be had.”

“Terrible dear,” the farmer’s wife said. “I wonder she doesn’t make her own.”

Alinor, knowing that anything she said would be repeated, smiled and made no comment.

“But I suppose they’re doing so well, she can afford to buy,” the woman said.

“I don’t know,” Alinor said levelly.

“Oh, weren’t you there at harvest home? Didn’t we all see the best wheat harvest they’ve ever had? And don’t they sell half of it for profit and send it out of the county? And her yaddering away all dinnertime with Master Walter’s tutor from Cambridge, as if she were as good as him? As if she would have anything to say to him that he would want to hear!”

Alinor blandly smiled again.

“Still, she’ll make no ground there. I hear he’s going back to Cambridge when Master Walter goes. Taking the young lord back there, to teach him all about law or whatever it is that they do.”

“I don’t know,” Alinor repeated.

“Such a handsome man!”

“I didn’t really see,” Alinor said, thinking that the thudding of her heart was so loud in her own ears that it must be audible to the woman sitting beside her.

“You must have done! He went right up to you after dinner. We were all wondering what he had to say to you.”

“He was telling me about Rob. My boy is taking lessons with Master Walter. He is his server.”

“Did you hope that they would send Rob as a companion to Cambridge?” the woman speculated. “Was that why you walked away from him at the dinner without a curtsey? Did you ask for Rob to go, and did the tutor refuse you?”

“No, no,” Alinor said. “Nothing like that! I was unwell. I was so afraid of being sick before the company. I had to get myself home. I begged his pardon and dashed for home.”

“She doesn’t cure her hams properly, for all she’s so proud of them,” the goodwife said. “I felt queasy myself.”

“What brings you on this road, Mrs. Reekie?” the farmer interrupted his wife. “Will you be wanting a lift back this way after the market?”

“No, we’ll take the usual road home,” Alinor replied. “We’re only out of our way because we were visiting.”

“Visiting who?” the wife asked curiously.

“Stoney Farm,” Alinor replied.

“Aha!” The goodwife was thrilled at finally extracting a nugget of gossip. “I saw the two of them dancing at harvest home. They made a lovely pair. Am I to listen for the banns?”

“Yes,” Alinor conceded. “Yes. Alys and Richard are to be married.”

“In our church at Birdham?”

“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 turned 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 upwards 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.”

“And yet . . . well, it’s a very good match for your girl. Stoney Farm! Richard Stoney! You’ll be lucky if people don’t say that she trapped him into it.”

“Nobody would be so unkind,” Alinor ruled. “It’s obvious that Richard loves her so much, and she him.”

“Just that it’s such a good match for her,” Mrs. Miller grumbled. “Strolling out of a fisherman’s cottage and getting to Stoney Farm in one jump.”

“There’s no denying that it’s a good match for her,” Alinor conceded. “But she’ll make a good wife to him. She has learned so much good housekeeping from you.”

“She’s learned nothing today, but walking around the market and spending other people’s money.”

“She’ll make it up to you,” Alinor promised, taking Alys’s cold hand. “And now we must be going.”

“I wish you well,” Mrs. Miller said begrudgingly. “I wish you very happy.”

“I know you do,” Alinor replied, and picked up her sacks of salt as Alys hefted the sack of wool and walked beside her mother out of the yard. She left the yard gate open for the carter to leave, and they went towards the ferry together.

“I put the purse back,” Alys said nonchalantly.

Alinor’s heart skipped a beat. “I thought you said you would do it in the evening. I thought you would come back, when she closes up her hens?”

“Yes, but when I saw her come out to you to look at the lace, I knew I had a moment. I ran into the kitchen, pulled out the brick, popped in the purse, and put the brick back in a second. She’ll never know it was gone.”

Alinor almost staggered with the relief. “So, it’s done, and you got away with it.”

Alys beamed at her. “It’s done, and I got away with it.”

“And you’ll never do it again,” Alinor commanded. “Promise me, Alys. It’s too great a risk. Never take anything from her again. Not even borrowing. You shouldn’t have done it this time. Promise me, you’ll never do it again. Think of the danger!”

The girl laughed as though no danger could threaten her. “I’ll promise you that I’ll never be caught,” she said gleefully. “I’ll promise not to end up on the gallows. A fool like Mrs. Miller will never catch me, and soon I’ll have far more money than Jane Miller’s dowry. You wait till I’m Mrs. Stoney, of Stoney Farm, Birdham! I won’t keep my money in a chimney. I shall have my own box at the Chichester goldsmith’s! I shall be a woman of means!”