Tidelands

TIDELANDS, DECEMBER 1648

Alinor and Alys walked in silence to the ferry-house, their shawled heads bowed against the icy wind that blew down the mire. They looked like two hooded beasts, crawling across a wet desert. They were each bent over a large basket filled with little bottles of oils, and twists of waxed paper filled with dried herbs. At the ferry-house Alinor opened the side door, went into the storeroom, and loaded another basket with jars of bottled plums, dried apples, dried black currants, red currants, and blackberries.

Ned appeared in the doorway, Red at his heels. “I’ll come with you,” he said abruptly. “I’ll carry this stuff for you. I’m on my way to London.”

“What?” Alinor asked. Her first thought was that he must somehow know that she was with child, and he was leaving them forever. “What? Ned? What d’you mean? You can’t leave?”

“Colonel Pride has taken the House of Commons,” he said, stammering with excitement. “God bless him, he’s one of the commander’s best men, so this must be on his orders. It must be. It’s war on parliament, as it was war on the king.”

“Whose orders?”

“Cromwell’s himself! Noll Cromwell himself!”

“What’s he done now?” Alys appeared beside her mother, pushing back the scarf from her cold face.

“Taken the houses of parliament, as if they were a royal palace—which they were! They were! The members of parliament will never again throw away an army victory. The army has barred the door to the king’s placemen, thrown out the traitor members. They’re not going to allow a deal with the king over our heads! They’re not going to put him back on the throne with some kind of cobbled oath that he’ll break as soon as he can. Us army men saw through his lies from the very beginning, we who were there, we who were there at Marston Moor, we who were there at Naseby.”

Alinor put down her basket and took her brother’s cold hands in her own, trying to hold him still. “Hush, Ned. I don’t understand you. You can’t go to London. Who’ll keep the ferry?”

“You must,” he said bluntly. “Look, I beg you. I’m sorry, but I have to go. I can’t miss this. Colonel Pride has taken the houses of parliament, praise God. The army will put in its own men, and they’ll vote down all these empty agreements with the king! I’ve got to be there. If they need an old soldier, I’ve got to stand with them. I have to see this. I can’t be down here, on the edge of the mire, getting news three weeks late, and wondering all the time what’s happening. I can’t be stuck in Foulmire like a frozen sheep in mud for the last days of my war. Alinor! This is the last battle. These were the greatest days of my life. These are the last days of the kingdom. I’ve got to be there. I was there at the beginning, I must see the end.”

Alinor closed her eyes to block out his flushed face. “I can’t keep the ferry,” she said. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”

“Nobody will want the ferry in the days before Christmas,” he lied. “After the Chichester Christmas market nobody’ll go off Sealsea Island. God knows, nobody’ll come here. They’ll all stay home for the season.”

“They will! They will!” Alinor was more and more distressed. “Nobody wants to go through the wadeway in winter. They’ll all want to go on the ferry, even at low tide, and at high tide they’ll load horses. I can’t do it, Brother. Not on cold water. Not on the winter tides. Don’t make me! I can’t—I swear that I can’t.”

“But I can,” Alys said suddenly from behind her. “I’ll keep the ferry for you, Uncle Ned.”

“You?”

“Yes, but you have to pay me. You know I don’t have all my dowry yet. I’ll keep the ferry for you for five shillings. I mean five shillings on top of the money you’ve promised me as a gift. Five shillings and I keep all the ferry fees.”

“You can’t,” Alinor turned to her daughter. “You can’t be on the water. I couldn’t bear it. You’re not strong enough, when the tide’s high . . .”

“Yes, she can,” Ned said. “What harm’ll come to her? And Rob can come back from the Priory and help.”

Alinor closed her eyes at the thought of her children on the dark waters of the winter mire. “Please,” she said quietly. “Please don’t do this. You know I can’t spare them.”

“Five shillings for my wedding,” Alys bargained. “And I keep all the fees.”

Ned held out his hand. “Done.” To his sister he said: “I’m sorry; I have to go. I know that the army’ll bring the king to London. I pray that they’ll charge him with treason against us, the people. He’s guilty as sin, and I want to see him answer for his crimes. He’s destroyed the peace of England and been the death of thousands of good men—it’s all been for nothing unless we gain our freedom from him. And I want to see him punished as I’d want to see a witch drowned. This is the end of tyrants in England, this is the start of our new country. I must be there to see him humbled. Sister, I have to be there.”

Alys, her face bright and uncaring, handed over the basket of oils to her uncle. “You can carry those for Ma,” she said, “as you go together to Chichester. And I’ll stay here. I’ll start today.”

He grinned like a lad. “Pull us over then,” he said.

“A halfpenny for the two of you,” she said, putting out her hand and slipping the coin that he gave her into the pocket of her gown. Ned took Alinor’s arm and helped her onto the ferry; she clamped her scarred hands on the wooden rail.

“Don’t fear,” he said to her. “No harm will come to her on the water. How should it? There’s nothing to fear except your dreams of drowning. And I’ll come back soon.”

“When?” she demanded.

“When it’s over,” he said, his face bright. “When the king has begged pardon of the people of England.”

Alinor and Ned parted at the Market Cross in the center of Chichester where the stone cross marked the roads that ran north and south, east and west. Ned was going to walk north to London, confident that someone would offer him a lift on the way, the wagons rolling easily on the frozen roads.

“There’ll be many old soldiers going to London for news,” he said confidently. “Many of us have waited for this for years.”

“But you’ll come back when it’s all over?” Alinor asked, putting her hand on his sleeve. “You won’t enlist again? Not even if the Irish rise against us, or the Scots invade again? You won’t go with Cromwell’s army?”

“That’s finished,” he said certainly. “There’ll be no more wars, there’ll be no more uprisings. The king will have to swear on his life to live in peace, and all the poor men who marched on one side or the other will be able to go home, and the brave women who kept the houses against their enemies will be able to live in peace at last.”

“I ask you, because I have troubles that I haven’t told you,” Alinor said choosing her words with care. “I’m going to need you at home, Brother. I’m going to need your help.”

At once, he was alert. “Has Zachary come back? Have you heard from him?”

“No, God be praised, no,” she said quickly. “But I have to get Alys married and Rob into his work and I have a difficulty, a difficulty of my own. I’ll need your help.”

He put his broad rough hand over hers. “Alys is earning her dowry even now,” he reassured her. “No need to fear for her. And Rob has his place promised to him and the Peacheys are paying his entrance fee. I’ll come back, but you’ve nothing to fear. Are you ill? Is that it?”

She made herself smile at him. “I’ll tell you when you come back,” she said. “It’ll keep.”

Only his excitement would have made him overlook her pallor. “You’d better stay at Ferry-house while Alys is keeping the ferry.”

“Yes, we will.”

“Look after the dog. He’s getting old now. He feels the cold.”

“I’ll let him sleep by the fire.”

“And when I come home, you can stay on. There’s no point going back to your cottage alone when Alys is wed and Rob away. We’ll tell everyone that Zachary is never coming home, and you can keep house for me. You can come back to your old home.”

Like a vision, Alinor imagined her childhood home as her own home once again, and the man she loved riding down the road to the ferry, just as he had done before. She thought that he would see her, standing at the garden gate of the ferry-house, with the deep water before her, and know that she was a free woman, waiting for him. She thought that when he crossed on the ferry and took her hands she would tell him that she was carrying his child.

Ned was dazzled by her smile, as bright as the winter sun.

“Yes,” she said. “Very well.”