Tidelands

TIDELANDS, JANUARY 1649

In the first cold days of January a fox got into the ferry-house barn and savaged three chickens before the anguished clucking of the flock brought Alinor running barefoot in her shift. As she flung the door open a streak of russet brown dashed out past her. One hen was dead on the floor, one beyond saving—Alinor picked her up and wrung her neck—but the third was bruised and bloodstained, and Alinor put her in a basket and took her into the house, washed the teeth marks on her breast, and kept her by the fireside in a basket. The hens were laying poorly in the cold dark days, so Alinor did not miss the income from the few eggs, but it was still a loss to the smallholding. Even if they could have afforded to lose three hens, Alinor would still have been grieved. She knew each bird by name and took pride in their glossy health.

“I know it’s stupid to weep for a hen, but I can’t forgive that fox,” she said to Alys.

“Tell the Peachey huntsmen where the earth is,” Alys said. “They’d be glad of a good run and a kill.”

“Oh, I couldn’t betray an animal to the hunt.”

Alys laughed. “Then until the resurrection and the life eternal you’ll always be sorrowing for something that’s been killed by something else. I can’t wait to eat her. Are you going to make chicken stew?”

“Yes, of course,” Alinor said. “I’m not such a fool as to not eat fresh meat in winter when it’s come our way. But you’re very hard-hearted for poor Mrs. Hoppy.”

“I’m hungry,” Alys said. “I’m hungry all the time. Aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Alinor said, noting that her daughter, for the first time in five months, was prepared to share signs of pregnancy. “And I need to piss every moment.”

The girl laughed. “I wish it was summer,” she said. “I was telling Richard that I wouldn’t mind going out to the midden if it wasn’t so cold.”

“He knows then?” Alinor asked. “You’ve told him?”

“I told him as soon as I was sure,” the young woman said. “He’s glad.”

“Will he tell his mother and father?” Alinor asked nervously, thinking of the formidable woman who would be Alys’s mother-in-law.

“He’s told them,” Alys said confidently. “And his father is one for the old ways.” She made a disdainful little face. “He jokes about it. He likes a fertile bride. She said that it was good to know that I’d continue the line—he said you only buy a cow in calf.”

Alinor laughed at Alys’s offended expression. “Well, at least they’ve no objection.”

“As long as I’ve got my dowry. That’s all she cares about.” She paused. “They said you’re to come and stay with me, when I’m near to my time. You’ll have to be with me, Ma, when I have my baby.”

“I hope so,” Alinor said slowly. “I pray for it, Alys. I am hoping and praying for us both, all the time.”

“Why don’t you send a message to this man? Why doesn’t he come and make everything right, if he loves you as you say?”

“He will come,” Alinor said steadily. “I don’t have to send for him. He will be coming as fast as he can.”

In the morning, Red, the ferry-house dog, did not get out of his corner and sit on the pier to watch the ferry, as he usually did.

“And we had a fox,” Alinor scolded him. “Are you getting lazy?”

The dog looked at her with his ale-brown eyes and turned away. Alinor put her hand on his head. “Oh, no, Red,” she said quietly. “What’s wrong?”

He sighed as if he would speak to her. Alinor took his broad head in both hands and looked at him as she would one of her patients.

“Won’t you wait till Ned comes home?” she whispered.

He stirred his feathery tail and then turned around three times and lay down. Alinor stroked his soft forehead where his frown wrinkled the fur, and let him stay in his bed.

Alys pulled the icy rope of the ferry as Alinor crossed the mire at low tide to go to work at the mill. It was bitterly cold, the ground slippery with frost. The sandbanks in the mire were white as snow.

“Get back in the warm,” Alinor said to her daughter. “And take care on the water.”

Alys’s face was white with cold, her mittened hands gripping the rope. “I’m fine,” she said. “You mind that you don’t slip.”

Mrs. Miller arranged the work of the farm and house so that she and her little boy, Peter, and daughter, Jane, stayed indoors in bad weather and sent her maid-of-all-work and Alinor into the cold. Alinor started in the barn where the cows were waiting patiently in their stalls. She took a three-legged stool down from the hook and set it beside the first cow, leaning her forehead against the warm flank, talking quietly to her, as she pulled on the udders, alternating her hands, and the milk hissed into the pail. It was so cold in the barn, the milk steamed and Alinor sniffed the rich creamy smell, longing to drink it. She carried the heavy pail to the dairy, and poured it into a bowl to separate for churning into butter later.

“I’ll thank you to check the dovecot for eggs.” Mrs. Miller poked her head into the icy dairy. “And after that, you can go home. I won’t need you for anything this afternoon.”

Alinor pulled her shawl over her head again, took the heavy basket, and went back out into the yard.

Richard Stoney, shoveling wheat into the dangling pan of the weighbeam in the barn, caught sight of her through the barn door as she was walking carefully across the frozen yard. “I’ll put down some straw so you don’t slip.” He hurried out to her.

She turned to him, the shawl over her head stiff with frost from her frozen breath. “You can’t,” she said shortly. “They never straw the yard. Only if the cows are coming out.”

“So the cows don’t fall, but you can!” he exclaimed. “Let me give you my arm then.”

She shook her head. “She’ll be watching from the window. Let me do my work, Richard. I won’t freeze and I won’t fall.”

“You’re never going up the ladder!”

Before Alinor could answer, the farmhouse kitchen door opened and Mrs. Miller shouted into the yard, “Richard Stoney, are you weighing grain or taking a stroll?”

“Go on,” said Alinor. “Back to work.”

“Can I come to Ferry-house on my way home? Is Alys well today?” he whispered urgently, as he raised a hand to acknowledge Mrs. Miller.

“She’s well. Of course you can come!” Alinor called, as she walked on towards the dovecot. Inside the circular tower she reached under her sheepskin jacket and rolled up the waistband of her skirt so it was hitched above her knees and she would not stumble on the hem as she went up the ladder.

She put her hands on the rung and looked upwards at the dovecot interior wall. It seemed like a long way up, and the ladder was old and rickety, but she could see a dove sitting on a nest. Alinor moved the ladder to the nesting dove, checked that it was firmly placed, hitched her basket on her arm, and started to climb. Each rung was freezing cold to the touch and slippery with frost. Up and up she went, step by step, not looking down, and paying no attention to the ominous creaking of the old wood. In some part of her mind she thought that a fall and a miscarriage would solve all her problems. Then she smiled to herself as she saw that at the thought of losing her baby she at once took a stronger grip on the ladder, and put her feet carefully on the rungs. She was as committed to her own life, and to the life of her child, as she had been that first cold morning when she had sworn that she would not be a victim of sorrows, but would bring this baby into the world and win a place for it.

There was a dove nesting in the pigeonhole; she did not move as Alinor climbed up within reach. Gently, Alinor put her hand under the warm soft breast. “I’m sorry, Goody Dove,” she said quietly. “But I am sent to get these. You lay more for yourself.”

Ignoring the bird’s indignant pecks to her cold hands, she lifted all the eggs but one from the nest, and put them carefully in the basket. They were small white eggs, warm from the mother’s breast feathers. Alinor climbed carefully down the ladder and looked upwards to see if another bird was nesting. Four times she moved the ladder and went up and down for eggs, and then she walked carefully back to the house with a dozen eggs in her basket. Mrs. Miller opened the door to her and managed a thin smile.

“I’d have thought you’d have sent Alys to do the work on a cold day like this,” she said. “Too grand for dove eggs now, is she? Now that she’s planning to marry so well? Playing the lady?”

“Oh, no,” Alinor said pleasantly. “But she’s still keeping the ferry for Ned.”

“Who’s going to cross in this cold weather? I hear the river has frozen in London and they’re walking from one side to another. You won’t get any fees if that happens here!”

“It feels cold enough to freeze,” Alinor agreed. “And the freshwater in the rife is frozen hard; but the tide still comes in.”

“And Ned still not home? I’m surprised he has the time and the money to go jauntering off to London.”

“It matters so much to him.”

“None of his business,” Mrs. Miller said sourly.

Alinor smiled. “Certainly, none of mine,” she said.

Mrs. Miller recovered a little good humor, unpacking the eggs from the basket and putting them in the crock. “Aye, I suppose so. You don’t take an interest in it?”

“I’m interested,” Alinor said carefully. “But I don’t take sides.”

“There’s not many that don’t think the king should be punished for his sins,” Mrs. Miller declared. “Making war on his own people! And the taxes! Would you like two eggs for your dinner?”

“Thank you,” Alinor replied, thinking that now there was no handsome stranger and noble party from the Priory, Mrs. Miller had reverted to being an envious roundhead. “Thank you very much for the eggs,” she said.

When she got to the rife, walking companionably with a Sealsea Island farmer’s wife, the ferry was waiting for her.

“Red’s missing,” Alys said as Alinor climbed cautiously aboard, the ferry rocking on the ebbing tide. “He didn’t come out to the pier this morning and he wasn’t in his corner at noon.”

“Yes, I know,” Alinor spoke unguardedly. “Poor Red. I said good-bye to him this morning.”

“You knew the dog would go missing?” the farmer’s wife demanded. “How did you know?”

“She didn’t know,” Alys interrupted rudely. “It’s just an old dog and he was lazy getting up this morning. She didn’t know.”

Alinor looked up, surprised at Alys’s harsh tone.

“Nobody could know such a thing,” Alys ruled.

The farmer’s wife remarked that sometimes she had premonitions herself, and her mother had been a terrible one for dreaming. “And of course your grandma had the sight,” she reminded Alys.

“Not us,” Alys declared roundly, bringing the ferry to the pier as Alinor got off, and turned to help the woman off the ferry. “We don’t believe in stuff like that. Good night!” she called. “See you tomorrow.”

“I did know about Red,” Alinor remarked mildly as Alys tied the ferry up and came up the steps.

“I know you did; but we can’t say things like that,” Alys said abruptly. “Not even to Mrs. Bellman. Anyway, I suppose he’s under a hedge somewhere,” she said.

“We’ll look,” Alinor promised her. “And I have an egg for your tea. A dove egg.”

“Lord, she exceeded herself!” Alys exclaimed. “How lucky are we? Two tiny eggs! She’s spoiling us. You go that way, I’ll go this. We’ll find him.”

The dog was not far from the house. He had gone quietly, as wise old dogs do, to die alone. It was Alinor who found him, as she knew she would, curled as if he was asleep; but his coat was cool and his nose was cold and his eyes were shut.

“The ground’s too hard for us to bury him,” Alys said. “What’ll we do? It doesn’t seem right to burn him, or put him on the midden.”

“I’ll dig a hole in the soft mud of the mire,” Alinor said. “You go and start dinner. I won’t be long.”

She took a shovel from the lean-to in the fruit garden and went out on one of the little shingle paths that led out into the deep mire. It would be flooded at high tide, but now, as the moon came up and the cold wind blew across the water, it was dry enough for her to walk along and to dig a deep hole in the soft mud at the side of the track.

When the pit was broad enough and deep enough she took the stiffening body, which now seemed so small and light, and laid it in the bottom of the hole. She knew that Ned would ask her if his dog had been properly buried, and that he would trust her. She filled the grave with shingle from the path to keep the body deep under the moving silt of the harbor floor. “Good-bye, Red,” she said gently. “You’re a very good dog.”

She shoveled a pile of silt and went to tamp it down when a glint of silver caught her eye, bright as a star in the dark night sky. She knelt down and found a tiny coin, shaved and thin but twinkling brightly in the mud. It was faerie gold, a coin from the old people, from the old days, with a crest on one side and a crown on the other, too rubbed and worn to be deciphered, too old to be recognized, too light to be valuable.

“Thank you,” Alinor said to Red. She accepted without a second thought that this was his burial fee, which he had sent to her from the other side, a country as far away and as misty as the distant side of the mire. “God bless, good dog. Godspeed.”

She put the coin in her pocket and the shovel over her shoulder, and she went heavily up the freezing shingle path to where the lights of the ferry-house gleamed over the cold waters.

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, JANUARY 1649

The two men went through the crowded streets, stepping over the dirty gutters in the cobbled ways, picking their way down muddy lanes till the great walls of the palace were before them and they could see the soldiers of the New Model Army on guard before the gates. There was a small crowd outside the gates, looking towards the gray carved stone walls and the snow on the slate roof.

“Where is the king housed now?” James asked, keeping his voice down.

“In St. James’s Palace. They’ve called a hundred and thirty-five judges to London to sit in a high court to try him. But I swear half of them won’t dare to come. And even if they do, he won’t answer to them. How are they even going to get him into court?”

“But if they come, and if he answers—”

The nameless man interrupted him. “He won’t,” he insisted. “By what rights can they summon him? You can’t summon a king. Nobody’s ever summoned a king. Would his father, King James, have come to the parliament whistle? Would Queen Elizabeth have trotted obediently along? No country in the world has ever called their king into a court. No English monarch has ever obeyed parliament.”

James nodded; it was incredible that the conflict between king and parliament, which should have been resolved on the first battlefield, or at least at Newport, had come so quickly to this unimaginable state. “But suppose they do,” he said. “Have they named a day and a time?”

“Tomorrow.”

“What?”

“Yes.”

“Can I get the names of the judges?”

“You can get the names of those who were called. But nobody knows who will come. They won’t know themselves. More than one will be sleepless tonight, trying to decide what he should do.”

“Is it possible that none of them will come, and the trial collapse?”

James’s guide spat into the frozen gutter. “The devil knows. It’s his idea, surely. But I would think Noll Cromwell will be there, wouldn’t you? And men who are faithful to him, and those that go beyond him?”

“The trial is open to the public?”

“Yes, but don’t think you can burst out of the crowd and save him. He’ll be so closely guarded, no one will get near him. They’ll be expecting a rescue attempt. They’ll take no risks.”

“The best time to get him away would be when he comes from his rooms at St. James’s to here at Westminster.” James was thinking aloud. “Probably by barge . . .”

The man ducked his head. “Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. And I have no opinion.”

“I have none either,” James said. “I’m whistling in the dark. Let’s get the names of the judges.”

TIDELANDS, JANUARY 1649

At dawn, the late cold dawn of January, Alinor woke to hear the cracking of ice and the sound of horses splashing through the cold waters as a carriage skidded down the wadeway and forded the ebbing tide. She rubbed the frost flowers off the inside of her bedroom window and squinted to her left. In the half-light she could see the lumbering bulk of the Peachey carriage.

“Alys! The Peachey carriage is going over the wadeway,” she said to the girl still sleeping in the bed behind her.

“Doesn’t matter,” Alys replied, unmoving. “He doesn’t pay.”

“I wonder if Rob is with them. And where they’re going.”

“To London, I expect, chasing after the king, like everyone else.”

“They’ll have left Rob at the Priory then,” Alinor said. “Surely, they wouldn’t take him?”

The rattle of the front door answered her. “That’ll be him now!” Alinor said gladly. She called down the ladder stairs: “Is that you, Rob?”

“Aye, Mother,” he shouted cheerfully. “I’m to stay with you till Candlemas and then Mr. Tudeley is to take me to Chichester. I’m to go to Mr. Sharpe, the Chichester apothecary. My term starts with him then.”

Alinor tied her shawl around her thickening waist, and climbed down the stair. She hugged Rob and stepped back to admire him. “I swear you’ve grown again.”

“In the three weeks since Christmas Day?” he teased her.

“You’re becoming a man,” she said. “Think of you going as an apprentice!”

He dropped to his knee for her blessing and when he rose up he asked, “Have you breakfasted?”

“Of course not. Alys isn’t even up yet. Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” he said.

“Sit down then and I’ll light the fire.” Alinor pressed him into the fireside chair, lifted the cover off the embers, and put the kindling driftwood and twigs on the red glow.

“Is Sir William going to London about the king?” she asked.

“Yes, he’s called to be a judge. He’s taking Walter on to Cambridge.”

“Is there really to be a trial of the king?”

“Everyone says so, but I don’t think Sir William’ll attend the court. He’s going to see if he can be excused.”

“How will the king get a fair hearing if the only men who judge him are parliament men?” Alys asked, coming down the stairs.

“That’s it,” Rob said. “He won’t.”

“He won’t?” repeated Alinor.

“He won’t get a fair hearing,” Rob predicted. “That’s what Sir William says. If they can get him into trial at all, there’ll be no justice for him.”

“So the royalists won’t be there?” Alinor asked, thinking of James.

“They’ll stay away.”