“We’d all be relying on you,” he said with a wry smile. “You and your new boat. But I did come home, and we’ve kept the ferry, and you don’t have to take a boat out if you can’t bear it. I know it’s the last thing you want to do, a woman like you.”
She heard the echo of the words: “a woman like you in a place like this” and he was surprised to see her face light up, as he had never seen her look before, not since their childhood.
“You say everything in the world has changed,” she said, and she did not sound fearful. “Perhaps I will change too.”
TIDELANDS, JULY 1648
Alinor walked with her boy on the seashore path to the Priory through a haze of midges and mosquitoes that rose as their steps crushed driftwood and dried reeds at the high-water mark. The tide was coming in; they could hear the bubble of the hushing well as they turned inland, away from the rising waters, across the Priory meadow, the haystacks as pale as straw in the late summer sunshine.
She said: “You’ll come home on Michaelmas Day and I’ll see you every Sunday in church.”
He was pale with fear. “I know,” he said shortly. “You’ve said it a dozen times.”
“I’ll come to the kitchen and ask after you on Friday. You can tell the cook if you want to see me before then, and she’ll tell me.”
“You said.”
She nodded. “If you really don’t want to go, you don’t have to. We can manage.”
“I’ve said I’ll go.”
She turned the handle on the wooden door set in the flint wall and suddenly remembered leaving the priest, Father James, to hide behind the haystack while she spoke to Mr. Tudeley. The metal handle was warm from the sunshine, the timbers of the door dry to her touch, just as they had been on that day last month. She felt that she was wrong to think of that moment, of that man, when she was sending her own son into service.
“Come on then,” she said, giving him a smile for courage, dismissing the day that a priest had looked at her with desire and said: “a woman like you.”
They went through the garden, to the kitchen door. The cook looked up from the table where she was kneading an enormous ball of dough, floury to the elbows. “You’re expected,” she said. She looked Rob up and down. “Good lad,” she said. “You mind your manners here and this will be a great chance for you.”
He pulled his hat off his head. “Aye, mistress.”
“You say ‘Yes, Mistress Wheatley,’ ” the cook corrected him.
“Yes, Mistress Wheatley,” he repeated.
“Stuart will take you up,” she said, turning her head and shouting towards the hall. “Where is that man?”
Stuart appeared in the doorway, a thin man dressed in the Peachey livery with down-at-heel shoes.
“Look at the state of you!” she scolded, without any hope of improvement. “Take Goodwife Reekie’s boy in to Mr. Tudeley. He’s expecting him. In his room. And then come straight back here. You’re wanted to get the platters down.”
He nodded to Rob and turned towards the door that led to the steward’s room.
“Wait! Say good-bye.” Alinor caught her son as he was following obediently, without another word to her.
He turned back to her, his face pale and closed, and dropped to his knee before her. She put her hand on his curly head in her blessing and then she bent down and kissed him. “Be good,” she said inadequately. She had no words for how much she loved him, how much she hated leaving him here. “God bless you, son. I will see you at church on Sunday.”
He rose up, his cheeks red with embarrassment at the emotion in her voice, yet anxious not to reveal his own feelings, and picked up the little sack of his belongings. He had almost nothing: a change of linen, his spoon and his knife. He followed Stuart out of the door.
Mrs. Wheatley laughed at Alinor fighting her tears as she watched her son leave. “Ah, give over,” she said kindly. “He’s not going to sea to fight against the prince. He’s not pressed for the army and marching into the wild North to fight Scotsmen.”
“I thank God for it.”
Mrs. Wheatley thumped the dough into a bowl and set it under a cloth beneath an open window to prove in the sunshine. “Will you take a glass of small ale before you go?” she asked. “Put a smile back on your pretty face?”
“Thank you,” Alinor said, taking a seat on the bench at the table. “Can I come at the end of the week, to ask how he’s doing?”
“Yes, you can bring me some samphire.”
“I will. And, Mrs. Wheatley, will you keep an eye on him?”
The cook nodded. “It’s a great chance for the lad.”
“I know it. But will you send for me if he doesn’t suit? If there’s any the least sign of trouble?”
“What could there be? He’ll get his schooling for free—his own tutor, not the day school—and his board, and he gets paid, and all he has to do is put up with the young master.”
“Is he difficult? I saw him last year when he was ill and he was a lamb then . . .”
“He’s a Peachey,” was all the cook said. “He’s the next lord. He was born to be difficult. But he’s not vicious. Your boy has fallen on his feet, to be sure.”
They heard footsteps in the stone-flagged passageway to the kitchen and Mrs. Wheatley immediately fell silent, picking up a jug of buttermilk and measuring it into a bowl. Mr. Tudeley put his head around the kitchen door.
“Ah, I thought I might find you still here, Mrs. Reekie. I have this for your boy’s first quarter.”
Alinor took the purse, heavy with five shillings, in her hand and tucked it in the pocket of her apron. “Thank you,” she said. “And thank you very much for the opportunity for Rob . . .”
Mr. Tudeley waved away her thanks and withdrew. Mrs. Wheatley nodded at Alinor. “No more than you deserve,” she said stoutly. “With two young children to bring up and no husband to be seen. And Rob’s a good boy, I’m sure. I’ll keep an eye on him, don’t worry.”
“Yes, I know,” Alinor agreed, reluctant to leave even now.
She bobbed a curtsey to Mrs. Wheatley and went out through the door to the walled kitchen garden, and crossed it, looking back at the house, searching the windows of the tall building in case her son was looking out. There was no one there. The leaded panes of glass reflected the dazzle of the sun high in the noon sky. She could see nothing. She raised a hand in case he was looking out for her and turned to walk home. She felt as if she were leaving a part of herself behind.
On Friday morning Alinor left a sleepy Alys in the warm bed, and went out in the dawn light to pick samphire on the shingle seashore while it was still fresh, damp and salty with the sea fret. The tide was on the ebb. She could see the little waves breaking on the sandbar, far out to sea, and the horizon was a glorious line of gold with low-lying banks of cloud catching the light of the sunrise. The little birds ran back and forth in the shallow water, sometimes wheeling away in a flock, to settle a few yards farther down the beach. At six o’clock by the stable clock she tapped on the kitchen door of the Priory and when Stuart opened it, his hands dirty with wood ash from the fire, she walked in and put down her basket on the dresser.
“Aye, there you are,” said Mrs. Wheatley, flushed from the heat of the bread oven where she was shoveling in rolls with a long-handled wooden peel. She closed the door with a thick woolen cloth over her hand and came over to look at the basket, pulling away the fresh green leaves from the top to make sure that the crop underneath was as good.
“Tuppence?” she offered.
“Certainly,” Alinor said pleasantly, though it was cheap.
“You’ll be hoping to see your boy,” the cook guessed. “You can come up to the chapel with me for morning prayers. You’ll see him then.”