James had cursed the bad luck of a king mustering such unreliable allies as the Scots, but failing to launch his own son’s fleet. Led by a competent general, this invasion could have turned the course of the war. But the best royalist generals were dead or dismissed, and the king was not on the field under his standard, but in prison, sending streams of contradictory orders.
“Actually, I came along the coast, not from London,” James said smoothly, hiding his chagrin. “I knew that the army had marched north to meet the Scots; but this victory is news to me.”
“And no reason that a gentleman should explain himself to the ferryman,” Mrs. Miller interrupted. “Mr. Summer, Your Honor, would you be so good as to carve the meat, sir?”
An enormous ham was placed in front of James, as the principal guest, and he took up the knife and carved it while the miller broke into a great game pie, Mrs. Miller spooned out chicken broth into the wooden bowls and passed them around, and Jane, her daughter, went to the dairy to fetch more butter.
“Not too thick,” Mrs. Miller instructed, keeping a jealous eye on the portions.
“It’s a good-sized ham,” he praised the meat.
“My own,” she said. “And I’ll have another four of them in the chimney this winter. I take great pride in my hams.”
James fought to keep his face straight. He did not dare to glance down the table to see if Alinor had heard this boast. “You have a very handsome farm,” he recovered, passing the platter with the slices cut thin.
“There are some that will taste meat this evening at my table that won’t have it again till Christmas,” she said complacently. “I believe in the old ways. Low wages but a well-spread board: that’s how you run a good farm.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” he agreed, knowing that the wages would be cut to the bone.
“Some of our neighbors—well, I don’t know how they get by,” she confided. “Scraping a living from the hedgerows, feasting like birds on berries and raw herbs.” Her envious gaze drifted down the table to Alinor and her daughter.
Around them everyone was helping themselves to food, passing bread, meat, the broth, cooked vegetables, and pouring the specially sweetened harvest ale.
“Hard times,” James said generally.
“Take Mrs. Reekie for one . . .”
Despite his sense that he should silence the gossiping woman, James could not help but lean forward.
“On the edge of starving last winter, I swear it. Knocking on the yard door and asking for work, anything. It was charity to buy her herbs. But now, from nowhere she has a boat, her son is in service at the Priory, and her daughter is making eyes at Richard Stoney and him a farmer’s son, the only son, and certain to inherit the farm! How’s that come about? For I know for a fact that her brother has nothing but the ferry and whatever was left of his army pay, and her husband has been gone for months.”
“Robert is my pupil,” he said cautiously. “He’s a good companion to Master Walter and paid for his service. Mrs. Reekie is well liked at the Priory.”
“By who?” she exclaimed as if scoring a point. “Who likes a common cottager so much that her son is suddenly Master Walter’s companion? Two months ago, the lad was bird-scaring for me after school, and glad of the work. Barefoot half the time. So where did she get the money to buy the boat? When she couldn’t afford shoes?”
James, knowing very well that it was a bribe for her silence about him, muttered that perhaps she had savings.
“Savings?” She snorted. “She has none! I say to my husband, please God that she does not fall on the parish, for we’re a poor church, and can’t support everyone, especially women who are neither widows nor wives, with a son and a daughter to keep. We can’t support a woman who may have beauty but not enough wit to keep her husband at home.”
“She has her craft and her boat and her herbs,” he protested. “I am sure she can keep herself.”
“She has no business keeping herself!” Mrs. Miller protested. “She’s neither a widow nor a wife, and when she walks across the yard, the work stops dead as if the Queen of Sheba was dancing on my cobbles. If her husband is gone, she should declare herself a widow and remarry—if anyone will have her, given what they say about her. If he’s alive, she should get him home. Then we’d all know where we are. She’s nothing but a worry as she is. Nothing but a worry to good wives. Who would give her money for a boat? And why? It’d better not be Mr. Miller, that’s all I can say!”
James finally understood the objection to Alinor. “She can’t be a worry to an established housewife like yourself,” he said soothingly. “There can be no comparison. Look at the dinner you put on today! Look at where you are in the world! The respect you are shown! You are blessed indeed. Mr. Miller must know that in you he has a helpmeet appointed by heaven.”
She flushed a little under his attention. “It’s not easy for me,” she reminded him. “Everything that I have, whether it is respect, or hams in the chimney, I have worked for. Every penny of my little savings I’ve worked for. Years of money I have saved up. Jane’s dowry is ready, for the first good husband to offer for her. You don’t find me without a penny to my name! But where does Goodwife Reekie get her money from? Her own husband swore she had faerie luck; perhaps he spoke true for once. How can she buy a boat if not by some double dealing? I tell you one thing: whenever she has something to sell, my husband buys a dozen of them—as if he needs lavender bags!”
James managed a false laugh, as if he thought the Millers’ grudging generosity to Alinor was funny; and unwillingly, Mrs. Miller smiled too. “Ah, well,” she said, recovering her temper. “No one is more charitable than me to our poor neighbors. I pride myself on my Christian spirit.”
James nodded his head approvingly. “It does you credit,” he praised her. “A woman so great as you in the neighborhood must show compassion to those who have less.”
“Was it Mr. Tudeley who chose her boy to be server to Master Walter?” she lowered her voice. “I thought it must be him.”
“I really don’t know.”
“But why would a man like him, his lordship’s steward, give a boy like Rob such a chance?” She slid a sideways glance at him. “I trust and pray that she has not played tricks on Mr. Tudeley. They say she can . . .”
James maintained a discouraging silence.
“. . . summon,” she said: an odd ambiguous word.
“Rob was chosen for his skills in the stillroom,” James repeated. “And because he’s a very clever boy.”
She hesitated. “I know she’s a good woman. I had her myself to the birth of my boy. But times are changing and if she can’t get a license for midwifery what is she to do? She might be an honest woman now, but what of the future?”
James glanced up and found Alinor’s dark gaze was steadily fixed on the two of them, watching them as if she could hear every spiteful word. He could not smile reassuringly while Mrs. Miller was pouring poison into his ear.
“Surely the only reason she cannot get a license from the bishop is because there are no bishops in the new parliament?”
“Aye, that’s what she says,” Mrs. Miller said grudgingly. “But everyone knows she’s lost more than one poor woman, dead in childbed. Her own sister-in-law . . .”
“She would get her license if they were being issued?”
“But they’re not! And so she has no license! And anyone can say anything against her.”
“Does anyone actually speak against her?” James asked. He longed to have the courage to add: “other than jealous wives and women with half her looks?”
“It’s only natural that they should. With men being such fools, and her in and out of the house when a wife is laid up. And her looking—” she broke off. She could not bring herself to acknowledge Alinor’s luminous beauty. “Like she does,” she said lamely.