It was unbearable: “For Christ’s sake, be quiet!”
She froze at his oath, and shot him a horrified glance from under her drenched eyelashes.
“I cannot be watched,” he whispered urgently. “You know I must not be observed. I have to serve my cause. I cannot have people noticing me. I am going now. I cannot be seen with you while you are in this state. Everyone is looking at us. I cannot have you draw attention to me.”
She changed in a moment, her beauty suddenly pale and contemptuous, her tears frozen. “You go,” she advised him. “I don’t care. Go at once. I don’t care for your cause. I cared for you and I was a fool. But I won’t be a fool again.”
Without another word, with the disdain of an offended queen, she turned on her heel and walked away from him, walked to her brother, and left James all on his own, hopelessly exposed to the inquisitive stares of the mill yard, all of them wondering how Alinor Reekie—the poorest woman at the harvest home—dared to snub him: the greatest guest.
He could not sleep. He turned around and around on the smooth linen sheets of his luxurious bed in the Priory, getting more and more restless until he welcomed the fever in his pulse and the heat under his skin, and he went down to the private chapel barefoot, and laid himself down on the cold stone before the bare altar in the position of penitence: feet together stretched out, facedown, arms spread, like a prone crucifixion. He felt his desire for her like a pain in his belly. He pressed his hands to the cold stone floor and imagined the curve of her cheek against his palm. He pressed his cock, which was hard as iron, into the icy limestone and felt the relief as it shriveled against the cold. He was forbidden to think of her as a lover by his oath to his God, to his king, to his conspiracy, to his class, and to his own honor. But as the cold seeped into his hot skin he knew that he was faithless to his God, to his king, to his conspiracy, to his class, and to his honor. All he could think of was the brilliance of her eyes and the flush of her cheek when she swore that she had cared for him once, but she would not care for him again.
Even in his heat and his distress he felt a little gleam of triumph that she had told him that she cared for him. He knew it—he had known it when she came so willingly into his arms off the rickety pier—but he was a scholar and he loved words; he loved that she had said: “I cared for you.”
That was where he must leave it, he thought. He ought to feel relieved that she had confessed her love and said it was gone. He should be glad that she had dismissed him, even though her pride was impossibly misplaced—she had forgotten the social order that placed her far below him. A woman like Alinor Reekie could not complain of the behavior of a gentleman like him. But better for him, in these dangerous times, that she turned from him, than if she betrayed them both with a foolishly adoring gaze. Better that he never saw her. She might come to prayers at the Priory and present herself at the communion table, but he need do nothing but serve the communion as the minister in the private chapel. If he did not seek her out, they would never meet again.
Of course, he must see her at St. Wilfrid’s Church the very next morning, as it was Sunday, but he would be far at the front, first in the church behind Sir William, and she would be where she belonged—far behind, in the gallery with the other poor women, the faint scent of sweat and fish rising from their damp shawls. She would never dare to approach him; he would not look for her. He would never again speak to her privately and, in time, this ache of longing would pass. Men on both sides in this war had lost their limbs, were crippled for life having fought for their beliefs. He thought that he—whose war had been so privileged, so hidden—had finally taken a wound as grave as theirs.
He would recover. His war was elsewhere: his duty was across the Solent with the king in Carisbrooke Castle. He should never have thought of her. He had been mad to look at her just because she was beautiful, to feel tender towards her because she risked her own safety to rescue him. He would confess the sin of desiring her, and be forgiven for having gone so close to temptation. He must take Mrs. Miller’s spiteful slander as a timely warning and pray that the madness was over, and this greensickness of love would pass quickly too.
“You’re so white—are you sick?” Alys asked her mother.
“Something I ate at the Millers’,” Alinor replied.
“Envy? She serves a lot of that,” Alys suggested. “Is that why you left early?”
Alinor nodded. “I’m fine now.”
“But wasn’t it the most wonderful harvest home ever? Not even she could spoil it. Richard said . . .”
“Richard said?”
Alys flushed. “He said I am as beautiful as a real queen.”
“Nothing but truth! You looked beautiful, and you danced beautifully.”
Alys beamed. “And it’s nice to see Rob.”
“Yes.”
“They were all mad for his tutor, Mr. Summer, weren’t they? Mary couldn’t eat her dinner for making eyes at him. Jane Miller couldn’t speak a word.”
Alinor forced a smile. “He’s a handsome gentleman. And a novelty. Did you dance with Richard Stoney again, after I left?”
Alys ducked her head down. “I didn’t dance with anyone else. I just couldn’t. And he wouldn’t ask anyone else. I love him, Ma, I really do.”
Alinor took a little breath. “My little girl in love?”
“I’ll always be your girl, but I do love him. And he loves me.”
“He’s said so?”
The girl flushed a dark rose. “Oh, Ma, he’s spoken to his parents. Weeks ago, he spoke to them. He wants to marry me! He asked me last night, Ma. He’s given me his promise.”
“He should’ve spoken to me before he said anything to you. You’re not yet fourteen. I was thinking of meeting his parents and asking for a long betrothal and—”
“He’s been courting me for weeks,” the girl said proudly. “That’s long enough for me to be sure. And I liked him from the first. But anyway, they want a girl who’d bring them some land, who has furniture, her own pewter plates, who’s got an inheritance. Things I’ll never have.”
“We can save up,” Alinor said bravely.
They both looked around the little cottage, the sparse worn goods, the wooden trenchers on the plain cupboard, the table and stools that Alinor had inherited from her mother, the hanging bunches of drying herbs, the treasure box containing the tenancy paper, and the red leather purse, filled with nothing but old tokens.
“We have no savings but dried leaves and faerie gold,” Alys pointed out.
“I could talk to them,” Alinor said.
“My father should go,” Alys said resentfully. “It shouldn’t be you, on your own.”
“I know,” Alinor said. “We’re unlucky in that.”
The two women put on their capes and their wooden pattens and started the walk to church. Behind them on the bank path came Alinor’s brother, Ned, his dog at his heels, and behind him a few farmers with their families from farther inland. The women waited for Ned to catch up, and walked three abreast with him, dropping into single file when the thorns of the path closed in.
“You’ll be happy with the news from Preston, Ned,” Alinor remarked. “It sounds like a great victory.”
“Praise God,” he said. “For if the Scots had got past Cromwell I don’t know where they would’ve stopped. We could have lost all of England to them, and they would have put the king on the throne again. But, God be praised, we won, and they are driven back and the king will know that he has no friends left in the world.”