“I’ll go tomorrow,” James said, glad to change the subject. “I have to go to London, and then I’ll take a ship to France. I will go to my seminary and confess. If they release me, perhaps I will be able to come back to England. Perhaps next time we meet I shall have my old name and my old house back again.”
“I hope you do, by God, I hope that you do. You deserve it,” Sir William said gruffly. “Remember that it wasn’t your fault. His Majesty chose his own path. Pray God that he chose rightly and it gets him to his throne. Pray God that both you and he get safe home.”
Alinor and Alys soaked their best caps and their linen in a bowl of water and urine as soon as they got home from the ferry-house herb garden. They left them to bleach all evening, rinsed them in cold water from the dipping pond, and then pinned them on a string beside the herbs to dry.
“I’m never going to be able to sleep,” Alys said.
“You should,” Alinor warned her. “I don’t want to be taking a pasty-faced girl to her new in-laws.”
“Pasty!” Alys objected.
“With dark shadows under her eyes like old drunk Joan.”
“All right, I’ll sleep, I swear it.”
“I’m stepping up to Ferry-house to see your uncle. I won’t be long.”
“All right,” Alys said. She took off her work skirt and jacket and laid them on top of the blankets. Wearing only her linen shift, and with her hair in a plait, she slid under the covers and drew them up to her shoulders. She looked like a little girl again, and Alinor stepped back to the bed to kiss her on her forehead. “Are you sure about this? You seem very young to be talking about your wedding?”
Alys’s smile was radiant. “I’m sure, Ma. I’m absolutely sure. And I’m the same age as you when you married my da.”
“It wasn’t a very good choice,” Alinor said quietly.
“But I’m as old as you were then.”
“Yes.”
“D’you think he’ll come home?” she asked. “My da. If he hears from someone that I’m to be married, will he come home for my wedding day?”
Alinor hesitated. “Alys, I don’t think he’ll ever come home.”
At once, Alys clapped her hands over her ears. “Don’t tell me anything!” she begged her mother. “The Stoneys can only just about bear me if they think my da is missing and might come home wealthy. If I tell them he’s run off they’ll never consider me for Richard, I’ll be next to a pauper for them.”
Alinor took Alys’s hands from her ears and held them in her own work-worn palms. “All right, I’ll say nothing. And you can say you know nothing for sure.”
“And that’s true.” Alys nodded. “This is the tidelands, there’s nothing sure.”
Alinor pulled on her cape, for the evening mist was blowing off the harbor, damp and cold, and she went out of the cottage garden and turned to the left, as if she were going to the ferry-house, as she had told Alys, but then, when she reached the top of the bank she turned again, and entered along the hidden footpath that ran behind the cottage towards the Priory and the sea. It was high tide and the smell of sea salt blew in with the ribbons of mist. When she looked to her right, inland over the low-lying fields behind the bank, she could see the white silhouette of an owl hunting along the hedgerow, silent as a ghost, its great eyes seeing through the darkness.
Alinor stayed on the high-tide path, dropping down to cross the narrow strip of dry beach above the lapping waters, back up the muddy steps to the top of the bank, tracing her way across the gray stepping-stones where a marshy field oozed into the mire: gray stones set in gray mud under a gray sky. She skirted the headland where the bell tower stood like a warning fingerpost against the darkening sky, and then she turned inland at a sunken mooring post, its base in deep water, green with seaweed. She crossed the foreshore, her boots crunching on a drift of tiny shells, and mounted the bank to the Priory sea meadow. She lifted her gaze from the uneven steps and saw him at once. He was waiting in the shade of a hayrick, hidden from the Priory windows, facing the sea path, looking for her.
Without a word, she went into his arms and they clung to each other.
“Alinor,” was all he said, and then he kissed her.
Alinor leaned back against the hayrick, her knees weakening beneath her as if she might fall to the ground. She made a little movement and he released her. “Not here,” was all she said.
“Not here. Will you come to the Priory?”
“I don’t dare.”
“Can we go to your cottage?”
“Alys is at home.”
He was silent. “Is there nowhere we can go? You know the woods, the mire, the little pathways?”
“I couldn’t lie with you on the mire.” She gave a little shudder and at once he put his arms around her and drew his cape around her. “Not with the tide high,” she said. “It’d be like drowning. Could we go to the chapel? We could sit in the porch?”
He shook his head. “I have lost my faith, but that would be too much. I couldn’t—forgive me, my love—I can’t.”
“Of course,” she said, and thought what a loose slut he must think her to even suggest it. “I didn’t mean . . .”
“I want you so much I think my heart will stop,” he said. “Anywhere, anywhere!”
“I don’t think there is anywhere for us,” she said quietly, and then she was struck by the words. “Oh, it’s true. D’you see? There’s nowhere for us, not on Sealsea Island, not in all the tidelands, not in the world.”
“There must be!”
“And besides, aren’t we here to say good-bye?”
“I can’t bear to say good-bye to you in this meadow again!”
“Last time you came back, as you had promised,” she reminded him shyly.
“Last time I was ordered to come back. Next time, I will come back a free man. I will come back for you.”
“I don’t think that can ever be.”
“It will. I will be freed of my vows. I will go and see my parents, I will buy back our house in Yorkshire, and I will come for you.”
Her hands twisted in his and she tried to pull away. “You know—”
“No, listen to me. I can confess my sins and be released from the priesthood.” He tightened his grip as she shook her head. “That is my choice. It is what I want.”
“But you were risking your life for your faith! You told me that it came before everything.”
“I did. But that was before Newport. My love, I failed in my mission and I lost my faith. I lost my faith in everything: king and God. I will leave the priesthood whatever happens, and I will never again come to England as a spy. I will not serve the king again—God bless him and may he have better servants than I. I have failed him and I cannot bear to fail again. That part of my life is over.”
“Even so . . .”
“Alinor, I won’t change my mind. I have lost my faith, I have lost everything. I can’t tell you, but there is a darkness where once there was a burning light. The only thing I care about now is you.”
“Oh, my love,” she whispered. “That’s not how to choose a wife.”
“But the thing that you don’t know and that I have just learned—it is good news—you will be free of your husband. I will never say that I saw him. Robert must be silent, too. I’ve told Walter. In six years, if nobody sees him, and nobody tells the parish that they saw him, then your marriage is dissolved as if it never was. He passes for dead and you are a single woman.”
She had not known this. She raised her eyes, clouded with doubt. “Is this true? Really? Can it be true? Six years and I am free?”
“It’s seven years by law, and the first year has nearly passed.”