Tidelands

Alinor flushed a little. “Ah, Ned, you know I only know my trade. I think midwives should be licensed, and women should be churched after their confinement. For the rest—how would I know?”

James had a sudden sharp memory of his mother’s astute vision, which had guided their family through years of change; she knew the world as well as her husband, and could calculate political advantage quicker than any man.

“Are you in favor of petticoat government?” James asked Ned, trying to smile.

“I’d rather be ruled by good-hearted women than by all the cavaliers who will be turning their collars, and flocking back to their houses, now they’ve lost.”

James flushed with anger. “I can’t agree with you,” he said shortly. “I think we’ll have to differ.”

Ned rose from the table. “Have done,” he advised James. “It’s as I thought. You’re what I thought. If you weren’t on cavalier business, or papist business, it was secret business and bad business. As for me, I don’t care what you did, as long as you cease doing it now.”

“Mr. Summer was my tutor,” Rob spoke up for him. “I’d not have had a chance at an apprenticeship without his teaching.”

Ned nodded, and put his hand on the seated boy’s shoulder. “I know. I know he did well by you.” He paused. “I’m going to bed,” he said. “Some of us have to work early in the morning. And this lad has to start at Chichester tomorrow morning, and that’s a great beginning for him. He should be early to bed and early to rise.”

“Yes.” James got to his feet. “I’m going. I just came for some herbs, for fever. I’m sorry we can’t agree.”

“I’ll see you out,” Alinor said, quickly going to the front door. “I’ll walk you round to the road.”

“Don’t let him fall in the rife and drown,” Ned remarked with such a bitter smile that his words seemed more of a threat than a joke. “That’d be a loss to the future government. Good night, Mr. Summer. Or will you go by another name when you take up your lands? Was that ever your name at all?”

James turned back towards Ned and stretched out his hand. “I will have another name, and I am sorry to have sailed under false colors with you. I lost my faith some time ago, and we were both a witness to the death of my king. I have been waiting to make my peace with all my countrymen and with you. I hope you will, one day, forgive me for my sins as I forgive those you have done unto me.”

Ned was surprised into taking the man’s hand and shaking it. “Aye, very well,” he said. “And no false dealing in future?”

“None,” James said. “The war is over for both of us, and for the king.”

“Aye,” Ned said with quiet satisfaction. “It’s surely over for him.”

Alinor was waiting at the front door with a shawl over her head. “I’ll shut up the hens,” she called back to the firelit room.

As they stepped out into the still cold air James could see the pale outline of her face and her dark eyes in the light of the sickle moon. He thought that he had never seen anything more beautiful in his life than this woman in this bleached and blackened landscape, with the harbor water shining like a sheet of pewter behind her, and the sliver of an ice-white moon in the sky above her.

“Aren’t you cold?” he asked, and put his arms around her as if he would straighten her shawl, but found himself holding her, as easily and naturally as if they had never been parted. She came into his arms but at once he felt a difference in her. Through the layers of homespun he could feel her body but it was strange to him. Something about her touch horrified him, as if she was a shape-changer in a frightening story, and he flinched, stepped back, and looked at her. He saw that the pallor of her face was not just moonlight.

“J-James,” she said, stumbling over his name.

“My love?”

“You came back for me?”

“As I promised, the minute that I could.”

She sighed, and he realized she had been holding her breath from the moment he had stepped over the threshold. Her anxiety only alarmed him more. He glanced back at the darkened doorway, and she took him by the hand and led him around the corner of the house and through a gate into the vegetable garden that ran alongside the deserted road.

“I have to tell you something,” she said.

At the sound of her voice, the hens, warm in their house, clucked sleepily to her. She bent, and latched the door of their house, bolting it at the top and at the bottom.

“I have to tell you something first,” he said rapidly. “I met with my parents, with my mother and my father. I told them of you. I told them that I will pay my fine to parliament and regain our house. I will take you there, and in six years’ time, when you are declared a widow, we will marry.”

He saw her blanched lips tremble and he was afraid that she was about to argue. But, to his surprise, she consented at once: “Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes, I will marry you and live wherever you wish. Yes. And I have something to tell you.”

“You will come with me?” He could hardly believe her words.

“I will. But I have to—”

“My love! My love! You will come with me!”