Tidelands

She went out through the side door that they used on rent days to make sure that it was unlocked for him, and back through the kitchen garden to pick up her pattens, and then, pushing her feet into the wooden shoe protectors, she walked through the gate and into the meadow. Anyone seeing her would think only that she was taking the most direct route back to her house at the far end of the harbor. Father James, watching from behind the haystack, saw her come out of the little wooden door in the flint wall, walking lightly, her head up, her apron tied around her waist, her skirt hushing on the cut grasses, releasing the scent of hay and dried meadow flowers. The moment he saw her, the easy grace of her stride, he knew that he was safe. No Judas could walk like that. She was as luminous as a saint in a stained-glass window.

“I’m here,” he said as she came around the stack of hay.

“You’re to go in,” she said breathlessly. “You’re safe. Through that door in the wall where I came out, and left through the kitchen garden. There’s a small door to the house—it’s black oak—at the side of the house on the left. You go in there. It’s unlocked. The steward’s room is just two steps down the corridor on the right. His window overlooks the kitchen garden. He’s waiting for you. His name is Mr. Tudeley.”

“He did not . . . he was not . . . you are not in his power now?”

She shook her head. “He paid me,” she said, trembling with relief, “for bringing you in. He’s on your side. And he paid for my silence. I’m richer by far for meeting you.”

He took both her hands. “And I, you,” he said.

For a moment they stood handclasped, and then he released her. “God bless you and help you to prosper,” he said formally. “I shall pray for you, and I shall send you money when I am back in France again.”

“You owe me nothing,” she said. “And Mr. Tudeley already gave me two shillings. A whole two shillings!”

He thought of his seminary, the gold plate on the altar, the glitter of diamonds and rubies on the shrines, the gold crucifix on the gold chain around his neck. Tonight, he would dine off silver and sleep on the finest linen while someone laundered his shirt and polished his boots. Tomorrow or the next day he would meet Sir William and they would hire a boat and bribe men with the fortune that he carried. Meanwhile this woman celebrated earning two shillings. “I will pray for you.” He hesitated. “Who shall I name in my prayers?”

She smiled. “I am Alinor. Alinor Reekie.”

He nodded. He could think of nothing to keep her, but he found he did not want to let her go. “I shall pray for you. And that you get your boat.”

“I might,” she said.

They spoke together and both broke off. “Will you ever . . . ?”

“If I come back here . . .”

“I don’t expect to come back here,” he admitted. “I have to go where I am sent.”

“I won’t look for you,” she assured him. “I know this is no place for you.”

“You are . . .” he started, but still there was nothing that he could say.

“What?” she asked. There was a slight blush on her neck just above the rough homespun gown.

“I didn’t know . . .” he began.

“What?” she asked softly. “What didn’t you know?”

“I did not know that there could be a woman like you, in a place like this.”

The smile started slowly, in her dark gray eyes and then her lips curved and the color rose in her cheeks.

“Good-bye,” she said abruptly, as if she did not want to hear another word after those, and she turned and went across the meadow towards the sea, where the tide was coming in, a dark line against a cloudy sky.

Elation at his words—“a woman like you, in a place like this”—lasted her for days, while she went about her work in the heat of the summer: weeding her garden, cutting herbs and drying them in the ferry-house stillroom, walking all the way to Sealsea village to see one of the farmers’ wives who was expecting her first child after the harvest. Her husband, Farmer Johnson, was well-to-do, owning his own lands as well as renting a share of the manor lands, and he gave Alinor a shilling in advance to visit his wife every Sunday, and promised her another shilling to attend the birth. She tied the two silver shillings in a rag and hid it under one of the stones of the hearth. “A woman like you, in a place like this” sang in her head through the long hours of summer daylight. She thought that when she had saved three shillings she would speak to her brother about buying a boat. “A woman like you, in a place like this.”

She repeated the words so often to herself that they came to lose their meaning. What was a woman “like her”? What was this place like, that her living here struck him as incongruous? Was there any sense that he meant the place was fine and she was not fit for it? But then she remembered his brown gaze on the neck of her gown, the warmth in his eyes, and she knew exactly what he meant and she felt the joy of his words over again.