Tidelands

“Is that right?” Mr. Miller asked suddenly. “A shilling, for a day’s work when you’ve done everything on the farm today?”

“It’s right,” Alinor said stiffly. She could have added—but hardly generous for a girl getting married tomorrow—but she would not say a word. Rob beside her stiffened, and she put her hand under his arm and gave it a little squeeze.

“It’s not right,” Mr. Miller said with the resentful persistence of a slightly drunken man. “Here! Betty Miller! You come out here!”

“Really,” Alinor said. “It’s right, Mr. Miller. Shilling a day, for the whole day, because we stopped at sunset.” She gave Rob a little push towards the yard gate.

Mrs. Miller came bustling out of her kitchen door. “And who’s shouting me out like I was a milkmaid?” she demanded.

Rob nodded to Mr. Miller. “Thank you for the lift in the wagon, Mr. Miller,” he said. “Good evening to you, Mrs. Miller.” Tactfully, he went to the yard gate and waited for his mother out of earshot as Mrs. Miller surged out and stood, hands on hips, glaring at her husband and Alinor.

“What’s this?” she demanded.

Alinor shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Really, nothing.”

“You’ve underpaid the Reekies,” Mr. Miller said mulishly. “Mother and the maid.”

“Sixpence each, as I always have done.”

“Sole charge!” he said, like a man who has discovered a password. “Sole charge. They had sole charge of the farm today, so that makes them like a yard man. Or like a bailiff. Sole charge. Good as a man. Good as two men.”

“You want to pay a woman and a maid as much as two yard men?” Mrs. Miller demanded scathingly.

“No,” he said, “course not. But they should have . . . and the pretty maid is getting married . . .”

Alinor noted the fatal slip of calling Alys “pretty” to his slate-faced wife.

“Who pays them?” Mrs. Miller suddenly demanded of him, going close and taking him by his linen collar as if she would choke him.

“Why, you do?”

“And who watches them, and keeps them right and clears up after their mistakes, and all the mess they make?”

Alinor let her gaze slip away from Mr. Miller’s crestfallen face to the creamy rosy sky over the harbor, glanced towards her son, Rob, waiting at the gate and wished herself home, with her children at the dinner table.

“You do,” Mr. Miller said sulkily.

“So, I think it’s best left to me and them, isn’t it? Without any man coming in and wanting extra payment for ‘pretty’?”

Mr. Miller had been defeated twenty years ago by the iron determination and chronic bad temper of his wife. “I was just saying—”

“Best not to say anything,” Mrs. Miller advised him smartly.

“Feeding the horse,” he said, as if to himself, and turned towards the stable.

“And we have to go,” Alinor said smoothly.

“Old fool that he is,” Mrs. Miller said.

“Good night, Mrs. Miller. We’ll see you tomorrow at church,” Alinor said.

“Good night, Mrs. Reekie,” she replied, recovering her temper now that she had won. “And God bless you tomorrow, Alys.”

Alinor and her two children walked down the track to the ferry crossing, where Rob ran ahead like a boy to ring the chime.

TIDELANDS, FEBRUARY 1649

The wedding was to be simple. Alys and Richard would be married before the usual Sunday morning congregation at St. Wilfrid’s Church, Alys in her best gown with her new white apron and new white linen cap. Richard would wear his best jacket, and Ned would lead the bride to the altar. The service would follow the new style as ordered by parliament: Richard would make brief promises, and Alys would assent to her own vows. After the wedding in St. Wilfrid’s, they would all cross the rife, take a goodwill drink at the tide mill, and then go on to Stoney Farm for the wedding feast. There would be good food, and healths drunk, and finally the young people would go to bed in the big bedroom under the thatched eaves.

Alys did not sleep until the crowing cock from the barn told her that the night was nearly over, and then she turned on her side, sighed with anticipation, and slept deeply.

The morning of her wedding day was freezing cold but clear, the ice on the harbor so white that the seagulls whirling above it were bright against the blue sky and then invisible against the blanched landscape. Alys, waking late and tumbling down the stairs to eat gruel at the kitchen table, swore that she would not wear her cape but would go into church in her gown and new apron and cap.

“You’ll freeze,” said her mother. “You have to wear your cape, Alys.”

“Let her freeze,” Ned advised. “It’s her wedding day.”

Alinor granted the one liberty that Alys had set her heart on. “Oh, very well. But this is what comes of a winter wedding. And no flowers to be had but a posy of dried herbs!”

“As long as I can wear my new pinny,” Alys stipulated.

“Oh, wear it!” Alinor said. “But you’ll put your cape on when you’re going home in the wagon to Stoney Farm.”

“I will! I will!”

Rob came down the stair from the loft, wearing his new work jacket and the Christmas shoes.