Tidelands

“And how fine d’you look, lad?” Ned asked, slapping him on the back. “This is a proud day for the Ferrymans.”

The children did not mention their father’s name, and Alinor, tightening her cape around her broadening waist, thought that if she had not needed a name for her baby she might never have heard the words Zachary Reekie again.

“All right, Ma?” Rob asked gently.

She smiled at him. “I’m fine.”

“She’s missing Alys before we’re rid of her,” Ned advised, but Rob’s brown eyes were fixed on his mother’s pale face.

“Are you really all right?”

Alinor held her breath. From childhood, Rob had been able to see beyond the surface of things, to illness and sorrow. She wondered if he could see her heartbreak, she wondered if he could sense her baby, his half brother.

She shook her head and smiled. “It’s as your uncle says,” she lied. “I’m seeing you and Alys out the house, both of you, in the same week and I feel like a broody hen with all her eggs stolen.”

“I’ll be working at the mill with you tomorrow,” Alys pointed out. “You’ll see me at first light. And Rob’ll be home at Lady Day.”

“I know, I know,” Alinor said. “And I couldn’t be happier for both of you. Come along now, Rob, and eat some breakfast. Alys, have you had anything?”

“I can’t,” she said at once. “I’ve no appetite.”

“Don’t you go fainting away at the altar for hunger,” Ned warned her.

“Take some small ale and a little bread,” Alinor urged her. “And I have eggs as well.”

Alys sat at the table as she was ordered, her uncle on one hand and her brother on another, and smiled up at her mother. “My last breakfast here,” she said. “My last breakfast as Alys Reekie.”

“Stop it,” Ned advised swiftly. “Or you’ll set your mother off again.”

Mr. Stoney, his wife, and son in their wagon rang the chime for the ferry just as the family was finishing breakfast, and Ned went out to bring them across the high water. Once they were on the island side Alinor rolled out the barrels of wedding ale for them, and the two men loaded them into the wagon. Alinor had two big wheels of cheese and two loaves of bread baked in the big oven at the mill.

“And are you ready?” Mr. Stoney asked Alys. “All your little things packed up?”

“I’m ready, I’m ready!” she said breathlessly.

Richard jumped down from the back of the wagon, his face pink with cold and shyness. He took her hands and kissed each one, and then he kissed her on the lips.

Mrs. Stoney climbed down from the seat at the front of the wagon and Alys curtseyed and kissed her mother-in-law, and as the adults greeted each other, she slid her hand in Richard Stoney’s warm grip.

“I’ll get her things,” Ned said to Alinor. “Are they all ready?”

Alinor and Ned went into the house and brought out a small pile of good linen, the best that Ferry-house had, and a knapsack of Alys’s personal goods. Mrs. Stoney’s eyes flickered over the little bag, but she said nothing. Richard gave Alinor his hand to help her into the back of the cart and lifted Alys in.

“We’ll walk over the mire,” Ned said for him and Rob. “See you at the church door!”

“Don’t delay!” Alys warned him. “Don’t get your shoes muddy—go round by the bank!”

“I shan’t be stolen by mermaids,” Rob teased her. “We’ll get there before you do!”

Mr. Stoney clicked to his pair of horses and they headed south as Ned put the cover over the fire, shut the back door, and walked with Rob on the little paths across the flooded harbor to church.

The whole parish turned out to witness the wedding of the pretty Reekie girl to the wealthy farmer’s son, many of them glad to see Alinor’s daughter doing so well, a few murmuring that it was a shame she was going off the island. Ned was known to everyone in Sealsea Island because of his long service on the ferry, and his father before him, and most of the women had consulted Alinor for their health or for the delivery of a baby. The marriage was an extraordinary upward leap for the family who had worked the ferry on the island for as long as anyone could remember, but everyone conceded that if any girl was likely to marry well for her looks, that would be Alys.

There were a lot of comments about Rob as he took his place in the men’s pews at the back. Some people who had seen him in the summer processing to the front of the church with the Peacheys were glad to see him returned to a lowly place. But the young people, especially the young women, remarked on the difference between Rob their former playmate, son of the missing fisherman Zachary Reekie, and this new Rob, with his command of Latin, his apprenticeship in Chichester, and his well-cut jacket.