Tidelands

The minister recited the closing prayer and reminded them: there was to be no play in the churchyard, there were no Sunday feasts or sports anymore. The Sabbath was to be holy now, and holy was quiet and reflective—not church ales and dancing at saints’ days. Ill behavior by any parishioner was to be reported to the church wardens. Women especially must be obedient and quiet. A godly victory demanded a godly people. They were all soldiers in the New Model Army now, they were all marching in step to the promised land.

As they filed out, sluggish with boredom, Mr. Tudeley, the steward, was standing behind Sir William at the lych-gate, naming the tenants as they went past dropping their bows and curtseys. Alinor waited her turn, her children behind her. As a deserted wife living on the very edge of the mire, on the very brink of poverty, she came behind nearly everyone. She curtseyed to the lord and to his steward in silence. His lordship looked her up and down unsmiling, nodded, and turned away, but Mr. Tudeley beckoned her with a crooked finger.

“Sir William is to appoint a chaplain to serve in his private chapel and teach his son,” he told her.

Alinor kept her eyes on the ground, saying nothing.

“Your boy is the same age as Master Walter Peachey, isn’t he?”

“A bit younger,” she said, moving her hand to indicate her son standing stock-still behind her.

“What work does he do, besides helping you with the herbs?”

She answered him calmly, hiding her surprise at the sudden interest in Rob. “He goes to school in the mornings, and after school he works at Mill Farm: crow-scaring and weeding. He’s a clever boy. He can read and write. He will come with me next week to the Priory stillroom, as you ordered, and it’ll be him who writes the labels on the bottles. He knows the names of the herbs in English and Latin and he writes fair.”

“Ever in trouble?”

Alinor shook her head.

“He will serve in the household,” Mr. Tudeley announced. “He will take lessons with Master Walter, and be his servant of the body, and his companion here at the Priory until Master Walter goes to Cambridge. He will be paid fifteen shillings a quarter, five shillings in advance.”

Alinor could hardly breathe.

“The tutor requested a companion for Master Walter,” he went on urbanely. “I suggested your boy. This comes to you as a favor from his lordship, to help you since your husband is missing. This is what it is to serve a good lord. Remember it.”

She dropped a deep curtsey. “I’m very grateful.”

He gave her a hard look. “If anyone asks, you will tell them that his lordship is generous to poor tenants.”

She dipped a curtsey again. “Yes, sir. I know, sir.”

She turned and walked to the lych-gate with Alys on one side of her, Rob on the other. The two women, mother and daughter, kept their eyes on the ground, and their white-capped heads bowed, the picture of submissive obedience.

“He doesn’t know about the rabbit then,” Alys said with satisfaction.

TIDELANDS, JULY 1648

Rob did not have clothes fit to wear to the Priory and stubbornly resisted the preparations, saying that he did not want to go into service with the Peachey son and heir. He said that he did not know him, that they would not be able to play together, for how could a son of the Peachey family wrestle with the son of a fisherman, or race frogs? But when his mother told him of the food he would eat in the great hall, of the five shillings that would come to them at once, and that it would pay the next quarter’s rent, buy the family a boat, and pull them out of the poverty that always yawned before them like the trough of a drowning wave, he stopped complaining and went to the ferry-house after dinner to borrow a jacket that had once belonged to Alinor’s father, and a pair of Ned’s old boots.

Ned walked back with his nephew at low tide, his dog, a water dog with a bright rufous coat, trotting at his heels.

“Sister,” he said brushing Alinor’s forehead with his lips.

“Brother,” she replied.

She poured him a mug of small ale and he drank it sitting on the bench at the doorway with his back against the cottage wall, overlooking the harbor, his dog, Red, sitting at his feet, looking longingly at the hens as they pecked along the scum at the low waterline.

“I brought you one of those little tokens that you like so much.” He dug into the pocket of his jacket, bringing out a tiny metal disc, snipped into shapelessness and tarnished black.

“Oh, thank you, Ned,” she said with pleasure. “Where did you find it?”

“In the dipping pond behind the house. It’s been so wet, I think it must’ve washed out of the ditch. It caught my eye. How would anyone lose a coin beside a pond?”

“So long ago,” she said, turning the little token over in her hand. “It makes you wonder what they were doing there, doesn’t it? So many years ago. Standing there, with this coin in her hand. Perhaps she threw it in for a wish.”