Tidelands

The water in the harbor was low, the millpond brimming, gates gently bumping together, pushed shut by the dark weight of the water in the deep pond. As the weary women walked to the white-painted gate of the yard, one of the miller’s young men walked around the millpond wall, balanced like an acrobat on the top of the gates, the dark waters lapping below him. He shouted boldly: “Good night! See you tomorrow!” to Alys.

All signs of her fatigue fell away in a moment. She could have been a princess hearing a tribute. She did not answer him, but she inclined her head, smiled very slightly, and walked on. Alinor, watching her, saw her weary daughter transformed.

“Who was that?” Alinor asked, hurrying her steps to catch up.

“Who?”

“That young man?”

“Oh, I think that’s Farmer Stoney’s son, Richard,” she said.

“Farmer Stoney from Birdham?”

“Yes.”

“Handsome young man,” Alinor observed.

“I’ve never noticed,” Alys said with immense dignity.

“Quite right,” her mother replied with a hidden smile. “But I noticed, and I can tell you: he’s a very handsome young man. He’s the only son, isn’t he?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Alys exclaimed, and strode ahead of her mother along the track to the ferry, so that when Alinor came up, Alys was standing beside her uncle Ned in the ferry, one hand on the rope, waiting for her mother.

Alinor paused on the bank, as some of the other women and a few of the reapers hurried past her to take their place on the ferry to go to their homes on Sealsea Island. Alys went among them, collecting the copper coins and calling out the promises to pay to Ned. Only when the ferry was full and ready to go did Alinor go down the bank and take tight hold of the side of the craft, and she was first off at the other side. The women laughed at her. “She’d be no good as a barker for you!” they teased Ned. “Nobody would ever take your ferry if they saw your sister’s face!”

Alinor raised a hand at the old joke. “I’ll come to pick plums tomorrow before gleaning,” she said to Ned.

He nodded. “I’m always here,” he said. “The good lord knows that I am always here.”

Alys and Alinor went about their chores in the shadowy cottage in weary silence. Alys opened the door for the gently clucking hens and they hurried into their corner of the cottage to roost. Both women drank a cup of small ale, and then Alinor washed her face and hands in a bowl of water and Alys followed her, using the same water and throwing it out of the door on the lavender and marigold plants. She knelt before her mother as Alinor combed out her fair hair and then plaited it for the night, resting her hand on her daughter’s head for a blessing. Alys, still on her knees, turned towards the bed and said her prayers, burrowed in like a mole.

“Sweet dreams,” Alinor said gently, and saw her daughter’s hidden smile.

Alinor twisted her own thick locks in a knot and tucked them under her nightcap, laid her shirt and gown over her stool, and got into bed in her linen shift. They lay side by side in bed together.

“I’m as tired as a dog,” Alys remarked, and fell asleep at once, like a child.

Alinor lay silent, her eyes wide open in the darkness. Perhaps tomorrow he would come back. Or perhaps the day after. Then she too fell asleep.

Just after midnight she started up at the loud knocking on the door. Her first frightened thought was that her husband, Zachary, had come home and was pounding on the door in a drunken rage, as he used to do. Then, as she jumped from the bed and went to the door and shot the bolt, she thought, confused by sleep, that the war had started again and the soldiers for the army, or the cavalry of the king, were knocking down her door. Her last thought, as she threw the door open, was that it was James, come for her; but there, on the doorstep, was Farmer Johnson of Sealsea.

“Thank God you’re here. It’s Peg,” he said shortly. “You must come, Mrs. Reekie. Her time’s come early, I think. We need you at once. I came as fast as I could. Come now! Can you come now?”

At once her dreams and fears vanished. “Farmer Johnson.”

“I’ve got a pillion saddle on my horse waiting for us at Ferry-house. Come! Please come!”

“One moment.” She closed the door on him and in the darkness pulled on her skirt and jacket that were laid on the stool. She found her cap, and pulled it on.

“What is it?” Alys asked sleepily from the bed.

“Mrs. Johnson’s baby, come early,” Alinor said pushing her feet into her boots.

“D’you want me to come with you?”

“No, you go to work in the morning. If it all goes well—God willing—I’ll meet you at gleaning and harvest home. If I’m kept overnight, you stay at Ferry-house.”

Alys nodded in the darkness, turned over, and went back to sleep immediately. Alinor picked up her sack, a box of dried herbs and some bottles from the cupboard, and stepped out into the cool nighttime air. The tide was coming in, seeping over the mud and climbing the bank towards the cottage and the sleeping girl.

“Quickly,” said Farmer Johnson. “What’s the safest way?”