Tidelands

The service was long, the sermon unending. Alinor and Alys, on the hard benches of the gallery at the back of the church, kept their heads down and hid all signs of impatience. From the shelter of the wings of her cap, Alinor glanced down only once from her seat in the gallery to the Peachey pew and saw James’s head bowed low, his hands clasped before him. He was either in deep prayer, or in the posture of a man enacting godly piety while his head was filled with heretical and dangerous thoughts. She did not even wonder which was the case. She felt that he had gone far from her, as if he had already set sail to an unknown destination, to take part in a secret plot. He had told her—and she had believed him—that his cause was more important than their newly discovered desire. Alinor, abandoned by her husband, was familiar with rejection, accustomed to coming in second place, third place, last place. She bowed her head and prayed for the pain to pass.

At the end of the sermon, while the more devout of the congregation exclaimed “Praise Be!” and “Thanks be to God!,” the minister stepped forward towards the Peachey pew, waited for Sir William to rise to his feet, and from that moral high ground, the two of them turned to scold the congregation, one of them representing the temporal powers, the other, spiritual authority.

“And on this Sabbath day, which the Lord has demanded that we keep holy, we have to call a sister to the altar and remonstrate with her,” the minister said. “It is our duty, and the order of the church court.”

Alys turned one swift sideways glance on her mother. Alinor showed her ignorance with widened eyes. Both of them stiffened and waited for what was coming next, wondering who would be named as guilty.

“A woman who has been the complaint of her neighbors, whose own husband has said that he cannot rule her,” the minister intoned. “Her trade has been uproar and some allege that she has been unchaste. Who gave evidence against her at the church court?”

“I did.” Mrs. Miller stood up from the middle of the church, where the prosperous tenants had their seats, her daughter and little boy either side of her.

“Course she did,” Alys breathed to her mother. “She’s got a bad word foreverybody.”

“Mrs. Miller, of the tide mill,” she announced unnecessarily to the neighbors who had known her from childhood.

“And what did you allege before this court?” the minister asked her. “Briefly,” he reminded her. Everyone knew that Mrs. Miller, once started, was hard to halt.

“I said that I had seen her at gleaning go behind a hedge with a man of this parish and come out with her dress disordered and her hair down.”

There was a mutter of speculation around the church as to who might be the “man of this parish,” but clearly his identity was going to be kept secret. The sinful woman would be denounced, her partner would maintain his reputation. Besides, it was hardly a sin for a man; it was his nature.

“And before that,” Mrs. Miller continued, “she traduced her husband, calling him an old fool, and on market day at Sealsea market she took his purse from him and gave him a buffet and told him that she would learn him.”

“Did anyone else speak against her in court?” Sir William asked.

“I did.” One of the Sealsea Island farmers’ wives stood up. “She came to my house on my night for spinning with my friends, and she called me a doting fool for letting my husband keep my money from my spinning. She slapped my face and she pulled off my cap when I said that her child was not of her husband’s begetting, which everybody knows.”

“I spoke against her, sir.” The Peachey cook, Mrs. Wheatley, rose to her feet from behind the Peachey seats. “She came to the Priory door and she was four eggs short of her tithe, and she said if there was no king, and no bishop, then there was no lord either, and she need pay no tithes and you could do without your eggs.”

“And then there was the ride,” a voice called out from the back of the church, from where the poor tenants stood. “Don’t forget that!”

“There was a skimmington ride,” Mrs. Miller explained to Sir William. “The boys rode a donkey backwards, past her house, with a lad wearing a petticoat over his head, to show that she was unchaste and a disgrace to our village.”

Sir William looked so grave that anyone could have believed that he did not keep an expensive mistress in rooms near the Haymarket in London. “Very bad,” he said.

“And so the church court sentenced her to stand before this congregation in her shift holding a lighted taper to show her repentance for the rest of this day till sunset,” the minister said rapidly, bringing the summary of the trial to an end and moving to sentence.