Tidelands

“Damn her to the deep! She left me!” Zachary exclaimed. “I may have been the one that was pulled out of the alehouse and thrown into the navy, but it was her who left me, years before that. She unmanned me; she can do it with a look. I could do nothing in her presence. I grabbed her once and was going to force her, but my hand went weak and my blood went like ice. I was going to make her do her duty by me—you know what I mean, a man has rights over his wife, whether she was willing or not—but I couldn’t. She looked at me with eyes like a curse, and I went as soft as a dead fish. I swear to you, she was killing me. I could do nothing with her: not beat her nor swive her. She was killing me from the cock up.”

“She was?”

“She drained me of life, I tell you. I could be no husband to her, and when I went with some drab I couldn’t do the act there either, for thinking of her. What is that but a curse on me? And after her mother died, it got worse. I thought that when her mother died her power would go, but it was as if she added the old witch’s power to her own. I was a baby in my own house. More of a baby than Rob, less of a voice than Alys. The press gang took me away, but by God I was glad to go!”

“Would you ever come back?” James asked.

“Never! Never! I’d rather die than go back to her. I’d rather drown. She’s a whore, I tell you. A whore to faerie folk. She’s a witch, I tell you. She can make a child without a man; she can prevent a child despite a man. She can kill a child in the womb and blast a man’s cock with one icy breath.”

“Dear God, what are you saying?” James could no longer hide his fear at the man’s words—the worst things a man could hear: a woman that could shrink his potency, kill his children. “I know her! This isn’t possible for a woman like her. It isn’t possible for any mortal woman!”

“You can say that, Priest,” the man said, his voice low. “You can say that who has never seen her naked, who has never touched her warm skin, who has never longed for her. But the taste of her mouth is like drinking henbane—she makes you thirsty for more and more, and then she drives you mad.”

“I’m no priest,” James said, quickly, ignoring what Alinor’s husband said about the woman he loved.

Zachary’s lip curled. “As you wish,” he said coldly. “But something stinks of incense here and it’s not me.”

There was a silence between the two men.

“Anyway,” James said, trying to recover his authority, trying to banish the image of Alinor whoring to a faerie lord, “I have no time for this nonsense. I am offering you a voyage or arrest. Which will it be?”

“Twenty crowns to take the trade out, to a meeting of your saying. Twenty crowns to bring you back?”

“Yes,” James said.

“And we never speak of this again, and you take that boy back to her and tell her that you never saw me?”

“I can’t make him lie, but I can make up some excuse.”

“So that she does not look for me?”

“She would not come looking for you.”

“She has the sight, fool. She can see me if she pleases, unless there is the deep sea between us. She cannot see me through deep water, I know that. She’s afraid of deep water because she has no power over it. But if I ever sail into Tidelands again the mire will boil beneath my keel and throw me up like sea wrack before her door, and she will destroy me with one look.”

“You speak like a madman.”

“What d’you think killed her sister-in-law?” the man suddenly demanded.

“What?” James was thrown off course again. “What sister-in-law?”

“See how little you know her?” He turned and shouted over his shoulder for another drink. The landlord brought it in silence, and silently James waited for him to pour, and for Zachary to take a thoughtful swig.

“Go on,” James said through his teeth.

“So you don’t know that either! Her sister-in-law. Ned’s wife. Her that she didn’t like. What killed her, d’you know?”

“I didn’t even know . . .”

“Exactly. You know nothing. She struck her dead from jealousy. So the poor mortal woman would not bear the child in her womb.”

“She would never do such a thing.”

“She did. I know it. For it was my child.”

“You put Edward Ferryman’s wife with child?”

“Yes, and my wife killed it, for spite.”

There was a long silence. Zachary drained his mug and pushed it towards James, hoping for more.

James took a shuddering breath against these horrors, casually asserted. “Stop this slander. It means nothing to me. I don’t know these people, and I don’t care about them. We are here to make an agreement: that you will sail for me.”

“You’re here for an agreement. I’m here for drink.”

James nodded over his shoulder to the landlord to pour another draft. “Will you sail for me or not?” he demanded, his voice very low.

“I will.”

“And if I agree to tell her that you will never return, do you swear that you will not?”

“Willingly. Didn’t you hear me? I’ll never go back to her.”

Zachary stuck out a dirty hand. Reluctantly, James shook it. When the warm palm with the old scars pressed against his own, he was reminded with a shock of Alinor’s skin.