Tidelands

“Well, you’ll pay me the forty crowns for my silence,” he observed.

“Twenty,” James said flatly. He took the purse from his pocket and tossed it over. Zachary caught it neatly, and it disappeared into the folds of his tattered jacket. “So you failed,” he said spitefully. “Your mission was a failure and so are you.”

“I failed,” James said. “But no one the wiser, and no harm done.”

“But I am wiser. I know of you and where you came from. Who you came from. Where you live. I think you’ll find that is harm done.”

“You know,” James agreed. “But I know of you, so we are equal in that. Will you come to have breakfast at the inn and see your boy this morning?”

Zachary shook his head. “Not I.”

“What am I to tell him?”

“Tell him I went out last night and drowned.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Then tell him whatever lie you can stoop to. For clearly you are not wedded to truth. You have broken your vows and you lie to those who trust you. You lie to your hosts and to their servants. If you have a lover, and I think we both know her name . . .” he paused and leered at the thought of Alinor, “. . . then, for sure, you lie to her, for she’s no royalist. She can’t be faithful to any cause or mortal man. You’re no better than me. In fact, you’re worse than me, for I ran for my life from a witch, but you are running back to her. And she will eat your lying soul and steal your child.”

“I am not running back to her!”

“Then you’re lying to yourself as well.”

“And there is no child.”

“There will be if she wants one.”

James paused and gritted his teeth on hatred. “I will not help her to find you in any way, and I will tell your son that you took a message for me and have not yet come back.”

Zachary nodded indifferently. “I sail on the morning tide anyway,” he said. “I’ll be gone for days, weeks. If the boy comes looking for me, he won’t find me.”

“Good-bye,” James said shortly.

“Godspeed, Priest,” Zachary said, getting a threat into the last word as James turned and walked away.

James went through the day in a daze. The boys wanted to watch the king go to church, but James could not bear to see that mournful face again, so he sent them on their own and they came back full of excitement that the king had saluted the crowd of well-wishers, that someone had raised their voice against him, that some cavaliers had started a brawl, that the king had laughed and gone back to his house, then waved to the crowd from his window, and that everyone said that the parliament men were coming in the next week to give him his crown back.

“D’you want to ride over to Cowes?” James asked. He found that every minute in Newport was unbearable. “We could take a ship to Portsmouth from Cowes, and then hire horses to ride home.”

“Can we?” Walter was exuberant. He cuffed Rob around the head. “Say yes!”

“Yes! Yes!” Rob exclaimed. “But did you say my father was coming to breakfast? Can I see him before we go?”

“He took a message for me to Southampton and he’s not returned,” James lied smoothly. “He said that he might be delayed. We might see him at Cowes. We might not. But I am afraid that he’s not coming home to your mother, Robert. He said he wouldn’t come home. I am sorry.”

“But what is she to do?” Rob demanded. “What if he never comes home? She can’t live off the herbs and the midwifery. Did he say he would send money? And there is Alys to be provided for. She needs a dowry. Her father should give her a dowry, sir.”

James swallowed his own sense of despair. “I will talk to your mother,” he said. He knew that he longed to talk to her. “If we can get you an apprenticeship, then you will earn good wages. You could do well, Robert. You could be her support. If your sister marries well, then your mother can live more cheaply at home. She’s got the boat now; she can earn her own keep. She does not depend on your father. She is skilled, and when she can get work she is paid well.”

“The women won’t use a midwife who is neither a wife nor a widow,” Rob said, flushed to his ears. “They think it’s unlucky.”

“I didn’t know,” James said quietly, realizing how much he did not know about Alinor and her life. “Perhaps she could go and live inland, where people don’t know her, where she could pass as a widow?”

“Why can’t he come home, and make everything right?” The cry came from the boy as if it were wrested from him.

James could not meet his eyes. “These are troubles between a man and a wife,” he said lamely. “I am sorry for you and for your mother. But if your father will not do his duty, I cannot make him. Neither can you, Robert. It’s not your fault.”

“The church wardens would make him!”

“They would, but he won’t come back to face them.”

“She will be shamed,” the boy said bleakly. “And they will call me a bastard.”