Tidelands

He shivered with distaste. He felt that he could not bear the ugliness of these people’s lives on the very edge of the shore, with their loves and hates ebbing and flowing like a muddy tide, with their anger roaring like the water in the millrace, with their hatreds and fears as treacherous as the hushing well. That Zachary might have raped his sister-in-law, or seduced her, that he bedded his own wife without her consent, that her brother tolerated this, and instead of putting it right, went away to fight against the king, that Alinor’s own husband denied fathering her children! James’s shudder told him that he wanted nothing to do with any of them. He wished himself back with his own people, where cruelty was secret, violence was hidden, and good manners more important than crime.

Tentatively, he reached out to her; he wanted her to be the lover of his feverish dream, not the woman who struggled in this sordid world. “I believe in you. I believe in you, Alinor.”

The face she turned to him was warm and trusting, her eyes brimming with tears. “You can,” she said simply, and he felt that he was falling into the deepest sin as he kissed her soft mouth and her wet eyelashes as they rested on her cheeks.

After that, they kept to their promise not to think of the world outside the stable loft; not to think of tomorrow; but at dawn, making love even before they were fully awake, when her eyelids fluttered open in pleasure, she saw the dim light at the window and she said quietly, sorrowfully, “Ah, my love, it’s morning.”

“Not yet,” he said, moving slowly above her. “That’s moonlight.”

“No. It’s dawn. And I have to go back to my home today, and we have to tell Sir William that you are well.”

He rested his head on her shoulder as he moved within her. “I can’t bear it.”

“Can’t bear the pleasure or can’t bear the parting?”

“Both. Can’t we say that I am still ill? Can’t we take another day? Alinor, my love, can’t we steal another day together?”

“No. You know we can’t. Neither of us can come under suspicion.”

“I won’t let you go.”

She raised herself up to his kiss and her rich hair tumbled back from her face. “Let me kiss you once,” she said, “and then I’ll get up and get dressed.”

He wanted to hold her, but she shook her head and he rolled away and lay back, gripping his hands behind his head so that he should not snatch at her, as she leaned over him and kissed him passionately on the mouth and then rested her forehead on his chest, inhaling the scent of him as if he were a rose beneath her lips. Then she peeled herself off him, as if she were shedding her own skin, and turned away, to pull her linen shift over her head so that the stiff fabric fell, concealing her.

“I can’t do this,” he said quietly. “I really can’t be parted from you.”

She said nothing, but stepped into her skirt and tied the laces at her waist with meticulous care, and then sat on a bench at the side of the room to pull on her woolen hose.

“Alinor,” he breathed.

“Let me dress!” Her voice was choked. “I can’t dress and speak. I can’t hear your voice and think. Let me dress.”

He sat up in the bed in silence while she twisted her hair into a knot at the back of her head and pulled on her white cap, crumpled as it was. When she turned to him she was, once again, the respectable midwife of Sealsea Island; and the tranced lover of the night was hidden under the shapeless bulky clothes.

“Now you,” she said.

He started towards her and she put out her hand to fend him off. “Don’t touch me,” she begged him. “Just get dressed.”

He pulled on his linen shirt. For the first time in his life he noticed what fine linen he wore, and he thought that the first thing he would do, as soon as he was well, would be to go to Chichester and buy her some beautiful shifts, as smooth as her flawless skin. He pulled on his hose, heaved up his breeches, stamped his feet into his riding boots, and turned to her.

“I’m dressed,” he said. “Are you satisfied?”

Her dark eyes in her pale face were huge. “No,” she said quietly. “I am longing for you again, already. But we have to be ready to face the world and the day.”

He heard the echo of Zachary in the back of his mind: that she was a woman that no man could ever satisfy. He shook his head. “Where will you go?” he asked, as if she had anywhere to go but the poor fisherman’s cottage.

“Home.”

“I shall stay here for a few days and then I will have to go to London and then to my seminary,” he told her, trusting her with his secrets as he had trusted her with his sin. “But, Alinor, my love, it is all changed for me. I have lost my faith and failed in my mission. I have to go and tell them that, and I will have to confess, and then, I suppose, I shall have to leave. I will have to beg them to release me.”

She looked alarmed. “You have to confess? You have to speak of this?”

He grimaced. “These are mortal sins. I have broken so many of my vows. I have to confess. My loss of faith is worse than this, but I have to confess this too and face my punishment.”