Tidelands

His lordship put the cleaning cloth and the oil to one side, racked the gun, and sat back in his chair. He looked her up and down, and felt again the regret that she was a respectable woman and the sister of a pious man. “I tell you what, Goodwife, I’ll do it for you. He’s a good lad, a credit to you. He’s been a merry companion for Master Walter and you’ve been a great help to me and my house. Just now with the tutor falling sick . . . and I know about earlier.”

For a moment, she could not speak. “Your lordship!”

He nodded. “I’ll get Mr. Tudeley to arrange for him to go as an apprentice, an apprentice to an apothecary, so he can get a training and a trade. Chichester or perhaps Portsmouth, I suppose.”

She was breathless with shock.

“Aye,” he nodded, thinking again that she was a beautiful woman. If only Sealsea Island had not been such a center of gossip, and so damnably godly, he might have brought her into his household, called her a housekeeper, and used her as his whore.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t accept. I can’t afford even the clothes he would need,” she said. “I don’t have the savings—”

“Tudeley will take care of that,” he said, waving away her objection. “How’s that? We’ll give him a suit of clothes, and buy him his apprenticeship as payment for your . . . help. How’s that?”

Her face lit up. “You would do that?”

His lordship thought that he would do much, much more, if she were willing. But he merely nodded.

“He’ll be so glad. I know he’ll work hard.” She stumbled over her thanks. “We’ll owe you a debt of gratitude . . . forever . . . I can’t thank you—”

“I’ll get it done,” Sir William concluded. “These are difficult times for all of us, you know.”

She nodded earnestly, wondering what he meant now.

“Dangerous times for some.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I suppose in his fever, the tutor didn’t speak out at all?”

Alinor checked her breathless thanks and stole a quick look at her landlord from under the brim of her white cap, knowing that this question was the most important moment in the whole of this interview.

“Speak out? Sir?”

“In his fever. Men say odd things when their minds are affected by illness, don’t they? He didn’t say anything, did he? Anything that I’d not want widely known? Or known at all? Anything that I wouldn’t want repeated? Not even here?”

“He didn’t say anything that I heard.” She picked her words with care, knowing that this was important, feeling perilously ill prepared to deal with a powerful man like her landlord. “Sir, people in fever often say fanciful things, things they wouldn’t say in waking life. I never take notice, never repeat them. I wouldn’t speak of things that I see and hear in the sickroom. Being deaf is part of the craft. Being dumb is part of being a woman. I don’t want any trouble. The day I spent nursing him, I won’t speak of, not to anyone.”

He nodded, measuring her reliability. “Not to your brother, eh?”

She met his gaze with complete comprehension. “Especially not him,” she confirmed.

“Then we understand each other. You can consider your son apprenticed to a Chichester apothecary.”

She bowed her head and clasped her hands. “I thank you, sir,” she said simply.

He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a handful of shillings. He made them into a little tower and slid them across the table to her.

“Your wages for nursing him. Ten shillings a day. There’s a pound. And my thanks.”

She picked them up with a little nod and put them into her apron pocket. “Thank you.”

He got up and came around the table. She stood before him and he put a hand on her arm. “You could come back tonight?” he said, unable to resist, looking down the front of her linen shift at the curve of her breast. “To visit me.”

He tightened his grip and drew her towards him, but to his surprise she did not move. She did not yield to him; but nor did she shrink back. She was as steady as if she were rooted to the spot.

“You know I can’t do that, sir,” she said simply. “If I did that, I couldn’t take my pay: it’d be whore’s gold. I couldn’t hold up my head, I couldn’t let you be a patron to Rob. I wouldn’t think of myself a good tenant to a good lord. I don’t want that.”

His grip felt weak, as if his fingers were powerless with cold. Still, she stood her ground, as if she were growing there, like a hawthorn tree, and he could not draw her closer. She stood like a stone, and looked at him coolly with a dark confident gaze until he felt awkward and stupid, and remembered the rumor that she could freeze a man’s cock with a look.

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose so.”

There was a little silence. She did not seem shocked; she was neither flattered nor fearful. She stood, waiting for him to take his hand off her arm, and let her go. He supposed that men desired her all the time and that she regarded a touch at her breast, a grab at her waist, as a regular inconvenience, like rain.