Tidelands

Inside her cottage everything was just as she had left it, the embers of the fire on the hearth under an earthenware lid, the runes drawn in the ashes to prevent a spark, the children in the bed in one corner of the room, the pot of gruel by the fireplace with the lid clamped on, to keep it from rats, and the roosting hens in their corner, who clucked sleepily as the cool air, smelling of mud and brine, blew in with her.

She took a bucket from the fireside and went out, inland, along the shoreline where the high tide was lapping at the mud and the reeds. She climbed up the bank, and down the other side using rough-cut steps, to the deep freshwater dipping pond. She held on to a worn post to fill her bucket, then lugged the slopping load back to her own cottage. She poured a bowl of water and set it on the table, took off her cloak and washed her face and hands, using the homemade gray fatty soap, rubbing her fingers with particular care, painfully aware that the priest had held them to his lips and must have smelled the lifelong scent of fish, smoke, sweat, and dirt.

She dried her hands on a scrap of linen, and sat for a little while, staring out of the open door where the sky—pale throughout this white night—was getting brighter and brighter. She wondered why—since she had failed to meet a ghost—she should feel so bewitched.

She shook her head, as if to pull herself back from the shadowlands, and rose up from her stool, to kneel before the fire, using a rag to lift the earthenware cover from the embers. With the back of her other hand she erased the runes against fire that were drawn in the cool ashes. She fed the glowing heart in the middle of the ash with little twigs, and then more driftwood, and when it caught she set the three-legged iron pot in the heat, added water from the bucket, and stirred the soaked oatmeal inside, bringing it slowly to the boil.

The children, in the one bed, slept through the sounds of preparation. She had to wake them, touching each one on the shoulder. Her daughter smiled in her sleep and rolled over to face the rough wooden wall, but her boy sat up and asked: “Is it morning?”

She bent down to hug him, burying her face in the warmth of his neck. He smelled of himself, sweet as a puppy. “Yes,” she said. “Time to get up.”

“Is Da home?”

“No,” she said flatly. The perennial question no longer gave her a pang of grief for her son. “Not today. Get dressed.”

Obediently Rob sat on the edge of the mattress and pulled his jacket on over the linen nightshirt. He pulled up his breeches and tied them with laces to the jacket. He would go bare-legged and barefoot to his work today. He was crow-scaring at Mill Farm after morning school. He sat up at the table and she poured gruel into his bowl.

“No bacon?” he asked.

“Not today.”

He took up his spoon and started to eat, blowing on each mouthful and sucking it loudly. She gave him a cup of small ale; no one at Foulmire ever drank the water. She turned back to the bed, sat on the edge, and touched her daughter’s shoulder.

Alys rolled over and opened her dark blue eyes to look at her mother as if she were part of a haunting dream. “Did you go out?” she asked.

Alinor was surprised. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I heard you come in.” The girl sighed as if she were about to sleep again. “In my dream.”

“What did you dream?”

“I dreamed you met a cat in the churchyard.”

The two of them were intent. “What color?”

“Black,” the girl said.

“What happened?”

“Nothing. That was all. You stood before him and he saw you.”

Alinor thought of this, held it in her seer’s vision. “He saw me?”

“He saw you, he saw everything.”

Alinor nodded. “Don’t speak of this,” she said.

The girl smiled. “Course not.” She pushed back the covers of the bed and rose up, standing tall at her mother’s shoulder, her fair hair in a plait down her back, her skin Saxon-pale. She turned to her pile of clothes at the foot of the bed and pulled on her skirt of felted wool, dried mud crusted on the hem, and a patched shirt. She sat on her stool at the table to wash her face and hands and then took the bowl to the door and threw it over the herbs outside.

Alinor took her stool beside her children and clasped her hands. “Father, we thank thee for our daily bread,” she said quietly. “Keep us from sin forever and ever. Amen.”

“Amen,” they said in a chorus, and Alinor served her daughter and herself, leaving a portion in the pot.

“Can I have that?” Rob asked.

“No,” Alinor said.

He pushed back his stool and knelt on the floor for her blessing. She put her hand on his matted curls and said: “God bless you, my son.”

Without another word, he took his cap from a hook behind the door, pulled it on his head, and opened the door. The sound of seagulls crying and the salty morning air poured into the darkened room. He went out, banging the door behind him.

“He’ll be early for school,” Alys remarked. “He’ll be playing football against the church door again.”

“I know,” Alinor replied.