Tidelands

“Hardly a fortune, my dear. Your reputation is hardly a fortune! Look, I’ll get you the ingredients myself and pay you to come to my stillroom and make it up for me. You needn’t tell a soul. It can be just between you and me. Our little secret. I don’t believe that you’ll turn down five shillings.”

Alinor had a pang of guilt thinking of the five shillings towards Alys’s dowry, but she could not rid herself of a fear of anything that looked like magic. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “But I only work as a herbalist, with the herbs that I know. I don’t dabble in mysteries.”

He laughed to conceal his irritation and she realized at once that the remedy was for himself. He had the edgy laugh of a man without confidence; his bullying tone came from his weakness. All the talk about a customer was a blind for his own need. “Oh! If you want to turn down good business from an established customer. . . .”

“I am sorry,” she said kindly. “But I can’t help you.”

“It’s not for me,” he said quickly. “But I could sell it a dozen times.”

“Then you will surely find someone to make it for you,” she said.

He grimaced. “Your herbs are so good—they’re the best. I wanted yours. People always ask for the oils from the pretty witch of Foulmire.”

“I hope they don’t call me that,” Alinor said coldly.

“Only in jest.”

“It’s no jest to me.”

“So you say, so you say. I’ll give you good day, and if you have the sense to change your mind you can come back to me.”

Alinor accepted her dismissal, pocketed her money, and lifted her basket from his stall. He waved her away, and Alinor gritted her teeth, smiled, and said good-bye. He did not bother to reply but turned to a customer and let her go without another word. Mother and daughter made their way through the crowd to the north side of the Market Cross, to the wool merchant.

There was a little crowd around his table, women bringing back wool that they had spun and collecting their payments, women buying sacks of raw wool for spinning. Alinor bought a shilling’s worth of fleece in a small sack. He took the money with a word of thanks. “Good day, Mrs. Reekie. I can fetch the yarn from you myself, if you work quickly. I am coming to Sealsea Island next month.”

“I’ll leave it with my brother at the ferry-house,” Alinor promised him. “And if you’ll take the price of another sack off my wages and leave it for me, I’ll spin more.”

“Working hard?” he asked with a wink at her. “Saving up for something?”

“Nothing in particular,” Alinor said discreetly, though Alys smiled and blushed and looked down.

They turned from the stall, trying not to bump people in the crowded street with the bulky sack.

“What now?” Alys asked.

“I have to buy some salt, for salting down the fish,” Alinor said, looking around.

“What’s wrong with the salt that we make?”

“I can’t make enough for a barrel of fish,” Alinor said. “And it’s such hard work, stirring the boiling pans and keeping the fire in all day, for such a little result.”

She led the way to the stall where two rough men were shoveling from sacks of salt into smaller bags. “I’ll take two,” Alinor said, and handed over the pennies.

As she took the bags and turned away, Alys said: “There’s the lace maker.”

She was an old lady sitting on her own, on a stool with a piece of cloth spread on the ground before her to show her little pieces of lace. She had a cushion on her knee, and her swollen fingers were busy with the bobbins as the lace grew from the center of the cushion. She pulled out a pin and pressed in another, pricking out the pattern as the bobbins whirled and clicked against each other, as if they were a little army in battle on a snowy field.

“Good day, mistress,” Alinor said politely.

“Good day to you,” she replied, not glancing up from her work.

“I’m looking for some lace for a collar for Mrs. Miller at the tide mill,” Alinor said.

“Everything you see is for sale,” the old woman said. “And I should be glad of your custom, my dear. I keep myself off the parish with my work, you see.”

Alys suppressed a giggle at the old lady’s piping voice, and Alinor frowned at her. The two of them knelt down and turned over the pieces of handmade lace until Alys said: “This is the prettiest, Ma. Look at this.” She held up a wide ribbon of lace that could be used to trim a collar. It was worked with a design of butterfly wings, a repeating motif. “Pretty,” Alys said and then added under her breath: “Far too pretty for her.”

“How much is this?” Alinor asked the old lady.

“That is two shillings for the yard,” she said.

“Could you let me have it cheaper?” Alinor asked. “I am not commissioned to spend if it is too dear.”