“Two babies,” was all that Alinor could say.
“Two bastards,” her daughter corrected her. “Pauper bastards. They’ll die in the poorhouse together. No one will let us raise them.”
“I’ll think about it.” Alinor drew a breath. “I will think about it today and tell you tonight.”
“You should have thought before,” her daughter said crudely.
Alinor flinched as if she had been struck. “I know,” she said, her voice very low. “I know how grave this is.”
“If you don’t finish it here, today, then my life is ruined. Rob’s, too,” Alys loaded her mother’s guilt. “Nobody will take him as an apprentice if his mother is a bawd who keeps a bawdy house on the mire. Nobody’ll ever marry me with a bastard child and my mother with hers. We’ll be ruined whores. My uncle Ned won’t even let us on his ferry. We’ll never get off the island at high tide. And when they come to drive us out, nobody will save us. Rob will have to watch them throw stones and mud and fish guts at our backs.”
Alinor nodded. She could imagine the reflection of torches in the water as the good people of Sealsea Island gathered at dusk to rid themselves of two friendless sluts. “I know.”
“Get the herbs ready,” Alys ordered. “I’ll come home early and we’ll do it this evening.”
She pulled on her jacket, and she took her distaff, her hank of fleece, and her spindle and she walked out of the door, spinning as she walked up the bank towards the ferry, to go to the mill where she would work as hard as any man, to earn the money for her dowry for the marriage that she was determined to make.
Left alone, Alinor started work on the daily tasks: shooing the hens out of the door, picking up the eggs, sweeping the floor, washing the two wooden gruel bowls, and rinsing the ale mugs. She swept the embers under the earthenware fire guard and made the marks against fire in the ashes of the hearth. She tied her cape around her shoulders, and went outside to gather firewood. And then she stood, looking at the harbor as if she had never seen it before, gazing at the gray horizon, wondering if she would ever again see a ship coming up the deep-water channel and hope that it was bringing the man she loved.
She had been so long in such a daze of missing James, and trusting him to return, that she could not now change the rhythm of her thoughts. She could not understand that she was no longer patiently waiting; now she was in crisis. She could not bring herself to face the problem and solve it. She sank down on the bench and, as the sky overhead darkened with a great flock of wintering geese and she heard their loud complaining cries and heard the beating of their great wings, without knowing it, under her cape her cold hand crept to her flat belly as if she would hold the tiny baby safe inside.
Later that morning Alinor was raking over the barley in the malthouse at Ferry-house. As she leaned on her rake and inhaled the warm scent of the barleycorns, a young lad put his head in the door and said: “Are you the wisewoman?”
Alinor, feeling far from wise, replied: “Yes. Who asks?”
“An oyster fisherwoman,” he said. “Down at East Beach.”
“Did her husband send for me?” Alinor asked, shoveling the barley grains rapidly into a pile so that they could continue heating.
“He’s at sea. His mother sent me for you. She gave me this.” The boy handed over a silver sixpence.
“I’ll come at once,” Alinor said, reassured that there would be money to pay her fee. East Beach fishermen were notorious: on a poor island they did poorly. “I’ve got to fetch my things.”
“I’m to come with you and help carry,” the youth said. He was pale with fright at having to serve a wisewoman. Alinor was known on East Beach to be a mistress of unknown arts. The fishermen of East Beach had drunk with Zachary when he had boasted about his wife’s strange powers. And then Zachary was gone, and his ship was gone, for no reason, on a clear day, and one or two said that she had sent him down with his ship and her faerie lover had danced like St. Elmo’s fire, in the rigging.
“We’ll walk across the mire to St. Wilfrid’s and then to East Beach,” Alinor decided.
He gaped. “Through the waters?”
“It’s low tide. I know the paths.”
The boy gulped down his fear and followed in her footsteps as she closed the door on the malting floor, shouted an explanation to Ned, who was plaiting a new rope for the ferry on the pier, and headed along the bank to her own cottage to collect the herbs and oils that she would need, putting them in the bag that she always took for childbirth. Alinor walked ahead of the boy along the bank, down to the white shingle shore, and then deep into the harbor, following the hidden paths, hearing him pattering along behind her, sometimes splashing in the puddles left by the receding tide.
They cut the corner by the church, crossing through the churchyard, and went past the big iron gates of the Priory. Alinor, glancing down the drive, saw Rob and Walter riding up the broad sweep. She waved at them but did not check her stride, and was pleased when Rob clicked to his horse and rode up to catch her up.
“Ma!”
“God bless you, my son.”
“Are you called out?” he asked, recognizing her sack of goods and her determined march.
“Yes, to East Beach.”
“We can take you up,” he said at once. He looked at Walter. “Can’t we? We can take my mother and this lad to wherever they need to go?”
“Why not?” said Walter easily. “Here, Mrs. Reekie, will you come up with me?”
Alinor was reluctant to ride with Walter, but her son was already pulling up his horse and putting a hand down to the boy.
“I don’t know that I can get up there,” she said, looking at Walter’s hunter.
“I’ll come over to this wall here,” he said. “And if you will climb up to the top, then you can step on. He’s a good horse, he won’t shy.”
Alinor could not say that she did not want to jolt the child in her belly. “I’ve got my bag of physic. Is he steady?”
“I promise you he has smooth paces. You can come behind me and hold tight to me.”
Alinor clambered up and then balanced on the top of the knapped flint wall as Walter brought his horse alongside. She stepped into the dangling stirrup and swung a leg over, to ride astride behind him.
“All aboard?” Walter asked as Alinor gripped his waist, the precious sack of oils held tightly between them.
“Yes.”
“And now we can go onward,” he said, and put the horse into a gentle walk.
“Do you want to go faster?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Not too fast,” Alinor said nervously.
Walter put the horse into a smooth controlled canter. Alinor clung on as the big-boned hunter plowed up the lane, onto the track to Sealsea, and then turned a sharp left down a sandy stony path to the hamlet of East Beach.
“You can put me down here,” she said breathlessly. “The lad’ll guide me to the cottage.”
Walter pulled up his horse, jumped down, received her into his arms, and set her on her feet.
“Shall I come with you and see if you need me to fetch anything?” Rob offered.
“If Master Walter can spare you,” she said.
“Oh, we do nothing but amuse ourselves now,” Walter said. “Our tutor, Mr. Summer, has gone away and will come back to take me to Cambridge in the Lent term.”
“Gone?” Alinor asked with painful interest. “Is he not coming back before then?”
She realized that she was looking earnestly from one boy to another, that she was far too eager for the reply. Lent was dangerously late for her. She would be nearly six months pregnant by then.
“No,” Walter said lightly. “Not till February.”
“Are you all right, Ma?” Rob asked, looking at her pale face. “Are you ill again?”