“You’re very welcome,” she said, recovering.
“I thought I’d walk over with Robert,” James said awkwardly. “I thought I’d ask you for some herbs against my fever . . . if it comes back again. I didn’t mean to disturb you all.”
Ned barely raised his eyes from his work but bobbed his head in a nod.
“Will you take a glass of ale?” Alinor asked. “Please, sit.” She gestured to her stool at the fireside.
“Thank you, and then I’ll walk back by the road.”
“Dark night,” Ned observed.
“Yes indeed.”
There was a silence as Alinor went to the cool buttery at the back of the house and drew a glass of ale each for James and Rob, and then brought another for Ned. Rob sat beside her on the bench against the wall.
“Is it strange to be home?” James asked Ned.
Ned shrugged. “It’s not the life I’d have chosen, but none of us can live the life we’d have chosen.” He paused. “Maybe you can,” he said. “Maybe his lordship does.”
“Not anymore,” James said honestly. “I never thought this would happen, and I never thought it would end this way.”
Ned put his knife carefully in the worn leather sheath and put the whetstone to one side. “Pity that you didn’t,” he said gruffly. “Could’ve been stopped years ago.”
“I agree,” James said, trying to find some common ground. “I have thought for a long time that we should have found a way ahead without going to war. That we should have made an agreement so that we could find a way to end our differences and live together.”
“Well, now we have,” Ned said with a little smile. “Though p’raps not the agreement you’d have wished. Can you live in this new England?”
“I hope to,” James said. “I hope to regain my home, and I hope to live there, with my family, and help . . .”
“Help what?”
“The ruling and governing of the kingdom . . . of the country.”
Ned raised his head and stared at James as if he could not believe the quiet words. “And why should you, and the likes of you, rule and govern us, when you’ve disturbed our peace for nearly ten years?”
James swallowed. “Because I am an Englishman and I want to live in peace.”
“I’m sure we all want peace,” Alinor interrupted.
Ned smiled at her. “Aye. I know you do, Sister. And I hope that we’ll have it now. What’s your opinion on how the country should be run?”
Alinor flushed a little. “Ah, Ned, you know I only know my trade. I think midwives should be licensed, and women should be churched after their confinement. For the rest—how would I know?”
James had a sudden sharp memory of his mother’s astute vision, which had guided their family through years of change; she knew the world as well as her husband, and could calculate political advantage quicker than any man.
“Are you in favor of petticoat government?” James asked Ned, trying to smile.
“I’d rather be ruled by good-hearted women than by all the cavaliers who will be turning their collars, and flocking back to their houses, now they’ve lost.”
James flushed with anger. “I can’t agree with you,” he said shortly. “I think we’ll have to differ.”
Ned rose from the table. “Have done,” he advised James. “It’s as I thought. You’re what I thought. If you weren’t on cavalier business, or papist business, it was secret business and bad business. As for me, I don’t care what you did, as long as you cease doing it now.”
“Mr. Summer was my tutor,” Rob spoke up for him. “I’d not have had a chance at an apprenticeship without his teaching.”
Ned nodded, and put his hand on the seated boy’s shoulder. “I know. I know he did well by you.” He paused. “I’m going to bed,” he said. “Some of us have to work early in the morning. And this lad has to start at Chichester tomorrow morning, and that’s a great beginning for him. He should be early to bed and early to rise.”
“Yes.” James got to his feet. “I’m going. I just came for some herbs, for fever. I’m sorry we can’t agree.”
“I’ll see you out,” Alinor said, quickly going to the front door. “I’ll walk you round to the road.”
“Don’t let him fall in the rife and drown,” Ned remarked with such a bitter smile that his words seemed more of a threat than a joke. “That’d be a loss to the future government. Good night, Mr. Summer. Or will you go by another name when you take up your lands? Was that ever your name at all?”
James turned back towards Ned and stretched out his hand. “I will have another name, and I am sorry to have sailed under false colors with you. I lost my faith some time ago, and we were both a witness to the death of my king. I have been waiting to make my peace with all my countrymen and with you. I hope you will, one day, forgive me for my sins as I forgive those you have done unto me.”
Ned was surprised into taking the man’s hand and shaking it. “Aye, very well,” he said. “And no false dealing in future?”
“None,” James said. “The war is over for both of us, and for the king.”
“Aye,” Ned said with quiet satisfaction. “It’s surely over for him.”
Alinor was waiting at the front door with a shawl over her head. “I’ll shut up the hens,” she called back to the firelit room.
As they stepped out into the still cold air James could see the pale outline of her face and her dark eyes in the light of the sickle moon. He thought that he had never seen anything more beautiful in his life than this woman in this bleached and blackened landscape, with the harbor water shining like a sheet of pewter behind her, and the sliver of an ice-white moon in the sky above her.
“Aren’t you cold?” he asked, and put his arms around her as if he would straighten her shawl, but found himself holding her, as easily and naturally as if they had never been parted. She came into his arms but at once he felt a difference in her. Through the layers of homespun he could feel her body but it was strange to him. Something about her touch horrified him, as if she was a shape-changer in a frightening story, and he flinched, stepped back, and looked at her. He saw that the pallor of her face was not just moonlight.
“J-James,” she said, stumbling over his name.
“My love?”
“You came back for me?”
“As I promised, the minute that I could.”
She sighed, and he realized she had been holding her breath from the moment he had stepped over the threshold. Her anxiety only alarmed him more. He glanced back at the darkened doorway, and she took him by the hand and led him around the corner of the house and through a gate into the vegetable garden that ran alongside the deserted road.
“I have to tell you something,” she said.
At the sound of her voice, the hens, warm in their house, clucked sleepily to her. She bent, and latched the door of their house, bolting it at the top and at the bottom.
“I have to tell you something first,” he said rapidly. “I met with my parents, with my mother and my father. I told them of you. I told them that I will pay my fine to parliament and regain our house. I will take you there, and in six years’ time, when you are declared a widow, we will marry.”
He saw her blanched lips tremble and he was afraid that she was about to argue. But, to his surprise, she consented at once: “Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes, I will marry you and live wherever you wish. Yes. And I have something to tell you.”
“You will come with me?” He could hardly believe her words.
“I will. But I have to—”
“My love! My love! You will come with me!”
“I have to tell you something.”
“Anything! Anything!”
The hens clucked again at the voices. “Hush,” she said, drawing him away from the henhouse. “I have to tell you . . .”