Alinor granted the one liberty that Alys had set her heart on. “Oh, very well. But this is what comes of a winter wedding. And no flowers to be had but a posy of dried herbs!”
“As long as I can wear my new pinny,” Alys stipulated.
“Oh, wear it!” Alinor said. “But you’ll put your cape on when you’re going home in the wagon to Stoney Farm.”
“I will! I will!”
Rob came down the stair from the loft, wearing his new work jacket and the Christmas shoes.
“And how fine d’you look, lad?” Ned asked, slapping him on the back. “This is a proud day for the Ferrymans.”
The children did not mention their father’s name, and Alinor, tightening her cape around her broadening waist, thought that if she had not needed a name for her baby she might never have heard the words Zachary Reekie again.
“All right, Ma?” Rob asked gently.
She smiled at him. “I’m fine.”
“She’s missing Alys before we’re rid of her,” Ned advised, but Rob’s brown eyes were fixed on his mother’s pale face.
“Are you really all right?”
Alinor held her breath. From childhood, Rob had been able to see beyond the surface of things, to illness and sorrow. She wondered if he could see her heartbreak, she wondered if he could sense her baby, his half brother.
She shook her head and smiled. “It’s as your uncle says,” she lied. “I’m seeing you and Alys out the house, both of you, in the same week and I feel like a broody hen with all her eggs stolen.”
“I’ll be working at the mill with you tomorrow,” Alys pointed out. “You’ll see me at first light. And Rob’ll be home at Lady Day.”
“I know, I know,” Alinor said. “And I couldn’t be happier for both of you. Come along now, Rob, and eat some breakfast. Alys, have you had anything?”
“I can’t,” she said at once. “I’ve no appetite.”
“Don’t you go fainting away at the altar for hunger,” Ned warned her.
“Take some small ale and a little bread,” Alinor urged her. “And I have eggs as well.”
Alys sat at the table as she was ordered, her uncle on one hand and her brother on another, and smiled up at her mother. “My last breakfast here,” she said. “My last breakfast as Alys Reekie.”
“Stop it,” Ned advised swiftly. “Or you’ll set your mother off again.”
Mr. Stoney, his wife, and son in their wagon rang the chime for the ferry just as the family was finishing breakfast, and Ned went out to bring them across the high water. Once they were on the island side Alinor rolled out the barrels of wedding ale for them, and the two men loaded them into the wagon. Alinor had two big wheels of cheese and two loaves of bread baked in the big oven at the mill.
“And are you ready?” Mr. Stoney asked Alys. “All your little things packed up?”
“I’m ready, I’m ready!” she said breathlessly.
Richard jumped down from the back of the wagon, his face pink with cold and shyness. He took her hands and kissed each one, and then he kissed her on the lips.
Mrs. Stoney climbed down from the seat at the front of the wagon and Alys curtseyed and kissed her mother-in-law, and as the adults greeted each other, she slid her hand in Richard Stoney’s warm grip.
“I’ll get her things,” Ned said to Alinor. “Are they all ready?”
Alinor and Ned went into the house and brought out a small pile of good linen, the best that Ferry-house had, and a knapsack of Alys’s personal goods. Mrs. Stoney’s eyes flickered over the little bag, but she said nothing. Richard gave Alinor his hand to help her into the back of the cart and lifted Alys in.
“We’ll walk over the mire,” Ned said for him and Rob. “See you at the church door!”
“Don’t delay!” Alys warned him. “Don’t get your shoes muddy—go round by the bank!”
“I shan’t be stolen by mermaids,” Rob teased her. “We’ll get there before you do!”
Mr. Stoney clicked to his pair of horses and they headed south as Ned put the cover over the fire, shut the back door, and walked with Rob on the little paths across the flooded harbor to church.
The whole parish turned out to witness the wedding of the pretty Reekie girl to the wealthy farmer’s son, many of them glad to see Alinor’s daughter doing so well, a few murmuring that it was a shame she was going off the island. Ned was known to everyone in Sealsea Island because of his long service on the ferry, and his father before him, and most of the women had consulted Alinor for their health or for the delivery of a baby. The marriage was an extraordinary upward leap for the family who had worked the ferry on the island for as long as anyone could remember, but everyone conceded that if any girl was likely to marry well for her looks, that would be Alys.
There were a lot of comments about Rob as he took his place in the men’s pews at the back. Some people who had seen him in the summer processing to the front of the church with the Peacheys were glad to see him returned to a lowly place. But the young people, especially the young women, remarked on the difference between Rob their former playmate, son of the missing fisherman Zachary Reekie, and this new Rob, with his command of Latin, his apprenticeship in Chichester, and his well-cut jacket.
Nobody remarked aloud that the two Reekie children had been blessed with extraordinary opportunities, given that they had been born in a fisherman’s cottage to a ferryman’s daughter and a wastrel father who was now missing. Nobody said that their good luck could only be something other than chance, charm, or ability. Nobody repeated the old story that they were faerie born, that their own father had sworn it, and that their good looks and good fortune were the gifts of their mother—a faerie concubine, beloved of the unseen world, and guided by it. But almost everyone thought: how else could the Reekie children be so undeservingly blessed? How else could their mother walk out of a violent marriage with her head high and not a mark on her? How else should Zachary so conveniently disappear? Nobody would say such a thing on Alys’s wedding day, but a number of people thought it, and glanced to each other, and saw that others were thinking it too.
Alys was about to go into church and Alinor about to follow her when Mrs. Stoney delayed them at the church porch. “D’you have the dowry?” she asked. “You’re supposed to give it to me here.”
Alinor halted, and turned to her daughter. Alys flushed a little, and reached into the pocket of her gown under her apron.
“If it’s short you’d better tell me now,” Mrs. Stoney said harshly. “Before you go a step farther.”
“It’s not short,” Alys said.
Alinor tried to nod as if she were confident that Alys had all the money. They had worked all the hours at the mill, and spun, but even with the ferry money and Rob’s wages, she thought that Richard must have donated all his inheritance.
Triumphantly, Alys handed over the purse, and Mrs. Stoney weighed it in her hand and then opened it and peeped inside. Alys’s face was like a sculpture in stone as she looked at her mother-in-law. The woman tipped the coins into her hand: gold crowns, silver shillings, no small coins, no coppers at alclass="underline" a fortune.
“You got it,” she said, as if she still could not believe it.
“Of course,” Alys said.
“Of course,” Alinor repeated.
Mrs. Stoney tucked the purse into the pocket of her cape. “Then we can go in,” she said. “I’ll put this in our treasure chest at Stoney Farm tonight.”
She turned and went into church, past the standing room for the workingmen at the rear of the church, and took a seat in a pew near the front, while the usual pew owner shifted up sulkily. Alys took her mother’s hand and went to stand at the back, waiting to be called up to the altar. Richard was waiting at the front of the church.
“Next Sunday, that’s where I’ll be,” Alys whispered to her mother, nodding at Mrs. Stoney’s determined occupation of the prestigious front pew. “And you shall sit beside me. That’s worth scraping up for pennies, isn’t it? We’ll have our own pew.”