Page 72 of Dawnlands

“Months! And who’s going to look after you?”

“There are more than enough of them. The cook’s a good woman, and the maid Lizzie,” Alinor said. “I can eat what they’re having in the kitchen.” She saw her daughter’s disapproval. “I’ll be served in the dining room!” she amended. “I’m not forgetting Matthew’s place!” She looked from one to another. “I can tidy and clean the stillroom, and weed the herb garden before winter. I can look over the linen, and get the chimneys swept and the covers off the furniture for when you next come down. It won’t hurt the place to have one of us living here.”

“Won’t you be lonely?” Matthew asked her.

Her smile was very bright. “My dear, everyone I ever loved has walked on these footpaths. They walk with me, all the time.”

“You’re thinking about him,” Alys said resentfully.

“Not about him now,” her mother said calmly. “About him then, and the young lovers we were. And about you and Rob, my little children, and my ma when she was young. I think about the past, and it’s as if it’s the here and now. As if I am the girl I was then. It makes me happy.”

“I can see it suits you,” Alys said begrudgingly.

“Aye, it suits me,” Alinor agreed with a mischievous smile. “And I’m going to stay an’ all. So there’s no need for you wear such a mope-face.”

Matthew choked on a laugh at Alinor’s impertinence, and turned to his foster mother. “She has become a girl again,” he told her. “Next thing, she’ll pull your braids. We’ll have to let her have her own way.”

TAUNTON, SOMERSET, AUTUMN 1685

Johnnie wanted to take Rowan to London at once, but she refused to leave the town while Ned was in the jail of Taunton Castle.

“I came here for you, not for my uncle Ned,” he told her in the morning after he had spent the night hot with desire, lying beside her in the bed, clenching his hands together to stop him from reaching out to her, listening to her quiet breathing in sleep.

She was tying the waistband of her skirt over the linen shift she had slept in. She nodded. “I know, you said.” She stuffed her hair inside her cap. He saw that it had grown and was nearly down to her shoulders. For a moment he thought he might reach out and touch it, imagining it silky and heavy in his hand. But then she pulled the ugly cap down over her forehead and his chance was gone.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of you in danger,” he told her.

She pulled on the new boots he had bought for her and started to lace them.

“Rowan—I want you to come to me. I will marry you.” He gulped at the thought of his mother’s outrage if she knew he was proposing to a runaway servant. “I want you to be my wife.”

She was silent; he could not imagine what she was thinking. “I know it’s not a good time to speak…”

“No… no… I know that you people like to talk…”

“I’ve never known anyone like you. I offer you the protection of my name. Look! I’ve bought you clothes and I am housing you—like a husband already. Say you’ll marry me, and we can start for London this morning.”

“Go without freeing Ned Ferryman?”

“My uncle was good to you, I know. But any debt to him is fully paid. And Rowan—he was guilty! His sentence is just. We can’t save him.”

He could not read the blank face she turned towards him. “I’m not free till he is free. If I agree to marry you, will you help me save Ned Ferryman?”

“Would you be freed by his death?” he confirmed, knowing that was the most likely outcome.

She did not flinch at the mention of his death, and that made him certain that she felt nothing more for Ned than an exaggerated sense of obligation, like a superstition, a savage superstition.

“I would be freed by his death,” she said solemnly.

“Then you are free now,” he said gently. “My dear, he is certain to die within a year of getting to Barbados. The weather is too hot for an old man like him to work in the fields. The work is crushing, he won’t survive it. Most likely he’ll die on the voyage. I’m very, very sorry, but it’s true. You can mourn him as a dead man.”

He took her hand—it was icy cold, and he felt that familiar tension in her.

“You can do nothing more for him,” he told her. “I can do nothing more. We’ve done all that could be asked of us. We can write to his master in Barbados and intercede for him. We can ask for him to have easy work. We’ll do that. It shall be our first action as husband and wife.” He paused, looking at her wide eyes. “And you will learn to take my hand and not look as if you are about to run away!”

He meant it as a joke, but he felt her return the pressure of his fingers and try to smile at him. He could hardly believe that she rested her hand in his, and he understood that this was her consent. “There,” he said, as if he were talking to a timid animal. “That’s better. There. There.”

She asked if they might walk up to the castle in the afternoon, and when they saw the many families keeping a vigil in the outer keep, praying for a miracle, he thought that now she would understand that there was nothing to be done.