Page 77 of Dawnlands

“I won’t be party to anything illegal,” Johnnie said.

“No,” Ned conceded. “But would you help me get a pardon, or get her released?”

“Can’t be done!” Johnnie said irritably. “What d’you think I’ve been doing here for all this time in this stinking town? I couldn’t buy a pardon for you. They’re not for workingmen.” He glanced round. “Guilty men,” he said accusingly.

“No, not for me, but she’s wrongly arrested. Even under a Stuart we can demand her release.”

Johnnie hesitated. “If someone would speak for her… but why should I do anything for her? Why should you? She robbed me and she hit you!”

“Aye, she’s bested us both, but I suppose that a blow doesn’t end love.”

“Of course I don’t stop loving her because she stole from me. But it’s against my better judgment. And you’ll think I’m a fool.”

“I don’t,” Ned assured him. “Will you at least go to the castle, and see what port they’ve taken her to?”

“I’ll do that,” Johnnie agreed reluctantly. “You wait here and keep out of sight. Wait in my room. And for the Lord’s sake, get a wash, change that bandage, and wear your hat.”

FOULMIRE, SUSSEX, AUTUMN 1685

James Avery’s carriage retraced the rutted track beside the harbor, the coachman driving with ill-concealed contempt for the poor road, the low hedges, and the overarching sky. The tide was coming in and the seagulls were swirling in white flocks, fishing in the incoming water. The Broad Rife was spilling over its muddy banks, like a mirror to the blueness above. The coachman halted the horses at the wadeway and the driver beside him climbed down to ring the bell for the ferryman.

James was in such a dream of the past he was half expecting to see Ned coming out of his door, wiping his hands on a cloth, and stepping down onto the flat-bottomed ferry, hauling it hand over hand on the overhead rope to the north side. But then he remembered those days were gone, Ned was gone, and there was a new ferryman in his place, and James would never again sit on his horse and look down the road to where Alinor, a young woman, her face bright with happiness at the sight of him, was waiting.

“It’s not too high, you can drive across,” the ferryman yelled at the coachman.

James let down the window and felt the soft salty air against his cheek. “What d’you think?”

The coachman tightened the reins. “There oughter be a proper ford. There oughter be a bridge.”

James closed the window and sat back. “It’s the tidelands,” he repeated. He closed his eyes and he could hear her voice: “The harbor moves in every storm. The sea breaks into the fields and takes back the land. The ditches make new lakes. These are the tidelands: half tide, half land, good for nothing, all the way west to the New Forest, all the way east to the white cliffs.”

He could hear her voice as if they were on the bank of the harbor, on the brink of love, then the coach turned left off the road, and right towards the Priory, and before he could compose himself into the important man he now was, he had arrived like a lovesick boy.

He did not know who to ask for, he did not even know how to announce himself. He stood hopelessly in the lamplit doorway while some servant—a footman? A steward? Surely, they did not have a chamberlain?—raised the lamp and said: “We were expecting you, Sir James,” and stepped back to admit him.

He recoiled from the hall. Where there had been a flight of stairs leading down to plain stone slabs, with a suit of armor at the bottom and an open fireplace billowing hot smoke, the hall was now floored with polished wood and the fireplace had been reduced in size and fitted with a neat grate. The old tapestries had been stripped from the walls, and there was painted wooden paneling in its place, with some blotchy landscapes of French gardens. The double doors to the chapel where he had served Mass as a secret priest were shrunk to a modern door frame, a single door, and the room was now a dining room with a good table and half a dozen chairs. The manservant led the way to what had been Sir William’s gun room overlooking the garden and opened the door, and James found himself suddenly in a pretty parlor, and at the fireside, there was the woman he had loved for so long.

Alinor rose as he entered and stood still, one hand on the mantelpiece, one on her heart.

Neither said a word.

“May I get you some refreshments, Sir James?” the man said into the silence.

James nodded, but found he could not speak at the sight of her, at her steady gray eyes on his face, at his sense that the years were falling away from them both and they were spinning back to their youth, both of them beautiful, both of them innocent, both of them so muchin love. “Wine,” he said, without taking his eyes from her lined face. “A glass of wine.”

The servant crossed the polished floorboards and poured two glasses, set a bowl of dry biscuits on the table, put another log on the fire, and reluctantly retired. Neither of them spoke, until the door was closed behind him.

“To see you here!” James said.

Her mischievous smile was quite unchanged, her merriment shone through her old face. “I know! Who’d have dreamed it?”

“You are comfortable?”

She laughed at him. “You mean: do I feel out of place?”

“Do you?”

“No. Not at all! I feel at home.”