Page 20 of Dark Tides
“You have a consumption?”
“Something like drowning,” she said. “I drowned then, and I go on drowning. The water sits in my lungs.”
He shut his eyes on the memory of the green water pouring from her mouth when they turned her limp body on her side. “I failed you.” He found that he was on one knee before her, his head bowed. “I failed you terribly. I have never forgiven myself.”
“Aye,” she said indifferently. “But I forgave you almost at once. There was no need for you to set your own penance.”
“I have served a hard penance.” He looked eagerly upwards, wanting her to know that he too had suffered. “I was restored to my home, to the lands that I loved, and I married, but my wife took no pleasure in our life, and she never conceived a child. I am a widower now. I am alone with no one to continue my name.”
“And so now you come to me?” She sat down and gestured that he should rise and take a seat.
“Now I am free to do what I should have done that day. I am free to claim you for my wife, my beloved wife, and to name your child as my child, and to give you both the home you should have had, and the future you should have had.”
She said nothing for a long moment and the silence made him realize for the first time how arrogant he sounded. Outside the seagulls wheeled and cried. He heard the clatter of the sheets against the masts, and at that sound, which had always meant leaving and loss to him, his heart sank and he knew that she would refuse him.
“I’m sorry, James, but you’re too late,” she said quietly. “This is my home, and there is no child of yours here.”
“I’m not too late. I am not too late, Alinor. I never ceased to love you, I wrote to you every year on Midsummer Eve, I never forgot you. Not even when I was married did I ever forget you. I swore I would come for you as soon as I was free.”
Her dark gray eyes gleamed with inner laughter. “Then you cannot be surprised that your wife took no pleasure in her life with you,” she observed.
He gasped at the sharpness of her wit. “Yes, I failed her too,” he admitted. “I am a failure: as a lover to you, and as a husband to her. I have been wrong since the day I denied you. I was like Saint Peter: I did not own you when I should have done. The cock crowed and I did not hear.”
She made a little tutting noise. “It was not the Garden ofGethsemane! I was not crucified! My heart broke; but now it’s healed. Go and live your life, James. You owe me nothing.”
“But the king is restored,” he tried to explain. “I want to be restored too! I want our victory. It won’t be a victory for me until I am back in my house with you at my side.”
She shook her head. “It’s no victory for us, remember? Not for people like us. Ned left England rather than be subject to this king. He left his home rather than live with my shame. And Rob went too, and now his widow comes to my door to tell me he’s drowned, and I can’t even make myself believe her. I can’t get back to my home. My brother can’t return, my son never will.”
He hesitated, driven to honesty. “Alinor—I must have my son. I have no one to continue my name, I have no one to inherit my house, my land. I can’t bear to have a son raised in poverty when I should endow him.”
“We’re not poor,” she snapped.
“I own hundreds of acres.”
She was silent.
“They are rightfully his.”
She sighed as if she were very weary. “You’ve imagined this boy,” she said gently. “All these years. You’ve got no son, no more have I. There’s no one here to inherit your fortune nor continue your name. You didn’t want the baby when he was in the womb, you denied him then. He was lost to you the very day that you said that you didn’t want him. Those words can’t be unsaid. You didn’t want him then, and now you don’t have him. You are, as you wanted to be: childless.” She put her hand to her throat. “I can’t say more.”
He leapt to his feet and reached for her. “Can I help you? Shall I call someone?”
She leaned back against the hard leather padding of the high-backed chair, her face as white as ice. She shook her head and closed her eyes. “Just go.”
He dropped to his knees beside her chair, he took up her still hand and put the cold fingers to his lips; but when she did not open her eyes or even stir, he realized that he could say nothing, do nothing but obey her. “I’ll go,” he whispered. “Please do not be distressed.Forgive me—love. I’ll speak to Alys on my way out. Forgive me… forgive me.”
He glanced back at her ashen face as he took two steps to reach the door, closed it behind him, and all but stumbled down the stairs. Tabs, the maid, was arduously climbing up with a tray of small ale.
“D’you not want it now?” she demanded with a sigh.
He brushed past her without an answer. Alys was waiting at the foot of the stairs, standing like a statue, her face like stone. The door to the parlor was ajar; he guessed that Livia was inside, eavesdropping.
“She’s ill,” he exclaimed.
Alys nodded. “I know it.”
“She refuses me,” he said.
