Page 32 of Dark Tides
“Here, yes, but perhaps not in a new world?” Alys challenged. “Where land is free? It was his hope that he could live of his own, without hurting another.”
“I pray that it does not come to it for me; but if I am forced to leave, I will come to you and ask for his direction.”
“He’d be glad to see you.” Alys bowed and Johnnie opened the front door and let the preacher out into the glaring light of the quay. Sarah was alone with her mother in the parlor.
“Did Uncle Ned know that man—Sir James?”
“No!” Alys lied at once. “Why d’you ask?”
“So how did Sir James know you and Grandma at Foulmire? How did he not meet Uncle Ned?”
“I meant that they were not friends,” Alys corrected herself. “Your uncle Ned was the ferryman, of course he knew everyone.”
“Before we were born.”
“Yes, as you know.”
“So did we all leave at once? Great-Uncle Ned, and Sir James and Grandma and you? Were we all in the wagon altogether?”
“No, it was just your grandma and me,” Alys said unwillingly. “I must have told you a dozen times. Just you babies and Grandma and me—after a quarrel with the Millers at the tide mill over my wages. Ned didn’t come till long after that. And then when the king was restored, he left for the Americas. Surely you remember! Now, I have to see what Tab is doing. I can smell burning.”
“So why did they leave? Uncle Ned and Sir James?” Johnnie echoed his sister, coming in at the end of this conversation. “Together? But not with us? It can’t have been about your wages, surely?”
“Oh really!” Alys hurried away. “What does it matter? It’s so long ago! We left because we wanted a better life for you than we could have had on the mire, Uncle Ned left for conscience, when the king came in; and Sir James was only ever passing through. We weren’t friends, we hardly knew him.”
“Then why does he come here every day and see Grandma?” Johnnie joined with his sister.
“He doesn’t come every day. He’s only seen her twice,” Alys said irritably.
“But why?” Johnnie asked.
“What?”
“Why does he come?”
“I don’t know!” Alys blustered, breaking away from the two of them and opening the kitchen door. A haze of fatty smoke rolled into the hall. “Tabs! What are you doing in there?”
“Surely you must know,” Johnnie said reasonably.
“I know that it’s none of my business nor yours. And I don’t want either of you talking to him. D’you hear?”
Alys closed the kitchen door on them. Sarah and Johnnie exchanged brief glances of complete understanding. “Something’s not right,” Sarah said.
“I know. I feel it.”
“We’ll find out,” she decided.
After dinner Sarah sat with her grandmother upstairs in her room, sewing black ribbons for Alinor and Alys’s mourning caps.
“Not for me, I won’t wear it,” Alinor said.
The girl hesitated. “Grandma, why not?”
“Sarah, I don’t believe it, I can’t feel that he’s dead. I won’t wear black for him.”
The girl laid down her work. “Grandma, you wouldn’t want to be disrespectful?”
“I won’t lie.”
