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“Take mine! Take one of the royal coaches.”
“Thank you,” Livia said smoothly. “I would serve you in rags, you know.”
“I shall pay you,” the queen assured her. “I shall see that you have a generous salary. Trust me. Promise you will come back. Promise me that you will never leave me.”
They held hands. Livia had the sense of the solemnity of an oath.
“I promise I will never leave you,” Livia swore. “Whatever becomes of us both. We will be together, one heart, one fortune.”
“I promise,” the queen whispered, and slid into Livia’s arms.
Livia rocked her like a hurt child, soothing herself, comforted that even if Alinor and James had managed, somehow, to die at the same time on the same night, as if holding hands on a journey together, then at least nobody would ever know.
FOULMIRE, SUSSEX, SUMMER 1687
The bell in the tower of St. Wilfrid’s Church tolled steadily for all the morning, as the plain coffin was carried from the Priory, down the lane to the church and set before the altar.
The priest, even though he was wearing a surplice and vestments, censing the church and dousing the coffin with holy water, still conducted a service as simple and reverent as Ned could specify and Alys agree. Mrs. Julia Reekie, now the only Mrs. Reekie, in the first pew beside her husband and daughter, expected a coffin with brass ornaments and great handles, a choir in the church, and all the tenants in black gloves; but Rob and Alys had refused everything but a plain funeral from the Book of Common Prayer.
Matthew, as the lord of the manor, stood by the coffin to say a few words about the woman who had raised him as her own son. Mia, Gabrielle, and Hester held hands in the second pew, willing him to get through the speech they had composed with him.
“My foster grandmother was born a poor woman,” Matthew started. Julia, behind a veil, closed her eyes briefly in horror.
“She was a woman of great gifts,” Matthew went on. “All of us have known her wisdom, and some of us have been lucky to have her advice. She was a natural healer, with an understanding of plants and herbs, and her son and her great-granddaughter have followed in that practice.”
Briefly he glanced towards Gabrielle and to Rob. He noticed that Julia Reekie had fixed him with an unwavering gaze, her eyes wide in warning, but took no notice.
“She had a great love of this land and this sea—the tidelands—and we are glad that she was able to spend her last years here. She leaves a large family—we are spread across the oceans—we loved her very much, and each one of us is a better man or woman for having had her raising.”
“God, keep him from saying anyone’s surnames! Or that they came from here!” Julia prayed fervently that the history of a poor family would be buried forever with Alinor.
“She was kind enough to raise me with her daughter as their foster son. We are all the better for her wisdom and her compassion and her understanding of this world and the next. She had a strong belief in the life after this one…”
“Stop there!” Julia whispered into her clasped hands.
“She sensed the other world, just through a veil, all around her,and neither time nor miles nor even death could part her from those she loved. She knew she would be reunited with those who love her in heaven.”
Gabrielle had been following along the words Matthew was saying, and now he was finished, she looked up, her eyes brimming with tears, and he saw the love and sympathy in her face. He bowed his head to the coffin, he put one gentle hand on it as if to say farewell, and he laid a sprig of rosemary, cut from the Priory garden that morning, to promise remembrance.
Julia flinched at the unconventional herb; but thought it might be safely overlooked when Rob stepped forward to place a bouquet of lilies, brought from London at enormous expense, at the foot of the coffin.
“God bless you, Ma,” he said quietly. “Thank you, for all you did for me. I know how much…” He could not say more. He stepped back to his pew.
Slowly, the mourning bell started to toll, and to everyone’s surprise, Ned stepped forward, holding Alinor’s herb basket, her pruning knife, and her hoeing stick. Gently, he placed them on the coffin, to be buried with her. Julia Reekie pressed her gloved hands to her lips to stifle a quiet moan at the eccentricity. The vicar looked inquiringly towards the young lord; Matthew nodded permission. He guessed this was a ritual from Rowan’s people and that his grandmother would understand it, as she had understood Rowan.
The door at the back of the church opened, and a man in green livery came forward. Matthew recognized with dread the Avery uniform and was afraid that his mother, the Nobildonna, had sent an ostentatious wreath tied with black silk ribbons and a card with flowery writing. But it was not. It was a spray of wilted white roses.
Only Alys recognized the white roses of Yorkshire and knew that James had cut flowers in his garden in the night before he died, to send them to the woman he loved; and that the bond which had held them throughout their lives had not been severed by death.
FOULMIRE PRIORY, SUSSEX, AUTUMN 1687
The summer was ending, the Michaelmas term starting, and Matthew was not sorry to be going back to London with Alys and Gabrielle and Mia. The Priory was strangely empty when Rob, Julia, and Ned left after the funeral. All of them had a place or a time of day where they looked for Alinor, all of them had to remember that she would not be seen there again.
“You will come and visit again, even though she’s not here,” Matthew said urgently to the two girls as they walked at sunset along the little path that led from the seashore, across the hay meadow where the aftermath grass was showing green through the stubble, through the door set in the flint-knapped wall. Matthew held the door for them to pass through into the garden. “You will come again, even though she’s gone?”
“Of course,” Gabrielle said with her ready sympathy. “We wouldn’t leave you here, all by yourself.”
“Won’t you marry?” Mia demanded and then blushed at herself. “I mean… well! won’t you?”
