Stolen Lives (The Alice Chronicles #3)

1

Midsummer, 1626

O n Midsummer Eve, taking a break from haymaking, Alice Jerrard the interloper looks out over the field of people moving along the rows, bent over the scythed grass, sifting and shaking and turning, and wonders how long it will be before they drive her out of High Stoke.

All these folk work, as their forbears worked before them, for the Jerrards of High Stoke, their fortunes rising and falling in tandem as the value of English wool rose last century and declines in this. These are the ways they have always known, man, woman and child, as surely as they know the ebb and flow of the seasons.

Then one rain-washed morning in spring between rising and breakfast, all that changed with Henry Jerrard’s untimely death – and Alice, his bride of less than a month, became their overlord. Although the High Stoke people have outwardly accepted her, increasingly she feels an impostor in this close community. A surliness has settled on them, a reluctance to meet her eye, which she can only divine as resentment of the outsider in their midst. Nothing has been said, nothing she can put her finger on, far less contest or negotiate. And she has tried. They comply to the extent they must, but Alice sees unwillingness in every hunched shoulder, sullenness in every averted eye, rejection in every turned back.

She stands hot and dispirited, leaning against the broad trunk of an oak in the corner of the hayfield. Next to her on the lush, shaded grass, her neighbour and friend Olivia Egerton sits fanning herself with her soft straw hat.

‘I’m not stopping,’ Alice tells her. ‘Just taking a short rest.’ She reaches down to the leather flask and unstoppers it. The mild small ale she made herself is cooling and refreshing, and she knows a moment’s satisfaction in recalling the many compliments on the quality of her brewing that replaced the former lacklustre bought-in ale. But that was weeks ago. No compliments on anything now.

‘Alice, slow down!’ Olivia advises, smiling up at her. ‘You run about here and there as if chased by demons!’

‘Yes, but haymaking is so uncertain. Everyone is needed at the moment. We must get it dry and stacked before we have rain again.’ She dabs her mouth on the back of her hand, tastes salt, and raises her arm to wipe the sweat from her forehead. ‘If we have another year like last year, we shall lose all this and have barely enough to overwinter the animals.’

‘It’s true,’ Olivia says. ‘I was with our people yesterday, making sure we bring in as much as possible. What I meant was, is it essential that you help in all the household tasks at High Stoke as well?’

‘We have to keep up with all there is to be done; I can’t afford to let things slip.’ Alice is insistent. ‘And that reminds me, I must do another brewing, we’re running low. You’d think a cook would know how to brew but Maureen’s attempt at it was well-nigh undrinkable.’ Maureen is now issuing the unpalatable small ale to all and sundry, to their grumbling discontent. Alice told Maureen to pour it away, only to be reminded with blunt satisfaction of her own frequent exhortations to everyone for thrift.

A restlessness has taken hold of her these past few weeks. The rapid onset of summer nudging out a short, late spring, has done nothing to lighten the weight of loss on her heart, seems instead to have reinforced its hold. She feels heavy, lethargic, yet contrariwise unable to sit still for any length of time.

‘I mean, is it so urgent that you cannot leave most of them to do their own work?’

‘They’re complaining to you?’

Olivia gives her a look. ‘I have eyes, Alice, I see you here, there, everywhere all the time.’

‘Yes, but if they don’t do their work, or do it badly, others will suffer as a result,’ Alice objects, thinking of Maureen’s ale. ‘Or they will spend time correcting it, and they won’t be able to help in the fields where I need them.’

‘Alice, do you not think most understand their own work?’

‘Yes, but… if I don’t… if they…’ Alice trails off, dissatisfied with herself, irritated with the suggestion of interference. She wipes a hand across her brow again, feeling the sweat springing afresh, the strands of hair sticking. ‘Ohhh,’ she sighs, and gazes out at all the people.

‘Even Sam understands what he needs to do.’ Olivia points. ‘Look at him, out there.’ Alice’s son, now that she has formally adopted him, is energetically jumping and bending down to pick through the cut hay, sifting out the green and turning it up to the sun’s drying heat. Then he jumps forward and does the same again.

‘He begged me for a pitchfork but I cannot allow him anywhere near one. The thought of an accident…’ Alice feels the tears come to her eyes, and turns her face away, annoyed with herself that she can still be taken unawares by jolting remembrance of that other accident.

‘Of course not,’ Olivia says gently. ‘No one would give a five-year-old a pitchfork, but he seems to be doing very well as he is.’

‘I tried to discourage him from helping at all but he was so hurt. All the same, I have told the men using pitchforks that they are to stop work forthwith if Sam comes anywhere near them. They just think I’m fussing.’

‘Most of the men are parents themselves, Alice. They would do exactly the same for their own children. Haven’t you noticed how Ned Cotter is shadowing Sam up and down the rows?’

Alice looks. Olivia is right. Ned, father of three, is working the row next to Sam’s, and every now and then he checks around.

‘Yes, but that means it’s holding him back.’ Alice stoppers the flask. ‘I must get Sam away.’

‘Alice?’

‘What?’

Olivia says gently, ‘You’re doing rather a lot of this at the moment, you know.’

‘Doing what?’

‘This Yes but to everything. You even said it to Betsy earlier over the washing. If anyone knows the washing of clothes, surely it is Betsy? After all, she launders for half the households around here.’

Alice sighs. ‘I know, but if you knew the situation here at High Stoke… It’s not just the threat of poor weather; there have been years of poor husbandry. We are on the edge, Olivia. Small oversights can have long-reaching effects.’

Olivia rises and moves to stand by her friend. ‘I know things are difficult, Alice, I don’t pretend they’re not. But all your people understand the need to pull their weight. They too have an interest in seeing High Stoke recover.’

‘I don’t want the demesne to fail because I didn’t do enough.’

‘And you have achieved much that others would not have,’ Olivia assures her. ‘See how everyone here has rallied around you, now that you are on your own.’

‘Rallied? Have you seen how they try to avoid me?’

‘Alice, you have a right to be here.’

‘Legal, perhaps.’

There is a short silence.

Then, ‘High Stoke might do better work than you think, if you let them get on with it.’

‘While I sit at my stitching, playing the fine lady? I don’t think so,’ Alice snaps. Olivia is silent, biting her lip, and Alice curses her own irritable tongue. ‘Oh Olivia, I’m sorry.’ Then she adds, ‘But think about it, my embroidery skills are truly awful,’ and they both laugh at that. ‘Olivia, I am sure there is much in what you say. It’s just…’ She trails off, shrugs. It is all very well for her friend to say, Walk away . Crossed fingers do not solve problems. ‘Might’, ‘possibly’, ‘maybe’; these are words with knives in their sleeves.

‘They have seen what you can do, Alice. What about trusting them to show you what they can do?’

‘How?’ Trust , another word with concealed weapons.

‘Think on it, Alice. I feel sure you can find a way that’s right for you. Now, I must go, Jack sent to say he will be back from London tonight. The King has dissolved Parliament, and all counsels to reconsider have been in vain. Jack is not a Privy Counsellor, of course, but he takes it very much to heart when men of sense bring not the smallest shift.’ Olivia shakes her skirts free of grass and bends to take up the wide-brimmed straw hat. ‘In any event, I have spent long enough sitting in the shade and playing the fine lady myself.’ As she settles the hat at a tilt, ‘Why are you smiling like that?’

‘You don’t have to play the fine lady, Olivia,’ Alice says, pushing her damp kinked curls off her face. ‘While I struggle with unruly hair and summer freckles, you glide along with your rich dark tresses and flawless countenance.’

‘You have no idea how I envy that red fire in your hair, Alice.’ Olivia leans to kiss her friend. ‘Thank you for your hospitality today.’

‘I am glad you came, Olivia. I feel less alone, knowing you are nearby.’ Alice puts down the flask and walks with her friend. ‘Give Jack my best.’ She checks around and lowers her voice. ‘Let us hope our new king sheds some pride and gains in wit – he needs to, especially in these first years of his reign.’

‘Those who advise His Majesty try to instil wisdom, but I’m told he stands ever on his dignity; he has yet to develop the confidence to be subtle.’

‘Sooner or later his advisers must surely find a way to persuade him.’

‘As you will find a way to smooth out your difficulties here, Alice. Probably sooner than His Majesty resolves his. As far as I can tell, you have a deal more wit and infinitely greater subtlety.’

‘Oh, hush, Olivia!’ smothering a chuckle.

‘Find that way, Alice, for their sake and yours.’