Alinor and Alys were silent as the coach eased forward, the iron-rimmed wheels sliding on the mud, the horses leaning back against the traces to keep the carriage steady on the downward slope,and then straining forward, their hooves slipping and grinding on the cobblestones, to mount the other side.
Matthew leaned forward and dropped the window as the ferryman came closer, his hat in his hand.
“All’s well then, sir,” he said. He stared into the carriage and bowed when he saw the two women, who looked blankly back at him. There was no recognition on either side.
“And you are?” Matthew asked.
The man bowed. “Tom Drydale, your honor. Tenant at Ferry-house. Your tenant, sir. And I work the ferry for you, sir.”
Matthew found he had nothing to say to the first tenant he had met. He reached into his pocket for a coin and stopped when he saw his foster mother’s tiny shake of her head. “Thank you, Drydale,” he said. He pulled the cord to tell the driver to go onwards, and the coach lurched forward, and the bowing tenant stepped back from the window.
“The lord doesn’t pay a fee to cross,” Alys told him. “It’s your ferry. It’s your wadeway. He pays you. Start as you mean to go on.”
“Leave the glass down,” Alinor said dreamily. “I like the smell.”
“Mud?” Matthew asked.
“Why d’you think it’s called Foulmire?” Alys asked.
Matthew shook his head. “I thought it meant bird marsh. Fowl Mere?”
“It means stinking,” she told him. “Foul Mire: Foul Mud.” She turned to her mother: “You ever heard of the Drydales?”
Alinor dragged her eyes from the watery waste on the left of the carriage. “Never,” she said to her daughter. “Perhaps it’s all new people under new names. And here we are, under a new name too. Here we are, anew.”
The carriage lurched past the ferry-house.
“That was our house,” Alinor told Matthew. “That was your uncle Ned’s ferry, and our father’s ferry before him. Our family were ferrymen here when the monks built the Priory. And we were ferrymen here when the monks were driven out.” She pointed to a ruined shanty on the bank of the harbor a little beyond the ferry-house. “And that was my—”
“That was our fishing hut,” Alys interrupted her mother. “We had a fishing boat, and we used to keep the nets and the lobster pots there. My father was a fisherman.”
Alinor regarded her daughter silently but did not contradict her, as the carriage jolted on, rocking in the ruts of the mud track. Both women were quiet, watching for the familiar landmarks that they had not seen for decades.
To the right of the carriage was a low flat plain intersected with draining ditches where the standing water shone in the setting sun, which was sinking low on the rim of the flat land. To their left was a formless sea of unending mud, intersected with rivers and pools of water and reed beds, and now and then a shingle beach, thrown up by underwater currents. The sea, too far away even to be heard, seemed as if it would never return and the mud and shingle and scrub and the great broad rivers of still water would stretch to the horizon forever.
Suddenly, there was a roar like that of an enormous waterfall and a grinding noise of machinery and the coach lurched as the horses shied in fright and the coachman shouted at them and hauled on the reins.
“God’s sake, what’s that?” cried Matthew, hanging on to the strap as the carriage bounded forward.
Alinor and Alys had tightened their grip on each other, but leaned back against the jolt of the carriage as the coachman hauled on the horses and the pace steadied.
Matthew turned to his mother: “What in God’s name was that?” He looked back the way they had come, and saw a gout of water spring from the bank behind them to gush, frothing and brown, into a deep channel in the middle of the harbor.
Alinor’s face was as white as a drowned woman’s.
“It’s safe!” Matthew said to her. “It’s all right. The horses are steady. But the noise! What is that? What on earth was that?”
“That was the tide mill,” Alys answered him, leaning slightly towards her mother so their shoulders rested together, as if to hold each other up. “They open the sluice gates of the millpond and the water pours into the millrace and turns the mill wheel. The noise—that’s the water rushing through the mill and turning the mill wheel for grinding and then the water pouring out into the harbor.” For thefirst time since the thunderous noise, she looked at her mother. “Are you all right, Ma?”
“I’m all right.” The thread of her voice was almost drowned by the noise of the mill wheel and the tide race.
“It’s a fearsome row!” Matthew exclaimed. “I thought my end had come!”
His mother smiled thinly. “It takes some getting used to.”
The carriage rocked down the rutted road, going south through thick woodland, away from the harbor and the rushing water. Matthew could see occasional clearings and the heaped pile of wood of a charcoal burner.
“Now this is Sealsea Island,” Alys told Matthew. “And everything on either side of this road is yours.”