Excerpt
The Sea Child
Chapter OneHer arrival in the village is made of whispers. They start the moment she descends the two steps from the coach onto the dirt road. Two women stand in front of one of the thatched cottages built against the side of the cliff, their black knitted shawls drawn tightly about their shoulders. The women aren’t pointing, but their looks are. Isabel cannot hear them with the wind blowing, but she can tell that they’re talking about her. Behind the window of the next cottage, a dirty strip of curtain moves against the breeze.
Her velvet pelisse isn’t made for the sort of wind they have out here, but the chill she feels consists of more than that. They know. The thought comes into her head, or maybe it was there all along, muttering behind all the other thoughts she’s had today, about the landscape, which is rough and beautiful, and the dreadful springs in the coach, and the disapproval in the lean coachman’s face when he stopped to change horses in Helston. Despite drinking hardly anything during the ride, she couldn’t hold her bladder any longer and the coachman said she took too long; he had letters to deliver.
They snaked their way up the cliff—the coachman, the Royal Mail guard, and her—the road narrowing until she felt she was passing through the gut of the village. The high walls on either side of the road, covered in ivy, squeezed the coach until, suddenly, a gap opened up and through it she glimpsed the river, all dark diamonds, and the boats bobbing up and down on the swell. Flowers bordered the wall, hundreds of them.
The river isn’t truly a river but rather a tongue of the Atlantic pressing deeply inland, fringed by piles of seaweed on the riverbank. There haven’t been any other passengers since Truro. She has come to the end of the world.
The coachman moves fast now, unbuckling the straps around her case and heaving it from the coach. With a grunt, he places it on the road beside her, while the guard carries the box with letters into the inn. The Shipwrights Arms, it says on a sign dangling from a post by the door. The women are still whispering. A third woman comes walking up the road, some years younger. She’s carrying a basket on her back, suspended from a leather strap around her hat, and an infant wrapped in a shawl on her front. This woman greets the other two and then she’s staring, too. Even the infant, tucked so deep into the folds of the knitted cloth Isabel can only see its eyes and nose, appears to examine her, her case, the coach. They know, she thinks again. They have had word.
She closes her eyes, breathing deeply. The ribbon of her bonnet flits against her face, straining to loosen in the wind. She feels the weight of the women’s stares press on her arms and burrow under her dress, under her chemise and her stays. The inn’s walls used to be white. The building stoops, with a narrow doorway to the side the only apparent entrance. To the left of it is a flat, rocky expanse, and across this she can see the river. The sight of it hits her, almost like a blow, every time she looks at it. The ocean is just around the corner. If the road made her doubt her reasons for coming, the river reassures her, in cool, glittering tones: this is why you’ve come. Her fears ebb, replaced by a sense of calm. The sea has that effect on her—it always has. Losing George hasn’t changed that.
She’s being unreasonable, of course. These women—what are they, fishwives?—could not possibly know why she has left London. They won’t have heard the rumors; they never will. She has left all that behind. They’re only looking because she’s a stranger.
The coachman tips his hat to her and mounts the box; the guard takes his seat at the back of the coach. The driver gives a click of the tongue, a flick of the reins, and the coach turns effortlessly in the small space. Isabel watches it roll down the hill, feeling unaccountably alone. She waits until she can no longer hear the sound of hooves on the road, then she turns back to the inn.
Sensing the eyes of the women on her back, she goes to the door. The dark blue paint on it peels. Before she can go in, it opens inward and a balding man ducks through the doorframe. When he unfolds himself, he’s even taller than Isabel expected. Thin and as sharp-looking as the blade of a letter opener, he’s taking her in with sage-green eyes tinged with the same curiosity as the staring women.
“Got yourself in a bit of a pickle with that case, haven’t you?” the man says. The fingers of his left hand play with his apron, a rough-spun affair in a surprising shade of peach pink. Isabel has to strain to understand the man; the intonation of the words is off and some of the vowels sound different.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Aren’t you the lady come to live in the old pilchard shed?”
Now it’s her turn to stare. “I’ve come to take Trevernan Cottage. Not a . . . a shed.”
The man laughs. “It’s the cottage by the shed. We call it the old pilchard shed—but what am I saying? I forget my manners.” He lifts his cap and, bowing, says, “Allow me to introduce myself. Tom Holder, keeper of the Shipwrights Arms here.”
Isabel inclines her head. “Mrs. Isabel Henley.”
He looks around as if he expects George to pop up from behind one of the low walls around the houses. “Of course. You’re married. Née Farnworth, it said on the paperwork, so Mrs. Dowling said. We’ve had word of your coming. Mrs. Dowling has talked of nothing else since she had confirmation of you taking the cottage.”
Isabel inspects her travel case. She shouldn’t have brought it. It’s too unwieldy and far too heavy, yet it only holds a fraction of all the things she wanted to bring. The air has trouble going down her throat. It’s difficult to swallow, too. This doesn’t happen often, not anymore. “Not married,” she says. “Widowed.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“It’s fine. There are rather a few of us these days.” Her laugh is as light as it is hollow. She hates the pity that flashes across Tom Holder’s face, the prick of the fishwives’ eyes on her back.
“Don’t mind them,” Tom Holder says. “They like to talk.”
“It’s because I’m a stranger here, isn’t it?” she says.
He shakes his head. “It’s because you’re not.” Glancing at the travel case, he says gently, “This is all you’ve brought?”
She meets his eyes and the understanding in them is like the tide, swelling high inside her. One more look like that and it’s going to spill over. She swallows and swallows. “My husband had some debts. The prize money . . . after his death, it wasn’t forthcoming. Being mentioned in dispatches doesn’t come with any monetary rewards, unfortunately.”
“Your husband was a sailor?” Tom Holder says.
“He was a midshipman on board HMS Neptune.” Her throat is so tight the words she pushes through it come out squeaky. Tom Holder looks like he’s having trouble hearing them over the wind. He’s leaning into her and she can smell his breath, which is sour. Her hand moves to her chest, where George’s Trafalgar medal sits under the velvet of her pelisse, suspended from a black ribbon around her neck. Already, the ribbon is starting to fray at the edges. She’ll have to save up to replace it. She has never had to save up for anything before.
She slips her hand between the buttons of her pelisse. The silver of the medal is comfortingly unbending in her hand. This, at least, is something that will never change. She’ll always have George’s medal. If the silver tarnishes, she’ll shine it, the way the maids used to. Glancing at the women by the house, Tom Holder says, “It’s all they can gossip about, you coming back here. All of the village has been talking since we heard the old pilchard shed—that is to say, Trevernan Cottage—was let to an Isabel, née Farnworth. But now you’re here, the talk will die soon enough.”
One of the women has fetched a broom, but she isn’t sweeping. Her dark eyes rest on Isabel while she says something to her companion.
Tom Holder says, “You won’t get far with that.” He indicates her travel case. “Trevernan is about a mile outside the village, along the coastal path. I’ll send my boy, Richard, to carry the case for you and show you the way. I’ll send word to Mrs. Dowling, too; she’ll want to come meet you.”
“I don’t wish to trouble you,” Isabel says. “I did not realize—I assumed the cottage was here in the village. I’d be much obliged for your son’s help.”
“It’s no trouble, Mrs. Henley. The boy’s twelve and sturdy as they come.”
She’s glad to leave the shawled women behind as she follows Richard around the end of the inlet, where the coastal path veers away from the road. The path is like a tunnel, green on every side. Above, too; the boughs of the trees touch in the middle. They remind Isabel of the arched roof of a church. It smells like spring, sweet and forest-like. The path is high enough she can’t smell the seaweed, but she can hear the water, and when she licks her lips, she can taste the salt.
