Dark Tides Page 16

  “Amen,” Ned said politely, well aware that New England was righteously devout and the minister’s housekeeper more than most.

  “But how do you cook here?” she demanded.

  “As anyone does, over the fire. I’ve let it go out in this hot weather. I might light a little fire outside later, and roast a fish on a spit. I could catch another, if you’d like to stay.”

  She hesitated. “I have to get back to cook dinner. Perhaps another time.”

  Ned nodded.

  “And how do you do your washing?”

  “There you have me!” Ned admitted. “I pay one of the women to come and do my washing.”

  “Not savages?” she asked, a little shocked, and when he nodded she shook her head. “Savages won’t get your linen white. You can bring your collars to the minister’s house and I’ll do them in our weekly wash.”

  “I’m obliged to you,” Ned said politely. “But I won’t impose. Not now that you have a little holiday, with your guests gone away for the summer.”

  “They’re no trouble,” she said. “Men of God, both of them, and exiles for a great cause.”

  “Have you always been in service?” Ned asked shyly.

  “From when I was a girl in Devon. My master was called by God to come here and brought us, his household servants, with him. He died on the voyage, my husband too, and we that were left had to find new places. It wasn’t hard—everyone wants a servant over here, and I chose to work for the minister as he promised me a plot of land in his new settlement, if I found a husband at the end of my time with him.”

  “You want your own land?” Ned asked.

  “Of course,” she said simply. “Everyone does.”

  “You would farm it yourself?”

  She risked a glance at his face. “I hope to marry a good husband and we’ll farm it together,” she said bluntly.

  Ned hesitated, not knowing how to answer her, and at once she finished her cup and rose to her feet.

  “I’ll leave you to read your letter.”

  “I would walk you back into town—”

  “I know you can’t leave the ferry,” she said. She hesitated and then told him what she had been thinking from the very first day she had seen the ferry-house go up and Ned spreading reeds for thatch on the roof. “You could make it a good business here. You could build a bigger house and open it as an inn for travelers going north, you could hire men to farm your plot, and maids to serve. If you had a wife who knew her trade in the kitchen this could be the best house on the river.”

  Ned did not argue that he had no appetite for a good business and desire to be an innkeeper. He smiled down at her. “You’re an enterprising woman,” was all he said.

  “That’s why I came here,” she agreed. “I was called by God to make a new life in this new world, and I thought it could be a better life than the old.” She hesitated. “There’s nothing wrong with that? Wanting a better life?”

  “No,” Ned said quickly. “And it’s what I wanted. I wanted a better life too. Just not… not at anyone else’s cost.”

  She put out her hand to shake, as if she were a man. “Good-bye.”

  He took her work-hardened hand in his own, and closed his other hand over it, so they were hand-clasped. “I’ll see you the day after tomorrow,” he promised her. “I’m picking fruit tomorrow. Shall I save anything for you? I’ll have high bush blueberries and the first of the wild grapes.”

  “I’ll take three pound of blueberries for bottling.” She hesitated but she did not draw her hand away from his warm clasp. “I’ll be glad to see you, Mr. Ferryman. The minister has no objection to you coming to the house to visit me.”

  Ned was very sure that John Russell had no objection to a visit, nor to a marriage. The whole village of Hadley was of the minister’s making; he had moved his congregation here from the river settlements in Connecticut, he had measured out the plots himself and invited other settlers to come. Ned had been awarded the ferry to the north and a plot of land, for escorting and guarding William Goffe and Edward Whalley; but even Ned must be settled under the rule of the town and that meant attendance at church, a godly marriage, and a family for his plot. Mrs. Rose was an indentured servant, a widow; she too must settle and marry at the end of her service.

  Ned followed his guest to the town gate and opened it for her; she passed through with a little smile.

  “I’ll see you, Mr. Ferryman,” she said, and started to walk down the wide green common way.

  It struck Ned that this was not the freedom that he had hoped for when he had crossed the ocean. He had dreamed of a life that they had passionately imagined, in the evening lectures of Cromwell’s army—a land where every man would have his own plot, his own faith, and his own rights. Every man would have had his moment of blinding illuminating godliness that would guide him for the rest of his life, every man would have his own voice in government and every man of every color would be free and equal. But here in the land that he had thought would be free, there were still laws that put everyone in his place, there were still masters and men, landlords and servants. Ned was still pulling a ferry, and his wife would be a maid, an indentured servant whose greatest ambition was to make others serve her.

  He thought he should have said something warmer, something more agreeable in reply to her plan of winning a husband, but he had not found the words. He thought he had always been a fool around women. His wife had died young, and the only woman he had ever understood had been his sister, and she had betrayed everything he had believed, and nearly died for her falseness. So he let Mrs. Rose go, and she walked on, her white bonnet visible all the way down the track.

  Ned turned inside to open Alinor’s letter and, at the first line, pulled the stool towards his rough table, to read and reread the words, holding the paper to the light from the open door to make out the scratched-out sentences. As soon as he understood that his nephew was drowned he dropped his head to his hands and prayed for the soul of Rob, the bright boy who had been the brightest hope of his family and who had been lost in deep waters. With a little groan Ned slid off his stool to his knees to pray for the boy’s mother, Alinor, and that she survived this new blow, and learned to accept it, as yet another tragic loss.

  “Amen,” he said quietly. “Lord, You know the pain that this family has endured. Spare us any more. Let my sister come to understand that her son is lost to this world and gone to another. Let her find peace at her home, and me in mine.”

  AUGUST 1670, LONDON

  The shipping on the Thames was at its peak in the fairer weather; the great galleons from the East Indies which had caught an early monsoon wind passed the little wharf as if they disdained it, heading to their own deep moorings, and their own great warehouses. Alys maintained her rounds of meeting merchants, drumming up business for the wharf, and seeing the goods in and out, and the Custom duties paid.

  Reekie Wharf was the preferred quay for a Kentish hoy that brought broadcloth in winter, and wheat and fruits in harvest time. The master—an old comrade of Ned’s—docked in August and Alys was able to climb the stairs to her mother’s room, where she was tying herbal posies to prevent fever, and put a bowl with fresh plums in her lap.

  “Sussex plums,” she said. “Captain Billen brought them.”

  Alinor closed her eyes to taste them as if she could see the tree, and the wall around Ferry-house garden, and the little house on the edge of the mire.

  “It must have been a good summer on Foulmire for these to be so sweet,” was all she said.

  The only idle person in the warehouse was Livia, who could think of nothing but the return of her ship from Venice carrying her goods; but could do nothing to make it come sooner. She hemmed her own exquisite linen, she played with her baby for a little while and then left him with Alys or Alinor for the whole afternoon as she walked in the fields and orchards to the south. She complained of boredom and of the heat, of the monotony of the warehouse life, of the likelihood of them all g
etting sick from the stinking River Neckinger that discharged into the Thames beside the warehouse. Her only interest was the design and ordering of some small elegant cards, like tradesman’s cards but on thicker quality paper. They showed a drawing of a classical statue head and, beneath, the address of Avery House.

  “But these make it look as if you own the place,” Alys objected when Livia showed her the top face of the cards in their box.

  “I can’t give my address as Reekie Wharf, Savoury Dock, can I?” Livia replied sharply. “These are antiquities of great value. No man of fortune and taste would be interested in them if he knew they came from here.”

  “You are ashamed of us?” Alys asked levelly.

  “Not at all! This is a matter of business. Not how things are, but how they look.”

  “And does he not object? To how things look? To your using his house, his name?” As usual, in conversation she left James nameless.

  “He will have no objection,” Livia ruled.

  Alys gaped at the younger woman. “He will? You say: he will? He doesn’t know?”

  “He knows I am showing my antiquities at his house. Of course, I have to give out his address. How else will people know where to come?”

  “I thought they were his friends, they’d know where he lives?”

  “This will remind them to return.”

  “However did you pay for them?”

  Livia turned her head away to hide a rush of tears. “They were not very expensive, and I had to have them, Alys.”

  Alys had a moment of dread. “You’ve never borrowed money from him?”

  “No! I would not!”

  “Then how?”

  Livia’s head drooped. “I sold my earrings.”

  “Oh! My dear!” Alys was shocked. “You shouldn’t have done that. I could have lent you the money.”

  “I couldn’t ask you,” Livia said, putting her black trimmed handkerchief to her eyes. “How could I? Not after how you were about the shipping. I can’t bear to be a burden to you…”

  “Did you pawn them? Can we get them back?”

  “They gave me three shillings for them.”

  Alys went at once into the counting house, opened the cashbox, and came back with the money in her hand. “There!” she said. “Money’s tight, but it’s always tight, and I’ll never let you sell your jewelry. Get them back, and never do that again. Come to me for anything else you need. Rob wouldn’t have wanted you to sell your little things.”

  “But he’s not here!” Livia exclaimed, tears pouring down her face, her lower lip trembling. “I have to make my way in the world without him, and I just can’t! I don’t know how!”

  “I’m here!” Alys exclaimed. “I’m here! I’ll take care of you, and little Matteo too. I always will.”

  Livia flung herself into Alys’s arms. “You’re such a good sister,” she breathed. “I shall come to you for everything, I won’t do such a thing again. Roberto gave them to me on our betrothal, it broke my heart to sell them.”

  Alys held her close. “Of course you must come to me for anything you need. You’re family, this is a family business, our fortune is yours.”

  Livia stepped away, dried her eyes, and tucked the coins in her pocket. Alys rubbed her face with her hands, smoothed down her apron, and her gaze fell on the cards again. “But I wish you hadn’t had them printed like this.”

  “I can get them reprinted, but it would cost another three shillings? I won’t allow the extravagance.”

  “It looks as if you live there.”

  “It does not look as if I live there,” Livia ruled. “It looks as if you can visit Avery House to see my antiquities, and you may apply to Avery House by letter if you wish to purchase. Avery House is my shop window, just as Sarah has a shop window for her hats. Nobody thinks she lives in the window.”

  AUGUST 1670, LONDON

  Sir James, when he saw the visiting card for Livia’s antiquities giving Avery House as the address, merely raised his eyebrows.

  “You’re very organized,” was all he said. “Do you hope that I will distribute these cards for you? As if we were hucksters and Avery House our stall? Are people to order antiques from me as if I were a grocer?”

  “No, no,” she said. “That would never do. I should never ask such a thing of you! I should never stoop to trade myself! See your name is not on here, nor mine. Just the address. These are for me to give to people who make an inquiry. All I want you to do is to invite people to a little party, to see our antiquities. I will show them the pieces, and then I will give them the cards, I will write on each card with a note of the piece they like and the price. So that they remember the antiquities are for sale and can be purchased from me.”

  “You want me to invite people?”

  “Gentlemen and ladies that you know.” She gave a little shake to her gown, as if dismissing everyone else in London. “No one commercial. We don’t want dealers or tradesmen or people of that sort.”

  “I agree,” he said hastily. “But I don’t have a circle of friends like that. I lived in Yorkshire with my wife and my aunt at Northside Manor, and we seldom came to London. After my wife died, I closed Avery House. I only opened it this year for—” He broke off.

  She felt a sting of jealousy as she realized he had opened it for Alinor; but she made sure that her smile never wavered. “You must have family friends?” she pursued. “Relations?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “And people who were friends of your parents.”

  “Naturally. Though not everyone came home from exile.” He shook his head, thinking of those who had never returned.

  “But there must be some people who were on your side for the king who came back and who owe you favors?” Livia pursued. “Many people. People whose secrets you kept? Were you not a royalist? Are you not the winners now?”

  He gave a little resigned shrug. “Very well. I shall send out cards for a breakfast party.”

  “If ladies are coming you will need a hostess,” she reminded him.

  He hesitated. “I suppose I can ask my aunt if she will come south from Northallerton…”

  “I shall do it,” Livia offered. “It is no trouble, and I have to be here anyway to speak of the antiquities. You can tell people that I am the widow of your former pupil Walter Peachey. They can think that we have been friends for years.”

  He was shocked. “I cannot give you another man’s name!”

  She smiled up at him. “It does not matter, does it, my dear Sir James? It gives you and I a provenance which we need. We can hardly say that we met at a dirty little warehouse, and that you were there to offer for a poor wharfinger’s mother, to claim your bastard son; can we?”

  “No, of course we can’t say that, it would be a disgrace!” He was shocked.

  “So we have to explain how we met,” she pointed out. “And why you would provide me with a gallery to show my first collection? All I am saying is we need a little polish.”

  “Polish?” He examined the word.

  “A little shine to deceive the eye.” She smiled. “As we do in the workshop. To add luster. A little polish. I will call myself Nobildonna da Picci, do you see? No change at all, just one little letter; and then no one can doubt our friendship is anything but you kindly helping the widow of your late pupil Walter Robert Peachey, my late husband. It is a more elegant name anyway, I think. We preserve my reputation from comment, and we spare you any connection to the wharf. You don’t want to expose me to gossip, do you?”

  AUGUST 1670, LONDON

  Sarah, home as usual for Saturday night, helped her grandmother to bed, straightening her bedding and smoothing the pillow and drawing the curtains against the night sky. A harvest moon lay low over the river and Alinor asked her to leave them open so that she could see the warm yellow light.

  “You don’t fear it’ll give you bad dreams?” the girl teased.

  “I like to dream. Sometimes I dream I am a girl again back on Foul
mire, and the sound of the gulls are the cries of the birds on the mire. Sometimes I dream they are the birds that Rob loved on the lagoon at Venice and that he is listening to them now.”

  “You dream of him like a wish?” the girl asked with ready sympathy.

  “No,” Alinor said firmly. “I dream of him like a certainty.”

  Sarah drew up the little stool and sat beside the bed. “A certainty? What d’you mean?”

  “He was sure-footed, my son: that’s certain. He was a good swimmer: that’s certain. What she told us—”

  “What Livia said?”

  “Aye. What she told us can’t be true: that’s certain. She told us he was always taking out a boat on the lagoon, and walking on the sandbanks and islands. So he wouldn’t have drowned there. Not my Rob, not in water that came and went, that was sometimes land and sometimes sea.”

  Sarah listened, wide-eyed.

  “If she’d told me he’d been killed in a fight or taken sick, I might’ve believed her. Sudden, and with no time for him to think of me. If she’d told us he was buried, I might’ve come to believe it. But I can’t imagine him drowned and no gravestone in his name. Besides, if he’d drowned, I’d have known it. I’d have known the moment it happened. It’s not possible that Rob drowned—and me in the yard on a sunny day, shredding lavender, picking thyme, singing… it just couldn’t happen.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “I see you sitting there, thinking that I am losing my wits.” Alinor smiled at her granddaughter. “But I so nearly drowned once, myself. Could my son go beneath the water and me not feel it? In the water that’s even now in my lungs?”

  Sarah got to her feet and drew the curtain a little more open so they could both see the path of the moonlight on the river.

  “I keep looking for him,” Alinor confessed. “I see the sails and think one of these ships will bring him home. I think he’ll come with her statues.” She turned and smiled at her granddaughter. “For some people, this world is not quite… watertight. The other world comes in… sometimes we can reach out to it. It’s like Foulmire—sometimes it’s land and sometimes it’s water. Sometimes I know this world, sometimes I glimpse the other. Don’t you?”