Dark Tides Read online

  “You’ve told Johnnie?”

  “I can trust him. But, Grandma, maybe don’t tell Ma, for she’ll only tell Livia.”

  Alinor nodded. “She tells her everything. I’ll say you went to stay with a friend in the country, for a week. And, at the end of the week, I’ll tell her then. That’ll give you a start, so Livia can’t send a message to warn them.”

  The girl frowned. “You think she has people working for her? But doing what?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t want her knowing that you’ve gone to find her out.”

  The girl was struck for the first time with the enormity of her task. “Grandma! If I find Uncle Rob, what am I to do?”

  “Just tell him what’s happening here,” Alinor advised. “Tell him Livia’s here, and what she’s doing. Tell him she’s got your mother wrapped around her little finger and she’s running us into debt. He’ll know what should be done. Once you find him, he can decide what is best.”

  “I don’t have to bring him home?”

  Alinor laughed. “A little thing like you? No. He’s a grown man. He must decide what he wants to do. All you have to do is see him. So I know that he is alive. And take this…” She picked up a worn red leather purse from the table. “I don’t know if it will be any use to you. But you should have it.”

  “What is it?” Sarah asked, thinking that it could not be more money, though coins chinked inside the red leather.

  “Little tokens, tiny old coins that I used to find when I was a girl at Foulmire. Rob would know them at once. If he doubts you come from me, or doubts your word, show them to him.”

  The girl said nothing; she thought with pity that her grandmother’s senses must be failing, to send her to the wealthiest city in the world with a purse of clippings to look for a drowned son, as if she could buy him back from the underworld. “And, Grandma, if I don’t find him?” the girl suggested hesitantly. “If I find that it’s true and that he’s drowned?”

  “Ah, if he’s dead and buried at sea then bring something back that he owned, if you can,” Alinor said, her face suddenly haggard. “I’ll have it in my coffin when I’m buried so that something of his can be buried on land in Christian ground, so his soul doesn’t wash around the world in dark tides. And if I’ve just been a foolish old woman who can’t bear the truth and makes up a stupid story, then bring back that to me—as hard and true as it is, Sarah. I’d rather have a hard truth than a soft lie. If he’s drowned, then take a boat out to where they say he went down, and throw some flowers on the water and say a prayer for him. Say his name. Tell him that I love him.”

  “I will,” she whispered. “If I can do nothing else, I can do that. You can tell Ma and Livia that I’ve gone to honor his grave.” She paused for a moment. “What flowers? Any flowers especially, Grandma?”

  “Forget-me-nots.”

  * * *

  Livia, with Carlotta, the nursemaid, trailing unhappily behind with the baby in her arms, walked the length of St. Olave’s Street to London Bridge. She elbowed her way through the teeming crowds on the bridge, snapping over her shoulder that Carlotta should keep up. Porters carrying trays on their heads or sacks on their backs pushed into the two women, wagoners bellowed for people to make way, shopkeepers shouted bargains at them, and beggars plucked at their skirts. Often the press of people was so great that they could make no way at all but just had to stand, crushed in the crowd, and wait for everyone to move on.

  “This is unbearable!” Livia exclaimed as Matteo wailed unhappily in Carlotta’s arms; but there was no avoiding the queues of slowly moving people.

  Halfway over the bridge the crowd thinned at the disused church; but then the way narrowed again and the women had to push along the drawbridge, and finally spill out onto Thames Street.

  “Follow me!” Livia ordered, and led the way for a mile up Thames Street, struggled through the smoke-stained half-ruined City gate, over the Fleet Bridge into Fleet Street, and elbowed her way around the half-built Temple Bar to emerge with a sigh of relief into the paved way of the Strand.

  It was a long way to carry a baby, stepping over the filth in the road, ignoring the stares of more fashionable people, avoiding the impertinent poor. Beggars had to be sidestepped, street sellers with everything from eels to posies of flowers and fruit from the country had to be refused. Carlotta was flustered and upset by the time they got to the steps of Avery House and Livia impatiently pulled the huge iron doorbell.

  “Why did we not take a boat?” Carlotta hissed. “What do all these people want us to buy?”

  “We have no money for a boat.” Livia spat her reply, and then turned a smiling face to the door as Glib silently opened the double-height door to the two of them. “Is Sir James at home?” Livia asked coolly, walking past him to the mirror and taking off her hat, pausing briefly to see the reflection of her perfect face.

  “In his study. Am I to show you in?”

  “I’ll go in,” Livia said. She nodded to Carlotta to sit on the chair in the hall and rock the fretful baby. “Keep him quiet!” she snapped.

  Glib did not warn her that Sir James had a visitor: but when he threw open the door for Livia she saw a stranger in the room. She hesitated on the threshold before stepping forwards with a charming smile. “Forgive me, I thought you were alone. I did not mean to intrude.”

  “No, come in, come in. I know this is your time to come for your letters.” Sir James beckoned her in. “Indeed, this is someone who can advise us. I have shown him the statues in the gallery already, my brother-in-law, George Pakenham.”

  Livia extended her black-mittened hand, curtseyed, glanced up at the gentleman from under her dark eyelashes. “I will not disturb you. I will take my letters and leave you to your discussions.”

  “Not at all, please take a seat. We were just going to have a glass of claret, weren’t we, George?”

  George, a rotund man of about fifty, lifted a chair from the side of the room and placed it near to the table. “Please, won’t you sit, ma’am?”

  “Lady Peachey,” she corrected quietly.

  “Your ladyship.”

  “I will sit,” she said, sinking into the chair and smoothing her black silk skirts. “But I will not delay you. I only came to make sure that we were all ready.” She turned to George Pakenham to explain. “It is to be an exhibition tea, for those who want to see the statues again.” She put her head to one side. “Do you like them? They are said to be among the most beautiful in Venice, in Italy.”

  “I’ve seen them,” George said pleasantly. “And I must say I thought they were remarkable.”

  Livia clasped her hands together at his praise and smiled at Sir James.

  “Some of them are modern copies, of course, and some original pieces cobbled together. But one or two are the real thing.”

  She froze. He saw the convulsive little tremor of her throat as she swallowed. Then she turned to Sir James. “They’re not copies,” was all she said, her voice unsteady.

  “George is something of a connoisseur. He’s a diplomat, he’s been all over. He was in Venice and Florence, and he saw some wonderful statues at the Dutch courts and the German courts, didn’t you? They’re great collectors there, he tells me…” James blundered into silence.

  “My antiquities are not copies,” she repeated flatly. She turned to George. “You cannot have looked closely, sir. I have nothing but what is ancient and beautiful. This was my late husband’s collection, and he was famous for his good taste. This is my dower. You do me a great disservice if you speak against them.”

  “I would as soon slander a lady’s reputation, as speak against her antiquities—not that I have ever met with a lady selling antiquities before!” He gave her a knowing smile, he almost winked. “I well understand that it is a question of value.”

  Glib knocked at the door and came into the room with a dewy bottle of ratafia and a dusty one of claret and three glasses.

  “Pour.” Sir James, harassed, gestured him
to get on with his task. “George—you didn’t say, as we were looking round…”

  “No, for what would you know, old fellow? I wanted to speak to the owner, of course, her ladyship here.”

  Livia said nothing until the cold glass of wine was in her hand and Glib was gone from the room. She took a sip. “Of course it is a question of value to me,” she said quietly. “As a measure of the judgment of the Conte—my late husband, a famous patron of the arts. Value to me as my dower. And value to Sir James as a means to help a most deserving family, poor cousins of my husband’s family. Poor but proud widowed women who will accept help from me, but from no other quarter. If you devalue my antiquities, sir, you damage many people. Including, I think, your brother-in-law, who houses them.”

  “Alas, madam. I have to speak, when I see my dear late sister’s house being used as a shop for some goods that are most definitely—”

  She rose to her feet, summoning all her courage. She did not glance to Sir James but knew his eyes were on her. “This is Avery House,” she reminded Sir George icily. “Not Pakenham House—if there is such a place? It is Sir James’s house; not yours. Your late sister is mistress here no longer. If Sir James admires the statues and they seem good to him, if he wants them to sell at a profit because he has a charitable ambition for the profits, then what do you do here, sir, but disturb Sir James, diminish the profits for a charitable cause, and distress me?”

  She was magnificent, James was speechless. George put down his glass with a heavy hand and rose to his feet to go. “I’ll see you at the coffeehouse,” he said over his shoulder to Sir James. He took Livia’s hand and bowed low over it. “You rebuke me, madam—” he started.

  “Lady Peachey,” she corrected him, unblinking.

  “You rebuke me, your ladyship, and I apologize if I have offended you. I will not say another word against your antiquities. Not here or elsewhere. I wanted only to know what was your intention in bringing these… these objects here for sale? What is it that you hoped for? And now I think I have a very good idea!”

  He walked to the double doors, threw them open himself, turned on the threshold, and bowed himself out.

  Livia hardly dared to look at James. He came quickly round the desk to her and she had no clever words to turn the situation. She turned to him white-faced, her mouth working. Without a word, he reached out for her, drew her in to his embrace. “Forgive me, forgive me for letting him speak like that to you. I had no idea that was his opinion.”

  “Ohhh,” Livia sighed, leaning against him, her mind racing.

  “I should never have shown him… I should never have let him…”

  Livia trembled a little, with unshed tears.

  “I suppose he grieves for his sister, my late wife. But he has no right to say that you should not show your beautiful statues here! He has no command in my house, I shall do as I wish, and he shall never, never insult one of my guests again. He overreaches himself. I can only apologize.”

  “So unkind!” Livia breathed shuddered with relief. “I was so shocked!” Her tears brimming onto her cheeks were completely real. She was weak at the knees at the narrowness of her escape; he felt her yield to him and he tightened his grip on her to hold her up and then kissed the tears away, one and then another, and then a rain of kisses on her face, as he drew her close to him, one arm around her waist, his hand pressing her breast.

  “I can never come here again.” She trembled. “I can never be alone with you again. My honor… He said such things of me…”

  “Marry me,” he whispered. “This shall be your house and you will do what you damn well want. I won’t hear a word against you! Marry me, Livia!”

  “Yes!” she gasped. “Yes, Sir James, I will.”

  He hardly knew what he had said or what she had agreed as she broke from him, at once, called in the baby from the hall, told Carlotta—the only witness that she could summon—and proposed a toast to the betrothal in a glass of ratafia. Carlotta took a glass and drank to her new master. “We will be happy,” Livia promised him. “I know it. We will be so happy.”

  Sir James took a seat behind his desk, his head whirling. “But what about the ladies at the warehouse?” He found that he had adopted Livia’s way of speaking about the woman he had loved.

  “I won’t say anything there yet,” Livia decided. “They don’t like to be unsettled. We will wait until my statues have sold and I can give them the profits, and I will order another batch and they can sell them. I shall make them importers of fine art rather than wharfingers of corn and apples. We will buy them a house, a storehouse, in a better district—you will know where!—and they can sell my antiquities. We will get them established in a better trade, with a better house.”

  “You won’t tell them now?”

  “Not until they can manage without me.” She remembered her plan for Johnnie. “But in the meantime, we can place their son in a good position.”

  “We can?”

  “Ah yes, he wants to enter the Company, you know? The East India Company?”

  “Yes, of course I know it, I am an investor.”

  “So you can give him a letter of introduction, and he can get a post?”

  “I can write the letter. But I thought his mother would take nothing from me…”

  “From me! It will come from me! I shall swear him to secrecy. And then, when I leave them to marry you, we will have provided for all of them, the girl in her shop, the boy in his post, and the two ladies with agreeable work. There can be no reproach. You know how Alys can be! So angry and sad! And Alinor so very weak, and so old. Let me set them up in a little business and then we will be free to be happy ourselves.”

  “My dear, of course. You know how I—”

  “But we can marry in the meantime,” she interrupted him, twinkling. “I don’t ask you to wait! Married and as happy as swallows on the wing. And little Matteo will be your son and take your name. And soon—perhaps next year—we will have a child of our own together.”

  “You want to marry at once? And for Matteo to be—er—mine?” He felt his head spinning and he put down his glass of the strong wine, thinking that he had taken rather a lot for early morning. “I thought you meant to wait… Marry without telling them? Secretly? I mean—why?”

  “Of course,” she said limpidly. “We shall marry at once. You have swept me off my feet.”

  NOVEMBER 1670, LONDON

  The second shipment from Venice was arranged between Alys and Captain Shore at his usual table in Paton’s Coffee Shop.

  “I had the address written out for you…” Alys opened her book but could not find the paper where Livia had written the address of her storehouse. “I am sorry, I thought I had it to hand…”

  “Same place as before?”

  “Yes, the lady’s steward.”

  “Then I don’t need directions. I know the man. I’ll go to the same place as before.” He hesitated. “Thing is, Mrs. Stoney… You’re happy with him, are you? Because you’re not his only customer. It’s not just her furniture in his store. He does a lot of trade.”

  “He was her late husband’s steward,” Alys said coolly. “A position of great trust. She trusts him.”

  “Then I’ll say nothing more. Same terms?”

  “Yes, collect and ship another twenty crates. Five pounds a ton.”

  She took out a purse and counted out fifteen pounds in a promissory note from a merchant, and coins.

  “Scraping the bottom of the cashbox?” the Captain guessed. He picked up the note. “Is this good?”

  “Yes,” she said shortly. “And you’ll deliver another twenty crates?”

  “How many has she got tucked away out there?” he asked curiously.

  “It’s her dower. Her personal goods.”

  The Captain scowled at her. “And that steward of hers is going to get an export license for another twenty crates of goods, personal goods? Not antiquities for export, his usual trade, which needs another license entirely, b
ut ‘personal goods’? And you want me to land them at your warehouse as personal goods? Paying no tax in London neither?”

  “Yes,” Alys confirmed.

  “Was it a palace she owned, that she’s emptying?”

  “It was, actually,” Alys replied.

  He gave her a level gaze from under bushy salt-bleached eyebrows. “Never in all my dealing with you have I seen you put a false account in to Excise,” he said. “Everyone else does it, all the time—but never you.”

  “This isn’t false,” Alys protested.

  “False as whore’s tears,” he said roundly. “But it’s not me risking my neck for a pair of dark eyes and a nasty temper.”

  “I’m not—” Alys started, and was surprised when he put a calloused hand on top of hers.

  “I don’t ask,” he said kindly. “But when I come home, and this deal is done, I shall speak with you, Mrs. Stoney,” he said. “And I shall put a question to you, and you’ll tell me the truth. But not till then.”

  “I always tell the tr—” Alys was halted by the pressure of his warm hand over her own.

  “I know,” he said. “I know you were as straight as an arrow. You’re not yourself now. But I’ll put a question to you. When I come home.”

  NOVEMBER 1670, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND

  The winter was coming surely onward, Ned felt as if it were coming just for him, like a private enemy. Every day was shorter, every night was colder; he went into the woods at midday and gathered as many nuts as he could, peeling bark off the sassafras tree, picking the last growth of the moss, looking out for the edible mushrooms, rooting for groundnuts, knowing that the darkness was coming, knowing that the snow would come and hide everything. He sold the calf to one of the other settlers so that he did not have to feed him through the winter, and took cheeses and two smoked hams in trade. He stabled the cow and the sheep together, so that they could keep each other warm, and when he locked them up under a black sky, pierced with stars, the frozen cold of the metal bolt made his mittens stick to the iron.