Dark Tides Read online

  “I will.”

  “And if you hope to bring your husband home with you, he’ll have to have his papers in order.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said.

  “And take care,” he warned her. “Everyone here is either a spy or a villain. Or both.”

  She hesitated at the top of the gangplank. “You make it sound like a nightmare.”

  “It is,” he said dourly. “Your own husband will report you. If he’s still alive.”

  DECEMBER 1670, LONDON

  In the absence of Sarah and her neat stitches, Alys was sewing bags for sassafras tea with her mother. They worked at the round table in the glazed balcony of Alinor’s room so they could catch the wintry light as the gray mist sighed against the windows and the low cloud billowed on the roof.

  “Can you see to work?” Alys asked. “Shall I get candles?”

  “We can’t have candles in the middle of the day,” Alinor replied. “I can see well enough.” She took a pinch of herbs and laid them on a new square of cheesecloth. “Has she finished selling her goods? Are they all gone?”

  Alys noted that now her mother never named Livia, just as she never named Sir James.

  “Yes, they’re all sold. I believe he’s going to his home in the north, for the winter season. When he comes back to London, I suppose she’ll put the new load up for sale in his house again.”

  “Has she given you the money she made?”

  “No, it’s at his goldsmith’s for safekeeping,” Alys said without a tremor.

  “He’s her partner? And you don’t object?” her mother asked curiously.

  “How can I object? I don’t have a beautiful warehouse where she can show her things, I don’t have an account at a goldsmith’s where she can keep her money. I can’t make demands of her or bring her down to our—”

  “You’re besotted with her,” Alinor said quietly, and saw the deep blush spread across her daughter’s face.

  “I love her as a sister,” Alys said stiffly.

  “And does she love you?”

  “Yes, when she’s not at his house or chasing after his friends to buy her goods, I think she is happiest. When it is just her and me, she’s at peace. In the future—if we can buy our own warehouse and run the business together—we’ll be completely happy.”

  “You have to buy her a warehouse?”

  “If I can, I will,” Alys said. “It’s our future.”

  “What if it turns out that she has deceived us?” Alinor named the worst fear.

  “She hasn’t,” Alys said. “She wouldn’t deceive me.”

  DECEMBER 1670, VENICE

  The quay was bordered with hard white paving stones, the very pavements of Venice were priceless stone. Jostled by porters and gondoliers, passersby and street sellers, Sarah walked slowly, feeling unsteady after so long at sea, as if the ground was heaving like waves. She did not feel safe to linger before the Custom House, among the watching officials, so busy and stern. A guard on one of the bolted warehouse gates stared at her and she moved away, knowing that he was watching her go.

  She rested her hatbox at the side of a stone bridge and looked inland, along a canal, marveling how the walls of the houses went sheer into the water, like brightly painted cliffs. Every great house had a water gate with an upright striped mooring pole for the private black gondola. One or two houses had left their water gates opened wide to the glassy canal, and she could see the shadowy interior, the water lapping gently against the marble stair as if the lagoon itself was a tenant.

  Sarah felt in the pocket of her cape for the address of the house of Livia’s old steward. When Johnnie had put it in her hand she thought it would be easy to find; but now, with streets of water and a spiderweb of narrow alleyways, she thought she was certain to get lost.

  “Hey!” She beckoned one of the begging children and two little boys approached her. She showed them the piece of paper but neither of them could read. “Ca’ Garzoni,” she said. “Signor Russo. Russo!”

  One boy turned to the other and spoke a stream of Venetian Italian, quite incomprehensible to Sarah. She tightened her grip on her hatbox and the little boy nodded to her and set off at a rapid pace, glancing back and beckoning that she should follow him. He went down to the quayside where a traghetto was taking on passengers to cross. The ferryman showed her an open palm, the international gesture for money, and she gave him an English halfpenny for herself and the two boys, and cautiously stepped from the wet steps into the rocking craft. The boatman poled them across, weaving around the canal traffic to the steps on the other side. The little boys sprang out and Sarah followed them, squeezing around women with baskets of shopping, market women with big panniers of goods, the watermaids with yokes on their shoulders loaded with slopping buckets of fresh water.

  Sarah followed the boys down a narrow lane, houses on either side, some serving as little shops, a shutter propped over an open window, the windowsill serving as a counter for goods. Some were workshops, with a tailor seated cross-legged in the window for the light, or a cobbler bent over his last. She dawdled by the hat shop, marveling at the delicacy of the work and the richness of the fabrics, longing to go in and see the premises, the girls, and the exquisite patterns.

  Every street led to water, every pavement ran alongside the smooth surface of a canal, or headed to a wooden bridge to connect one tiny lane to another. The canals were crowded with the little boats of traders going into the markets of the city carrying fruit and flowers and fish, local people ferrying their goods and delivering their products, and threading through it all, the sleek pitch-black gondolas with the gondoliers standing carelessly beautiful, high in the stern and propelling themselves and their passengers steadily forward, poling their craft through the canal traffic like needles through patchwork, calling a warning at every corner like the cry of a strange seabird: “Gondola! Gondola! Gondola!”

  Every house had a tiny door on the narrow street for tradesmen or servants, but the grand door, the front door for visitors, residents, and guests, faced onto the water and opened to the lapping canal, so a boat could enter the house like a horse going into a stable and visitors could disembark on the private indoor quay. Sarah, peering through the open water gates, could see one or two gondoliers waiting for their masters, dressed in the house livery, straw hat in one hand, the other hand on the rearing prow of his craft, like a groom holding a horse. Someone jostled Sarah and she stopped staring and walked on.

  The boys went through lane after lane and up and down over bridges and finally came to a great square with a central domed stone well in the center, caged in a heavy iron grating, surrounded by tall buildings. The little boys pointed to one with a small dark doorway and RUSSO carved in the stone over the arched door.

  The boys closed on her, hands out again, Sarah gave them each another farthing, and made a shooing gesture that they should leave her. They did not argue as London urchins would have argued, they each made a little bow and disappeared in a moment down an alleyway. Sarah straightened her bonnet and strode to the door, knocked, stood back, and waited. There was a long silence and she knocked again, wondering what she should do if Livia had misled them all, and this was the house of a stranger, or an empty house. Then she heard the sound of bolts being shot back inside, the door creaked open, and a handsome man in his early thirties waited silently in the doorway. Sarah, with her keen judgment of men, honed by her apprenticeship in the millinery shop, scanned him from his expensive shoes, up his well-made suit of velvet, to his dark handsome face. She took in the gold signet ring on his finger and the slight scent of bay and vanilla. She noted the dark eyes and the slow, almost unwilling smile, which seemed to warm as he saw her, as if he were glad to find her on his doorstep. She found she could not stop herself smiling in return.

  “Well, signorina!” he exclaimed, opening his door wide, speaking English. “I am Signor Russo at your service, and how may I help you?”

  Sarah, dropping a little curtsey, realized that
this was certainly not the elderly steward who had loved Rob like a grandson.

  “Forgive me,” she said. “I am looking for Signor Russo.”

  He bowed. “You have found him.”

  “I am looking for Signor Russo the elder.”

  “I am the oldest of my line,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “I am Bathsheba Jolly, from London,” she said. “Nobildonna da Reekie’s maid. How did you know I am English?”

  He shrugged. “Your hat,” he said. Sarah sensed this was not a compliment to English style. “Your perfect skin.”

  Now, she blushed. “I have brought a message from her ladyship.”

  He hesitated for a moment as if he were thinking rapidly, and then he opened the door. “Forgive my surprise. You come with a message from the Nobildonna? Of course you do! Then you must come in, come in. Forgive the state of the entrance, mostly my guests come by gondola to the water gate. Only the English would walk in Venice. Nobody else uses the street door.”

  “Of course, I am too English,” Sarah said, speaking at random. “My lady laughs at me for it.”

  “She is well?” he asked, leading the way across the hall, which was floored with red-and-white pavers set diagonally, empty but for two giant statues one either side of the hall, glaring at each other with sightless eyes. He led the way up a set of wide marble stairs. Sarah followed and they came out to a first-floor salon where the grand windows looked over the greenish lapping canal.

  “She is very well, extremely well,” Sarah enthused, taking in the marble floor and the large marble table surrounded with weighty dining chairs of mahogany upholstered in golden velvet. The room was lined with statues, and hanging behind each one, on the silk-lined walls, were beautiful gold-framed mirrors to show every side of the polished marble figures. Sarah blinked at the opulence and looked up to see a magnificently painted ceiling and a glass chandelier reflected in the shine of the table, the glass blown into flower-like shapes in radiant colors. “Oh! What a beautiful room.”

  He bowed in acknowledgment. “May I take your box? Your cape, Miss Jolly?” He hesitated. “A handsome hatbox. ‘Sarah’ is the name of your milliner?”

  She let him take her cape from her shoulders and felt the light touch of his hands. “Yes, I mean, no!” she said. “That is—I don’t have a milliner—that’s where I used to work.”

  “It is your first time in Venice? You must find it all very strange.”

  “I cannot stop staring. Every way I look there is something more lovely.”

  “The English love our city,” he agreed. “Some for its houses, some for its people. But you have an eye for beauty.”

  She made a little gesture at the statues that lined the room. “You have beautiful things in your sight all the time.”

  “But I never take them for granted,” he assured her. “It is an art to learn—don’t you think? To be surrounded by beauty and never become blind to it. The art of a good husband? To never become dulled to something precious?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Sarah. “Of course, you must get used to it, but sometimes it strikes you anew.”

  “And what do you love most?” he asked, as if her reply mattered to him. “I have a warehouse, you know, of beautiful things. What should I show you to strike you anew?”

  She laughed and thought to herself that she sounded affected. She tried to be more sober, but his intense attention made her feel giddy. “I worked as a milliner,” she confided. “I was surrounded by lovely fabrics. But the thing I loved best were the feathers.”

  He laughed aloud. “You love feathers?” he said. “Allora! I shall take you to the feather warehouse and you shall see every feather of every bird under the sun.”

  “You have feather markets here?”

  “In Venice, you can buy anything in the world as long as it is expensive and beautiful,” he told her, and smiled at the brightness in her face. “I will take you to the feather market and to the velvet warehouse, also to the silks markets. There is a lace market and some beautiful cloth from India for saris. But I am wasting your time, forgive me. You will be here to work. Did the Nobildonna send you to me?”

  “Yes.” Sarah felt the scrutiny of his dark eyes on her face as she lied. “She needs more sculptures. They have sold so well, that she needs more.”

  He raised his dark eyebrows. “Why did she not send the Captain?”

  “She wanted me to pick them out with you,” Sarah had prepared for this question. “I sailed with her captain, and she wants me to travel home with them, to make sure that they are kept safe, and arrive safely.”

  “She does not trust him? He sold her short last time?”

  “No! No! She has no complaint; but she is afraid of accidents, if you send more delicate pieces.”

  He scrutinized her for a moment. “And you were her choice of courier? Being so strong to lift them? And so fierce to defend them?”

  Sarah tried to laugh but knew that she sounded nervous. “I am her only choice, for she has no money to pay wages for anyone else, you know? I am employed as a maid at the house where she lives, Mrs. Reekie’s house. I am maid to Mrs. Reekie. So they lent me to her for free, and she said that I must help you pack the things and bring them home.”

  “She trusts you with me?” he suggested.

  “Yes,” Sarah stumbled, feeling there was something behind the question that she could not guess.

  “And she trusts me with you?”

  “Why not?” she said boldly, her heart beating in her ears.

  “You have a letter of authorization?”

  Sarah clutched her box and looked distressed. “In my other bag, with my money,” she said remorsefully. “But I was robbed on the way to the ship in London! I am so sorry. It was a sealed letter so I don’t even know what she said to you.”

  “Did you lose your money too?”

  She nodded. “I have enough for my keep here, that I had in my placket, but a wicked child snatched my bag and ran.”

  He smiled at her. “Poor Miss Jolly,” he said. “So if you could not defend your own bag, how shall you rescue the treasures from pirates?”

  “I am sure that the Captain will defend his ship,” she said, feeling that every smiling comment was a trap.

  “For sure he will. And I see you are… intrepid. I shall call you Brave Miss Jolie, for you are.”

  “Brave?” she asked.

  “And Jolie.”

  “Pretty?” she confirmed.

  “Very,” he said.

  There was a silence while she absorbed this, and thought she had nothing to say in reply.

  “Never tell me that I am the first man to tell you?”

  Her blush told him that he was the first man that she had heard.

  “Allora! Then I am a lucky man!” he said. “Now, what may I do for you? Shall you dine? Where are you staying?”

  “I came straight here from the ship,” she replied. “I will find an inn tonight and tomorrow come back at your convenience? And shall we go to your warehouse?”

  “You are here already,” he said. “This is my workshop, and my palazzo. We Venetians all work, we are not like your English lords. My dining room is where I show my antiquities. Everything you see here is for sale.” He gestured out of the window. “Everything in Venice is for sale: from a whisper, to a mountain of gold.”

  Sarah nodded, trying not to look overwhelmed.

  “You shall stay here,” Signor Russo decided. “I will not hear a word against it. You shall sleep with my little sister in her bedroom. My mother will greet you and show you to your room. And then you and I shall go out for dinner, it’s just around the corner and perfectly good. We dine early like the Doge. And after dinner I will show you the pieces I have here, and you will make your choice of what La Nobildonna would like. If you agree?”

  Sarah smiled. “Of course,” she said. “Thank you. But I can easily find an inn and come back here.”

  “My mother would never forgive me,” he assured her
.

  He opened the door and called up the stairs. “In Venice we have our kitchens under the roof, it is better in case of fire, you know? And here she is.”

  A broad smiling woman came down the stairs, was told Sarah’s assumed name, and kissed her warmly on both cheeks. Her son instructed her in rapid Italian that Sarah could not follow, and the woman took the hatbox and led Sarah into a room overlooking the canal furnished with a curtained bed, and—even here—a great many marble figures.

  “Yes, these too are for sale!” Signor Russo said from the doorway. “You shall examine them when you are rested. But we will leave you to make yourself at home and I will come for you in an hour or so. Rest now.”

  “I can go to dine alone,” Sarah protested. “I don’t want to be any trouble.”

  “No, I shall come with you. It is the greatest city in the world, but unsuitable for a beautiful young woman.”

  “There are thieves?” she asked, glancing towards her box, safe on the bed.

  “Of every legal sort, and lechers,” he said. “Gamblers and spies. I am sorry to say we are decadent, Miss Jolie. We are all sinners in this most angelic of cities. You will find yourself much desired.”

  Sarah tried to laugh carelessly, like a woman of the world, but found she giggled. He smiled at her and ushered his mother from the room and closed the door and there was silence.

  DECEMBER 1670, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND

  Darkness held the sky from afternoon till midmorning, ice held the lakes and ponds, snow held Ned’s door closed so that every morning he had to break out like a man under siege. The path to the animals in their stall had to be dug out almost every day as the snow fell without ceasing; he did not even attempt to clean their pen, he just piled straw on straw so they were deep-littered on a thick bed.

  Ned’s food stores were covered with a drift of snow and had to be dug out, but the maize was keeping well and the jars of dried berries. He had enough to trade when he made his weekly trek into Hadley for extra supplies. Ned forced himself to struggle down the common grazing lane, now a snowy plain of white, supplying dried goods to his customers, demonstrating his faith at the meetinghouse, and his loyalty to the men in hiding.