Dark Tides Read online

  “But I want nothing more.” Livia clasped Alys’s hands, as if to swear a promise. “Nothing more than to enter the world with a firm footing. Nothing more than to make a new life, a better life. And we shall call each other sister and love each other as sisters should.”

  JUNE 1670, LONDON

  The first morning after her arrival, Alinor invited Livia to take breakfast with her, and Alys helped the maid carry the heavy trays up the winding stairs. A small round table was laid with plain cutlery in the turret window and Alinor sat with her back to the river, with the glazed door open on the latch behind her, so that the ribbons of her cap stirred a little in the breeze. She could hear the gulls calling. It was a slack tide and the skiffs went quickly upstream, the sunlight shone on the water, and the ceiling of the room was dappled with the reflected ripples of light. “Tell me about your life in Venice,” she invited Livia. “When did you meet my son?”

  “We met in Venice. Italian families are very strict, you know? I was married very young to a much older man, a friend of my grandfather’s. When the Conte, my husband, was taken ill, I had to call in a doctor; and everyone said that the young English doctor was the best in the world for my husband’s condition.”

  “He trained at the university in Padua,” Alinor said proudly.

  “He came every day, he was so very kind. My husband had always been—” She broke off and looked at the older woman as if she could trust her to understand. “My husband was very… harsh with me. To tell you the truth: he was cruel, and Roberto was so kind. I fell in love with him.” She looked from the older woman to the younger one. “I tried not to. I knew it was wrong, but I could not help myself.”

  Neither mother nor daughter exchanged the smallest glance. Alys fixed her eyes on the table as her mother watched Livia. “It is sometimes hard for a woman,” Alinor agreed quietly. “Did Rob love you?”

  “Not at first,” she said. “He was always so careful, so correct. So English! You know what I mean?” She looked at their closed faces. “No, I suppose not! He used to come to the house wearing”—she broke off with a pretty little laugh—“such great boots! For going out on the marshes, you know? He used to walk on the sandbanks and islands, at low tide, where there were no paths or even tracks, he used to walk out and pick herbs and reeds. He would take a boat across the lagoon and then find his own way around the little islands. He knew his way as well as the fishermen that live on the lagoon. He would come into our old shuttered palace that was always so dark and so cool and I could smell the salt air, the open air on his jacket, in his hair—” She looked from one woman to the other. “It was like he was free, free as the birds of the lagoon and the salt marshes.”

  Alys glanced at her mother, who was leaning forward, drinking in the news of her son. “It sounds like our old home,” she said.

  “He was walking the tidelands,” her mother agreed. “Like at Foulmire. He was walking in the paths between sea and land.”

  “He was!” Livia agreed. “There he was, living in the richest city in the world, but every afternoon he turned his back on it and went out into the lagoon and walked and listened to the cry of the birds. He liked our white birds, egrets, you know? He liked to watch them. He liked the waterside paths better than the gold markets and streets! He was so funny! Not like anyone else. He caught his own fish, imagine it! And he was not ashamed of being a countryman; he told people that he felt at home on the water and walking on the sandbanks and islands. And when my old husband became more and more ill, Roberto came to stay in the house to help to care for him, and when he died, Roberto was a great comfort.”

  Alys examined the bread rolls, not looking at her mother.

  “I turned to him in my grief, and that was when I told him that I loved him,” Livia whispered. “I should not have spoken, I know. But I was so lonely and so afraid in the great palace on the canal. It was so cold and so quiet, and when the family came for the funeral, I knew that they would throw me out and put the heir in my home. I knew they hated me: my husband had married me because I was young and beautiful.” She gave a little laugh. “I was very beautiful when I was young.”

  Neither of her listeners assured her she was beautiful still, so Livia went on: “I only had one friend in the world.” She looked imploringly at Alinor and reached out to clasp her hand. “Your son, Roberto.”

  Alys saw her mother withdraw her hand from the young woman’s touch and wondered at her irritability. “Are you tired, Ma?” she asked her in an undertone.

  “No, no,” Alinor replied. She clasped her hands together in her lap, out of reach. “You must forgive me,” she said to Livia. “I am an invalid. And Alys worries about me. Go on. Did Rob know you were in love with him?”

  “Not at first,” Livia said with a rueful little smile. “It’s not how it should be at all. I know that in England it is the gentleman that speaks first? Isn’t it so?”

  Neither woman replied.

  “I truly think that he was just sorry for me. He is—he was—so tenderhearted. Isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Alys said when her mother said nothing. “Yes, he was.”

  “When I had to leave Venice and go back to my family house in the hills outside Florence I thought I would never see him again. But he followed me.” She put her hand to her heart. “He came to my family house and he told my cousin, the Signor, the head of my family, a very great family, that he loved me. It was the happiest moment of my life. The happiest ever.”

  “He wrote to us that he had met you, and that he admired you,” Alys confirmed.

  “Yes, he did,” Alinor said. “And when he wrote to us that he would marry, we sent you some lace to trim your gown. Did you get it?”

  “Oh yes, it was so beautiful! And I wrote in reply with my thanks. Did you receive that letter?”

  Alys shook her head.

  “I’m so sorry! I would not want you to think I was not grateful, and so glad of your good wishes. I wrote you a long letter. I sent it by a merchant. But who knows what happens to these ships! Such a long voyage and such dangerous seas!”

  “Yes,” Alinor agreed. “We’ve always lived on the edge of deep waters.”

  “So, we married quietly in Venice and we defended ourselves against my first husband’s family.”

  “Against what?” Alys asked.

  “Oh, they were jealous! And they said all sorts of things against me. Then, I found I was with child, and we were so glad. When little Matteo was born we knew that we had found true happiness. Then—ah, but you know the rest—”

  “No, I don’t,” Alinor interrupted. “You have told me nothing!”

  “You only wrote that he had drowned,” Alys reminded her.

  Livia took a sobbing breath. Clearly, it was an ordeal for the widow to speak. “Roberto was called out to one of the islands on a stormy night. I went with him, I often went with him. There was a terrible wind and our ship overturned. They pulled me out of the water at dawn, it was a miracle that I survived.” She turned her face from the brightness of the window and hid it in her little black-trimmed handkerchief. “I wished that I had not survived,” she whispered. “When they told me that he was dead… I told them to throw me back into the waters.”

  Alys looked at her mother, waiting for her to speak with her usual compassion; but the older woman said nothing, just watched, her gray eyes slightly narrowed, as if she were waiting to hear something more.

  “So terrible,” Alys whispered.

  Livia nodded, dried her eyes, and managed a trembling smile. “I wrote to you of his death—I am sure I made no sense at all, I was so grieved! I knew I should come to you, I knew Roberto would have wanted it. So, though I was quite alone in the world, I packed up our little house, I spent all our savings on my passage on the ship, and here we are. I wrote to you as soon as we landed, and then I hired the coach and came. I have brought my English boy to his home.”

  There was a silence.

  “And we’re so glad you’ve come,” sa
id Alys too loudly into the quiet room. “Aren’t we? Aren’t we? Ma?”

  “Yes,” Alinor said. “Did they find the body?”

  The question was so coldly abrupt that both young women stared at her.

  “The body?” Livia repeated.

  “Yes. Rob’s drowned body. Did they find it? Drag it from the water, bury him with the proper rites? As a Protestant?”

  “Ma!” Alys exclaimed.

  “No,” Livia said, the tears welling up again. “They didn’t. It’s so deep, and there are currents. They did not expect to find it—him—not after he had… sunk.”

  “Sunk,” Alinor repeated slowly. “You tell me that my son—sunk?”

  Alys put out her hand as if to stop the words but neither woman noticed her.

  “We held a service of memorial at the place that he was lost,” Livia said, her musical voice very low. “When the sea was calm, I went out on a little rowing boat; it was halfway between Venice and the island of Torcello. I put flowers on the water for you: white lilies on the dark tides.”

  “Oh really,” Alinor said indifferently. She turned her head and looked down to the quayside. “There’s that ship factor again,” she said.

  Livia leaned towards the window and glimpsed James Avery on the doorstep, being admitted to the house. “Oh, that is not a ship’s factor,” she said. “That’s Sir James Avery, Roberto’s tutor and friend. I met him yesterday.”

  The room froze. Nobody spoke. Alys could hear the maid slowly laboring up the stairs from the hall and then the creak as she opened the door. “Am I to clear the crocks?” she asked into the stunned silence.

  “Yes, yes,” Livia said, when no one else answered. She looked from Alinor’s white face to Alys’s fixed grimace. “Have I said something wrong? What is wrong?”

  “James Avery is here? That was the visitor: James Avery?” Alinor demanded.

  “Yes,” Alys said tightly. “I didn’t even know if you would recognize his real name?”

  “Yes. It was to be my name. Of course I recognize it.”

  “He is Sir James. Turns out he has a title. Did you think it would be yours?” Alys demanded.

  “Yes. He came here to see me?”

  Alys silently nodded.

  Mother and daughter looked at each other as if they were blind to the maid clattering around the table and Livia’s avid face.

  “Alys, when were you going to tell me?”

  “I was never going to tell you.”

  The maid took the heavily laden tray and walked out of the room, leaving the door open. They heard her slow progress down the stairs and then the knock of the whip handle on the front door. They could hear her sigh, and the rattle of crockery as she put the tray down on the hall table. They listened as she opened the front door and said impatiently: “Go in! Go in!” sending Sir James into the empty parlor as she hefted the tray again and went down the hall to the kitchen to yell from the back door for the wagoner to take the gentleman’s horse again.

  “Has he been before?”

  “Not before yesterday. I swear he has not.”

  “Or written?”

  Alys’s silence was a confession.

  “He wrote to me? He has written to me?”

  The daughter said nothing.

  “Did you think you were keeping him from me, for my own good?” Alinor asked gently.

  “No.” Alys was driven into honesty, the words spilling out with sudden tears. “It was for me. I could hardly bear to touch his letters. I’d never have let him in if I’d known who he was yesterday, I’d have slammed the door in his face. As it is, I told him not to come back. Not for you, because I don’t know what you feel—now, after all this time. It was for me. Because I will never forgive him.”

  “After all this time? As you say? After all this time?”

  “More. More every year that you sicken.”

  “But he was so good to Roberto!” Livia interrupted. “And so charming a gentleman. I don’t understand! You are angry, Sister Alys? You are distressed? And you… Mia Suocera?”

  They both ignored her.

  “He wrote to me?” Alinor’s voice was a thread.

  “I dropped his first letter in the fire, and when the wax burned off, a gold coin fell through the bars of the grate into the ashes. I didn’t even know what it was, only that it was gold. It was a French pistole. I kept it. It paid for your medicine, we’d never have afforded the doctor without it. Next year he sent again. This time I lifted the seal and took the coin and burned the letter. I never wanted to know what he wrote. I never wanted to see his writing. I never wanted to see him again.”

  “But Roberto said he was so good…” Livia remarked. “And he is such a gentleman! His clothes…”

  “He wasn’t good to us,” Alys said with quiet bitterness. “He was no gentleman then.”

  Her words drove Alinor to her feet, leaning on the breakfast table for support. At once, Alys jumped up to help her.

  “No, I can walk. I’m just going to my chair.” She took the three steps, leaning on the table and then the back of the chair, and when she was seated she was breathless, her face pale.

  “Let me tell him to leave?” Alys asked her. “Ma? Please can I tell him to go?”

  “Leave?”

  “And come back in another twenty-one years?”

  Alinor shook her head, fanning her face with her hand as if she would summon air. “I can’t see him now.”

  “Oh, why not?” Livia’s face was bright with curiosity. “Since he has come twice to see you? And before that, he sent money?”

  “You don’t have to see him, ever,” Alys said fiercely.

  “Ask him to come back tomorrow.” Alinor struggled to speak. “I’ll see him tomorrow, in the afternoon.”

  “I don’t want him here again.”

  Alinor nodded. “I know, my dear, I know. Just this once.”

  Livia looked from one to the other, her dark gaze sharp. “But why not?”

  “Not Saturday afternoon, not Sunday,” Alys specified.

  Alinor took a shuddering breath. “Oh? Is it the children he wants? Did he not come for me, but for them?”

  “I don’t know what he wants,” Alys said stubbornly. “But he shan’t have it.”

  Her mother looked at her with a long level stare. “I expect you do know,” she said, her voice very low. “I expect he told you.”

  “I hate him.”

  “I know.” She took a breath and closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the high chair. “Best tell him to come back this afternoon then. Not tomorrow so he can’t see the children.”

  “Shall I tell him?” Livia offered helpfully. “Shall I run down and tell him to come back this afternoon?”

  Alys nodded, and the young woman whisked from the room. They heard her high-heeled shoes clatter down the stairs to the parlor, and then they heard the door close behind her. In the sunlit bedroom Alinor reached out her hand silently to her daughter, and Alys gripped it.

  * * *

  James Avery was looking out of the window over the busy quayside; the grinding of the pulleys and the rolling of the barrels was a constant nagging din.

  “Sir James.” Livia entered and swept a deep curtsey to him.

  He turned and bowed. “Nobildonna da Ricci.”

  “Madam Ricci will see you this afternoon,” she said simply. “It is too early now. She is unwell, you understand. And of course, old people do not like to meet their friends early in the day.”

  He hesitated as if he could not understand what she was saying.

  She gave him a mischievous smile. “You must not surprise us ladies in the morning!” she said. “The older you are, the more there is to do!”

  James flushed and looked awkward. “I did not think… I’ll come back this afternoon then.” He picked up his hat and whip from the table. “Would three o’clock be the right time?”

  “Why not say four o’clock, and you can stay for dinner,” she offered.
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br />   “She invited me for dinner?” He was astounded.

  Her gleeful smile told him the truth. “No! It is my invitation; but I hope that they will agree.”

  “You are kind to me, Nobildonna da Ricci,” he said, carefully hiding his disappointment. “But I think I had better wait for an invitation from Mrs. Stoney.”

  “From Sister Alys? She’ll never make you welcome! Why does she dislike you so much?”

  “I didn’t know that she did?”

  She laughed irrepressibly, and then clapped her hand over her pink lips and the little white teeth. “Ah, this house! Nobody laughs here!”

  “They don’t?”

  “No, it is very grave. Roberto was such a happy young man. I thought everyone would be merry.”

  He started to speak and then checked himself, as if there was too much to say. “It all happened a long time ago.”

  “When the twins were born?”

  “There are twins?”

  She widened her dark eyes. “Did you not know? But I thought you came to see them?”

  “I did not know there were twins,” he said, carefully choosing his words. “I must speak to Mrs. Reekie. I might be able to… I could assist the boy. I have been blessed in my good fortune, and I would want to be of assistance to her, if I can.”

  “You have no family of your own?”

  “My wife and I were childless. It was a great sorrow to us.”

  “But of course. It is a sorrow for any man and wife. Especially if there is property.”

  He smiled at her frankness. “You are a Venetian indeed. Yes, it is a great pity, especially if there is property.”

  “I am not a Venetian,” she corrected him. “My family home is in the hills outside Florence. We are a very old family, a noble family. That is why I know the importance of a son and heir. And now I am an English lady. With an English boy. Would you have made Roberto your heir if he had lived?”