Dark Tides Read online

  “They’re frightened, they won’t listen,” Ned said, and at once cursed himself for telling an Indian that the white men were frightened. “Lord, I shouldn’t have said that to you. Wussausmon, we have been friends, we cannot be on the brink of being enemies. Mrs. Rose—the minister’s housekeeper—she’s talking about leaving here altogether, going back to Boston.”

  “Will you go with her?”

  Ned looked from the frosted trees to the great river flowing under the thick ice, the forest on the other side, and the snowcap on his little house where the chimney sent a single stream of smoke into the translucent sky. “How can I? How can I leave here? This is my home!”

  A dark smile crossed Wussausmon’s face. “Ah, do you feel it now? That you belong to the land and it belongs to you? That you cannot leave?”

  “Almost,” Ned said tentatively.

  “I shall look for you here when I come by again, if I ever come by again,” Wussausmon told him. “But Mrs. Rose is right: none of you are safe here.”

  “I wear Quiet Squirrel’s moccasins every day,” Ned objected. “My roof is thatched with the reeds she traded me. Are you saying that I am in danger from her now?”

  “All of us who have been living between the worlds will have to choose,” Wussausmon said. “You’re on the very edge here, Nippe Sannup, between water and land, between tribal lands and English village, between one world and another. You will have to choose.”

  “And you?” Ned asked his friend. “Between the praying town with your wife and children and the warpath at Montaup. Will you have to choose too?”

  Wussausmon turned to his friend, his face impassive but his eyes bright with tears. “I will have to betray someone,” he said quietly. “I am Squanto.”

  JANUARY 1671, LONDON

  In the new year Livia tried to create a habit with her fiancé that she would dine with him every Sunday, after church, and then every other day throughout the week. But he was often dining out, and sometimes at business, and even when she did arrive at dinnertime to find him at home, Lady Eliot was always there too. Sometimes, Livia would swear the older woman had been about to leave the house, but as soon as Livia arrived, she shed her cape, and said she would stay for dinner. Sometimes, even worse, Livia was certain she had seen a glance between Sir James and his aunt that had prompted the older lady to stay.

  “We have to have a chaperone, for your good name,” he told her one day towards the end of January.

  “We don’t need one. We will be married in two weeks.” She came a little closer to him so that he could smell the perfume of roses in her dark hair. “I am baptized and confirmed, the banns are being called, why should we not be together?”

  He stepped back and felt the edge of his desk against the back of his thighs blocking his retreat, as his betrothed came forward until she slipped into his arms and pressed herself against his body.

  “We don’t need a chaperone,” she whispered. “For we are friends and lovers, and betrothed to marry, our wedding within weeks, and we have been everything to each other. Tell her to go out, and let us be together!”

  “That can’t happen again,” he said; but she could feel his arousal. “Not until our wedding day.”

  “Send her away for tonight, and let me dine with the man I love alone,” she whispered.

  “I can’t,” James said. “In all honor, I should not be alone with you, Livia. It is for your good name, as much as my own.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes inviting. “Do you want me so much? Should I be afraid of your passion?”

  The way she spoke to him, the tremble of her voice on the word “afraid,” made him cool abruptly. There was something calculating about her, the lilt of her accent sounded suddenly affected. “No indeed,” he said, stepping away from her and putting the desk between them. “I would be ashamed to make a lady afraid. The incident, when I forgot myself, was, as you know, an accident that I will not repeat.”

  She turned to the window for a moment to hide her frustration, then she turned back to him with the sweetest smile. “Ah, I know. And you must forgive me. I just long for the time when we can honorably and truly love one another. When I can give myself to you,” she whispered. “When we can give your great name an heir.”

  A tap on the door saved him from answering her and Lady Eliot threw the door open. “Look who’s coming to dinner!” Lady Eliot said, taking in the room in one swift glance. “Dear George. George Pakenham.”

  Livia stepped forward, her hand held out for him to kiss. “Ah! How glad I am to see you again!” she said, as if she were genuinely delighted. “And not one word about my beautiful things, this time, for they are all the property of Sir James. And he won’t hear a word against them!”

  She turned a laughing face back to James, who was silent behind his desk.

  “How come?” Sir George said, kissing Livia’s hand.

  There was a moment’s pause. “Oh, did you not know? We are to be married!” Livia announced. “Aren’t we, caro marito?”

  “Yes,” James said, coming round the desk to greet his brother-in-law. “Yes. Her ladyship has condescended to make me so happy.”

  “Really?” George demanded.

  “Next month,” Livia triumphed. “In two weeks! You must come to my wedding.”

  JANUARY 1671, AT SEA

  Felipe was in the prow of the ship, at noon, wrapped in a thick cape against the cold wind, watching the hypnotic smooth parting of the waves under the wooden bow. Sarah came up on deck as if drawn to him, and stood beside him. Without a word, he opened the side of his cape and put it around her shoulders, like an embrace. They stood, side by side, enwrapped in the cape, but not embracing. Their shoulders brushed against each other on each roll of the ship.

  “You could have drowned.” Felipe was coldly furious.

  “I can swim,” she said calmly.

  “You could have been arrested. We nearly left you. The pedotti should not have let us launch the dinghy that close to the quarantine island. He would not have allowed us to wait for more than a moment longer.”

  “But you persuaded him?”

  “I had to tell a mouthful of lies.”

  She smiled up at him. “That must have been torture for an honest man such as you.”

  “This is not amusing to me,” he said furiously. “I thought you would die in the water. I felt—” He broke off.

  “What did you feel?” she asked.

  “Terrified,” he said, as if the truth were forced out of him. “I thought you were—”

  She waited.

  “I thought you were lost. I thought I had lost you.”

  Still wrapped in his cloak she turned towards him and put her hands on either side of his face. “Forgive me,” she said earnestly. “I had to lie to you, I knew you would never have let me go; but I will promise to never lie to you again.”

  He put his hands on her slim waist; but he did not draw her close. “You will be true to me?”

  “I will,” she said solemnly.

  “You know that I cannot make a promise to be true to you? I am what you called me—a counterfeiter, a forger, a fraud, a grave robber, a thief, and a liar.”

  She nodded very gravely. “I know. But you could change?”

  He shook his head. “Cara—I cannot promise to reform, I have lived a life—my whole life is dishonest. My business is forgery.”

  The look she gave him would have converted any sinner. “But you could change? You could repent?”

  He bowed his head. “I am not worthy of you. Even if I were free.”

  “I see I would have to save you,” she said, with a hopeful little smile.

  He swallowed down his reply, and he released her and she turned away so that they stood shoulder to shoulder again, watching the sea.

  “Our worlds are oceans apart,” he remarked. “And soon there will be a sea between us again. Will you go back to being a milliner?”

  “Already Venice feels like a dream,” she
said. “I feel as if I will wake up to London and the shop and the hats, and the girls will ask me where I have been and what I have done, and I’ll never be able to tell them.”

  “What would you tell them about me?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll never speak of you.”

  For a moment they were silent, looking at the waves.

  “Will you sell your feathers at a great profit?” he asked.

  “I’ll sell some, but I’ll keep some back. I’ll make my own hats and headdresses and sell them on my own account.”

  “I shall think of you in your milliner’s shop, when I am home again,” he said. “I shall think of you every day.”

  She looked up at him and for a moment he thought he could not resist pulling her towards him and kissing the sadness from her mouth.

  “Don’t do that. Because I shan’t think of you at all,” Sarah said determinedly. “Not at all.”

  FEBRUARY 1671, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND

  Ned was smoking meat in the chimney of his house, long strips of venison that Quiet Squirrel had given him earlier in the day when she had crossed the river for trade. She said that she wanted some pins for sewing, an excuse so transparent that Ned did not even count the pins he poured into her sack, and neither did she.

  “Want news?” he asked her, thinking that his grasp of the language was so poor that he could never convey to her his anxiety about what was to come, especially his fears for her, and the little village with the new palisade around it.

  She nodded, her eyes on his face. “If you know anything, Ned.”

  “Massasoit must go to Plymouth, understand? He must make answer, he must say: sorry.”

  She sighed and he thought it was impatience at the childishness of his speech in their tongue. “I wish I could tell you that I know all this,” she said to him in her own language, knowing he would grasp one word in ten. “I know all this! We’ve all seen it coming. What I want you to tell me is when the men at Hadley, even the old soldiers that we helped to hide, are going to come against my people? I know they will. I don’t ask if, I ask when.” She took his hands and looked into his face as if to summon his attention. “Hadley men?” she asked him. “Are they going to march against us? Against my children?”

  He understood at once what she meant. “No,” he said, then he checked himself. It was not for him to reassure her so that she trusted her neighbors when they were arming themselves, when they were talking of teaching a lesson to this wise old woman and the village. “Maybe,” he said, his face grim. “Maybe.”

  “They are arming?” she asked him. “They are drilling?”

  Before he could answer her head jerked up to listen to a noise outside, and at the same moment Red raised his head from his paws and growled.

  “Someone at the door?” Ned asked, and turned back to her, but she was already gone. She had melted to the back of the room and slid herself under Ned’s big winter cape on its peg and stood perfectly still.

  The hammer of a fist on the door echoed in the snow-silent cabin and Ned shouted: “Who’s there?”

  “Selectman!” came the reply.

  Ned opened the door and wrapped his jacket around himself against the cold as the man jumped down from the drift of packed snow into the house. Ned slammed the door behind him.

  “Long way to come in the snow,” he said.

  “I didn’t think I’d get through.” The man gestured at himself. He was dusted with snow from head to feet. He had been struggling through waist-high drifts up and down the common lane. “I’m going into all the houses this end of the village. You’re mustered: town militia. You’re to attend first Saturday on the meadow if fine. Next Saturday if snowing. One after that if still bad. You’re to bring your own weapons. D’you have a musket?” He looked above the door where Ned’s gun hung. “You’re to bring it.”

  “What’re we doing?” Ned asked him.

  “Drilling,” he said. “Practicing marksmanship, practicing marching.”

  “To defend?” Ned asked, his last hope.

  “To attack,” the man said. “To march with other militia under commanders appointed by the Council. A force of all New England, advancing together. You’re to be captain.”

  “Marching against who?” Ned asked.

  “Against the savages,” the man said generally.

  “Who?” Ned demanded. “What tribe?”

  The man made a lordly wave. “All of ’em,” he said. “They’re all as bad as each other. D’you accept your summons?”

  “Yes,” Ned said. “Of course.”

  The man turned, opened the door, and grunted as he heaved himself up the big bank of snow. He set off at once, without saying good-bye, struggling through the thick snow, falling, picking himself up again. Ned shut the door against the cold and Quiet Squirrel came out from his cape.

  “What will you do?” she asked him, her face as tender as a mother to her son. “Nippe Sannup—what will you do?”

  FEBRUARY 1671, AT SEA

  True to his word, Rob had gone straight into the cabin that Felipe hastily vacated and did not come out for forty days, a self-imposed quarantine that he would not break. His food and beer were left at the door, and he returned the plates scraped clean, throwing the scraps and his slop bucket from the porthole. A bowl of vinegar stood outside his door and his plates and cups were soaked in it before they were collected. An old sailor, who had survived the triangular trade to the killing coasts of West Africa with one of Mrs. Reekie’s plague purses sewn around his neck, swore he would catch nothing, and served Rob, steeping his clothes in seawater and vinegar and then boiling them in hot water, pressing them with a scorching iron to kill the lice.

  “He’s cleaner than I am,” he said with satisfaction on the fortieth day of the voyage when it was thought safe that Rob should come out.

  “Really, that’s not the highest accolade in the world,” Felipe said.

  Sarah giggled, but tapped on Rob’s cabin door. “Will you come out?” she said.

  “Does the Captain give permission?” he asked from inside.

  “He does.”

  They heard the noise of the bolt being shot and then Rob opened the door and stood before them, newly washed, newly shaved, in pressed plain clothes. He was a strikingly handsome young man of thirty-four years old, brown-haired, brown-eyed, with a square open trusting face and an easy smile that warmed his face and lit his eyes when he saw Sarah. “My little angel,” he said. “You were just a child when I left London and look at you now!” But then he saw Felipe, and the smile was wiped from his face and he fell back.

  “You! What are you doing here? You damned serpent! God! What trick is this that you have played on me?” Furiously he turned on Sarah. “What have you done? Tricked me? Where are we going? How could you?”

  “I didn’t, I didn’t,” Sarah said hastily.

  He would have flung himself back in his cabin and slammed the door on them but they both went forward with him and Felipe caught the door with his shoulder.

  “She hasn’t betrayed you, fool,” he said sharply. “You blame the wrong woman. You misunderstand—as usual. Dio! I had forgotten how persistently stupid you are!”

  “Traitor!” Rob accused Sarah. “You sent me my mother’s coins and I trusted—”

  “I freed you,” Sarah said quickly. “That’s the truth. The ship’s sailing to London and the Captain is honest. I am who I say I am, your niece and your friend. It’s all as you thought. It’s Felipe that is different. He’s with us now.”

  “My enemy!”

  “Not now. He’s on our side.”

  “He’s only ever on his own side!” Rob accused.

  Felipe gave a little ironic bow. “Alas, that was once too true. But listen and stop raving. I helped Sarah set you free, I didn’t realize she was going to be quite so”—he paused to search for the word—“dramatic. I didn’t realize she was going to fling herself off the boat, nearly drown herself, nearly freeze to death, and bring back
a plague carrier. But I did tell her where you were, I did help her find you.”

  “It wasn’t very hard to find me!” Rob spat. “Since I was committed to the prison where you sent me.”

  “True,” Felipe conceded. “But nonetheless we did find you.”

  “You left me to die in there.”

  “I did, but she rescued you. You’ve nothing to fear from her. She’s always been true to you, came here to find you, and wouldn’t stop till she did.”

  “You are?” Rob turned to Sarah, desperate to believe in her. “You are true to me? You are my niece? You did come for me?”

  Sarah nodded, and put her hand to her heart. “I did come to find you, I did rescue you. I promised your ma that I would find you, or I would put flowers on your grave.”

  Rob nodded. “But him? Do you know what this man is? This coldhearted brute?”

  “Yes,” she said boldly, “I know the worst of him; but he helped me. I could not have found you if he hadn’t helped me. And he’s coming to London to accuse Livia. He’s turned against her. It was her who stole the goods from her husband’s collection and now she’s using our family to sell the goods.”

  “You have nothing to fear from me. I am your friend,” Felipe told him cheerfully.

  “You will never be my friend,” Rob assured him.

  Felipe hesitated in the face of such determined hostility. “Very well, as you wish; but we share an enemy.” He glanced down at Sarah. “And we share a most gallant friend.”

  Rob turned from him and took Sarah’s hands. “You are truly my niece, Sarah?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “And you came here to Venice to find me?”

  “Yes. It was your mother who asked me to come.”

  “You have been misled and betrayed by this man,” Rob warned her. “He can be no friend to you.”

  “No, he’s told me everything, I think.”

  “Sarah, it was he that arrested me and threw me into the well. Nobody gets out of the well. They only freed me to go to my death on the Lazzaretto Nuovo.”