Dark Tides Page 45

  “Could have sent you to the Lazzaretto Vecchio,” Felipe pointed out, provocatively. “Far worse. Far more certain a death. And life is always a chance, here or in the well.”

  Rob ignored him. “He plotted my death so that he could steal and trade antiquities with my wife,” he told Sarah. He expected her to be shocked but the face she turned to him was completely calm.

  “I know this,” she said. “He told me himself. And now, in turn, Livia has betrayed him. She’s in England, selling the antiquities for her own profit and planning to marry an English lord.”

  “Livia? She’s in England?”

  “She came to us,” Sarah told him. “She went to your ma and told her you were dead—drowned.”

  Rob was horrified. “She never told Ma that I was drowned! Not drowned!”

  “It wasn’t as wicked as it seems,” Sarah said fairly. “She didn’t know your ma wouldn’t be able to bear such a thought. She didn’t know what she was saying to people like us, people from Foulmire.”

  He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. “How did Ma bear the news?” He looked quickly at Sarah: “It didn’t make her ill?”

  She beamed. “That’s what’s amazing. She was unhurt. She didn’t believe Livia for a moment!”

  “She didn’t? But why not?”

  “There’s something about Livia that Grandma doesn’t like,” Sarah said honestly. “She’s never said what. But she never believed her, not from the first. Livia is beautiful, and so tragic—you know—she told a story that would break your heart. But Grandma just looked at her and said, ‘Oh yes.’ ”

  “Oh yes?” Rob repeated.

  Sarah felt a little bubble of laughter at the thought of her idiosyncratic grandmother. “It was when Livia put Matteo into her arms and said he would comfort her and be in the place of you.”

  Rob was smiling now too, imagining his mother. “She didn’t like that?”

  “It should have been really moving; but apparently your ma just held him, looked into his face, and said: ‘I don’t think it quite works like that.’ ”

  “Lord, I can hear her! I can see her!”

  “But why?” Felipe asked. “This woman is like a stone!”

  “She’s not a fool to be played by a mountebank,” Rob snapped. “She’d see right through you.”

  “Later, when she asked me to look for you, she told me she would know if her son was dead and I believed her,” Sarah told him. “I knew what she meant. I’d know if Johnnie was sick or dead. I’d just know it. Grandma never believed that you were dead, and she was certain you weren’t drowned. The only time she had a doubt was just when I was leaving, and then she was afraid. She asked me to bring back something of yours that could go into her coffin at her death. And to put flowers on the water where they lost you.”

  “What flowers?”

  “Why does that matter?” Felipe asked, who had been following the rapid speech.

  “Forget-me-nots.”

  Rob grimaced. “Ah God, I’d never have wanted her grieved! And all this time, in the well and on the island, I’ve been thinking that Livia was breaking her heart and going to everyone for my release.” He glanced at Felipe. “I thought you’d acted on your own, and that she would be fighting you, trying to get me freed. I imagined her entrapped by you, fighting to be free.”

  Felipe shook his head. “Not the Nobildonna! You never knew her at all. She left at once for England, the moment they issued a warrant for your arrest. She was afraid they would call her as a witness to the death of her first husband. The day you were arrested was the day she sailed for London. She went like a princess, with a beautiful trousseau of black gowns—from when she was mourning the Conte—and she hired a maid to care for Matteo.”

  “And we took her in,” Sarah told him. “And Ma believed her. She showed her antiquities in London, she sold them, and she said she would use the money to buy a bigger warehouse, in a better part of town, with better rooms for us.”

  “Her antiquities?” Rob turned to Felipe.

  “Indeed.” He gave a little bow. “Those that she stole from her husband and those that I make. And now she has ordered more from my store. We’ve got them on board now. We’re taking them to her.”

  “She doesn’t know that Ma sent you to Venice?” Rob asked Sarah.

  Sarah nodded. “She doesn’t know. At least—she didn’t know when I left. I don’t know what she’ll have got out of my ma while I’ve been away.”

  “She won’t know that you’re coming to London with her antiquities?” He turned to Felipe.

  The Italian smiled. “She can’t know that. I did not know it myself.”

  “Why did you bring him?” Rob turned to Sarah.

  “Perhaps she is going to save me?” Felipe said provocatively.

  “In fact, it’s an ambush,” Rob named it.

  “She deserves it,” Sarah said grimly.

  “She’s still my wife.”

  There was a pause. “You can’t still love her?” Sarah asked cautiously. “Are you going to forgive her? She nearly killed you.”

  “I have thought of her night and day for nearly ten months. I can’t suddenly see her as an enemy. I can’t believe that she has done what you say. I can’t change how I feel, like that!” He snapped his fingers. “In a moment.”

  Felipe raised his eyebrows at Sarah. “As I say,” he reminded her: “persistently stupid.”

  “I can’t understand how she can have done the things you say, when I think of how she was with me,” Rob explained to Sarah, ignoring Felipe. “It’s as if you’re talking about a stranger. The thought of her trying to rescue me was all that kept me alive. I knew she would never stop trying to save me—and now you tell me it was she who put me there?”

  “But this is her!” Felipe exclaimed. “This is what I love about her—the very thing that you never saw! That she can change her very self in a moment! She understands that the only way to make money is to be constantly deceitful—she stops at nothing.”

  Rob shook his head, as if he could not follow his own thoughts. “When I first met her, she was a young wife, lonely and ill-treated by her husband’s family, a beautiful widow, lost in a grand palazzo with a family that hated her. I loved her. I fell deeply in love with her. I rescued her from them. I can’t imagine any other Livia.”

  “There are a dozen others,” Felipe told him. “And you’re not the first man to love the face that she showed him.”

  “And not the last!” Sarah added. “She’s doing it right now! She turned to Rob. “I’m sorry that you still love her, Uncle Rob. But I think she’s planning to marry this English lord. The one who helped her to sell the antiquities to other gentlemen.”

  “Who is he?” he asked.

  “Sir James Avery,” she told him.

  He thought for a moment and shook his head. “Never heard of him.”

  “He came to the warehouse,” Sarah told him. “Someone from the old days at Foulmire? Ma hates him, but Grandma said she would see him, just once. Wasn’t he your tutor? When you were a boy? On Foulmire?”

  “That was James Summer,” he exclaimed. “James Summer was my tutor. Not Avery. But I suppose—could it be the same man?” He looked astounded. “He came back to Ma? But how does Livia know him?”

  “Livia got her claws in him on his first visit. He let her use his house to show the antiquities. By the time I left, she’d persuaded him to do a second show. That’s what this shipment is for. She was very sure of him, in and out of his house, acting like she owned it. It looked to me as if she planned to marry him.”

  Felipe waited, his eyes on Rob’s stunned expression. “Slow,” he remarked quietly to Sarah. “Persistently…”

  “She can’t marry him; she’s married to me!” Rob said simply.

  “Ecco!” Felipe said triumphantly. “Finalmente! Exactly.”

  FEBRUARY 1671, LONDON

  The line of ships waiting for the legal quays trailed down the river. Captain Shore,
staring upriver, his blue eyes squinting against the light drizzle of a cold morning, called for a skiff to take him to the Custom House to ask permission to go straight to the Reekie Wharf and meet a custom officer there.

  “You don’t have to unload at the Custom House?” Felipe asked with interest, looking up to the quarterdeck and the Captain.

  “Only if you’re carrying special cargo, cargo that pays a royal duty, like coffee or spices, or from the East Indies, or cargo of high value. Our manifest says private goods, furniture and the like.” Captain Shore scowled down at the handsome younger man. “And some barrels of oil, and wine. We can unload them all at Reekie Wharf and pay the duty there. If they were private goods, furniture and the like, then I would have no worries. You tell me they are?”

  “I do. And you have an export license that confirms my word.”

  “Then of course I am reassured.”

  “Do you have to declare the passengers?”

  “Of course. And I will,” the Captain warned. “Proper papers. Mrs. Reekie’s reputation is good, and I won’t be a blackguard at her wharf. Proper papers, full declaration. The officer will see you at Reekie Wharf and you can pay your dues and get your passport there. Give me your papers to show at the Custom House.”

  Felipe handed over a much-signed document with many ribbons that attested he was Felipe Russo, a trader in antiquities, a member of the guild of stone masons of Venice, a freeman of the city, and entitled to travel where he should wish.

  “What about Roberto?” Felipe asked.

  “As he’s an Englishman, he needs nothing,” the Captain said. “He’s just coming home. Like Miss Reekie. But they’ll ask if any of us have been in contact with disease.”

  “We have not,” Felipe said. “We are all come from Venice, which is—grazie Dio—free of illness.”

  “Aye, you have an answer for everything,” Captain Shore said. “Wait on board, till I return.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Felipe said in a parody of obedience, and watched the older man climb down the ladder at the side of the ship and step into the waiting skiff.

  “What do we do now?” Sarah asked, appearing at his elbow. “I can almost see my home from here.”

  “We have to wait,” he said. “Did you think you would dive in and swim over?”

  “No,” she conceded. “I don’t want to do that again.”

  “Then I should think you’ll be home this afternoon, as soon as the Captain has permission to dock at your wharf. And then what will we do?”

  “I’ll take Rob to my grandma,” she said, smiling in anticipation, “and then we’ll see Livia—at home if she’s there, and if she’s not—we’ll go to Avery House and find her. If you’re still sure?”

  “I’m sure,” he told her. “I’m very sure.”

  “You’ll unmask her?” she demanded.

  “I’ll see what she requires,” he answered ambiguously.

  She turned to go back down to her cabin, but he caught the edge of her shawl. “Stay,” he invited her. “Tell me about your home. Show me the landmarks. I’ve never been to London before, tell me about the City?”

  Her gaze on his face was very direct. “You’ll find out soon enough,” she said bluntly. “All you need to know for now is that here is the south bank, the poor side of the City where the Nobildonna lives with my family, and uses our space and treats us as if we were there to serve her, and over the river on the north side is where she is headed, where beautiful houses await a cultured and beautiful mistress, where people buy your fraudulent goods, thinking them real, where they enjoy her company, thinking her a woman of quality. It’s an easy city to read. We live here, on this side, the poor side, the dirty side. We’re honest on this side. But Livia is determined to spend her time on the other side. As anybody would. You as well, I expect. That’s where you will ‘see what she requires.’ That side is for the nobility and the liars, those for who appearance matters more than truth. People like her; people like you.”

  He took her hand and kissed it, glancing up at her. “No,” was all he said.

  “No what?” Sarah said, pulling her hand away.

  “I am ready to become an honest man, I no longer want to be one with the nobility and the liars. You can stretch out your hand and save me, Miss Jolie. Miss Pretty. Let me be on your side.”

  She looked at him as if she did not wholly trust him. “You are reformed?”

  He smiled at her, shamelessly attractive. “If you will save me?”

  FEBRUARY 1671, ST. CLEMENT DANES CHURCH, LONDON

  Livia, wearing a new gown of navy blue silk, with a matching jacket trimmed with navy blue lace, an exquisite bonnet with a navy blue veil of lace caught back with a golden pin, walked down the aisle of the church, quite alone, her new shoes making a satisfying tap-tap on the floor. Behind her came Carlotta, carrying Matteo in her arms, as if the little boy must witness the marriage of his mother, and establish his rights to his stepfather. Matteo was sleepy and looked around him blinking his wide dark eyes and then tucked his little head under Carlotta’s chin. Livia did not look back at him, but walked steadily forward, her eyes modestly downcast. She had no other companion.

  Waiting for her, in his family pew on the right side of the church, was Sir James, Lady Eliot beside him, Sir George Pakenham beside her. In the pew behind them were the upper servants from Avery House, allowed to come to church in the afternoon to witness the wedding of their master. As Livia walked up the aisle they craned and stared and whispered.

  Livia, pretending to hear nothing, carried a small posy of primroses, tied with a dark blue ribbon, and a Book of Common Prayer. As they heard her heels tapping on the newly laid stone floor, Sir James rose from his knees, where he had been praying in his family pew, and took his place before the altar, so that when she came up he was ready, like a man standing in a dock.

  She thought he was very pale and drawn; she raised her eyes to him, in a parody of modesty, wishing he would look more like a man on his wedding day, and less like a man facing a slowly closing trap. She whispered a word of greeting and he gave a grim nod to acknowledge her and turned to face the minister. Sir George came out of the pew to stand at his side, as Lady Eliot begrudgingly rose to her feet, to witness the wedding.

  Livia peeled off her dark blue lace mitten from her left hand. George placed the ring on the open book that the minister held towards him. It was the wedding ring of Sir James’s first wife, George’s sister’s wedding ring, a slim gold band inset with diamonds. Livia had insisted upon having it. She would not have a new ring; she wanted the old one. She wanted everything that the first Lady Avery had owned, as if her ring and her embroidery frame in her parlor, her cut-glass perfume bottles in her traveling case, would make the title real. The minister took a breath, looked from the drawn face of his parishioner Sir James to the exquisite beauty of his young bride, and started the service:

  “Dearly beloved friends, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this Congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy Matrimony…”

  The minister had rehearsed the service several times with Livia so that she should understand the significance of each word in a church that was not her family’s church, in a language that was not her own. He always had the sense that she was learning her lines like an actress, rather than repeating them as a prayer. Even now, as he intoned the introduction to the marriage service, he thought there was something rather theatrical about the beautiful widow. She lifted the posy of primroses to her face and breathed in their scent, and then she lifted her dark eyes to his, looking at him soulfully over the butter-cream petals.

  “…Which is an honorable estate, instituted of God in Paradise in the time of man’s innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church.”

  He could not be mistaken: her smile gleamed at him as if she had enlisted him to help her in some trick, as a cardsharper in the street might use a bystander to lur
e a fool and take advantage of him. The minister continued with the words, but he could not bear Livia’s smiling gaze.

  “…Which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee; and is commended of Saint Paul to be honorable among all men: and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God…”

  The minister glanced at his other parishioner, Lady Eliot, rigid with disapproval in the family pew, visibly unhappy at this second marriage and bitterly resenting this foreigner. At the bridegroom’s side, George Pakenham stared blankly at the stained-glass window behind the minister’s head as if he wished he was elsewhere. The minister hesitated, any man on God’s earth would have hesitated, looking from the white-faced Englishman to the smiling Italian widow. And as he paused, Livia lifted her pretty face and snapped: “Go on.”

  Sir James flinched at her order. Then he confirmed it: “Yes, Mr. Rogers, please continue.”

  The minister recited the sacred reasons that the two should be joined in matrimony, unconvincing even to himself. He demanded if there was any reason that they should not be married? And that anyone should speak now, or forever hold his peace. He made the traditional pause for any reply, and Livia’s upward glance at Sir James was sweetly trusting.

  Lady Eliot held her breath, looked at Sir George, opened her mouth as if to speak, and then subsided. There was nothing she could say to prevent the wedding going ahead. There was nothing anyone could say.

  The minister held the Prayer Book towards Sir James, the wedding ring resting on the open page, and James put his dead wife’s ring on Livia’s finger, reciting the wedding oath: “With this ring, I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.”