Page 123 of Dark Tides
“Yes, of course. If you had sickness in London, the Captain, his crew, and even you would have to kick your heels for forty days on the island before you were allowed into Venice. Any goods you brought in would be cleaned while you waited, to see if any infection showed. The merchants hate the delay; but it keeps us free from illness.”
“And after forty days they are released?”
“Of course,” he said smoothly. “So everything here is clean. It might stink but it’s not infectious.”
“But it is…” She could not find the word. “Cruel?”
“A severed head? Of a bird? And this from the nation that beheaded a king? I thought you were bolder than that! You know, someone always gets hurt if there’s a profit. But if you are so squeamish, come and see the finished feathers. There are no broken necks here!”
There were a hundred stalls made from boards on trestles lining the long hall and a double passageway down the middle, each heaped with a speciality. Sarah could see sheaves of peacock tails, the strangely sculpted feathers of birds of paradise. There were drifts of snowy white feathers from egrets, and the enchanting dapple—like speckled bronze on marble—of barn owl feathers. Cormorant pelts shone an iridescent green-black, a pile of parrot tails showed aviolent almost luminous blue. There were sacks of tiny feathers sold by weight, sorted by color, the deep reddish-brown of feathers shaved from dead pochard heads, the black-cobalt of male mallards.
On the middle stalls the feathers had been cleaned and dyed. Jet-black feathers—the hardest color to achieve—made a pool of darkness in sack after sack, graded by size. There were feathers that had been expertly styled and finished, cut into scalloped edges, shaved to a single bobbing frond. Some had been dusted with gold so they glinted and glittered, some had been set with sequins, all of them were beautifully worked and stroked so the fronds sat together in lustrous perfection.
“Oh,” Sarah said, taking in the riches all around her.
“Face,” Felipe said.
Sarah bit down a giggle and composed herself. “But I have no more than half my guinea for spending,” she whispered urgently.
“Do you want quantity or quality?” he asked.
He could see her yearning look at the perfect single plumes, then she resolutely returned to the sack of kingfisher feathers. “How much of these would I get for my half a guinea?” she asked.
He turned and spoke in rapid Italian to the stallholder.
“They charge by their weight in gold,” he said. “Do you want a guinea’s worth of this sort?”
Sarah gulped, but she knew that she could sell them for five times that price in London. “Half,” she said. “I have to keep some back, in case of trouble.”
He laughed. “I will keep you safe, little cautious one! There will be no trouble for you! But half a guinea, it shall be.”
The woman behind the stall proffered a large set of scales with a tray for money on one side and a basket on the other. She showed that they weighed true with matching Venetian coins on either side, and then Sarah put a handful of her gold into the tray. The woman tipped an avalanche of turquoise feathers into the basket until the scales trembled and swung, and then balanced themselves evenly.
“And for luck?” Felipe reminded her, and she threw in another handful.
“You are content with your purchase?” he asked Sarah.
Dazzled by the color, the basket of sapphire, she nodded, and the woman poured them like a stream of light into a bundle of soft cloth, tied the top into a loop for easy carrying, and shoveled the gold into a pocket of her apron.
DECEMBER 1670, LONDON
Johnnie’s master called him into the inner office on Christmas Eve, and he stood before the great desk, loaded with ledgers, while Mr. Watson finished checking a column of figures and then peered at him over the top of a set of small eyeglasses.
“Ah, Master Stoney,” he said pompously. “Your time with us is up.”
“Yes, sir,” Johnnie replied.
“You have your contract of apprenticeship?”
Johnnie unrolled the scroll with the fat red seals at the bottom and Alys’s plain signature beside his master’s scrawl.
“Completed to the day,” Mr. Watson said. “You sign there.”
Johnnie made a clerkly signature at the foot of the page and Mr. Watson signed his own name with a swirl.
“You will stay on?” Mr. Watson inquired. “Senior clerk at five shillings a week?”
“I should be glad to,” Johnnie said. “Till Easter, if I may?”
