Page 124 of Dark Tides
“You hope to move to another House?”
“I have been fortunate,” Johnnie told him. “More fortunate than I could have hoped. I have a patron who has mentioned my name. I have visited the East India Company and they have offered me a post. They say I may start at Easter.”
“Good God!” Johnnie’s master dropped his chair back to four legs. “You’re flying very high,” he said with a hint of resentment. “I’ve not got a place at that table. Who got you in?”
“My aunt from Venice knows an investor,” Johnnie said. “He was so good as to recommend me.”
“You have an aunt from Venice?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s new, isn’t it?”
“It is, sir, and unexpected. But my uncle has just recently died and his widow has come, and is living with us.”
“And what do you have to do for her? For your patron? For this is a more than cousinly favor you have here?”
Johnnie laughed, a little embarrassed. “It seems I have to be her advisor, and her friend,” he said. “She lives with my mother and grandmother at the warehouse, and—it seems that she wants my support in a plan that she has for the business.”
Mr. Watson looked dourly at the young man. “Well, you can go home to your family, befriend your aunt over the holiday. If she wants to invest any money in cargoes I rely upon you to bring her here; bear in mind what I’ve done for you, lad. I expect to see her in the New Year.”
“She has only her dower,” Johnnie said. “She’s not a wealthy woman.”
“She has wealthy friends,” the merchant said flatly. “I’d like to meet them too.”
“I’ll tell her,” Johnnie said awkwardly. “I’ll definitely mention your name.”
“Aye. Well and good. Off you go now. Start again, day after Christmas, and God bless you all.”
Johnnie hesitated, in case there was a Christmas box—and left without any gift.
DECEMBER 1670, VENICE
Early in the morning, before the household was stirring, Sarah woke and dressed in silence, in the half-light of the moon reflected from the canal to her dappled ceiling. As she moved to leave the room, Chiara, still asleep in bed, stirred, and muttered something. Sarah froze, and then crept to the door on the creaking floorboards. She made no sound at all on the stone stair, and with her slippers in her hand she slipped down to the street door like a ghost. It was unlocked, the kitchenmaid had already come in and climbed up the stairs to the kitchen, to light the fire and start baking, so Sarah swung it open and went out into the quiet streets.
Venice was awake—Venice never slept. There were street sweepers plying their brushes, pushing the dust into the canal where it floated like a pale scum, and there were street waterers, hauling water from the canal and sloshing it over the pavements. The sellers were walking to the markets, their wares in balanced baskets swinging from the yokes on their shoulders. There were plain wooden gondolas and sandoli going up and down the canal carrying goods. The collectors of trash and soil were heaving the neighborhood baskets into their boat. There were one or two glossy black gondolas laden with drunks wallowing low in the water, heading home from a late night. One gondola with a closed cabin showed a flickering candlelight where clandestine lovers were holding back the day.
Sarah retraced her steps from yesterday, to the Rialto square where the moneylenders had their tables. She was too early for all of them, but one young boy, dressed in black with a skull cap on his head, anda betraying yellow star of cloth sewed on his little shirt, was waiting for his father by the fountain. Sarah went up to him.
“I’m looking for Mordecai the money changer.”
He bowed low, clasping his shaking hands before him, too afraid of the Christian woman to find his voice.
“Mordecai, the money changer,” she repeated.
“He walks here,” he replied reluctantly. “He will come at eight of the clock.”
“Can I go to meet him?”
“Your ladyship must do as you please,” he said in his little-boy treble.
“Will you guide me?”
His anxious look around the square showed her that he did not want to walk with her, but he knew he could not refuse a Christian lady anything that she might demand.
“Of course, your ladyship,” he said.
He trotted away from the square; Sarah strode beside him. “Where are we going?”
