Page 126 of Dark Tides
He thought for a moment. “Three-quarters of a year ago. Nearly a year.”
“Where did you see him?”
“We met at the house of a friend. He too is a physician. He and your uncle were friends, they worked together, they were interested in physic and how it worked. They were interested in preventing fevers—marsh fevers. They were working with patients, they thought they might find a cure.”
“An herbalist?” she guessed, and when he looked yet more grave, she continued: “Worse? Worse than that? An alchemist? A Jewish alchemist?”
“I don’t know what they did,” he said flatly. “I sometimes sold them metals for their work. Always, I had a license. Never did I disobey the law. May I go, your ladyship? I should set out my stall.”
“Wait.” She put a hand on his arm and he recoiled from her touch as if she were a danger to him.
“I am forbidden to touch you,” he said. “Do not harm me, signora, I pray you.”
“But it was I that touched you! What’s wrong with that?”
He shrugged as if he did not expect justice, but only that the law would be used against him. “I am forbidden.”
“Please! Where is he?” she asked simply, stepping closer to him and looking up into his face. “Where is the English Milord? My uncle?”
He pitied her enough to bend his head to whisper. “Alas, he is as good as dead. His mother is right and wrong at the same time. He is not dead; but he is in the well.”
She leaned closer, thinking she had misheard him. “In the well? Did you say he is in the well? What is that? What do you mean—the well?”
“The well is what they call the cells below the Doge’s Palace,” he replied. “Where they keep the prisoners. Those who are awaiting torture and questioning, those who have been accused while evidence is being gathered against them. Those who will be executed.”
“They are killed?” Sarah was breathless with shock.
“They die of the cold and the damp, they are below the canal, lying on damp stone, without light. They die of the heat in summer, and in winter, like now, of the cold and thirst and madness.”
“Thirst?”
“They lick the water from the walls, they are starved.”
“The prison of the Doge?”
“A prison that is itself a death sentence. Most likely he is dead already.”
She was as white as a ghost, but her hand tightened on his sleeve. “But he’s not drowned? He was not drowned in an accident? He was not drowned in a stormy night in dark tides?”
“Denounced,” he said, his face filled with pity. “Far worse than drowned. Denounced.”
DECEMBER 1670, LONDON
Johnnie found the table laid in the parlor, the walls pinned with evergreens, the fire lit in the hearth, and his mother, his grandmother, and his aunt Livia waiting for him.
“This is nice,” he said, looking around at the copper coal scuttle newly polished, and the candle flames dancing over wax candles. “This is so nice! You must have worked hard all week.”
“Your mother did,” Alinor told him. “She has been fetching and carrying every day and Livia pinned up the leaves.”
“I did nothing.” Livia put her hand on his knee and smiled at him. “I just told Tabs what to do. I am a most idle daughter-in-law.”
“She knew how to make things lovely,” Alys defended her.
“I thought you would at least have put up a couple of Caesar heads for us to dine with,” Johnnie joked.
She slapped his leg and made him blush at her touch. “Naughty boy to tease me!” she said. “We’ll have to wait till your mamma has agrand dining room, and then I will fill it with marble. Don’t you think we should sell up here and buy a bigger place upriver?”
He opened his mouth to answer, and was spared by a shout from the yard at the back of the house. They heard Tabs answer and open the warehouse doors and shout: “Mrs. Stoney! It’s a man from the Custom House,” she said.
