Page 130 of Dark Tides
“How do you know?”
DECEMBER 1670, VENICE
Sarah walked briskly to the quay where Captain Shore’s ship,Sweet Hope,sat before the wide warehouse door loading goods for the return voyage, scheduled to leave within two days. As she had expected, Captain Shore was on the quayside, negotiating with much hand waving and miming to overcome the language difficulties, with a merchant who was sending Venetian glass to London. Sarah waited at a distance while the two men haggled. When they finally shook hands and the merchant turned away into the Custom House to declare his goods and get his permit, Sarah stepped forwards.
“Eh?” Captain Shore remarked. “You here, Bathsheba? All going well? Found your antiquities?” He lowered his voice. “Where’s the husband?”
“No,” she said awkwardly. “There is no husband. I’m sorry, but I lied to you, Captain Shore. And my name’s not Bathsheba Jolly either.”
He was horrified. “Never mind me, child! You lied to the port officers? The papers you signed?”
“I never mentioned a husband. They know nothing of him. But I lied about my name.”
He turned on his heel and then came back to her. “It’s not safe! It’s not safe!” he exclaimed. “Venice is not a city for amateur deceivers! They burn people in public for forging coin, behead them for forging letters—this is a merchant city, your word has got to be good. Your name has to be known for straight dealing. If you lie—you must never be caught. And now my paperwork is wrong too. Fool that you are—I’ll have to report you. I’ve got no choice, but I’ll have to report you. What’s your real name?”
“Sarah Stoney,” she told him, and saw him slowly realize what she had said.
“Not Mrs. Stoney’s girl, of Reekie Warehouse at Savoury Dock?”
She nodded.
“Christ’s teeth! Does your ma know you’re here?”
“No. My grandma does. She sent me.”
“Good God! Have you run away from home? And I helped you? God spare me! I’d do anything not to offend your ma!”
“No, no. My grandma asked me to come, and she’ll have told my mother by now. She asked me to come and find my uncle Rob. He was reported drowned, you see, but my grandma is sure… she felt…” Sarah trailed off.
“Your grandma—the healer?”
Sarah nodded.
“And she wanted you to find her son?”
Sarah nodded again.
“The drowned one!” he exclaimed.
“Yes, she doesn’t think he drowned.”
“But why not send your brother? Or Mrs. Stoney herself? I’d have been proud to carry her. She could have had a cabin for free!”
She had no answer. “It was only my grandma who wanted me to come. She was certain, she felt she just knew.”
“Does she have the sight?” he lowered his voice to ask. “The sailors who buy her teas against fever say she has a gift. Do you have it?”
“I don’t know,” Sarah said cautiously. “It depends who’s asking.”
He laughed unwillingly at that. “You’re your mother’s daughter,” he said. “No fool. But—Lord—you’ve got us into trouble here. How will you set about finding him?”
“That’s why I came to see you,” she said. “Someone told me that my uncle was not drowned, but in the well. D’you know what that means?”
The Captain’s anxious face was suddenly as grave as if she had told him of a death. “Of course, I know what it means. They make sure that everyone knows. It means he is lost to you, child. The well is the stone cellars of the Doge’s Palace, the worst of prisons. Nobody comes out from there, but to the scaffold.”
“There must be people who are released! People who prove their innocence?”
He looked at her. “Maid, I’m sorry for you. This isn’t England. They’re denounced, they’re taken up, they’re tried, and then they’re gone. If they ever come out at all it’s to be hanged in the square, but mostly they just disappear, no one ever speaks of them again. If they’re in thepiombi—the cells under the lead roof—they die of the heat in summer. In winter, they die of cold. If they’re in the well, they get sick from the mists and the damp of the canal. And if they’re accused of heresy or treason, they put them in a cage and dangle them over the canal and let them starve to death in public.”
