Page 145 of Dark Tides
“As soon as the thaw comes we’re ordered to muster and train thetown militia,” John Russell told him. “You’ll be summoned, Ned, and we’ll need you more than anyone. You’re one of the few who has seen action. You’ll be made a captain.”
Edward leaned forwards and clapped Ned on the shoulder. “You’ll be a commander, Ned! And we’ll advise. We’ll stay out of sight but we’ll order the drilling and training, and we’ll plan defenses.”
Ned remembered Wussausmon saying that the fences would not stop a deer and that the People could command fire to go where they wanted. “We’ve only got stock fences,” he said. “Nothing that could defend us against an attack.”
“They won’t directly attack us,” John Russell said. “They wouldn’t dare. I expect them to creep up on a few deserted farmhouses. They’d no more attack us than fall on Springfield. They know we’re too strong for them.”
“But you should come into town, Ned,” William said. “You’re too remote, out there by the river, and they could scalp you in the night and get away by canoe and we’d not even know it. You’d better come into town and then you can supervise the defenses.”
Ned thought for a moment he must have taken a fever he felt such a rush of sickness and weariness. “I can’t leave the ferry,” he said miserably. “If the people from Hatfield want to come over in spring, especially if they feel in danger, I have to be there to bring them over. And I can’t leave my beasts in the winter and I can’t drive them in through the snow.”
“The Hatfield people must fall back inside our palisade as soon as they can travel,” Edward ordered. “And the ferry ropes cut, and the raft sunk, so the enemy cannot use it.”
Ned shook his head, at the thought of destroying his ferry, at the thought of Quiet Squirrel and her people being named as enemies, at his sense of the world falling out of control, falling from godliness and certainty into fear and war.
“You’ll have to come into town,” his old commander told him, and Ned heard the order. “Your place is here, with your own people. Now that it’s war.”
DECEMBER 1670, LONDON
Dinner with his aunt and Livia was even worse than James had feared. From the first introduction it was a joust of beautiful manners.
“May I present the Nobildonna da Ricci—” he started.
“Peachey,” Livia corrected him.
“You don’t know her name?” his aunt turned to him.
“Myfidanzatomistakes,” Livia said smiling, curtseying low. “It is my accent! I am learning to speak English, you know. My name is pronounced Peachey.”
James’s aunt, who had known Sir William Peachey of Sussex in the days before the war, gave her nephew a long considering look, and curtseyed very slightly to the widow. “Any relation to the Sussex Peacheys?”
“Very distant,” Livia answered truthfully.
“This is my aunt, Dowager Lady Eliot,” James said.
Livia returned the curtsey. “Ah! You are a widow like me?” Livia tipped her head on one side to convey sympathy and smiled tenderly.
“Indeed,” her ladyship said, immune both to sympathy and the smile.
“And you have children?”
“Four: Sir Charles my son, my daughter Lady Bellamy, and my daughter Lady de Vere, and another daughter.”
“Not married?” Livia was as fast as a hound on the scent of the sole disappointment in this list of social triumph.
“Married but not to a nobleman; she is Mrs. Winters.”
“I am surprised you do not live with them?”
“A glass of wine?” James interposed. “Before dinner?”
“I live at Northside Manor. To keep James company after his loss.”
“And now I will be able to comfort him,” Livia assured her. “And you can be released to their ladyships and the little Mrs.”
“I expect I will stay at Northside,” her ladyship said firmly. “I lived very happily with dear Agatha.”
“White or red?”
