Page 33 of Dark Tides
“What does Ma say?”
“Nothing. I’ve not said anything to her.”
Sarah scrutinized her grandmother. “You cannot doubt the word of his widow. It’s not just a letter now, she has come all that long way, with her son, and now you know what happened?”
Alinor looked out of the window where a mist was uncoiling along the incoming tide. Sarah felt a chill in the room as if the hairs on the nape of her neck were standing up, one by one. She shivered.
Alinor glanced at her. “Yes,” she said, as if it were a commonplace. “Something’s not right. You feel it too.”
Sarah got up to close the half door to the balcony outside.
“It’s not the mist,” Alinor told her granddaughter. “You know as well as I do that it’s the sight.”
“I don’t see anything,” the girl complained. “I just feel a chill.”
“That’s how it feels,” Alinor confirmed. “I know something, but I don’t know what. I felt it when she said that poor little baby would be a comfort to me. That he would replace Rob!”
“Nobody could replace Rob.”
“It’s not that… It’s because…”
“What?” the girl prompted.
“I don’t know.” Alinor shook her head. “I can’t see anything clear. But I just know that something’s out of true.”
“D’you know what is true, Grandma?”
“Yes,” she said swiftly. “Always. As if the truth had a scent. I recognize it. And if you and me both feel the mist on the back of our necks—then there’s a warning.”
“A warning for who?”
“I don’t know for sure.” Alinor smiled at the girl and let the spell slip away. “But here’s a lesson down the years, from my grandmother to my mother, from her to me and from me to you: mind that chill when you feel it… something’s wrong.”
“Can we put it right?” the girl whispered.
Alinor looked at her granddaughter, at the bright courage in her dark eyes, at the strength in her face. “Maybe you can,” she said.
“How? How could I put it right? I don’t even know what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know either. But I believe it will be you who finds the truth in this. And in the meantime, I won’t wear black.”
Sarah said nothing more but picked up her grandmother’s cap and started to unpick the black ribbon. “What will you say?” she asked.
Alinor smiled ruefully. “I won’t have to say anything,” she said. “Everyone will just assume that I am a stupid old woman and I can’t accept the truth.”
“You don’t care if people say that?”
She smiled. “I’ve been called worse.”
Downstairs, Johnnie joined his mother in the counting house and they went through the transactions for the previous week, balancing the cash taken and spent against the stock held. They had to file the licenses to show that ships with foreign goods for the legal quays had been permitted to unload at the little wharf. They had to file the double-stamped dockets that showed that duty had been paid. Johnnie was meticulous with the documents: the smallest question against any one of the sufferance wharves would lose them the permission to bring cargoes onshore and pay the dues.
Livia put her head around the door and, seeing them both hard at work, laughed at their industry, and said that if she was to be neglected, she would take the baby and the nursemaid on her afternoon walk. They left the house together, and at the corner of Shad Thames the maid was surprised to see Sir James was waiting.
“I brought Matteo with me for some good country air,” Livia explained to him as she strolled up. “It is not good for him to be indoors all the time. A baby should be in the fresh air, in the country. If only we could visit a house in the country!” She beckoned Carlotta to her side and lifted the white lace shawl from the baby’s face. “See him smile? He knows you!”
“He’s very small,” Sir James said, looking at the tiny body in the trailing white gown.
“Oh yes, for he’s so young! But you will see. He will grow. He will grow to be a little English boy, a strong, brave little English boy.”
