Page 38 of Dark Tides
“Of course,” Alys said. “If you want.”
She turned her back and whipped off her own dayshift and pulled on her nightgown as quickly as she could. But when she turned back to the bed there was no need for self-consciousness, Livia was not watching her. She had climbed into the big soft bed and was lying back on the pillows. She reached out her arms. “Come and hold me! Hold me and let me sleep like a little girl in your arms.”
Shyly, Alys climbed in beside her, and felt the warm lithe body slide against her own. “Isn’t this better than being alone?” Livia asked as her head dropped to Alys’s shoulder. “I hate sleeping alone.”
JUNE 1670, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND
The morning after the town meeting the iron bar clanged on the far side of the bank and Ned left his breakfast to climb the embankment and look at the other side. Quiet Squirrel was standing there with her fishing creel in her hands, her daughter and two other women beside her.
He raised a hand to them, stepped onto his ferry, and hauled the raft across, going hand over hand on the damp rope. He ran it to the pebble shore and the Norwottuck women stepped on board, saying“Netop, Netop”one after another. Last on board was Quiet Squirrel. “Netop, Nippe Sannup,” she said.
“Netop,Quiet Squirrel, you’re selling fish today?”
“Is it true they will pay more?”
“How you know that?” Ned asked, smiling. “Quick!”
“We listened at the meetinghouse window,” she said, matter-of-factly. “We’re not such fools as to be deaf to our neighbors. Especially when they talk about us—at the tops of their voices.”
Ned understood only some of this. But he smiled. “Glad see you. We want friends with Norwottuck.”
Her smile crinkled the skin around her dark eyes. “Didn’t sound like it,” she said cynically. But when she could tell from his trusting face that he did not understand her, she spoke more slowly. “You Coatmen want land,” she said flatly. “You want servants. You want people to feed you and hunt for you. I don’t think you really want friendship.”
Ned understood most of this; he spread his hands. “I’m friendly,” he said. “Hopeful. We’re all good people. Try harder. Why not?”
“Why not?” she agreed. “You can be hopeful.”
JUNE 1670, LONDON
The three women took breakfast together in Alinor’s room, the noise of the Monday morning quayside below them, the brightness of the sunshine muted by the linen curtains, the seabirds outside calling over the high tide and diving for fish into the water.
“May I speak of a little matter of business?” Livia asked when Tabs had cleared the plates and the jug of small ale.
“Business?” Alinor asked.
“Indeed yes,” she replied. “I hope to be a help to you here, and not a burden. If I had known that it was so small a house and so mean a business, I would not have thrown myself on your kindness—but Roberto did not tell me.”
“I’m sorry if that’s so,” Alinor said a little stiffly. “We’ve never pretended to be more than we are.”
“No, it is I that am sorry that I have no fortune to bring you! But I have prospects. This is what I want to discuss.”
Alys glanced at her mother and opened the curtain halfway so she could look down at the quayside below. “I’m expecting a cargo,” she remarked. “I’ll have to go when the ship comes in.”
“Of course,” Livia said politely. “I know that the little ships come before everything! I will be quick. It is this: my first husband was a wealthy and noble man. His family had a large collection of antiquities—marble busts, statues, columns, and friezes—beautiful things from the old days of Greece and Rome. You know the sort of things I mean?”
The two women nodded.
“He taught me how to identify the beautiful things, you know theyare become so fashionable now? He taught me their value and how to know a real antiquity from one newly made and sold as counterfeit.”
“People do that?” Alys asked, curious.
“They do. It is a crime of course. But our collection was all good. He made me the keeper, and I acquired pieces, and I sold some that did not suit our taste, especially to the visitors from France and the Germans too. They love the old beautiful things, but the greatest collectors, and those with the most money to spend, are the English.” She paused, looking from one face to another. “You can see what I am thinking!” she asked with a charming smile.
Clearly, they could not. “When my husband died, his family claimed our palazzo—our palace, our beautiful house on the Grand Canal. The palace and everything in it, the tapestries on the walls and even the beautiful pastellone of the floor, they valued everything and took it all from me. They went through my trunks of clothes as I left, to see that I took nothing, as if I were a thief! They checked the smallest cameo, the tiniest coin. Even the things that he had given me as a wife were taken from me as a widow. The family jewels, the family fine linen… Roberto was most shocked.”
“Roberto was there?” Alinor asked.
“Of course, as my husband’s doctor, he was there all through his last illness, and at the end. But what they did not know, and I did not tell them, was that not all the antiquities were in the house. Many of them were in my store, guarded by my husband’s steward, being restored and cleaned. I did not tell my late husband’s cruel family about them! They were my treasures, I thought, not theirs. So I kept them safe, Roberto and I planned to send them to you by ship—here to your warehouse—and to sell them to your friends in the City.”
