Page 90 of Dark Tides
“No!” Ned exclaimed. “I don’t know anyone who has them. I’ve only seen a French trapper wear them. I’ve always dug out my path and struggled along. Isn’t it hard to learn to walk on them?”
“It’s just walking,” Wussausmon smiled. “Coatmen can walk? Just keep your tips up.”
“How do I fit them?” Ned asked.
“That’s the other part of her gift to you,” Wussausmon told him. “You’ll have to give up your shoes, you’ll have to wear moccasins like the People of the Dawnlands.”
“She’s always hated my shoes,” Ned complained. “And my feet will freeze!”
“No, they won’t. These are winter moccasins, they’re made from moose fur; your feet will be warm. Far better than in your boots, and she’s given you buckskin leggings to tuck into them.”
Ned looked at the beautifully stitched moccasins, more like the bootees that an English child might wear in the cradle than shoes for a man, but he could see they were thickly lined with fur and were made with double skins, real native boots.
“Try them!” Wussausmon suggested.
Ned heeled off his heavy shoes and his cold damp hose and slid abare foot into the fur-lined moccasin; the comfort and the warmth was instantaneous. Wussausmon laughed aloud at Ned’s face.
“Shall I tell her you’ll give her a cheese for them?”
“They’re worth two!” Ned swore. “And tell her she is a good friend to think of me in these cold days.”
NOVEMBER 1670, LONDON
Alys and Livia waved at the passing masts of Captain Shore’s galleon as it went downriver at midday, under a darkening sky.
“Godspeed,” Livia called after it. “God bless.”
“I hope it’s not going to be stormy,” Alys said.
“God grant them good weather,” Livia agreed. “Especially coming back with my goods.”
“Amen,” Alys said as the two women went into the warehouse front door and closed it behind them. “But before it returns we have to earn some money! I can’t pay for the return voyage and the delivery. I’ve got next to nothing in the chest, after paying Captain Shore. I’m having to ask some creditors to wait.”
The younger woman slipped her arm around Alys’s waist and rested her smooth cheek and scented ringlet curls against Alys’s shoulder. “Make them wait,” she recommended. “Unless you want me to borrow from Sir James?”
“No! No, of course not. We don’t need anything from him. We can stretch it. Tabs can wait for her wages. If the worst comes to the worst I can borrow at Paton’s against the next cargo.”
“Of course Tab can wait,” Livia agreed. “You feed and house her, after all! And could you borrow enough to take another bigger warehouse?Would it not make sense to get a bigger warehouse so that I don’t have to sell at Sir James’s house? So I never have to go to his house again?”
At once Alys looked anxious. “I’d rather you didn’t go—but we couldn’t raise such a sum, it would be far too much.”
“If we sold this warehouse?”
“We can’t sell here!”
“But my dear, how are we going to make more money unless we take our opportunities? You don’t want me to be confined here forever, do you? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to buy a new warehouse, somewhere more fashionable, somewhere that we could show the antiquities, and you could run the warehouse and I could sell the treasures in a gallery?” Livia took Alys by the waist and swayed with her as if they were dancing together. “It would be a real partnership, it would be our own business.”
“I… I… don’t think, I couldn’t…” Alys floundered, torn between the beguiling picture of a thriving warehouse and a business that Livia could run alongside her, a partnership of work and love. “It sounds wonderful… but I couldn’t raise such a sum. I couldn’t risk our home… and Johnnie would never agree.”
Livia’s pretty laugh tinkled out. “Ah, Johnnie! We might as well ask Matteo for his permission. My love, we will not let our children rule us! We will think what we can do. Us together. And see! We have just seen our ship go out, we are going to see it come in. You don’t know, you have no idea, what profit I am going to make. You don’t know, you have no idea, what plans I have for us. Especially, you have no idea how happy we are going to be.”
Sarah’s bumboat hailed Captain Shore’s galleon as it rolled at anchor, waiting for the tide. Passengers often joined ships at Greenwich, merchants often sent out a final load. Captain Shore himself helped her scramble aboard over the ship’s rail.
“Whoa—a little lass?”
“I’m the maid at the Reekie warehouse,” she said. “The Nobildonna has sent me to choose her goods in Venice and get them packed.”
“I’ve already got the order from Mrs. Stoney,” he protested.
