Page 137 of Dark Tides
Alys, thinking that Livia had accounted for Sarah’s absence all on her own, leaned towards her and kissed her yielding mouth. “True,” she repeated.
DECEMBER 1670, VENICE
The room was deathly quiet when Felipe had stopped laughing at Sarah’s stunned face.
“Livia denounced him?” Sarah asked. “She denounced her own husband? Robert Reekie?”
“Wait,” he said. “I will answer your questions, when you answermine. We shall speak truly to each other now, shall we? First tell me: who are you? For never in all her life would the Nobildonna send her milliner to rescue her husband. Not this husband. And Lord! Not this milliner! The moment I saw you on my doorstep I knew you had not come from her.”
Sarah took a breath. “I’m Sarah Stoney. My mother is Alys Stoney, and my grandmother is Alinor Reekie.”
“Reekie?” he demanded. “Reekie? You mean Roberto Reekie’s mother?”
“Yes. She’s my grandmother. It’s her that sent me to find him.”
“Did she not believe that he was dead?”
Sarah shook her head. “Not for one moment.”
“But why not? Livia was in full mourning black? She threw herself on your pity? She cannot have been less than convincing.”
Sarah shrugged. “My grandmother is a very wise woman. She never trusted Livia. She didn’t like her saying that Matteo could take Robert’s place.”
“Lord! Did she think he was not Rob’s child?” he demanded.
“No, no,” Sarah corrected herself. “Just that he could not take Rob’s place. She was completely sure that Rob was still alive.”
“She had a vision?” he asked scathingly. “She has magical powers, your grandmother?”
Defiantly, Sarah nodded.
“Dio!”he said blankly. “I sent Livia into a madhouse.”
“Why did Livia denounce her husband?” Sarah pursued.
“To be rid of him,” he said simply, as if it were obvious.
“She put a letter in the Bocca?”
“Yes, I arrested him myself.”
Outside, the constant lapping of the canal grew a little more urgent, like a speeding heart, as a boat went by and the splash of the wake lapped against the walls of the house. Sarah looked at Felipe, her eyes dark, her face blank: “Did Rob see the warehouse? Was she your partner in the lower workhouse as well as the upper one? Did Rob see the bodies?”
“Yes,” he said, and poured a glass of wine for himself. “Alas, he did. He wanted to purchase a body, you understand? For his studies.He and the Jewish doctor needed to examine a dead body, to understand how the muscles worked, how the breath comes. He was especially interested in the lungs—especially interested in people who drowned.”
Sarah wrapped her arms around herself so she did not shudder. “You told me that you buried them with respect?”
“I do, when I can. But I also sell them to the hospitals, and the doctors, and the artists.”
“This is legal in Venice?”
“No,” he conceded. “So, we keep each other’s secrets. The Jewish doctor brought Rob to meet the man who could supply a corpse, and there—ecco!—was I in my storeroom!” He broke off. “Roberto had known me as Milord’s steward, and Livia’s trusted servant. He was very surprised to find me in such a grand palazzo, selling corpses. He was determined to know, he pushed into my workroom… he saw…”
“He saw what I saw?” Sarah whispered. “The terrible dead? The unburied? And their tombs. He was here?”
Felipe bowed. “He was here. He was just like you—shocked like you were. He dashed away, he went straight home and accused his wife of terrible crimes: defrauding her dead husband, trading in grave goods, lying to him, deceiving him with me.”
“As her criminal partner?” Sarah confirmed.
