Page 61 of Dark Tides
“More herbs?” Livia suggested limpidly as she followed Alinor downstairs, Matteo against her shoulder.
The lighterman and a couple of dockers carried the crate into the warehouse. Alys paid for the shipping and then fetched the hammer from the wall to open the lid.
“Tabs can do that,” Livia said.
“I can do it.” Alys pulled nails from the top of the crate till it was ready to open. She smiled at her mother. “I know you’ll want to open it.” Skillfully, she levered up the lid but left it resting on top.
Alinor cautiously lifted the lid and at once the rich strong smell of sassafras breathed into the room.
“There must be something else inside,” Alys told her. “It was heavy.”
Alinor scraped a little of the dried leaves aside and found the cool globe of rock. “It feels like pebbles.”
“Could it be ore?” Livia asked, interested at once. She handed the baby to Alys and stepped forwards to see. “Gold-bearing ore?”
“He wouldn’t send gold in a crate.” Alinor drew it out and weighed it in her hand. It was a big stone, the size of a cobble, gray and uninteresting on the outside but it was split, it opened in her hands and she gave a little gasp.
It was a treasure, a sparkling sharp-toothed cave of jewels, purple as dark as indigo, and so white as to be translucent. “Will you look at this?”
“Are they diamonds?” Livia breathed. “Has he found diamonds? Purple diamonds?”
“He’s written.” Alys pulled out the sheet of paper packed in the crate.
“Dear Sister and Niece Alys,”she read aloud.“Here is a crate of sassafras leaves, which I know you can always use, and a stone that the Norwottuck people call ‘thunderstones.’ They say that a stone like this draws lightning away safely to the ground. I have not seen such a thing, but I thought it might be helpful in the spires and roofs of London. If you can sell them at a profit I can get more. It cost me 6d. in trade goods, so let me know if it’s worthwhile. In haste to catch the boat—your loving brother, Ned.”
“He says nothing about me? Nor his nephew?” Livia asked.
“This will have crossed with my letter,” Alinor told her. “It takes a long time for news to reach him—a month and a half—sometimes more?” She put the thunderstone together and then opened it up again. “This is beautiful.” She turned to Alys. “Will you take it to the apothecary and see if he has any sale for it?” she asked her. “You can tell him we’ve got a new delivery of sassafras too. I’ll keep some back to make bags and tisanes, but you might ask him what he’d pay by the pound?”
“I’ll go this afternoon,” Alys started, but then she clicked her tongue in irritation. “No, I can’t, I’m expecting some fruit from Kent.” She turned to Livia. “Could you go? You could go on from the Strand with Carlotta.”
“I?” Livia asked, looking from one woman to another as if it were an extraordinary request that she could hardly understand.
“Why not?” Alinor asked quietly.
Livia just glanced at Alys, who answered for her. “Oh! No, Ma, of course she can’t.”
“Why not?” Alinor turned the question to her daughter.
Alys flushed. “She’s a lady, she can’t go selling things to a shop. It’s not right. She can’t go into a shop and haggle for something… in English… with Mr. Jenikins who’s always so… It’s not her language, it’s not her place.”
“Is this true?” Alinor asked Livia as if she were curious. “Our work is beneath you?”
“No! No! Of course I will go,” Livia said gracefully. “If you ask me, I will go,Mia Suocera. Of course. I can’t do it as well as darling Alys, but I can try. If you wish it, I will try. I want to help, I will do anything you ask me.”
Alinor turned to her daughter: “You go when you’re able. See if he wants more of these thunderstones and what he’ll pay.”
“But I will go if you want me?” Livia interposed.
Alinor did not even glance at her inquiring face. “Nay, you think no more of it,” she said.
SEPTEMBER 1670, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND
Ned’s garden sprawled with green weeds at the end of the hot humid summer, the river broad and limpid green, the woods on the far side a wall of green, the meadows above them a yellowing green, and the pines above them a deep purple green. Even Ned’s clothes in his box were green with mold, and every hole under his eaves and every corner of his root cellar was sprouting a little nest of green shoots. He spent hours every day hoeing his crop with his stone-blade hoe, and peeling back the leaves from the ripening heads of corn so they dried brown. As his crop of beans flourished, climbing around the corn stalks, and his squash vines trailed on the ground, more and more animals came from the forest on either side of his acreage to raid his harvest. Black flocks of crows darkened the sky and would have stripped the field bare if Red had not bounded barking from his kennel. Squirrels came scampering along the branches of the trees overhead, partridge hens led their fat chicks, ducking under his fence to pick and scratch in his precious seedbeds. Ned repaired his fence, sticking willow wands into watered earth, weaving them together, to mark out his half lot of four acres, trying to grow a tame little English hedge to keep out a wilderness of trees that stretched for miles, greater than all of England, perhaps greater than Christendom. Nobody knew how far the land extended, it could go on to the Indies for all anyone knew.
Wussausmon, walking up the broad common stretch from the south one evening, was unrecognizable, dressed as an Englishman in breeches, shoes, and a shirt and a jacket. He opened the north gatefrom the town, came to Ned’s garden gate, and remarked: “You English, you cannot leave anything alone.”
Ned looked up at the friendly voice, and looked again as he recognized the Pokanoket man under the English hat. “I didn’t recognize you!”
