Page 64 of Dark Tides
John raised his cup to the silent river. “You know I can’t say. Would you not be bound to pass my words to your elders? Would they not tell the governor? And then they’ll summon the Massasoit as if he were their servant, scold him and fine him and take more of our land and pretend it is a just punishment and not your greed? I warn you—I want to warn you; but I will not betray him.”
“He mustn’t gather the tribes together,” Ned said flatly. “I warn you in return: it would be the end of all our hopes to live free and at peace here.”
“But we are not free,” John pointed out. “We are not at peace. When your king overstepped his rights you killed him. What should we do when you overstep? The Pokanoket are tired of you, and your broken promises. I translate nothing but insults. The Pokanoket are tired of me too.”
“Are they? Is the Massasoit tired of you? Is it dangerous to go between two worlds? Should you stay in the praying town and be an Englishman, where we can keep you safe?”
“You can’t keep me safe, you can’t even keep yourselves safe. Your town is fenced with wood that wouldn’t stop deer. You know we can make fire in a forest and tell it which way to go! If we told fire to come to Hadley, your roofs would burn in a moment, we could walk through the ashes. If we were all as one and we rose as one against you, you would not be able to resist us.”
“We can,” Ned said firmly. “Don’t tell anyone that we can’t.”
“So now you’re all Englishman? I thought you were half Norwottuck?”
Ned sighed. “I am a man at peace, in a peaceful country,” he said. “Neither Indian nor English.”
“We will all have to choose a side at the end of the peace.”
“God forbid,” Ned said sourly. “None of the militia know how to march.” Then he remembered that he was speaking to a Pokanoket. “Don’t tell anyone that either.”
SEPTEMBER 1670, LONDON
Alinor, Livia, and Alys were breakfasting in Alinor’s room. The glazed door was open and the warm air breathed into the room. For once it smelled only of salt and the sea, the stink of the river was washed away by the high tide. Livia, waiting for her ship to come in, was too nervous to eat anything; she drank her chocolate and nibbled at the edge of a roll of bread. Alys glanced at her. “Would you eat some pastries?” she asked. “I can send Tab out for something sweet?”
“No! No, I am eating this.” She broke off a little crumb.
“What did the apothecary say about the thunderstone?” Alinor asked her daughter.
“He paid well for it. He’d never seen such a thing before. Three shillings a pound, and it was a pound and a half weight. When you write to Uncle Ned, tell him that we can sell more. And any curiosities—he told me the gentlemen of science are taking an interest in such things, especially from New England.”
“And the sassafras?”
“He has it on sale at four shillings a pound and he offered to buyfrom me at two and six a pound. I think I could have got more but I said yes, because—” Alys broke off.
“Because we need the money now,” her mother finished the sentence.
Livia ate a tiny crumb of bread, her eyes on the river.
“The cashbox is emptier than I’d like,” Alys admitted. “But it’ll come in.” She smiled. “Perhaps today! On Livia’s ship!”
Livia took a tiny sip of chocolate and said nothing.
“Well, I’ll get started,” said Alys, and rose to her feet, kissed her mother on the cheeks, and went out of the room. They could hear her heavy footsteps on the stairs and the closing of the door of the counting house.
“I am so anxious,” Livia volunteered.
“You are?”
“See? I cannot eat, I cannot sleep. I even dream of my ship at night. I so much want this for all of us. I feel that I owe it to Roberto, to give his son my dowry as an inheritance, since his loving father could do nothing for him.”
“You dream of it?” Alinor asked her.
“Yes! Yes!”
“D’you ever dream that Rob might come on it?”
Livia recovered rapidly from her shock at the question. “Alas no,” she said. “No. It is not possible,Mia Suocera. I don’t dream of it.”
Alinor nodded. “It’s due this week, I think?”
