Page 75 of Dark Tides
Alys breathed out and Livia continued: “You think that a woman should be honorable. I’ve seen you speak to the captains, to the warehousemen, even to the lumpers. You speak to them with respect and you demand that they respect you: a good trader. You think that a woman succeeds by being like a man. You think that if you act like a good honest man you will rise in a man’s world. You think you will succeed on your merits. You think hard work and God’s blessing will be rewarded.”
“I am honest,” Alys was driven into speech. “I learned it—the hardest way.”
“I’m not,” Livia replied quickly. “I am far more interesting than honest. I am far more successful than honesty could ever be. I am only ever honest to myself. My face in the mirror is the only one that I trust with my secrets. I never lie to myself, Alys, I know what I am doing when nobody else knows. And I don’t do things by accident. I never do something and not know why, I’m never driven by an unknown desire, I never run in one direction while yearning for the other. I always know who I am, and what I want, and I go to my way in a roundabout fashion so that no one can refuse me. The only honest word I utter is to myself.” She paused. “That is admirable, in a way. In its own way. I am admirable; in my own way.”
“But what do you want here?” Alys cried out to her, sitting up and turning round so that her sister-in-law could see—even in the shadowy room—her eyes red from crying and her face twisted with distress. “What d’you want here, if you despise us so much? Why stay in our home when it’s so poor? Why are you using our warehouse but going out to make money with our enemy? Why’ve you come here to distress us? Why d’you work with him? What d’you want? What were you planning, when you came here, all little and crushed and grieving? When you came so beautiful that a heart would break to see your face? And the first thing you did was reach out your hand to him? You held your handkerchief to your eyes and you reached for him! How can you boast of your pride when you flung yourself at him?”
Livia flung herself into Alys’s arms, kissed her hot face, wet with tears, lay along the lean length of her. “I want you,” she whispered in her ear. “That’s what I want. I know it now, and the moment I met you. I want to be like you: simple and honorable and brave. I want you to love me as I am: curious and duplicitous as I am. I want to belong here with you. I want to be yours: heart and soul. I want you to own me as a sister, I want to be the great love of your life. I want you to see past the beautiful surface of me, past my luster, and see me for myself.”
“Luster,” Alys repeated the unusual word.
“The shine on a beautiful marble, the gleam on a skin of bronze. The glow of my perfect skin.” She gave a low laugh.
“I can’t bear lies,” Alys whispered in reply. “You don’t know what they cost me, what they cost my ma. You don’t know how we both told lies until there was such a tangle of deceit that we were drowned under the weight of them. We weren’t punished for our crime, my crime. It was the lies that destroyed us. I can’t live with a pack of lies. I can’t bear it.”
“You must, you must bear me,” Livia urged her, pressing her warm breasts against Alys’s cool nightgown. “For you are the only person in the world that I speak the truth to. The only one in the world that I love and trust. I have to be with you. You have to love me in return. Please, Alys. Without you I have no one! I have nowhere to live, I have no friend. I am an orphan, alone in the world. I am a widow. How can you not love me? How can you not pity me? You are my sister: be a sister to me!”
Alys did not plunge into Livia’s arms but hesitated, scrutinized the beautiful face in the stripes of moonlight. “Can I trust you not to lie to me?” she demanded. “Even if you lie to everyone else? Can you be honest to me, here, when we are alone together, in this room? Even if you lie all the day to everyone else?”
Two tears like pearls rolled down Livia’s cheeks, her lips trembled. “Yes,” she said. “I swear I will be true to you; if you will love me.”
The two women looked at each other, unmoving for a long moment, and then Alys opened her arms and they kissed, deeply kissed, and fell asleep, enwrapped, Alys’s face buried in Livia’s dark hair, Livia’s hands linked behind Alys’s back, drawing her close and holding her close all night.
OCTOBER 1670, LONDON
Sarah and Johnnie walked back from church together, as Sarah described Avery House, and Livia’s presence as the lady of the house, under the name of Lady Peachey.
“You think she’ll catch him?” Johnnie muttered, one eye on his mother walking before him arm in arm with Livia.
“She’s got him wrapped around her finger,” Sarah said. “She walks in and out of the house as if it was her own.”
“Then she’ll be a wealthy woman, and she can pay her debts to us.”
“There’s plenty of money there,” Sarah confirmed.
They followed Livia and Alys through the front door and parted in the little hall. Sarah went upstairs to sew with Alinor, while Johnnie went to the counting house with his mother.
As soon as he looked at the books he saw that the warehouse had carried the cost of loading, shipping, and unloading, that Livia paid nothing for the storage of her goods in the warehouse, and nothing for them to be delivered by the Reekie wagon to Avery House, crossing and recrossing the river on the expensive horse ferry. The warehouse books had never showed such debt before, the cashbox was almost empty.
“Has she promised payment when she sells?” he asked. He looked at the outlay and then asked more hopefully: “Or is she paying us a share of the profits, are we partners with her?”
Alys shook her head. “I didn’t ask for a partnership,” she said. “I just paid for the shipping, and then the wagon of course. She knows it’s more than we can bear for very long. She’ll repay us as soon as she makes her sale.”
“I thought she’d done the sales?”
“That was the viewing. She’s got orders, but she’s taken no money yet.”
“Don’t they pay on ordering?” he asked.
Alys shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s not a business we know, Johnnie. We have to trust her that she knows how it’s done.”
The young man was troubled. “I see that, Ma, but we’ve never carried costs like this before. And where’s the certificate of tax for her goods? Did she pay it herself, and keep the certificate?”
“She doesn’t owe tax as it’s her private furniture, delivered to her home, here.”
The young man looked up at his mother. “It’s not really private furniture,” he said. “And though it was delivered here, she’s not kept it here, at home. We’re not sitting on her chairs now! She should have declared it as antiquities for sale; for she’s selling it, and she’s selling it very publicly too.”
“To gentlemen, to noblemen,” his mother replied. “Nobody who’s going to ask to see a tax receipt.”
