Page 98 of Dark Tides
“That would be so kind,” she said. “I should give myMia Suocerasomething for housekeeping too.”
He drew out a heavy purse and tipped out five gold guineas. “Would this be sufficient?”
She took it and breathed: “Thank you, you’re very thoughtful. Perhaps ten? I would not want to embarrass myself in front of Alys, she’s very grasping.”
“She always was,” he assured her, and handed over the entire purse, which disappeared into the placket sewn inside the waistband of her skirt. He bowed and kissed her hand and then helped her down the stair into the stern of the waiting skiff, as Glib scrambled into the seat in the prow. The boatman nodded to Sir James, pushed off, and started rowing.
The sun low on the river, the skiff went along its own shadow on the darkening water. The wind was coming in from the sea and the boat rocked gently on the little waves. Livia, a woman of Venice, took no notice of the birds skimming by her, going to roost for the night, or the beauty of the little moon rising before her. She looked back to the water stairs of Avery House and the tops of the trees beyond it in the orchard and the hidden garden, and thought only of the grand house behind that and the Avery fortune that had built and maintained it, and the ten guineas in her pocket.
The waterman drew up to the Horsleydown Stairs and Glib paid with Sir James’s money, and got out of the boat first, to help Livia up the greasy steps. “You can go,” she dismissed him when she reached the top.
He hesitated. His orders had been to see her into the warehouse, and he hoped she might pay for his return by boat.
She snapped her fingers in his face. “Did you not hear me? Go.”
He bowed and set off on the walk back to Avery House, as Livia opened the mean front door and stepped into the dark little hall.
Alys was waiting for her. “I saved you dinner,” she said eagerly. “I’ve been waiting for you!”
“I’m very tired,” Livia said sulkily. “I don’t want anything.”
“Oh! Would you like some soup? Or a glass of—”
“I said: nothing! I think I’ll go straight to bed.”
“How was it?” Alys asked. “Did it go well? Did you…?”
“I suppose you want money,” Livia said unpleasantly.
“Well, of course I do! But I also hoped that you’d had a good day. I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve been thinking about you. I was worrying as it got dark that you wouldn’t…”
“Wouldn’t what?” Livia countered. “Bring home a pocket of shillings like your son and daughter have to do? Of course not! I haveput my earnings into the care of Sir James who will deposit them at his goldsmith’s! Did you think I would push a purse down my bodice like a thief?”
“I did hope you would bring money home, tonight,” Alys admitted. “My dear, we need it! The warehouse has paid out for the shipping, and for the wagon, and for the lightermen. And we’ve commissioned a second voyage. I can’t carry the debt! I did tell you? And you did say you would…”
Livia put her black silk shoe on the bottom stair. “I’ve earned a fortune today, more than you could have earned in a year, in ten years! I told you I would do so, and of course, I will pay my debts, but I shan’t be paying out my money for your children’s keep, nor for a maid who does not even come when she is called.” She opened the purse from her pocket and pulled out five coins. “Here is five guineas and you’ll have the rest later. I would have given you it at breakfast, there was no need for you to stay up and dun me on the doorstep.”
“I just wanted to see you safe home!”
“You wanted to see the money safe home! All you care about is money. And don’t wait up for me again, unless I ask you to.”
NOVEMBER 1670, LONDON
Johnnie tidied his high desk in the merchant’s counting house as the early dusk darkened the lofty dirty windows. The other clerks were putting on their jackets and hats, and leaving at the same time, but he did not walk with them to the bakehouse or coffeehouse. Instead he went down to the river and stood at a set of river stairs. The low tide lapped at his feet on the green weedy steps, a wash of rubbish,bits of cloth, the flat end of a bonnet, a sheet from a catalogue, some bits of wood, something stinking and dead; but he looked beyond the flotsam to the horizon. The river, even at dusk, was a forest of swaying masts, as ships—sails furled—were towed in by busy barges or moored in midchannel waiting for their turn to declare their duty and unload at the legal quays.
A child of the warehouse, Johnnie usually counted the queue of waiting ships and looked for the names of those that often came to the Reekie Wharf; but this evening he looked beyond them to the east where the thick gray clouds merged the sky into the sea on the dark horizon.
He was confident that Sarah would be safe on board Captain Shore’s ship and that she would cope with whatever faced her in Venice. She was only twenty-one years old but the two of them had been raised on the streets, alleys, and wharves of St. Olave’s, and he knew she was no fool. She had seen enough libertine men buying gewgaws for their mistresses at the milliner’s not to be tricked or seduced by a few slick words, she had seen fellow apprentices leave the workshop in a carriage and come back barefoot. A child of the coastal trade, he was not fearful for her at sea; a firm believer in his grandmother’s wisdom, he did not think she had been sent on a mission that she could not accomplish. But he believed himself to be half of a twin and, as she went farther and farther away, he felt as if half of himself was missing.
He walked along the wharf from one set of steps to another, not knowing where he was going in the gathering dusk, but understanding that he was undertaking a sort of vigil, a waiting for her, and that until she came home his family would be dispersed and he would have no comfort until he knew she was safe. Now he understood how it had been for his mother, when her brother, Rob, went away; for his grandmother when her brother, Ned, went to the New World. Now, as he tried to look through the dusk, as if he could see Sarah so far away at sea, he believed that his grandmother would know for sure if her own son was alive or dead.
NOVEMBER 1670, LONDON
Sarah had been away from her home for nearly a week when Alinor came down the narrow stairs to find Alys in the counting house, on the other side of the narrow hall.
“Alys, I need to talk to you.”
At once, Alys slid down from her stool at the clerk’s high desk where she worked. “Ma? Are you ill?”
