Dawnlands, page 23
“She’s nothing like Mama,” Mia said. “But just as Mama described her. Busy, hurried, nice.”
“Thank God we’re out of Venice,” Gabrielle said. “Every day we were farther away I felt more and more free. Look at her down there, giving orders, raising her voice! She runs the wharf, Mama said, not Captain Shore.”
“Mama said London is full of women with their own businesses. What if we were to be wharfingers ourselves!”
Gabrielle shook her head. “Physicians,” she said. “I want to study herbs with our great-grandmother and doctoring with Uncle Rob.”
“And there’s the exhibitions and the studios and the libraries, churches and concerts,” Mia pointed out. “And women can go to them. We can even walk out alone.”
“It’s like a new world,” Gabrielle said. “Streets everywhere, roads everywhere, horses everywhere. And everyone speaking English and sounding like Mama!”
“A different world and yet a homecoming,” Mia said.
ON THE ROAD TO LONDON, AUTUMN 1685
Johnnie hired a coach to take him and Ned to London. “We can’t do any more here,” he told Ned. “She’ll be held at Bristol till her ship, the Rebecca, sails. All the Taunton prisoners are the property of the queen and she’s giving them to her favorites. And that’s where we get our chance. The courtiers are selling pardons!”
“They are?” Suddenly interested, Ned turned from watching the granite walls of Taunton high street jolt past the window.
“Far beyond the price of common people, but for gentry or lords who can raise the funds, who’d rather pay than see a cousin or a younger brother in such a state, they’re selling a royal pardon for a couple of hundred pounds.”
“I’ve not got that sort of money,” Ned said. “Nowhere near.”
Johnnie scowled. “We might be able to bargain it down. Livia Avery is a favorite of the queen, if we could get her to intercede for us.”
“What sort of king enslaves his own people?” Ned demanded. “Why should we pay for our freedom?”
The coach went faster, swaying on the straps as they joined the highway, but neither man noticed.
“Your crime made you the property of the king,” Johnnie the merchant-trader asserted. “This is not tyranny but justice.”
Ned rested a hand on his shoulder. “Lad, I was fighting injustice before you were born, I will be against it until the day I die. If we have to pay a tyrant to free Rowan, I will. But I would free all slaves, if I could.”
“Slaves are property, it’s not about justice but about wealth. And you’ll never change that. Someone owns everything.”
Ned shook his head. “It’s the nature of the world that we’ve chosen to make,” he said stubbornly. “Because men like you want it that way. But I don’t want it that way, and there are men like me, and women, who would rather not own another, not profit off someone’s misery.”
“Then you’ll live and die a poor rebel in someone else’s coat,” Johnnie predicted. “Like you are now. Riding in my coach with a mouth full of treason but nothing in your pocket. The very food in your belly, I bought you.”
“It’s going to be a long, long journey for you if you’re counting the pennies at every stop,” Ned observed unruffled. “And I thank you for my coat, though it wasn’t your gift. The shoes I stand up in were stolen from you by a girl with a greater heart than yours. Her land was taken and her people enslaved by men who think—like you—that they have a right to everything. And sorry I am, to see a man of my own family—and we were a poor family ourselves—become one of them.”
“Being poor is the very reason we’re driven to make money and keep it!” Johnnie exclaimed. “I was raised by a mother who used to look in the cashbox every Sunday night to see if she could send me to school with a penny for my schooling the next day! She swore, and I swore, that the cashbox would never be empty. Her life’s work, and mine, is to make the fortune that you so despise.
“You’re playing an old song, Uncle! It’s not freedom from a king that matters now, it is the freedom to make money. You went to war to change the king but the king matters less than profit. The true king of England is not Charles or James or whoever comes next. The true king of England is wealth. And we can all see the good of that. We’re all loyal to that.”
“Not me,” Ned said imperturbably. “Still not me.”
FOULMIRE PRIORY, SUSSEX, AUTUMN 1685
James, in the grand guest bedroom at Foulmire Priory, slept badly, listening, as he always did, to the thud of his heart, wondering if it was speeding or slowing or even missing a beat, and if this was the night when he would hear it stop. He woke late, got dressed, and slipped out of the front door to walk around the garden. The kitchen garden had been replanted with herbs and there was a new rose garden, but the door set into the wall leading to the hay meadow was the same. He remembered waiting in the meadow and letting her go in alone, because he served a cause that was greater than them both; and his moment of revelation when the door opened and she came out, her carefree smile, her confident stride telling him that she was safe—and his realization that there was no cause in the world greater to him than the turn of her head and the light in her gray eyes.
He heard the bell in St. Wilfrid’s church tower strike ten as he went back through the little door, across the garden, and into the front door. Alinor came down the stairs wearing a gown of slate gray with a white cap on her silver hair. She had a hand on the bannister and with her other hand she steadied herself with a black ebony cane. Seeing her in the morning light, her little grimace of discomfort at every step on the stair, reminded him that they were old. He told himself he should have put passion aside long ago, and that he only burned for her now like a young man because they had parted so abruptly, as such young lovers. They had longed only for the next day and the next night. There had been no familiarity to wear off passion, no daily life to erode desire. He could not see her as a woman of sixty-four, he could not imagine his death without her at his side.
He reached his hand to her. “You look like you did when I first saw you in the churchyard,” he said.
She smiled. “Doesn’t it sometimes feel like yesterday? Or even that it’ll all happen for the first time, tomorrow? I forget it was the past, I’ve lost the sense of time.”
She took his hand, and at her touch he was certain that she would come to him, that they would be lovers again. He knew he only had to draw her to him and she would yield, as she had always done before. He led her into the dining room, which was laid for breakfast. She offered him small ale or milk, and he took the small ale for the remembered taste.
“Is this your brewing?” he asked.
“Lizzie does the hard work. But I cut the herbs and taste the brew.”
He carved slices of ham and the maid brought boiled eggs in their brown shells. Alinor ate a little meat and a sliced apple. She drank a glass of milk as he reveled in the normality of sitting at a table with her and eating breakfast and seeing her smile. She said: “Shall we walk out? I think it’s going to rain later on, there’s a dark cloud out to sea, and the wind’s getting up.”
Together they went through the front door and without saying a word turned to the path through the herb garden.
“Do you remember…?” he began. He was thinking of the days when he had been sick with fever, isolated in the loft above the stables, and she had washed him with cool water and wrapped him in clean linen. He had longed for her with a mounting desire like a second fever, and she had laid her cool body against his, and they had lost all sense of themselves as a poor woman and a wealthy young man but become, somehow, one complete being.
She smiled. “Of course I do.”
They walked through the garden, brushing against the overgrown herbs. She ran her hand through the spikes of rosemary and gave him a twig for the sharp perfume. Without speaking again they went through the little door in the wall of knapped flints and out into the sea meadow.
She hesitated on the threshold. “I can almost see us here.”
“A woman like you, in a place like this,” he quoted himself, and she nodded.
He tucked her hand into his arm and she walked with him towards the plank that crossed the drainage ditch to the bank beyond. He helped her up the steps in the bank, and at the top they looked over the harbor at low tide. Ahead of them, the Broad Rife was running deep with brown river water, and in the distance she could hear the roar of the tide mill like receding thunder.
“I’ve thought about what you want,” she said, her eyes on the far horizon where she could see a darker line that meant rain.
He knew, with complete certainty, he would live with her for the rest of his life. He savored his joy and hoped that he would live long. The thought of lying with her again filled him with a sense of life renewed; he wanted to hold her gently in his arms and kiss her closed eyelids and whisper that he loved her, that he had always loved her, and that the years apart would be forgotten.
“James, I’m sorry, but you can’t come and live here with me,” she said coolly. “It’s not possible. And you can’t visit again.”
He was astounded. “Alinor!”
She looked at him steadily with her gray gaze. “I am, I’m truly sorry.”
“But why not…?”
“What happened between us was like a death,” she told him slowly. “What happened at the tide mill that day… it can’t be undone.”
“I know!” he said eagerly. “I know that! But we don’t have to spend the rest of our lives apart just because we made a mistake…”
“I’m that sorry to refuse you,” she said gently. “Especially here and now, where I could refuse you nothing.”
“We could bring back that time!”
“Nay, you know you can’t bring back time by wishing.” She turned and started to walk inshore, along the top of the bank, the meadow on her left, the harbor stretching to the horizon on her right. He followed behind her, remembering other times when he had followed her worn boots and trusted that she would take him safely through the quicksands and the mudflats and the deep pools. They came to the lane that led from the harbor to the little church and walked side by side, in silence, past the mound of the old ruined castle, to the low flint wall of the churchyard. She paused at the lich-gate.
“D’you attend every Sunday?” he asked her.
She nodded. “Imagine! We’re in the first pew at the front. I think Matthew has the right to appoint the vicar.”
He was not to be distracted. “When I die, I should like to be buried here.”
He was glad to see he had startled her. “Here? Not in your family vault at Northallerton?”
“My body has to go there, the funeral will have to be there, and the reading of my will. But I should like my heart to be buried here. In the same grave as you.”
She laughed out loud, and then clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh no!” she said. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh. I know it’s not funny. Not funny at all!”
At his grave face she could not stop herself; her laugh pealed out again. “No, James, really! Think how horrible for the Nobildonna! To have her husband divided! And how could she explain it to your family and friends? And how should I bury a part of you? And if I’m already dead and it’s poor Alys, she would be so furious and… anyway… why?”
“I want to lay in the same ground as you,” he said stiffly. “I thought my heart could be buried beside you.”
“But won’t that ruin the resurrection of the body?”
He was suddenly furious that she was such an ill-educated woman, wise only in superstitions and fables. That she laughed when something struck her as funny, without considering how she appeared, without understanding that it was not funny; not funny at all. That she was a common woman from common stock and, although he loved her, she would always disappoint him.
“That’s heresy,” he instructed her.
“Is it?” she asked. “I wouldn’t know.”
“No. But I know, and I am telling you.”
She shot an amused smile at him and turned from the lich-gate and started to walk back to the Priory. “I’ve got to rest now,” she told him pleasantly as they walked up the drive shaded with overhanging trees. “I have to cosset myself like an old plow horse. I can’t go too far.”
They walked to the great front door, which was not opened at their approach as it should have been. James had to step forward and open it for Alinor and they went into the hall. “No servants?” he asked.
“I don’t like them waiting around for me,” she said simply. “I can open my own doors and light my own fire.”
He thought she was ill served, and if she had been his wife, she would have had a maid to walk behind her, carrying her gloves; but he said nothing.
“Will you eat before you leave?” she asked simply.
“Before I leave?” Obviously, he could not stay. But he had thought he would choose the time of his leaving. “Will I see you again before I go? At noon?” he asked, holding on to his dignity.
She had no idea that she had offended him. She was trying only to see that he had dinner before he left.
“At noon,” she agreed, and wearily started to climb the stairs.
BERRY STREET, LONDON, AUTUMN 1685
The hired coach drew up outside Johnnie’s little townhouse on Berry Street.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go on to the wharf?” he asked Ned. “You can have the carriage.”
“Nay, I’ll come in with you. Happen Sarah’s girls will be in my old room already, and if I’m here, we can start raising the money for Rowan’s pardon at once.”
Johnnie paid off the coach, picked up his portmanteau, and opened his own door.
“I don’t like servants in the house,” he explained to his uncle. “I’ll send for my housekeeper now.” He whistled for a link boy, gave him a small coin and an instruction, and then showed Ned into the narrow hall.
“When Mrs. Wales comes, she’ll make up a bed for you. She just lives down the street, she’ll be here in a moment. And tomorrow we’ll go to court. She’ll know where they are, St. James’s or Windsor.” He smiled. “She’s a great enthusiast for the royals.”
“Papistical?”
“Fashionable. She likes the clothes.”
“We can’t go tonight?”
“Easier to get admittance in the morning, and we’ll have to smarten up. We won’t get in if we don’t look like gentlemen.”
The front door behind Ned opened, and Johnnie’s housekeeper bustled in and dropped the two of them a curtsey. “I came at once,” she told Johnnie. “I’ve been in every day to dust. I didn’t expect you to be away so long.”
“I was detained,” Johnnie said shortly. “This is my uncle, Mr. Ferryman. Can you make up a bed for him in my dressing room, and send out to the bakehouse for dinner for us both? And I’ll have a bath.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “I’ll get the hot water on at once. Shall I bring some wine and biscuits to the parlor?”
“Yes please,” Johnnie said, and the two men went into the little room at the front of the house, overlooking the street.
“I’ll light the fire,” Ned said, looking at the kindling ready laid in the grate. He smiled at the housekeeper when she demurred. “Nay, it’s no trouble.”
“I’ve got your letters, sir,” she said to Johnnie, bringing them in on a leather tray.
“I’d better send a note to my grandmother to tell her you’re safe,” Johnnie said to Ned. He turned over his letters. “Oh, this one is from Ma,” he said, surprised, and broke the seal. “She’s not at the wharf, whoa—” He broke off. “We’ve been away too long, Uncle! All sorts of changes. Matthew’s been given Foulmire for services to the queen, and they’ve gone down there in the Avery carriage!”
“What?” Ned demanded incredulously.
“See for yourself.” Johnnie flicked the letter into Ned’s hands.
“Sir James Avery?” Ned demanded. “He’s the very one we should see about getting a pardon for Rowan.”
“D’you know him?” Johnnie asked curiously.
He saw one of Ned’s rare smiles. “We were on opposite sides of the king’s war,” he admitted. “But he owes my sister his life.”
“I thought they were enemies? Ma and Grandmother and the Nobildonna and Sir James?”
“Your grandma hid him when he was a royalist spy,” Ned said shortly to Johnnie’s shocked face.
“She did?”
“And he betrayed her. It was years later that the Nobildonna turned up, dumped Matthew on them, nearly ruined the business, and scooped him up. They never spoke after that. But if your ma and grandmother will use his carriage now, then I can ask him for a favor. Besides, he’s the only man we know at court.”
“We could ask the Nobildonna?”
“Her, I wouldn’t trust at all.”
FOULMIRE PRIORY, SUSSEX, AUTUMN 1685
James Avery ordered his carriage to the door of Foulmire Priory when the stable clock struck twelve; rebuffed and offended. She could not have been more clear that he could not live with her at Foulmire. He would not invite her to his home in Northallerton, or even to his great house in London. She had laughed at the thought of his heart being buried with her. She refused to speak of love; she had grown old and heartless, she had never had an education—and now she had no wisdom either.
The servants laid out small ale and the interminable ham and bread at the parlor table. When he heard her light step on the stair, he rose from the table for courtesy to greet her and lead her to a seat at the fire. But when he saw the pallor of her face he was filled with tenderness.
“Was I wrong to come to you? Was it too much for you?”
She smiled up at him, as if she were glad of his touch on her hand, and the way he put a cushion behind her back. “Nay, I slept like a baby,” she said. “It’s such a treat to take a nap in the day, and not be up at dawn to work! Of all the things that have come to me in this life, to have a comfortable bed and good linen is the greatest!”
