Dawnlands, page 7
Alys shivered as if she was cold though the sunshine still shone through the window into the little room. “Let’s not think of it. When’s Uncle Ned coming back?” she turned the talk. “Has he really gone to join Argyll in Scotland?”
“Monmouth,” Alinor said shortly. “He’s gone to the duke.”
Alys looked down at her husband’s ship below. Lumpers were tossing hessian sacks of woolen cloth, one to another, across the quay for stowing in the deep hold. Alys could calculate to the nearest shilling the value of the boat, the value of the load, the likely profit from a good sale in Venice, the value of the artworks and luxury goods that her daughter, Sarah, would send on the return voyage. Her constant calculation of value was not driven by greed but the dread of ruin. “If Uncle Ned is taken for treason we would lose everything,” she said very quietly.
“He won’t name us,” Alinor said gently. “He’s promised.”
“He’d have done better to promise to have nothing to do with it at all!” Alys exclaimed.
“Aye. So you say. But all his life Ned has been a parliament man. Before you were even born, Alys. He’s always been for the Church of England and the people of England. He’s bound to fight against a king who’s lived in foreign parts for most of his life, is a declared papist, and has a foreign papist wife.”
“Still crowned King of England,” Alys said stubbornly.
“So was his father,” Alinor said cheerfully. “And your uncle Ned saw him beheaded and came home and told us all about it: and we were glad.”
“Hush,” Alys said, turning from the window. “I won’t have a word of it in this house. It’s nothing to us! Trade is good, the country is quiet, they’re still rebuilding after the fire, and everyone wants our stonework and statues for their houses and gardens, our art for their galleries, and our silk for their walls. Even your tea sells faster than you can make it for the slaving ships. We’ve got nothing against this king. He can pray as he likes, and as long as he doesn’t tax like a papist, I won’t hear a word against him.”
“You won’t hear a word against him from me,” Alinor pointed out mildly. “I’m not the ranting sort.”
Alys was forced to laugh at her mother, sitting so quietly behind her table with her pile of sweet-smelling herbs and her muslin purses. “You!” she said. “You’ve got a wild streak in you, Ma—and I see it in my uncle Ned, and in our Sarah when it took her to Venice, and I pray to God that I never see it in Johnnie or Matthew.”
Alinor did not deny the wildness. “It was a long time ago—men questioning their king, women questioning their husbands, and everyone questioning their God. Everyone thought that anything could happen. Everyone was drunk with questions.”
“Those times are gone,” Alys told her severely. “We all want peace now and a sober life.”
“Not all of us,” Alinor warned her with a gleam of a smile. “Some of us would be glad to be drunk with questions all over again.”
AMSTERDAM, HOLLAND, SPRING 1685
Ned and Thomas Dare, followed by Rowan, turned into a dark doorway and went down a short flight of stairs into a metalwork shop. The forge was blazing bright in the yard outside, and the workshop was ringing like a belfry with the noise of men hammering hot iron. The acrid smell of charcoal smoke drifted into the low-ceilinged room.
“Take a good look at the muskets before I pay,” Thomas Dare told him. “Put aside anything faulty. We only want the very best.”
Ned had seen colonial-made muskets blow off a rifleman’s hand. “The lad knows good workmanship,” he remarked.
“I thought they weren’t allowed weapons?”
“We only sell them faulty ones,” Ned said with grim humor. “That’s how he knows.”
The owner of the shop greeted Thomas, nodded to Ned, and waved them to a pile of muskets ready to be wrapped in sacking and packed into boxes. There were more than a thousand, piled in the corner of the room. Ned made a soundless whistle with his lips and Rowan glanced at him.
“Check one in every ten,” he told her.
“You’ll find they’re good,” the forgemaster said as he came over, his leather apron stained with scorch marks and his hands rough with old burns. “I sell my muskets to the Dutch East India Company—they don’t pay me to fail!”
“They better be,” Thomas Dare replied. “I’ll leave you here, Ned, while I get this purse pawned.”
“Very well.” Ned and Rowan pulled weapons from the stack, checking the sighting, peering down the powder pan, and moving the trigger. They tried the ramrod down the barrels to ensure they were straight. They worked their way through the weapons, and as they passed them to one side, one of the smiths came in and wrapped them in sacking and packed them into wooden crates and nailed them shut.
Ned’s head was half deafened by the noise of the yard by the time they had checked the whole pile, and Rowan was pale under the bronze of her skin.
“All good?” Thomas Dare demanded, darkening the room as he came in the doorway.
“All but those.” Ned indicated the handful of weapons that had faults.
Thomas Dare handed over a heavy purse; the forgemaster tipped the coins into his scales and weighed them, pulling one or two out to bite in his teeth to see that they had the softness of true gold. Then he and Dare shook hands, and he promised that the weapons should be delivered to the quay at Texel at once.
Dare, Ned, and Rowan emerged with relief into the sunlight of the street.
“What now?” Ned asked.
“Leather jackets,” Dare replied. “We need a thousand; they’re being made at the tanners’ canal, at Jordaan. Shop in the name of Jan Muis—sign outside is a mouse. You can get them, pay for them, and get them delivered to the ship. And powder horns, get as many as you can for the money.”
He reached into his pocket, took out a purse, hefted it in his hand, and passed it over to Ned. “See if you can get the price down, for the Lord’s sake. Check everything, only pay for good work.”
Ned nodded.
“And there’s a special leather jacket for his lordship on order. Make sure they deliver them together to the Helderenberg, on the dock at the Island of Texel. You’d better go with them. I’ll meet you there.”
LINCOLN’S INN, LONDON, SPRING 1685
The usher brought a note to Matthew when he was studying in his room, the window thrown open for air, the sultry stink of the City drifting in.
“Lady sent this,” he said shortly.
Matthew lifted his head from his books. “A lady?” He dropped his pen, where it splattered black ink on the case that he was preparing to argue—Soledad v. Timmings—and took the note. It was addressed to him as Matteo da Picci, and as soon as he saw the name, in the beautiful script, he knew it was from her.
Son,
I would be obliged to you if you would meet me at the coffeehouse at Serle Court. I will wait only half an hour.
Your mother—Nobildonna Livia Avery
Matthew pushed back his chair and snatched up his jacket, thrusting his arms into the sleeves. A glance in the looking glass over his bed showed a handsome young face, half man, half boy. He crammed his pupil’s hat on his long curling hair and crossed the little room in one stride.
“When did you get this?” he threw over his shoulder to the usher who waited on the stair.
“Just five minutes ago, sir,” the man said. “A lady, with her maid behind her.”
Matthew clattered down the winding stone stair, his hand dropping from one worn wooden peg to another on the central stone pillar, and ducked his head under the narrow stone doorway.
Matthew’s rooms were in Gatehouse Court, a tall redbrick building trimmed with pale sandstone that had seemed overwhelmingly grand to him when he first took his room as a student to the inn. Now he did not notice the buildings set in the huge well-kept gardens, as he pulled his jacket straight on his shoulders and strode, long-legged, across the paved courtyard, through the deep arch into Serle Court, where the stonemasons were carving blocks for the new buildings in one corner and builders were tying wooden poles of scaffolding together nearby. Even from the courtyard Matthew could smell the roasting coffee beans and the rich smell of yeast from brewing ale. He pulled off his hat as he ducked his head under the doorway and opened the door on his right.
The place was quiet; Mr. Hart, the owner, looked up but did not stir from his stool for a mere puny. Only a couple of clerks were seated at the big central table, spread with pamphlets and newspapers. A lawyer and his client were in one corner discussing their case in low tones.
“Good day, Mr. Hart,” Matthew said politely, looking past him to the interior.
A veiled lady was seated at a table at the back of the room, her maid standing behind her like a guard. Before her stood a tiny cup of strong coffee. Matthew skidded to a halt and watched her put back her veil, lift the cup, take a sip of coffee, and release her veil to hide her face again. He had seen nothing but rouged lips. His heart thudded at the realization that his mother, his beautiful mysterious mother, had finally come for him.
“The lady is here for you?” Mr. Hart rapidly modified his view of Matthew’s unimportance.
“Yes.” He walked across the wooden floor, conscious of the creak of his shoes, and stood before her table, her letter in his hand. He thought he must look like a child, summoned to stand before his schoolmaster.
“My lady, you sent for me?” His voice sounded unsteady in his own ears. He flushed. “I am Matthew,” he said, and now he was too loud, bellowing like a fool.
She swept back her veil and pinned it on her hat with one swift gesture, as if she were ready to reveal herself to him. Matthew stared into a face that he felt that he knew, that he had somehow always known. She was unforgettable. Thick dark hair was piled off her unlined forehead to tumble in curls to her shoulders, dark eyebrows were arched in interrogation, dark eyes raked him up and down. Her red lips curved into a conspiratorial smile, as if the two of them shared some kind of secret. Dimly, he supposed that they did.
He scanned her face for similarities to his own and found them. Her eyebrows slanted up a little at the ends, as his did. Her eyes were as dark as his, the two of them—mother and son—had the same classically beautiful profile, but his smile was wide and frank, his face was open; hers was veiled even when the lace was put aside.
“Ah, so you are my son,” she said. He heard the lilt of her Italian accent, carefully preserved after fifteen years in England. “I would have known you anywhere.”
He made an awkward bow, and she rose from the table and put her hands lightly on his shoulders and drew him towards her, kissed his forehead like a blessing, and then—like an Italian—kissed him on both cheeks. Her perfume, a light scent of roses, brushed his memory.
She stepped back to inspect him, as if calculating how best she should treat him. She saw the flush in his cheeks and realized that he was still a boy, a youth, sheltered by a loving foster family, kept from the temptations of the City and the dangers of the world. He might be smartly dressed and handsome, he might be studying law; but he was no match for a woman of her sharp acquisitive wits.
“So…” She was reassured. She took her chair and gestured that he should sit opposite her. “So, we meet again. Do you remember me at all?”
“Very slightly,” he stumbled.
“Of course, it was a long time ago. You may sit down, my dear boy, my dearest son. Caro figlio. You speak Italian?”
At his downcast face she laughed. “Of course you do not. How should you learn? But you are educated? I pay the fees, you know? You read Latin at least? And speak French, I suppose?”
He nodded. “I didn’t know you paid…”
“Well, yes! The good women of the warehouse could never afford it and would not have known what school you should attend, or how a gentleman should be raised. I took care of all of that. You have to have guarantors to enter the Inns—they’re called ‘manucaptors’—I provided them too.”
“They never said… I didn’t know.” He flushed, angry at himself for blindly assuming that his foster mothers had provided for him in a world they had never known.
“I doubt they speak of me at all! Do they? And never of what they owe me!” Her musical laugh made Mr. Hart look up, and at her gesture, he came over with a fresh pot of coffee and a cup for Matthew.
“They don’t,” Matthew admitted. “But I thought that was your wish? I thought you told them to raise me and never trouble you?”
“Allora!” she exclaimed. “I see you are a lawyer in the making indeed. Caro, I was in no case to issue instructions. I was trapped between the wishes of my new husband and the will of the stubborn old lady. They would have nothing to do with each other, and I had to find a safe haven for my beloved only child, while I made my new marriage.”
“For fourteen years?” he queried.
She shot a quick look at him as if assessing his tone. “You feel that I should have sent for you earlier? Would you not have been torn between the women of the warehouse and me? Between two worlds and secure in neither? Was it not better to let them give you a childhood—an English childhood—of great safety and peace?”
“Yes…” he said uncertainly.
“And so that is what I did. You lived with them under their name—Reekie—only I cannot say it! So I call you Picci, da Picci for my title. And only now that you are a young man, a proper young man, and I am free of the demands of my husband and the manor and Yorkshire, can I visit you and see that my son has grown, and what we might be to each other.”
He felt slow and stupid. “What we might be?”
“Yes, of course, I want to help you to make your way in the world, and I am sure that you would want to see me rise.”
“I thought you…” Under her bright gaze he found his mouth was dry and took a gulp of coffee. It was scalding hot. He swallowed, feeling the burn go down his gullet. He flushed scarlet at the pain and blinked tears from his eyes.
“You thought I had risen?” Livia guessed, ignoring his discomfort. “Toll-loll! You must know I was a great lady in Venice, of the Fiori family, and then I came to England and married Sir James and became a great lady in Yorkshire, and now I am a great lady in London—a friend to the Queen of England! So, yes! I have risen. And I continue to rise—” She broke off and snatched a quick look at him. “But these are troubled times and I need to know that you are with me. As I work for our good.”
“You are working for our good?” he queried.
“Always,” she assured him. “When my dearest friend your foster mother and her mother agreed to take you in, I knew you would be safe with them. But I knew too that the day would come when I would come back for you and make you my own again.”
She was unstoppable. He felt his head spinning and his throat hurt.
“I won’t leave them.”
“Of course not! It would be most churlish. They have been as my nurserymaids, they have been as rockers for you. But I am your mother—that was never forgotten. And I will open doors for you that would otherwise be distant dreams. I will take you to court, you shall meet the king and queen.” She assessed the impact she was having on him. “You want to be a lawyer?” she asked abruptly.
“Yes…” he said. “Or at any rate some post—”
“There you are then!” she said triumphantly. “I shall find you a post. None of them at the wharf could do so! But now tell me—does the wharf have its own ship now? Alys married Captain Shore, did she not? He still has his ship?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Very good, very good. And this ship—it is in London now?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. They’re loading.”
“And if I wanted to take passage I could go?”
“I suppose so. They often take passengers.”
She smiled at him. “You will be puzzled by all this, I know, Matteo. But I need you to trust me.”
The Italian version of his name, spoken lovingly in her accent, startled him. He felt that he had heard her say his name in that caressing voice, through his dreams, for all of the fourteen years that he had answered to Matthew.
“You cannot trust me yet,” she said understandingly. “But you will. It may be that I need your help in a matter of life and death. You may be able to save me, your own mother, and…” She leaned forward and lowered her voice so that he had to lean towards her to hear her whisper, “the Queen of England herself!”
He could feel her breath on his cheek, he could smell the sweet dark scent of coffee.
“The queen needs a ship?”
She sat back and smiled at his stunned face.
“Because of the invasion?”
“Of course, I cannot say! But you speak to Alys and to Captain Shore and tell them we may need two cabins, perhaps at once, perhaps in some weeks’ time, and I will send to you if I need you.”
“I may tell them why?”
“As much as you think safe. As little as you can.”
“Won’t the king provide for her safety? What about the navy?”
She shrugged. “Oh, perhaps! But if he is away fighting with his army? And who should provide for me if not my own boy?” She rose from the table and pulled down her veil from her hat, so her face was hidden.
“Your husband?” he suggested weakly. “Shouldn’t he…”
She laughed. “He doesn’t have a ship and—allora!—you do!”
Her maid, who had been standing behind her, came forward and offered her arm. Livia turned to Matthew who stood, quite stunned, before her.
“I shall come again in a few days,” she promised, as if he had asked for her. “We shall meet here.”
He made a little bow. “As you wish, your ladyship,” he said.
She gave him her gloved hand to kiss. He put his lips to the warm silk.
“You may call me Lady Mother,” she told him. “Signora Madre.”
