“It’s not the mist,” Alinor told her granddaughter. “You know as well as I do that it’s the sight.”
“I don’t see anything,” the girl complained. “I just feel a chill.”
“That’s how it feels,” Alinor confirmed. “I know something, but I don’t know what. I felt it when she said that poor little baby would be a comfort to me. That he would replace Rob!”
“Nobody could replace Rob.”
“It’s not that… It’s because…”
“What?” the girl prompted.
“I don’t know.” Alinor shook her head. “I can’t see anything clear. But I just know that something’s out of true.”
“D’you know what is true, Grandma?”
“Yes,” she said swiftly. “Always. As if the truth had a scent. I recognize it. And if you and me both feel the mist on the back of our necks—then there’s a warning.”
“A warning for who?”
“I don’t know for sure.” Alinor smiled at the girl and let the spell slip away. “But here’s a lesson down the years, from my grandmother to my mother, from her to me and from me to you: mind that chill when you feel it… something’s wrong.”
“Can we put it right?” the girl whispered.
Alinor looked at her granddaughter, at the bright courage in her dark eyes, at the strength in her face. “Maybe you can,” she said.
“How? How could I put it right? I don’t even know what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know either. But I believe it will be you who finds the truth in this. And in the meantime, I won’t wear black.”
Sarah said nothing more but picked up her grandmother’s cap and started to unpick the black ribbon. “What will you say?” she asked.
Alinor smiled ruefully. “I won’t have to say anything,” she said. “Everyone will just assume that I am a stupid old woman and I can’t accept the truth.”
“You don’t care if people say that?”
She smiled. “I’ve been called worse.”
Downstairs, Johnnie joined his mother in the counting house and they went through the transactions for the previous week, balancing the cash taken and spent against the stock held. They had to file the licenses to show that ships with foreign goods for the legal quays had been permitted to unload at the little wharf. They had to file the double-stamped dockets that showed that duty had been paid. Johnnie was meticulous with the documents: the smallest question against any one of the sufferance wharves would lose them the permission to bring cargoes onshore and pay the dues.
Livia put her head around the door and, seeing them both hard at work, laughed at their industry, and said that if she was to be neglected, she would take the baby and the nursemaid on her afternoon walk. They left the house together, and at the corner of Shad Thames the maid was surprised to see Sir James was waiting.
“I brought Matteo with me for some good country air,” Livia explained to him as she strolled up. “It is not good for him to be indoors all the time. A baby should be in the fresh air, in the country. If only we could visit a house in the country!” She beckoned Carlotta to her side and lifted the white lace shawl from the baby’s face. “See him smile? He knows you!”
“He’s very small,” Sir James said, looking at the tiny body in the trailing white gown.
“Oh yes, for he’s so young! But you will see. He will grow. He will grow to be a little English boy, a strong, brave little English boy.”
She turned away from her son and took Sir James’s arm. “Shall we walk together into the fields? I so love the country.”
“Of course, if you wish.”
He let her take his arm and was relieved that the nursemaid followed them with the baby, like a chaperone, as they walked towards Horsleydown Fields.
“I understand now what it is you want from the warehouse,” she said in an intimate whisper.
He did not like the way she said “the warehouse,” as if they were a commodity that he might order on the wharf, and not the woman and her son that he loved.
“But Mrs. Reekie is of stone! And she is very ill, you don’t know how very ill. There was a terrible accident. I think at sea. And then for her son Roberto to drown too!”
He could taste cowardice in his mouth like brine. “A very… tragic… coincidence.”
“But here is another coincidence,” she said, speaking quickly, her accent getting stronger in her excitement. “You come to the warehouse, wanting a wife and a son—and I come to the warehouse: a widow with a son!”
“The cases are hardly—”
“Don’t you see?” she demanded. “The very things that you need: I have here. You hoped that Mrs. Reekie, a widow, had your child, and that she would marry you. But ecco! She denies you. But I have her son’s child, and I am a widow. Do you see?”
He thought he could see nothing but the enchanting dimple at the side of her mouth where the fashionable black patch set off the creamy pink of her cheek.
“I must be very stupid…”
She laughed. “No! No! You are too modest. An Italian man would catch my meaning at once. But I don’t care for Italian men, don’t think that of me! If I had wanted to marry an Italian I had only to stay in Venice where I was much admired. But I need to have a friend in England, a man of property, someone who will introduce me to the people who will buy my antiquities. I need a protector in England, someone to care for me and my son. And my son needs a father, someone to keep us and educate him, bring him up as an English boy.” She looked at him inquiringly. “Now do you see?”
“Are you proposing that I should help you? And be a father to your boy?” he asked, feeling his face grow hot at her immodesty.
“Of course!” she said limpidly, as if it were the most obvious of solutions. “You want a son?”
“I want my own son!” he said, as if it were wrenched from him.
She beckoned the nursemaid, who stepped forward again and showed the little face, the hands like tiny roses, the face like a flower in the lace cap. “Have this one!” she urged him. “And marry me.”
JUNE 1670, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND
Ned attended the town meeting about the defense of the country after the Sunday afternoon prayer service, standing at the back alongside the other single men of the town. There were only three of them; the other two were tradesmen: a glazier and a carpenter, invited by the minister and the elders to bring their skills and scrape a living on a half lot. Ned was not called on to speak, though he knew the native people better than any of them, meeting them daily on the river and in the forests, and ferrying them in and out of town. But a friendship with the native peoples was no longer seen as an advantage, it put a question mark over a man’s loyalty; a knowledge of their language was not a useful skill unless it was put at the service of the settlers.
The messenger from Mr. John Pynchon, son of the founder of Springfield, commander of the militia, deputy to the general council and the greatest man in the valley, brought a stern warning: every town militia must be mustered, drilled, armed, and prepared to defend their own areas. Every town must report what the neighboring savages were doing, if they were friendly or complaining, if they were trading or refusing to service the settlers. There were reports that the leader of the Pokanoket tribe, King Philip, had invited the king of the Niantic people to his fort at Mount Hope. Ned listened as one speaker after another warned of the danger if the old rivalry between the Niantic and Pokanoket were ended, if the Niantic were to join with the disloyal Pokanoket, if they were to refuse land sales to the settlers, to deny trade, to deny service. Once or twice one of the elders glanced towards Ned, one of the few men from Hadley who used the many paths that crisscrossed New England, who met Niantic people on the river and in the forest. Ned kept his head down and said nothing.