Sarah listened, wide-eyed.
“If she’d told me he’d been killed in a fight or taken sick, I might’ve believed her. Sudden, and with no time for him to think of me. If she’d told us he was buried, I might’ve come to believe it. But I can’t imagine him drowned and no gravestone in his name. Besides, if he’d drowned, I’d have known it. I’d have known the moment it happened. It’s not possible that Rob drowned—and me in the yard on a sunny day, shredding lavender, picking thyme, singing… it just couldn’t happen.”
Sarah nodded.
“I see you sitting there, thinking that I am losing my wits.” Alinor smiled at her granddaughter. “But I so nearly drowned once, myself. Could my son go beneath the water and me not feel it? In the water that’s even now in my lungs?”
Sarah got to her feet and drew the curtain a little more open so they could both see the path of the moonlight on the river.
“I keep looking for him,” Alinor confessed. “I see the sails and think one of these ships will bring him home. I think he’ll come with her statues.” She turned and smiled at her granddaughter. “For some people, this world is not quite… watertight. The other world comes in… sometimes we can reach out to it. It’s like Foulmire—sometimes it’s land and sometimes it’s water. Sometimes I know this world, sometimes I glimpse the other. Don’t you?”
“Oh, Grandma— I know you hope I do, I’d like to think that I did,” she said quietly. “But I don’t have the sight.”
“I know you do,” Alinor challenged her.
“Well it’s not clear to me…”
“It’s rarely clear,” Alinor confessed. “And I’ve no proof of anything. Nothing to say to your mother. Nothing to ask anything of Livia.”
“What would you ask her if you could?”
“I’d ask why she’s dressed in black but spending every day with another man? Is her little heart broken but mending fast? And if she is no widow; then where is my boy?”
SEPTEMBER 1670, LONDON
The tide was on the ebb and the terns, hovering over the water, were dropping into the waves with a splash and coming up with tiny silver fish in their sharp beaks. Livia hesitated in the doorway of Alinor’s bedroom, Matteo in her arms, and spoke to Alys, who was collecting a tray full of posset bags from her mother’s worktable.
“Can you have him this morning?” she asked. “I need Carlotta to walk me over London Bridge.”
“Not now,” Alys answered. “I’m expecting a ship.”
“He can spend the morning with me,” Alinor offered. “He’s no trouble.”
“I’ll take him for a walk when they’ve unloaded,” Alys promised. “I’ll be free at noon, but then I should have another cargo this afternoon…”
There was a shout from the quay below, where a lighterman stood up in his rocking boat. “Delivery for Reekie Warehouse,” he yelled.
Alys opened the door and stepped out onto the little balcony. “Reekie Wharf! What’ve you got?” she shouted down.
He gestured to the crate in the prow of his boat. “From New England,” he said. He pointed to the ship behind him, hove to, and taking on lines from a barge to go upriver.
“Wait there! I’ll come down.” Alys hurried from the room.
Livia raised her arched eyebrows at Alinor. “How she runs when someone shouts for her!”
“She has to pay for their time,” Alinor said. “Of course she runs. I’ll go down and see as well. It’ll be something from Ned.”
“More herbs?” Livia suggested limpidly as she followed Alinor downstairs, Matteo against her shoulder.
The lighterman and a couple of dockers carried the crate into the warehouse. Alys paid for the shipping and then fetched the hammer from the wall to open the lid.
“Tabs can do that,” Livia said.
“I can do it.” Alys pulled nails from the top of the crate till it was ready to open. She smiled at her mother. “I know you’ll want to open it.” Skillfully, she levered up the lid but left it resting on top.
Alinor cautiously lifted the lid and at once the rich strong smell of sassafras breathed into the room.
“There must be something else inside,” Alys told her. “It was heavy.”
Alinor scraped a little of the dried leaves aside and found the cool globe of rock. “It feels like pebbles.”
“Could it be ore?” Livia asked, interested at once. She handed the baby to Alys and stepped forwards to see. “Gold-bearing ore?”
“He wouldn’t send gold in a crate.” Alinor drew it out and weighed it in her hand. It was a big stone, the size of a cobble, gray and uninteresting on the outside but it was split, it opened in her hands and she gave a little gasp.
It was a treasure, a sparkling sharp-toothed cave of jewels, purple as dark as indigo, and so white as to be translucent. “Will you look at this?”
“Are they diamonds?” Livia breathed. “Has he found diamonds? Purple diamonds?”
“He’s written.” Alys pulled out the sheet of paper packed in the crate.
“Dear Sister and Niece Alys,” she read aloud. “Here is a crate of sassafras leaves, which I know you can always use, and a stone that the Norwottuck people call ‘thunderstones.’ They say that a stone like this draws lightning away safely to the ground. I have not seen such a thing, but I thought it might be helpful in the spires and roofs of London. If you can sell them at a profit I can get more. It cost me 6d. in trade goods, so let me know if it’s worthwhile. In haste to catch the boat—your loving brother, Ned.”
“He says nothing about me? Nor his nephew?” Livia asked.
“This will have crossed with my letter,” Alinor told her. “It takes a long time for news to reach him—a month and a half—sometimes more?” She put the thunderstone together and then opened it up again. “This is beautiful.” She turned to Alys. “Will you take it to the apothecary and see if he has any sale for it?” she asked her. “You can tell him we’ve got a new delivery of sassafras too. I’ll keep some back to make bags and tisanes, but you might ask him what he’d pay by the pound?”
“I’ll go this afternoon,” Alys started, but then she clicked her tongue in irritation. “No, I can’t, I’m expecting some fruit from Kent.” She turned to Livia. “Could you go? You could go on from the Strand with Carlotta.”
“I?” Livia asked, looking from one woman to another as if it were an extraordinary request that she could hardly understand.
“Why not?” Alinor asked quietly.
Livia just glanced at Alys, who answered for her. “Oh! No, Ma, of course she can’t.”
“Why not?” Alinor turned the question to her daughter.
Alys flushed. “She’s a lady, she can’t go selling things to a shop. It’s not right. She can’t go into a shop and haggle for something… in English… with Mr. Jenikins who’s always so… It’s not her language, it’s not her place.”