“Yes,” Alys admitted.

“So let her think that. I will visit him and work with him, but it is all, only, to make a fortune so we can have a business, a home, and a life together. Everything I do is for us to have our house together and we shall have a love that is true.”

Alys, thinking that Livia had accounted for Sarah’s absence all on her own, leaned towards her and kissed her yielding mouth. “True,” she repeated.

DECEMBER 1670, VENICE

The room was deathly quiet when Felipe had stopped laughing at Sarah’s stunned face.

“Livia denounced him?” Sarah asked. “She denounced her own husband? Robert Reekie?”

“Wait,” he said. “I will answer your questions, when you answer mine. We shall speak truly to each other now, shall we? First tell me: who are you? For never in all her life would the Nobildonna send her milliner to rescue her husband. Not this husband. And Lord! Not this milliner! The moment I saw you on my doorstep I knew you had not come from her.”

Sarah took a breath. “I’m Sarah Stoney. My mother is Alys Stoney, and my grandmother is Alinor Reekie.”

“Reekie?” he demanded. “Reekie? You mean Roberto Reekie’s mother?”

“Yes. She’s my grandmother. It’s her that sent me to find him.”

“Did she not believe that he was dead?”

Sarah shook her head. “Not for one moment.”

“But why not? Livia was in full mourning black? She threw herself on your pity? She cannot have been less than convincing.”

Sarah shrugged. “My grandmother is a very wise woman. She never trusted Livia. She didn’t like her saying that Matteo could take Robert’s place.”

“Lord! Did she think he was not Rob’s child?” he demanded.

“No, no,” Sarah corrected herself. “Just that he could not take Rob’s place. She was completely sure that Rob was still alive.”

“She had a vision?” he asked scathingly. “She has magical powers, your grandmother?”

Defiantly, Sarah nodded.

“Dio!” he said blankly. “I sent Livia into a madhouse.”

“Why did Livia denounce her husband?” Sarah pursued.

“To be rid of him,” he said simply, as if it were obvious.

“She put a letter in the Bocca?”

“Yes, I arrested him myself.”

Outside, the constant lapping of the canal grew a little more urgent, like a speeding heart, as a boat went by and the splash of the wake lapped against the walls of the house. Sarah looked at Felipe, her eyes dark, her face blank: “Did Rob see the warehouse? Was she your partner in the lower workhouse as well as the upper one? Did Rob see the bodies?”

“Yes,” he said, and poured a glass of wine for himself. “Alas, he did. He wanted to purchase a body, you understand? For his studies. He and the Jewish doctor needed to examine a dead body, to understand how the muscles worked, how the breath comes. He was especially interested in the lungs—especially interested in people who drowned.”

Sarah wrapped her arms around herself so she did not shudder. “You told me that you buried them with respect?”

“I do, when I can. But I also sell them to the hospitals, and the doctors, and the artists.”

“This is legal in Venice?”

“No,” he conceded. “So, we keep each other’s secrets. The Jewish doctor brought Rob to meet the man who could supply a corpse, and there—ecco!—was I in my storeroom!” He broke off. “Roberto had known me as Milord’s steward, and Livia’s trusted servant. He was very surprised to find me in such a grand palazzo, selling corpses. He was determined to know, he pushed into my workroom… he saw…”

“He saw what I saw?” Sarah whispered. “The terrible dead? The unburied? And their tombs. He was here?”

Felipe bowed. “He was here. He was just like you—shocked like you were. He dashed away, he went straight home and accused his wife of terrible crimes: defrauding her dead husband, trading in grave goods, lying to him, deceiving him with me.”

“As her criminal partner?” Sarah confirmed.

Felipe bowed. “As her lover,” he said very quietly. “He guessed that too.”

“Is that why she denounced him?” she asked. “So he could not accuse her, and you, of what you have done here?”

“Really, she had no choice. And besides, her husband’s family were saying he was murdered. It was quite obvious that she should blame it on the doctor.”

Sarah was aghast. “She accused Rob of murder? And you sent him to his death?”

“Really, he left us with no choice.”

Sarah rose from the chair and pressed her trembling hands down on the highly polished table to hide their shaking. “Then what about me?” she asked him. “For now I know too. What are you obliged to do to me?”

DECEMBER 1670, LONDON

Twice a week Livia made the long cold journey from the south bank of the river to the north, to the fashionable church where Sir James had suggested that she should meet with the minister. Twice a week she sat in the minister’s book-lined study, with his housekeeper as chaperone, darning in a corner by the door, while he taught the principles of the Protestant Church, the catechism, and the prayers in English. He praised Livia for her command of the language, her punctuality, and her diligence, but he found he could not warm to the beautiful young woman who occasionally tapped a long fingernail on the desk and muttered, “Allora!” at some particularly obscure theology. He feared she was preparing for baptism and confirmation for worldly gain—so that she might marry Sir James—and not because she knew in her heart that the religion of her family and childhood had fallen into heresy. When he tried to gently question her as to her heart and her conscience Livia widened her dark eyes at him and smiled her enchanting smile. “Father,” she said, though he wished she would not. “Father, my soul is pure.”

“The world is full of temptations…” he started, hoping she would admit that she was tempted by Sir James’s wealth and position.

“Not to me,” she said quietly. “All I want is grace.”

Livia never told anyone where she was going, nor what she was learning. She said that she was walking for her health and that she could not remain cooped up in the little warehouse every day of the week, especially in this miserable weather when the fog lay low on the icy tide. Alys made no complaint, and never questioned Livia about her outings. Occasionally, Livia brought home some little fairings: a ribbon for Alys, or a toy for Matteo, or some special herbs for Alinor. She said then that she had been shopping, or visiting the Royal Exchange, she said she had been walking towards the City and stopped to look at a market in the street. She said that she could not be expected to see nothing day after day but the cold rise and fall of a dirty winter river.

Some days she walked past Avery House on the Strand, taking care to cross the road to walk in the shadow of the imposing wall so that she could not be seen by any servants cleaning or tidying the empty house. She would pause at the corner and glance back at the shuttered windows, imagining the rooms where the furniture was covered, and even the chandeliers were bagged and dark. There were no signs that Sir James was expected, and there was no way for her to cross the road and knock on the front door to ask. She would not have demeaned herself by inquiring for him, when he had told her that he was snowed in at his country house. And anyway, the valuable brass door knocker had been taken off the door.