Dark Tides

by Philippa Gregory

  “The native tongue. The People of the Dawnlands.”

  “We don’t call them that.”

  Ned shrugged. “Maybe you do or you don’t; but it’s their name. Because they’re first to see the sun rise. All these lands are called Dawnlands.”

  “New England,” the man corrected him.

  “Did you come all this way to teach me how to talk?”

  “They said in the town that you speak native. The elders say you must come to explain a deed to one of the natives.”

  Ned sighed. “I only speak a little; not enough to be of any use.”

  “We need a translator. We want to buy some more land, over the river, farther north, over there.” He waved to where the huge trees came down and leaned curving boughs into the glassy water. “You’d want land there yourself, I suppose, you’d want land around your ferry pier?”

  “How much land?” Ned asked curiously.

  “Not much, another couple of hundred acres or so.”

  Ned shook his head, rubbed earth from his hands like a man brushing off sin. “I’m not the man for you. I left the old country to get away from all the moneymaking and grabbing from each other. When the king came back it was like rats in a malthouse. I don’t want to start all over again here.” He turned to go back to the garden behind his house.

  The man looked at him, uncomprehending. “You talk like a Leveler!” He climbed up the little embankment to stand beside Ned.

  Ned flinched a little at the memory of old battles, lost long ago. “Maybe I do. But I’d rather be left in peace, on my own plantation, than make a fortune.”

  “But why?” the selectman demanded. “Everyone’s come here to make their fortune. God rewards his disciples. I came to make a better living than I could in the old country. Same as everyone. This is a new world. More and more people arriving, more and more being born. We want a better life! For ourselves and our families. It’s God’s will that we prosper here, His will that we came here and live according to His laws.”

  “Aye, but some people hoped for a new world without greed,” Ned pointed out. “Me among them. Maybe it’s God’s will that we make a land without masters and men, sharing the garden like Eden.” He turned and made his way down the rough steps back to his garden.

  “We do share it!” the man insisted. “Share it among the godly. You have your own share here by the minister’s goodwill.”

  “The elders’d do better to ask one of the native people.” Ned undid the twine at his garden gate and went in. “Dozens of ’em speak good-enough English. Some of them Christian. What about John Sassamon? The schoolteacher? Him that’s preaching to King Philip? He’s in town, I brought him over this morning. He’ll translate for you, as he does for the Council. He’s been educated, he’s been to Harvard College! I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  Ned fastened the little handmade gate behind him, and ordered his dog to sit. “Don’t come any farther,” he said firmly to the unwelcome visitor. “I’ve got seedlings in here that don’t need treading.”

  “We don’t want a native. Truth be told: we don’t trust one to translate a deed to buy land. We don’t want to find out in ten years’ time that they called it a loan rather than a sale. We want one of our own.”

  “He is one of our own,” Ned insisted. “Raised as an Englishman, at college with Englishmen. Crossed on my ferry this morning, wearing boots and breeches, with a hat on his head.”

  The man leaned over the garden fence, as if he feared the deep river might be listening to them, or the long grassy banks might overhear. “Nay, we don’t trust any of ’em,” he said. “It’s not like it was. They’re not like they were. They’ve gone sour. They’re not like they were in their old king’s time, welcoming us and wanting to trade, when they were simple savages.”

  “Simple? Was it truly all so sweethearted then?”

  “My father said it was so,” the man said. “They gave us land, wanted our trade. Welcomed us, wanted help against their enemies—against the Mohawks. Everyone knows that they invited us in. So here we are! They gave us land then, and now they have to give us more. And we’d pay a fair price.”

  “In what?” Ned asked skeptically.

  “What?”

  “What would you pay your fair price in?”

  “Oh! Whatever they asked. Wampum. Or hats, or coats, whatever they wanted.”

  Ned shook his head at the exchange of acres of land for shell beads. “Wampum’s lost its value,” he pointed out. “And coats? You’d pay a couple of coats for a hundred acres of fields that they’ve planted and cleared and forest that they’ve managed for their hunting, and call it fair?” He hawked and spat on the ground, as if to get the taste of fraud from his mouth.

  “They like coats,” the man said sulkily.

  Ned turned from the gate to end the argument, dropped to his knees, and picked up his hoeing stick, to weed around his vines of golden squash.

  “What’s that stink you’re spreading there?”

  “Fish guts,” Ned said, ignoring the smell. “Shad. I plant one in each hillock.”

  “That’s what natives do!”

  “Aye, it was one of them taught me.”

  “And what’s that you’re using?”

  Ned glanced at the old hoeing stick which had been rubbed with fat and roasted in ashes till it was hard, sharpened till it was as good as hammered iron. “This? What’s wrong with it?”

  “Native work,” the man said contemptuously.

  “It was traded to me for fair payment, and it does the job. I don’t mind who made it, as long as it’s good work.”

  “You use native tricks and tools, you’ll become like them.” He spoke as if it was a curse. “You be careful, or you’ll be a savage yourself, and you’ll answer for it. You know what happened to Edward Ashley?”

  “Forty years ago,” Ned said wearily.

  “Sent back to England for living like a native,” the selectman said triumphantly. “You start like this, with a hoeing stick, and next you’re in moccasins and you’re lost.”

  “I’m English, born and bred, and I’ll die English.” Ned reined in his irritation. “But I don’t have to despise anyone else.” He sat back on his heels. “I didn’t come here to be a king looking down on subjects, forcing my ways on them in blood. I came here to live at peace, with my neighbors. All my neighbors: English and Indian.”

  The man glanced to the east, upriver where low-lying water meadows on the other side of the river became deep thick forest. “Even the ones you can’t see? The ones that howl like wolves in the night and watch you from the swamp all the day?”

  “Them too,” Ned said equably. “The godly and ungodly, and those whose gods I don’t know.” He bent over his plants to show that the conversation was over; but still the messenger did not leave.

  “We’ll send for you again, you know.” The man turned away from Ned’s garden gate and headed back to the town. “Everyone has to serve. Even if you don’t come now, you’ll have to come to militia training. You can’t just be English sitting on the riverside. You have to prove yourself English. You have to be English against our enemies. That’s how we know you’re English. That’s how you know yourself. We’re going to have to teach them a lesson!”

  “I should think we’ve already taught them a lesson,” Ned remarked to the earth beneath his knees. “Better not invite us in, better not welcome us.”

  JUNE 1670, LONDON

  The Italian lady had to take off her hat and the dark veil, her black lace mittens, and wash her face and hands in the little attic bedroom before she could visit her mother-in-law. The baby was still sleeping but she took him in her arms and came into the room, strikingly beautiful, like a sorrowful Madonna. Alinor took in the dark gown cut low over her breasts, the creamy skin veiled by black lace, the pile of dark curling hair under the black trimmed cap, and the wide tragic eyes; but her attention was on the sleeping baby.

  “Rob’s boy,” was all she said.

/>   “Your grandson,” Lady da Ricci whispered, and put the baby into Alinor’s arms. “Doesn’t he look like Roberto?”

  Alinor received the baby with the confidence of a midwife who has attended hundreds of births, but she did not embrace him. She held him on her lap so that she could look down at the sleeping face, round as a moon with red lips that showed a rosy little sucking blister. She did not exclaim with instant love; strangely she said nothing for long moments as if she were interrogating the dark eyelashes on the creamy cheeks and the snub little nose, and when she looked up at the widow kneeling beside her sofa, her pale face was grave: “How old is he?”

  “Ah, he is just five months old, God bless him, to lose his father when he was newborn.”

  “And his eyes?”

  “Dark, dark blue, you will see when he wakes. Dark as the deep sea.”

  The Italian lady felt, rather than saw, the little shudder that Alinor could not suppress.

  “He is so like his father,” she asserted louder. “Every day I see it more.”

  “Do you?” Alinor asked neutrally.

  “He is Matteo Roberto, but you must call him Matthew of course. And Robert, for his father. Matthew Robert da Ricci.”

  “Da Ricci?”

  “My title, and my married name.”

  The widow saw her mother-in-law’s hand tighten on the beautiful lace trim of the white gown. “I’ll call him Matteo, like you,” was all that the older woman said.

  “I hope it will comfort you, that though you have lost a son, I have brought your grandson to you?”

  “I don’t think…”

  “You don’t think…?” the Italian woman repeated, almost as if she were daring Alinor to finish her thought. “What don’t you think, Nonna? I shall call you dearest grandmother, you are his only grandmother!”

  “I don’t think that one child can take the place of another. Nor would I wish it.”

  “Oh! But to watch him grow up! An English boy in his father’s country? Won’t that joy take away the pain of your loss? Of our loss?”

  Alinor said nothing, and the widow sensed that her lilting voice was somehow off key. “I must not tire you with my baby, and my sorrows.”

  “You don’t tire me,” Alinor said gently, giving the baby back to her. “And I’m glad that you have come and brought your son. I’m sorry we’re not made ready for you. We only just got your letters. But you must have a home here as long as you want. Rob wrote that you have no family of your own?”

  “No one,” she said swiftly. “I have no one. I am an orphan. I have no one but you!”

  “Then you shall stay as long as you wish, I’m only sorry that we don’t have more to offer you.”

  The widow did not allow herself to glance around the room which was obviously a workplace, a sitting room, and a bedroom in one. “I want only to be with you. Is this your only house? What about your home in the country?”

  “This is all we have.”

  “All I want is here,” she breathed. “All I want is to live with you and with my sister, Alys.”

  Alinor nodded; but said nothing.

  “Will you bless me?” her daughter-in-law prompted. “And call me Livia? And may I call you Mamma? May I call you Mia Suocera, my mother-in-law?”

  Alinor’s face paled as she closed her lips on a refusal. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. God bless you, daughter.”

  * * *

  The two young women dined alone in the parlor while the maid took a tray up the narrow stairs for Alinor. The nursemaid ate in the kitchen, sulking that there was no servants’ hall. She took the baby under one arm and her candle in her hand and went up the narrow wooden stairs, to the first-floor bedroom, opposite the big front room that Alinor seldom left.

  “Your mother is ill?” Livia asked Alys. “Roberto never told me she was so very ill.”

  “She had an accident,” Alys replied.

  Livia shook her head. “Ah, how sad. Just recently?”

  “No, it was many years ago.”

  “But she will recover?”

  “She can walk out in fine weather, but she gets very tired. She prefers to rest in her room.”

  “Oh, so sad! And she must have been a beautiful woman! To be struck down so!”

  “Yes,” said Alys shortly.

  “Roberto never told me! He should have told me!”

  “It was—” Alys broke off. She thought she could not answer for her brother to this exotic bride he had chosen. “It was a great shock to us all. We never spoke of it. We never speak of it at all.”

  The Nobildonna considered this for a moment. “An accident too terrible to discuss?”

  “Exactly.”

  “You are silent?”

  “Yes.”

  The pretty young woman considered this. “Was it your fault?” she asked baldly. “Since you have made a silence of an accident?”

  Alys’s face was stricken in the candlelight. “Yes, exactly. It was my fault. And I never speak of it, and nor does Ma.”

  The younger woman nodded as if secrets came naturally to her. “Very well. I shall say nothing also. So, tell me about the rest of your family. You have an uncle, do you not? Rob’s uncle Ned?”

  “Yes, but he is not in London. He would not live here, under a king. He writes every season from New England, and he sends us goods. Mostly herbs, he sends us rare herbs that we can sell to the apothecaries…”

  “He leaves his home because he does not like the new king? But why should he care?” She laughed. “It’s not as if they are likely to meet?”

  “He’s very staunch,” Alys tried to explain. “He believed in the parliament, he fought in the New Model Army, he hates the rule of kings. When his leader Oliver Cromwell died, and they brought Prince Charles back, my uncle left the country with others who think like him—great men, some of them. They would not live under a king and he would have executed them.”

  “He is wealthy in the New World?” she inquired. “He has a plantation? He has many slaves? He makes a fortune?”

  “No, he has half a plot and the rights to the ferry. No slaves. He would never own a slave. He went with almost nothing, he had to leave our home.”

  “But it still belongs to the family?”

  “No, it’s lost. We were only ever tenants.”

  “I thought it was a great house, with servants and its own chapel?” she demanded.

  “That was the Priory, where Rob stayed as a companion to the lord’s son. My uncle Ned just had the ferry-house, and Ma and Rob and me lived in a little fisherman’s cottage nearby.”

  Livia’s pretty mouth pursed. “I thought you were a greater family than this!” she complained.

  Alys gritted her teeth on her shame. “I’m afraid not.”

  But Livia was pursuing the family history. “Ah well, but you have children! Are they doing well? I so long to meet them! Where are they?”

  “They are twins. My son, John, is at work, apprenticed to a merchant in the City. My daughter, Sarah, works as an apprentice milliner, she’s nearly finished her time at the shop. She’s very skillful, she takes after her grandmother—not me. They come home on Saturday after work.”

  “Heavens! You let her live away from home? In Venice we would never allow a girl such freedom.”

  Alys shrugged. “She’s had to earn her own living, she has to have a trade. She’s a sensible girl, I trust her.”

  Livia’s laughter grated on Alys. “Allora! It is the young men I do not trust!”

  Alys managed a smile; but said nothing.

  “You do not arrange for her marriage to a wealthy gentleman?”

  Alys shook her head. “No. It is better for her that she has her own trade, we think. And we don’t know any wealthy gentlemen.”

  “But what about your visitor? Is he not wealthy?”

  “We don’t really know him.” Alys ended this inquiry. “You must be very tired from your journey? But tomorrow I would be glad if you could tell me about your life wi
th Rob. And… and… how he died.”

  “You surely had our letters?”

  “We had letters from him when he first took up his post in Venice, and then he wrote that you would marry. He told us of little Matteo’s birth and your happiness. But then we heard nothing until you wrote that he had drowned. We only got that letter last week. And then three days ago we had your letter from Greenwich telling of your arrival.”

  “Ah, I am so sorry! So sorry! I wrote from Venice at once, after my loss, and sent it at once. I did not think it would be so slow! I wrote again the moment that I landed. How good you are to welcome me when I bring such bad news!”

  The maid came into the room and cleared the dishes. Nobildonna da Ricci looked around as if she were expecting more than the single plate of fruit and pastries.

  “May I call you Livia?” Alys asked her. “You shall call me Sister Alys, if you wish.”

  “Roberto used to call me Lizzie, which made me laugh. He said he would make me into a real Englishwoman.”

  “You speak English so beautifully.”

  “Ah, my mother was an Englishwoman.”

  “Really? And your title?”

  “It is my family title,” she said. “An ancient name. So when I married, I added it to Ricci. That’s the correct thing to do, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” Alys said. “We’ve not got a title, we’re not like that. Just a small family with nothing but this warehouse and two horses and the cart.”

  “But Roberto told me that Sir William Peachey was his patron, and James Summer was his great friend and tutor. He promised that when we came home we would have a great house in London, that he would be a famous physician.”

  “Rob was always ambitious,” Alys conceded awkwardly. “But there’s no great house. Just here.” She looked around the small room and the cold grate. “This is an achievement for us… when I think where we came from…”

  “Where did you come from?” Livia was curious. “For Roberto told me of land like the Venice lagoon—half land and half water, changing every tide, with the birds calling between sky and sea.”

  “It was like that,” Alys agreed. “We were always on the edge, between poverty and surviving, between friends and enemies, in the tidelands between water and fields. We were on the edge of everything. At least here we are in a world with a firm footing. At least Uncle Ned is making a new life in a new land as he wants.”