Dark Tides

by Philippa Gregory

  Venice was awake—Venice never slept. There were street sweepers plying their brushes, pushing the dust into the canal where it floated like a pale scum, and there were street waterers, hauling water from the canal and sloshing it over the pavements. The sellers were walking to the markets, their wares in balanced baskets swinging from the yokes on their shoulders. There were plain wooden gondolas and sandoli going up and down the canal carrying goods. The collectors of trash and soil were heaving the neighborhood baskets into their boat. There were one or two glossy black gondolas laden with drunks wallowing low in the water, heading home from a late night. One gondola with a closed cabin showed a flickering candlelight where clandestine lovers were holding back the day.

  Sarah retraced her steps from yesterday, to the Rialto square where the moneylenders had their tables. She was too early for all of them, but one young boy, dressed in black with a skull cap on his head, and a betraying yellow star of cloth sewed on his little shirt, was waiting for his father by the fountain. Sarah went up to him.

  “I’m looking for Mordecai the money changer.”

  He bowed low, clasping his shaking hands before him, too afraid of the Christian woman to find his voice.

  “Mordecai, the money changer,” she repeated.

  “He walks here,” he replied reluctantly. “He will come at eight of the clock.”

  “Can I go to meet him?”

  “Your ladyship must do as you please,” he said in his little-boy treble.

  “Will you guide me?”

  His anxious look around the square showed her that he did not want to walk with her, but he knew he could not refuse a Christian lady anything that she might demand.

  “Of course, your ladyship,” he said.

  He trotted away from the square; Sarah strode beside him. “Where are we going?”

  “Towards the ghetto, your ladyship.”

  “What is that?”

  “The old iron foundries… where the people of the Book have to live, all together. Locked in at night.”

  She was going to ask more, when the boy looked up, and said with evident relief: “There is Mordecai now,” and she saw the man walking towards them, the deep canal on one side of him, the dark wall on the other, with his young apprentice following his footsteps, carrying the chest of money.

  “Signor Mordecai?”

  The boy shot an imploring look of apology to the older man. “I am sorry, signor,” he said in Italian. “She insisted, and I could not refuse.” He vanished into the shadows of the lane.

  “Your ladyship,” Mordecai said in English, showing no surprise.

  “You knew me for English, yesterday?”

  He bowed. “I did.”

  “You said I looked like the Milord doctor.”

  He bowed in acknowledgment. “You understood me when I spoke Italian?”

  “I did; I was not mistaken.”

  “I meant no harm, signora.”

  “I know that you didn’t. I have come to you—because I think you are an honest man.”

  “I should not be speaking with you.”

  “We can say I am changing money. Did you mean Roberto Reekie? The English doctor?”

  “I knew him,” he said reluctantly. “But I knew nothing of him. I told them.”

  “You told who?”

  “The men who inquired.”

  “Who inquired?” Sarah asked.

  He frowned a little. “The authorities,” was all he said.

  “Signor Mordecai, may I trust you with a secret?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “It is not safe for me to know secrets. And you should trust no one.”

  He turned to walk away, shaking his head; but Sarah ran after him and stepped in front of him to bar the way. “I have to trust you,” she said. “I have no one else to ask but you. The Signor Roberto was my uncle. That’s why I look like him. As you say. You knew at once. He was my uncle, my grandmother grieves for him, she wants him home. I have to ask after him!”

  He turned. “You are under the protection of Signor Russo. Of all men in Venice, he knows all the secrets. You ask him.”

  “I don’t know him,” Sarah gabbled. “And I am not under his protection. I have told him a false name and a pretend reason for being here. I have no friends in Venice, and I don’t know where to begin. My grandmother has sent me to find Robert Reekie. She is a woman of wisdom—she knows things—and she says that she knows, without doubt, that he is still alive.”

  His face was graven with lines of sorrow. “Then she is blessed,” he said. “To know that your son is alive is a blessing for any mother. Many mothers do not have that confidence.”

  “If you care for them, then care for my grandmother too. Let me tell her that her son is alive?”

  He sighed and paused to allow her to speak.

  “When did you last see him?” Sarah pressed him.

  He thought for a moment. “Three-quarters of a year ago. Nearly a year.”

  “Where did you see him?”

  “We met at the house of a friend. He too is a physician. He and your uncle were friends, they worked together, they were interested in physic and how it worked. They were interested in preventing fevers—marsh fevers. They were working with patients, they thought they might find a cure.”

  “An herbalist?” she guessed, and when he looked yet more grave, she continued: “Worse? Worse than that? An alchemist? A Jewish alchemist?”

  “I don’t know what they did,” he said flatly. “I sometimes sold them metals for their work. Always, I had a license. Never did I disobey the law. May I go, your ladyship? I should set out my stall.”

  “Wait.” She put a hand on his arm and he recoiled from her touch as if she were a danger to him.

  “I am forbidden to touch you,” he said. “Do not harm me, signora, I pray you.”

  “But it was I that touched you! What’s wrong with that?”

  He shrugged as if he did not expect justice, but only that the law would be used against him. “I am forbidden.”

  “Please! Where is he?” she asked simply, stepping closer to him and looking up into his face. “Where is the English Milord? My uncle?”

  He pitied her enough to bend his head to whisper. “Alas, he is as good as dead. His mother is right and wrong at the same time. He is not dead; but he is in the well.”

  She leaned closer, thinking she had misheard him. “In the well? Did you say he is in the well? What is that? What do you mean—the well?”

  “The well is what they call the cells below the Doge’s Palace,” he replied. “Where they keep the prisoners. Those who are awaiting torture and questioning, those who have been accused while evidence is being gathered against them. Those who will be executed.”

  “They are killed?” Sarah was breathless with shock.

  “They die of the cold and the damp, they are below the canal, lying on damp stone, without light. They die of the heat in summer, and in winter, like now, of the cold and thirst and madness.”

  “Thirst?”

  “They lick the water from the walls, they are starved.”

  “The prison of the Doge?”

  “A prison that is itself a death sentence. Most likely he is dead already.”

  She was as white as a ghost, but her hand tightened on his sleeve. “But he’s not drowned? He was not drowned in an accident? He was not drowned in a stormy night in dark tides?”

  “Denounced,” he said, his face filled with pity. “Far worse than drowned. Denounced.”

  DECEMBER 1670, LONDON

  Johnnie found the table laid in the parlor, the walls pinned with evergreens, the fire lit in the hearth, and his mother, his grandmother, and his aunt Livia waiting for him.

  “This is nice,” he said, looking around at the copper coal scuttle newly polished, and the candle flames dancing over wax candles. “This is so nice! You must have worked hard all week.”

  “Your mother did,” Alinor told him. “She has been fetching and carrying
every day and Livia pinned up the leaves.”

  “I did nothing.” Livia put her hand on his knee and smiled at him. “I just told Tabs what to do. I am a most idle daughter-in-law.”

  “She knew how to make things lovely,” Alys defended her.

  “I thought you would at least have put up a couple of Caesar heads for us to dine with,” Johnnie joked.

  She slapped his leg and made him blush at her touch. “Naughty boy to tease me!” she said. “We’ll have to wait till your mamma has a grand dining room, and then I will fill it with marble. Don’t you think we should sell up here and buy a bigger place upriver?”

  He opened his mouth to answer, and was spared by a shout from the yard at the back of the house. They heard Tabs answer and open the warehouse doors and shout: “Mrs. Stoney! It’s a man from the Custom House,” she said.

  “An officer?” Alys started, suddenly pale, rising to her feet and opening the door.

  Johnnie exchanged one appalled look with his mother. Alinor went white and grasped the arms of the chair.

  “Nay!” Tabs said dismissively from the hall. “A porter from the Custom House. He’s got a box for you.”

  “Oh, of course, of course.” Alys put her hand to her pounding heart and laughed with relief.

  They all crossed the narrow hall into the warehouse and found the porter pushing his barrow loaded with barrels and boxes through the half door of the warehouse. The wintry air blew in with him. “Delivery for Reekie,” he repeated, resting the barrow on its legs. “And duty to pay on the goods.” Alys felt in her pocket for a shilling and paid him for the delivery. “I’ll come down and pay the duty after Christmas,” she said.

  “Aye, it’s not a gift!” he joked.

  Alys managed a strained smile as Johnnie took a crowbar down from the wall and began to lever the top off the first box. At once the storehouse was filled with the heady scent of strange herbs. Alinor leaned over the barrel and inhaled the perfume.

  “Sassafras,” she said. “No wonder it brings such health.”

  “No wonder it’s so expensive,” Alys exulted. “Uncle Ned has sent us a fortune, just as we need it. Will you make posset bags with it?”

  Alinor was rifling in a box of bark and roots. “And here are some seeds for us to set, and some other herbs.”

  Johnnie loosened the ring and took the lid off a barrel. “Dried fruits,” he said.

  “God bless him,” said Alys. “It couldn’t have come at a better time.”

  “You read his letter.” Alinor dusted it and handed it to Alys as Johnnie carefully replaced the lids and followed his mother and grandmother into the warm parlor. Livia slipped ahead and took a seat beside the fire.

  Alys cut the seal, opened the single sheet of paper, and read the letter telling of his preparation for winter. Alinor looked out of the window towards the river, listening intently to the list of goods, his preparations for the season, and his blessing. When Alys had finished she said only: “Read it again.” After the second reading she breathed out slowly, as if she had almost been holding her breath, and said: “I always used to garden with him, it’s strange to think of him working alone.”

  “It sounds as if he is doing well,” Alys said cheerfully.

  “Aye—what does he call the marrows?”

  “Squash. And the berries are called cranberries. But other things sound the same—thatch and hens—Ma. Think of him having bees? Just like you used to do! Some things sound just the same as England. And some things sound better? Being free, without a master and without a king.”

  Her mother nodded. “He’ll like that,” she said. “And what he says about how you can just pick up your bed roll and musket and go. He always wanted to be free to leave Foulmire; and now he is. I must be glad that he’s free.”

  “And he thinks of us,” Alys pointed out. “He thinks of you when you think of him, at the full moon.”

  Alinor smiled. “I suppose it’s the same moon,” she said. “The same moon shines on my brother as it does on me. It shines on us all, wherever we are.” She took the letter and turned it over in her hands.

  “I’d give so much to travel!” Johnnie said. “But I’d go East rather than West.”

  “Oh, would you?” Livia asked limpidly.

  “He’s always wanted to join the Honorable East India Company,” Alys told her. “But you need to have a patron to get a place in the Company. That’s what they call it—as if it needs no other title—the Company.”

  “A patron?” Livia asked, as if this were news to her, and Alinor glanced at her. “What sort of patron?”

  Johnnie was excruciatingly embarrassed; but could do nothing but answer her. “You can only enter the Company with a patron, Aunt Livia.”

  “Someone like the noblemen who purchased my antiquities?”

  “Yes, those sort of gentlemen,” he agreed shortly, wondering why she was leading him on to lie to his mother. “Someone like them, I suppose.”

  “But I know people like this!” Livia exclaimed smiling. “They buy my goods—they would not buy anything from here, but they buy my goods on the Strand.”

  “I know,” he said awkwardly. “But it’s a far cry from buying your antiquities to sponsoring a young man from nowhere. There’s no reason they should recommend me, just because they like a column twined with ivy.”

  Livia flickered a dark gaze at him like a lover’s secret glance. “Not so far,” she said. “And it was honeysuckle.”

  “We know no one whose help we want,” Alys ruled, looking from Livia’s half-hidden smile to her mother’s gray gaze which was fixed, speculatively, on Livia’s downturned face.

  “We’d rather make our own way than depend on someone’s favor,” Alinor supported her daughter. “Wouldn’t you, Livia?”

  “Oh, I suppose so,” Livia concurred, glancing up at Johnnie almost as if she would wink.

  DECEMBER 1670, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND

  On his Christmas Eve in Hadley Ned was surprised to hear a whisper of displaced snow at his door and a quiet tap from a mittened hand.

  “Who’s there?” he shouted. He did not reach for the musket, but nor did he think for a moment that it was Mrs. Rose.

  “I don’t know!” came the laughing response in a deep voice. “Am I John Sassamon, or Wussausmon?”

  “I think it depends what you’re wearing?” Ned said, opening the door and welcoming the tall man dressed in Indian winter clothes into his room.

  He brushed snow from his head, from his shoulders, from the iced fringes of his buckskin leggings and then stepped inside. “I will make a lake here, where I melt,” he said.

  “I see you, Lake,” Ned said. “But come in anyway, and get warm. Will you stay the night?”

  “If you will have me? I leave for my home at dawn. I said I’d be there for Christmas Day.”

  “Lord, is it Christmas Day tomorrow?” Ned asked.

  “Heathen,” Wussausmon said comfortably. “Did you not know?”

  “It makes no difference to a godly man.” Ned followed the old ruling of Oliver Cromwell. “It’s not a celebration ordered in the Bible so it’s an ordinary day of prayer to me and all true Christians. Certainly to all of us in Hadley. So who’s the heathen now?”

  Wussausmon laughed shortly, shook off his undercape, and came to the fire. “Ah, you’ve let your dog in,” he said as Red came to sniff him. “I wondered if he would spend the winter outside.”

  “He sleeps out,” Ned said defensively. “I’m not making him soft. He’s a working dog.”

  The Indian raised his hands. “Why would I care?” he asked. “You Coatmen are so strange with your animals. Both tender and cruel. You put your dog out but you sleep with hens?”

  Ned laughed. “I do,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  “It shall be our secret,” Wussausmon promised. “Please God we never share any worse between us.”

  “Will you take a glass of cider?” Ned invited. “A small glass, and don’t get drunk and se
ll me your fields at Natick?”

  “A small glass, and then I must sleep. I will have to leave at dawn.”

  Ned poured a tiny measure for him and his guest and the two men stretched their feet to the fire and sipped.

  “D’you know the name of the translators for the Coatmen who first came?” Wussausmon asked Ned.

  “No,” Ned replied. “No, wait, someone told me. When the English first arrived on the first ship, the Mayflower? You mean, translators like you?”

  Wussausmon smiled. “Maybe they were like me. I hope to God that they were not. One was called Squanto and one Hobbamok; they were rivals, they each told the English that the other was a Judas, a betrayer. Nobody could decide who to believe. Perhaps they were both liars, perhaps they were both betrayers of their people and their birthright.”

  “I told John Russell of your fears.” Ned guessed that Wussausmon was speaking of his sense of being in two worlds and belonging to neither. “I told him of Norwottuck arming, I warned him as you wanted me to do.”

  “Will he pass on the warning to the Council? Will the hidden generals speak for us to their friends?”

  “I think they will. I think they’ll persuade the Council to make an agreement with the Pokanoket in spring. I tried to tell them of everything—both the wrongs against the Indians, and their arming.”

  “They believed you? They believed me?”

  “Yes, they know what’s happening. They weren’t glad to hear me name Josiah Winslow as one of the merchants who are foreclosing on Indians; but they didn’t deny it.”

  “I pass like a spirit from one world into another, I tell of what I have seen. But then I go back and speak of where I have been,” Wussaus-mon remarked. “And every day I fear that I am not translating one to another; but just making the misunderstanding worse. I am trying to bring these two worlds together but all they do is grind against each other. They don’t trust each other, nobody wants to hear what I say, and they both believe I am a liar and a spy.”

  “Is that like Squanto? And Hobbamok?”