“Through the locked door? The one that is hidden behind a curtain?” he pointed out.
She felt simply in the wrong. “I was just working…”
“No you weren’t,” he said coldly, and she swallowed a little gasp on her new fear of him.
“Suppose you tell me the truth?” he suggested. “It is nearly morning, and my mother has told me you had your dinner and you went early to bed. I know you are lying with this talk of working for the Nobildonna; but I don’t know why, nor what you are really doing here?”
She trembled again, her mind frozen in this new shock. “I’m not lying.”
“Obviously you are.” There was ice beneath his pleasant tone. “You are lying to my face and spying on me. First of all: what is your real name?”
She shivered; she did not know what she should say.
“Better that you say.” His voice was silky.
“My name is Sarah,” she said in a very small voice. “Sarah Stoney.”
“And how do you know the Nobildonna?”
She looked towards the door, to the windows overlooking the canal. There was no escape from this interrogation. “I want to go to bed,” she said childishly.
“Not till you have answered my questions. Remember, you are in my house under a false name. I could denounce you for spying right now and I would be paid a fee for arresting you.”
“I’m just a milliner!” she protested.
“Now, that, I believe,” he agreed. “You truly loved the feathers.”
“I did. I really did.”
“So, are you the Nobildonna’s milliner?”
“Yes,” she said, grasping at the lie.
“And why did she send you here?”
“To find her husband,” Sarah invented rapidly. “She’s so grieved—her heart is breaking—and she thought he might be alive. She thought he might be in prison: not dead. So she asked me to come…” Her lie tailed off as he rose and went to the window and looked out at the canal. His face was hidden from her but she could see his shoulders were shaking. She thought he was weeping, perhaps for sorrow at the loss of Rob—so she rose too, uncertain what she should do. Carefully she approached him and put her hand gently on the velvet sleeve. “Are you distressed, Felipe? Did you know him?” she asked.
Felipe Russo turned, and showed her the tears in his dark eyes, but they were from laughing, he could hardly stop laughing to gasp: “Child, I swear that you will be the death of me! For God’s sake stop lying to me. That is the funniest thing I ever heard. You will never know how ridiculous! It’s a terrible lie, a stupid lie, a clumsy lie. She would never send a girl like you to save her husband from prison!”
“But why not?” Sarah demanded. “She loved him. She would want to know he is safe. She would surely want him found? Why should she not have sent me to get him out?”
“Never! Never!”
“But why never?”
“Because it was she who denounced him! Little fool! She put him in there, herself!”
DECEMBER 1670, LONDON
“And where is Sarah?” Livia asked the one question Alys had been dreading. The two women were in bed, wrapped up in shawls against the cold, ice flowers frosting the inside of the windows in the winter London dawn.
“Still at her friend’s house.”
“She does not come home? Not for Christmas? Is she coming for Twelfth Night? When will she come?”
Alys moved out of Livia’s embrace and leaned up on one elbow, so she could see the beautiful face on the pillow, the dark plait over the bronze shoulder.
“She will come soon,” she said.
“You do not send for her, and order her home?”
“No. She will come… perhaps next month.”
“So, tell me the truth.”
Alys felt dread in her belly. “The truth?” she repeated. She knew she could not bear to tell Livia that she was so deeply mistrusted, that her own mother-in-law would not love her, would not receive her money, would not accept her child as a grandson.
“Have you sent her away because you did not want her to see us?” Livia whispered.
“See us?” Alys repeated; she had no idea what Livia was saying.
“See us together?”
“Why should she not see us together?” the older woman repeated.
Livia stretched deliciously, like a lazy cat, her arms above her head, the dark hair in her armpits releasing an erotic scent of musk and oil of roses. “Since she would see—as your mother, for all her wisdom, does not see—that we are friends, that we are lovers who will never be parted, we will be together forever.”
Alys felt her world turning around her; she put a hand on the headboard, as if to anchor herself against seasickness. “We are sisters,” was all she could say. “We love each other as sisters.”
“Oh my dear, call it what you will! Do you not love me and want me to stay here forever? Do you not wait, through the long cold day, for when we shall be alone together at night? Have we not found, together, true happiness? We are loving sisters who have never found love like this before in our lives. No husband has understood me or been tender to me as you, and you have never had a husband at all. Am I not dearer to you than anyone you have ever known?”
“Except my children,” Alys temporized. “Except my mother.”
Livia waved them away. “Of course, of course, except our children. Is not this the first true love you have known?”
Alys thought of the young man who abandoned her on her wedding day and left her and her mother to face disaster alone. “All he gave me was a cart,” she said with old bitterness. “And I had adored him, I risked everything for him.”
Livia laughed. “But I will give you a fortune,” she promised. “We will move to a bigger, better wharf with a beautiful storehouse where you will show art and antique collections and we will be true in love and true in business. The world will see us as loving sisters, and we will keep our desire hidden. I will never tell of it and you will be mine, heart and soul. Send for Sarah, she can come home. We will be discreet. I will let everyone think that I am pursuing Sir James—” She put up her hand before Alys could protest. “I know you don’t like him but let everyone think that I am chasing him for his money. That’s what your mother thinks already, isn’t it?”
“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.”
“Lo
rd! 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.
DECEMBER 1670, VENICE
Felipe rose to his feet and poured the rest of the bottle into Sarah’s glass. “Of course, you raise a very difficult question,” he complained. “Perhaps I had better just strangle you and drop your body in the water gate.”
“Captain Shore knows where I am,” she said defiantly, but her voice trembled.
He shrugged: “Does he care? Would he look for you?”
“I can offer you an agreement,” she said unsteadily. “If you will help me rescue my uncle, I will never speak about the… all this. I will forget all about the workshop and what you do. We will never mention it again.”
He cocked an eyebrow.
“And I can pay you!” she said desperately.
He openly laughed at her. “Half a guinea? Or will you throw in the half guinea’s worth of feathers?”
“I can send you money from England. If you will only help me.”
“Obviously, I’m going to get money from England, and far more than you can raise.”
“But what if you don’t?” Sarah challenged. “What if you don’t get any money? What if you are working to your plan, and risking everything, but she isn’t?”
He turned his head and looked at her over the top of his glass. “What do you mean?”
“Because she’s not sent you any money, has she?” Sarah gambled. “And she’s certainly not paid us anything. I think she’s keeping it all to herself. The antiquities were for sale—I saw them for sale myself! But she has a new partner now.”
“Who? She was to sell them in your warehouse? With you bearing the costs.”
“She’s got another plan now!” Sarah grew more confident. “She’s got another partner. We carried the costs, but she showed them in his house. He’s an English lord, she chased him since she first arrived in England. She’s ditched you, she’s ditched us! She’s got another patron altogether. She’s a whore like one of those women on their chopines, and she’s moved on from you and left you behind.”
He shook his head, confidently smiling. “She would never double-cross me.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because we are promised to marry.”
“Not her!” Sarah swore. “She’s going to marry Sir James Avery, and give him the son he wants. Matt
eo will be an English boy. You’ll never see either of them again. She’ll marry him—an Englishman, far richer and grander than you will ever be—and she’ll never ever come back here.”
DECEMBER 1670, LONDON
Livia shivered in the stern of the little skiff as it crossed the river, a cold wind blowing in from the sea, the water stairs at Avery House glittering with frost, the garden a monochrome of tree trunks, white on one side and black with damp on the other, the twigs and the boughs outlined, as if a limner had been through the orchard to make every branch a thing of startling beauty.
“Here,” Livia said, putting a penny begrudgingly into the man’s hand.
“You’re welcome, my pretty,” he taunted her, and let the boat rock as she stepped from it to climb up the stairs, her boots making dark tracks in the white frost of the steps.
“I shan’t be long, you can wait,” she said.
“You hiring me to wait?” he asked hopefully.
“No! Of course not! Why should I pay for you to do nothing? But if you wait, I shall come in a moment and pay you to take me back to Savoury Dock when I’m ready.”
“I’ll wait unless I’m called away,” he said, resentfully. “I’ll wait for free and then I’m sure it’ll be my honor to escort you home. To Savoury Dock—known for its aroma. To the Reekie Wharf—known for its elegance.”
“Chiudi la bocca,” she muttered under her breath, and turned to walk through the garden. Ahead of her a robin gripped a swinging bough, sang to her, a sound of piercing sweetness. Livia did not hear it, did not see the tip-tilted bright head. The statue of the sleeping fawn was curled at the foot of a gnarled apple tree, drifted snow was white on the white marble of its back. Livia strode past it, eyes on the blank windows of the house.
Glib, the footman, had reported that the staff had been instructed to light fires, air the linen, and open the shutters and that the master would return within the week, but Livia had heard nothing from Sir James himself, neither letter, nor invitation. She did not know why he had not invited her to his house, not written to her again from Northallerton and sent no present. She had been hoping for a diamond ring as a Christmas gift and a betrothal. She had received nothing. Livia gritted her teeth and walked up the beautiful terrace, sparkling with frost in the hard bright sunshine of winter.
Dark Tides Page 38