Dark Tides

by Philippa Gregory

  Ned traded venison from Norwottuck as he went, picking up a small cheese from a dairywoman whose cow was still in milk, and admiring some knitted woolen gloves. Though his fingers were red and chapped from the cold, he did not think he could afford to trade food for gloves.

  He made his way down the street to the minister’s house where the slaves had arduously dug a path to the front and back door and to the meetinghouse. Ned, carrying his basket, went round to the back, and knocked on the kitchen door.

  “You have to push it open, the wood’s warped,” came a shout from Mrs. Rose inside.

  Ned put his shoulder against the door and fell into the kitchen. “Beg pardon,” he said, flinching from her glare as snow from his hat cascaded on the clean floor. He stepped back out again, took off his snowshoes, shook himself like a bear, and then came inside, leaving his oiled cape, coat, hat, and mittens on the hooks at the side of the door. “I am sorry,” he said.

  “Never mind, you’re in now,” she said. “Is it cold out?”

  “Very. I left my dog in one of your stables.”

  “Will he be warm enough there?”

  “Yes, I won’t be too long. I brought you some meat.”

  She glanced into his basket. “Thank you. They’re all upstairs,” she told him. “The cellar’s too cold in this weather. And no strangers come in this season, anyway.”

  Ned hesitated, wondering if he should say something more intimate to her. “I’m glad to see you,” he said. “You’re looking well.”

  She threw him a little smile. “And I you,” she said. “I think of you, beside the ice river, the last house of the town.”

  “It’s not that far away,” he protested, as he always did.

  “Look at you!” she replied. “Wearing half a bear just to get to the minister’s house.”

  He nodded. “John Sassamon came the other day and he was wearing half what I put on, and he was warm. I must get him to trade me his furs.”

  She turned her head at once. “He’d rather have a red or a blue coat,” she said. “They all would. They all want proper clothes; but they won’t work to earn it. You shouldn’t buy his native clothes, and he should stay in his proper trousers and shirt. Why would he run around in buckskin when he’s got a perfectly good proper house in Natick? A wife? A ministry? What’s he even doing this far north?”

  “That’s what I’ve got to talk to the minister about,” Ned said.

  She nodded, compressing her lips on what she might have said. “He’ll be spying,” was all she said shortly. “Running about the woods and spying on us.”

  “He came openly to see me,” Ned protested. “Boot’s on t’other foot. He took me to spy on them.”

  “Well, you can go on up,” she said, silencing him. “They’re all three together upstairs.”

  Ned made an awkward little nod to her and went out of the kitchen and up the staircase. As he climbed, he called: “It’s Ned Ferryman!” and the door at the head of the stairs opened and the minister looked out.

  “Good to see you!” he said. “All well with you?”

  “Aye, I came to see that all was well with you?”

  “Praise God, yes. Come in.”

  John Russell opened the door and Ned edged into the room. The three men were sitting on hard high-backed chairs with the single bed pushed back against the wall to give them more room. A mean fire burned in the grate, there were frost flowers on the inside of the window. A Bible was on the table, open at the Psalms.

  “Ned!” William said warmly. “Good man!”

  “Good to see you, Ned Ferryman,” said Edward.

  Ned smiled at them. “I’m sure you need no guarding,” he said. “The weather will keep everyone indoors. But I thought I would visit, and I brought you some fresh meat for your dinner, venison from my neighbors over the river.”

  “You’ve never crossed the river?”

  “John Sassamon led me across. I don’t mind admitting I was fearful.”

  “Is he this far north again?” John Russell asked.

  “Yes,” Ned said. “Again. I’ve come to speak with you about him, and the Pokanoket. Indeed, he asked me to speak with you, and with these gentlemen.”

  “What’s the matter?” The minister took his seat, and waved Ned into a stool by the fire. “What does he want?”

  Ned squatted on the stool. “Thing is,” he started. “He trusts you, sir, as a man of God, a minister far superior to him, and a man who has risked his own safety for his friends.”

  “Rightly,” William said.

  “And he trusts you two,” Ned said, turning to his former commanders, “after taking you out and bringing you back to Hadley last summer. He knows you have the ear of some of the great men of the Council, he knows that you know the governor, and the great men: Josiah Winslow and that Mr. Daniel Gookin keeps your cattle, and that you have friends throughout the land.”

  “How does he know all this?” Mr. Russell asked, surprised.

  William nodded, not taking his level gaze from Ned’s face. “We are blessed with good friends,” he said. “What of it?”

  “John Sassamon says that the settlers aren’t staying within their agreed bounds,” Ned said earnestly. “They’re buying land, though the Council forbade them to buy. The Indians are selling to them, though the Sachems forbade them to sell. The country is driven by buying land and no law seems to be able to stop it.”

  “Amen. It’s true,” William said seriously.

  “Amen,” Edward said. “The Indians are right to complain if we bring them not to God but to Mammon.”

  “The Massasoit has all but lost his kingdom,” Ned said. “They say he can see a roof and a chimney from every side of Mount Hope where once there was nothing but forest. He can’t even get to the sea without crossing settler farms. That’s very bitter for them—his prayers in the morning are to be said facing the rising sun over the sea.”

  “He’ll have sold it himself,” Mr. Russell pointed out.

  “Not freely,” Ned went on. “They say that we get them into debt, and then we suddenly foreclose.”

  “That is illegal, the Council are firmly opposed to it. All deeds have to be good, and signed in good faith. They should make a formal complaint and we will prosecute the settlers,” John Russell said firmly.

  Ned looked away, embarrassed. “Yes, but it’s the old governor’s son,” he said miserably. “He’s suing an Indian for a ten-pound debt. Says he’ll take twenty pounds’ worth of land for it!”

  “Says who?” William asked indignantly.

  “They say,” Ned admitted. “The debtor is the nephew of the Massasoit—King Philip. The father, who is Sachem of his tribe, is handing over a hundred acres of land to the trader to forgive the debt.”

  “Josiah Winslow is doing this?” Edward asked.

  “It’s worse than that—he’s got a debt on King Philip himself.” Ned looked from one grave face to another. “If they force the Massasoit to sell land, when he has sworn he will not—”

  “It makes him look bad,” John Russell said. “It makes him break his own word. It humiliates him.”

  “They say that when they were all-powerful and the English newly arrived and starving, they were good to us. They were generous. They say that now we have guns and cannon and a militia and we are stronger than them, they say we should be generous to them.”

  “Are we stronger than them?” Edward the old commander demanded. “If it came to war?”

  Ned looked at him, unable to lie. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve not been to Mount Hope—Montaup, the sacred home of the Pokanoket—and I’ve never seen one of their gatherings. But I know they’re having big gatherings and that other tribes are attending.”

  “To make alliances? To go to war?” John Russell asked.

  “They say it is to dance. John Sassamon came just to warn me, he told me to warn you. He showed me a village that’s arming and building defenses, a Norwottuck village, just over the river, as close a
s Hatfield, and they are arming and building a palisade that would withstand cannon. I swear they’re stockpiling weapons, perhaps even muskets. He showed me, so that I should tell you what I’ve seen with my own eyes. He asked that you pass it on to the men you know on the Council. I’ve seen him many times this autumn and winter; and he’s clearly traveling for the Massasoit. He’s talking to kinsmen and tribes, it certainly looks like they’re mustering. If the governors don’t meet with him and make a treaty about leaving the Indian lands alone, I’m afraid it will be war.”

  The two older men, who had made war on their own people up and down England, and even in Ireland, looked bleak. “A war of the Pokanoket and their allies against us would be deadly,” Edward judged.

  “It would undo all our work,” John Russell said. “We’ve told Boston, we’ve told Plymouth before. But we’ll have to warn them again. We’ll have to make them understand. They might survive a war with the Pokanoket in the cities; but we would not!”

  “And which side would you take, Ned?” William challenged him. “You and your Indian friend? Aren’t you and he both in the same boat? Warning both sides against the other? You can’t spend your life crossing from one side of the river to the other. You’re going to have to choose.”

  DECEMBER 1670, VENICE

  Sarah woke after strange haunted dreams of her aunt Livia as a monster of stone, as a sculpted sea serpent, as a white marble widow, as a disinterred goddess, and came downstairs, pale and dark-eyed, to have breakfast in the salon served by Mamma Russo, who was not as charming as she had been the night before. The marble-floored salon was cold, the whole house was chilled stone built on icy water.

  Sarah tried to throw off her unease, and spent the morning wrapping the smaller statues in scraps of sheep fleece, and then sewing them into a coarse sailcloth, and handing them to the Russos’ servant, who crated them for her: building little cages of wood around the irregular shapes. She could not rid herself of the sense of working among a mortuary: every now and then she looked around, and the sightless eyes were watching her. Even the little stone animals seemed to silently yearn for a sun that had been lost.

  At four, as the light from the warehouse window darkened and the canals gleamed with gondola lanterns reflected on their still waters, the whole family gathered together in the first-floor dining room for their evening meal: the mother of the family, Signora Russo; her handsome adult son; her little son; and the sulky daughter, Chiara. Sarah, as guest, took the foot of the table opposite Signor Russo, and when the children withdrew after dinner and his mother put a bottle of brandy before him, she set three glasses and sat with him and Sarah, as if Sarah were a gentleman guest, a man of quality, who should be served with honor.

  “You enjoyed yourself today among the antiquities?” the young man asked her.

  She did not tell him that she had looked for him all day, and had been wishing he would stroll into the storehouse and flirt with her.

  “Yes,” she said. “They are all things of such beauty, I kept looking around and surprising myself.”

  “One day I shall take you to the feather market, and we can visit a milliner’s also. You might like to see how they work here. They make masks as well as hats, their speciality is masks and crowns and fantastic headgear, and beautiful creations which cover the face and the hair, for those ladies who wish to be unknown.”

  “You would take me?” Sarah asked, and felt her face warm in a blush as he smiled at her.

  “It would be my pleasure,” he said.

  “When I first arrived, I saw some ladies in masks and standing very tall on pattens, so high that they had to be held up by maids.”

  “Those are our courtesans,” he said. “The courtesans of Venice on their chopines. Pattens, as you say, but so tall they are almost like stilts. Very expensive, very famous, very beautiful.”

  Sarah felt herself flush hotter. “I didn’t know. In London, of course, especially at court there are…”

  He took a sip of his wine. “The whole world knows of the London court, and the ladies who whore for the king. But you are not of that world?”

  “No,” she said, falling back on her usual excuse. “I don’t know anything about it. I’m just a milliner.”

  “I believe that Signora Nell Gwyn was just an orange seller. But it didn’t prevent her making her fortune from favor. D’you never think of that life? You have such beauty that you would surely be a success?”

  Sarah knew she was blushing furiously. “No,” she said. “My mother is a woman of great…” she could not find the words. “Great…”

  “A puritan, in fact,” he helped her.

  “Yes,” she gasped. “Very respectable. I would never…”

  “But you like pleasure? You like beautiful things?”

  “Yes I do…”

  “And you hope to marry? You are betrothed perhaps?”

  “I have no thoughts of marriage.” Sarah tried to compose herself. “I’ve just finished my apprenticeship. I have to make my own way in the world. I cannot afford any luxuries.”

  “You call a husband a luxury?” he laughed.

  “In my world, a lover or a husband is a luxury,” she managed to say. “And one I can’t afford.”

  “I toast you!” he said, raising his glass to her. “A young beauty who thinks of men as expensive luxuries. Indeed, you come from a country which has turned everything upside down. The English throw down their kings and then bring them back, raise young women who cannot afford to marry! What a novelty! Bless you, Bathsheba Jolie!”

  His mother smiled and raised her glass to the toast in English, which she could not understand. She asked her son a quick question in Italian.

  “She asks me what I have said to make the English rose blush red?” he reported.

  Sarah smiled and shook her head. But she knew that those had not been the words. The woman had spoken too quickly for her to follow, but she would have recognized the words “rose” and “English.” She was almost certain that she had heard Livia’s name in the stream of rapid Italian.

  “If you had been raised as I have been, you would think the same,” she told him staunchly.

  “No father?” he asked. “Me neither.”

  “No father; but the hardest-working mother that ever blessed a home, and a grandmother who never complains, who understands more of this world and the next than any ordained minister. A home where we don’t really live together, we cling together while the world turns upside down and back again.”

  “A little business?” he asked sympathetically.

  “Clinging on,” she said. “So my brother and I had to make our own livings. He—Johnnie—is doing well, he has a head for numbers. He’s apprenticed to a merchant and they think well of him, and I have my millinery papers. When I go home, I’ll look for work as a milliner and leave service.”

  “And is that what you want?” Signor Russo asked, his dark eyes on her animated face. “Now you have come so far and seen Venice? Is that all you want—to go home to a new millinery shop, with a box of feathers?”

  She hesitated. “It’s hard not to want more,” she admitted. “Now I’m here, even though I’ve seen only the port and the streets on the way to here… it’s hard not to imagine more.”

  He got up from his seat, came to the foot of the table, and leaned over her chair to pour her another glass of wine. “Imagine more,” he counseled softly in her ear. “This is a city where imaginings can come to life. Marco Polo went from here, overland to the court of China: just because he dreamed it was possible. We live here without a king, without an emperor: because we thought it could be done. We won’t run out of great leaders and fetch a king back like the English did. This is a republic that is built to last. Every wall here is painted by a Master: because we love beauty; look up when you walk around and every corner is beautiful. Even the courtesans make a fortune: because we know that beauty is fleeting and precious. Imagine more, Bathsheba, and see where your dreams take you.”
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  She found she was smiling, filled with excitement. “I must be drunk.” She resisted the spell his words were weaving around her. “I can’t be imagining and dreaming. I have too much to do. I have to pack up my mistress’s goods and go home.”

  He laughed. “Then I will light your candle for you to go to bed, you drunkard,” he said. “Good night, Bathsheba.”

  “Good night, Signor Russo, good night, signora,” she replied, rising from the table and going to the beautiful marble-topped side table where her candle stood ready in a beautifully wrought gold candlestick.

  He lit her candle from one of the branch on the dining table and as she took it, he held her hand. “You may call me Felipe,” he said quietly. “You can say: Buonanotte, Felipe.”

  She glanced at his mother and saw her smiling, dark-eyed nod, and then turned back to his intense gaze. “Buonanotte, Felipe,” she repeated, and took her candle and walked from the dining room. She felt him watch her all the way to the foot of the stone stairs, and she walked, shoulders back, head set, proudly like a little queen, as beautiful as a statue, all the way up the stairs while the candle flame bobbed excitedly beside her.

  DECEMBER 1670, LONDON

  Johnnie came home the Sunday before Christmas and found his mother standing precariously high, on a clerk’s stool, pinning greenery above the corner cupboard in the parlor.

  “You know, when I was young, it was forbidden to take a holiday on Christmas Day?” she said, stretching to make the last adjustment. “This is such a pleasure.”