Dark Tides

by Philippa Gregory

  She felt no gladness when she saw that the curtains of his study were drawn open. She felt no joy when she saw the back of his head and shoulders as he sat at his desk. She raised one dark gloved hand and rapped on the window. He jumped at the sudden knock, turned and saw an ominous figure in a dark dress; she saw the shock on his face, and then he recognized her.

  He rose to his feet and opened the tall glass door. “Livia,” he said weakly. “What a surprise.”

  She marched in.

  DECEMBER 1670, VENICE

  Sarah woke late, to a silent house, and went apprehensively downstairs. The beautiful hall was the same as always. Sarah had the strange feeling that she must have dreamed the night before, but when she turned to glance at the front door she saw it was bolted tight. She was imprisoned in the quiet house.

  Felipe’s mother Signora Russo had a milky hot drink ready for her, and bread and jam to eat in the dining room, but when Sarah took her seat at the table, the woman stood and watched her, as if she were on guard. Felipe Russo came up the stairs from the water gate, directly from Mass at the local church, holy water still wet on his forehead, said one quiet word, and his mother left the room.

  He took a seat opposite her. “You told me last night that the Nobildonna would not come back here,” he started abruptly. “You told me she was to marry an Englishman.”

  “You told me last night you might as well drown me in the water gate,” she said defiantly.

  He gave her a quick warm smile. “You know I would not. But what you said about Livia: was it a desperate lie to save your skin?” he asked.

  She hesitated before answering him. “No. It’s more than that. I’ve never met anyone like Livia in my life before, so I can’t say what she might do. I don’t know what promises she has made to you. But truly, when I left she looked very much as if she were planning to marry an English baronet—he’s called Sir James Avery. At first, she said that she had come to live with us, that she wanted an English family, she wanted nothing but to share our life. Then she started to complain that we aren’t rich enough for her, the warehouse is too small, in a poor part of town, a long way from the City. She said that my uncle Rob had led her on to think we’re grander than we are.” She flushed. “We’re working people,” she said. “My grandma sells herbs and possets to apothecaries, Ma runs a little wharf.”

  “But you do have a warehouse?” he pressed. “I sent the first load? Reekie Wharf?”

  “It’s just a little storehouse beside the wharf, we load corn and apples and coasters’ loads for shillings at a time. We don’t earn much, we could hardly afford the shipping for her first load.” He heard the resentment in her voice. “She talked my ma into paying for her.”

  “We agreed she should arrive penniless.” He laughed shortly. “We thought it would be more persuasive. We thought you were wealthy and you would be bound to help her if she came in, in tears, with the baby in her arms.”

  Sarah scowled as she remembered Livia’s tragic appearance. “Oh, she did that, she did all of that. And we did help her. She’s got my mother wrapped around her little finger, risking our whole business in not declaring the goods. When you bring goods into England you have to pay the Excise—but the Nobildonna didn’t declare it.”

  He gave a little laugh. “Of course not!”

  “The first rich man she met was Sir James, and straightaway she got him to let her sell the antiquities at his big house on the Strand. I saw them together, as close as lovers. She sat at his desk to open her letters, she looks like she owns the place.”

  Sarah betrayed all of the Nobildonna’s secrets without hesitation. “If she catches him, she’ll surely have no interest in trading antiquities, she’ll never want to see you again. She’ll want to leave you far behind, and us—she won’t come back to our wharf when she’s Lady Avery; she’ll be an English lady then, thinking of nothing but her children and her dogs.”

  “But he’s an old man? You said he was old?”

  “He is, he must be about forty.”

  “Forty is no age at all!”

  “It seems very old to me,” she replied. “Old enough to be my father.”

  He looked at her from under his dark eyebrows “I am thirty-four. Do I seem very old to you?”

  She could not help but laugh. “No! You’re…”

  She blushed and could not describe him and he understood her stammering halt, and beamed back at her. “Thank God for that,” he remarked. “Did she really send for a second order of antiquities? That was true?”

  “Yes,” Sarah said, recovering from her betraying embarrassment. “She said she made a fortune on the first load. Did she send any money back to you? Captain Shore could have carried a letter? Have you heard nothing from her at all?”

  He rose from the table and went to the window, looking down at the canal as if he would find an answer in the green lapping waters and the crisscrossing boats.

  Sarah rose from the table to stand beside him and follow his gaze. “So… now you know this of her, will you help me to get Rob released? There’s no reason for you to leave him in prison now. Not now that she’s betraying you. You’ve done all this: you’ve lied for her and denounced an innocent man, and smuggled for her, and now she’s gone away with your money and will marry someone else.”

  “You talk like a child,” he said angrily. He turned from the window and threw himself in his ornate chair at the head of the table.

  Sarah stood before him. “I speak simply,” she conceded. “And I’ll tell you why. Just because she is complicated, doesn’t make me stupid. I’m no fool. She’s played me for a fool, and she plays my mother for a fool, and plays Sir James for a fool, and even—I think—she’s made a fool of you. But not my grandmother, who knew the truth the moment she saw her and her baby. We don’t all have to dance to Livia’s tune. You can help me save Rob, and that will be one thing where she has not had her own way. My uncle is a good man, I believe, and his mother loves him. There’s no reason that we should help Livia to have him imprisoned, and maybe die in prison, and break my grandmother’s heart.”

  He was silent, considering this. “One should never do business for spite,” he remarked.

  “But why should you do so much, and risk so much, to get her into Sir James’s beautiful London house? With the next shipment of antiquities you will lie for her, supply her with forged goods, help her marry another man, and you’re not even going to be paid!”

  He nodded slowly. “I am not disposed to do that.”

  “Then help me.”

  “Perhaps I could save Roberto,” he conceded. “Unless he is already dead. But it will not be easy, and why should I?”

  “Because I believe you are a good man,” she said earnestly, putting her hand on his. “A good man who has done bad things. But this can be put right. You can put it right; indeed, you should put it right.”

  He looked at her with a smile in his dark eyes. “For the sake of goodness and justice?” he asked her. “So that I can be a better person? You talk like a Protestant!”

  “Yes.” She did not flinch at his cynicism. “But there is another reason.”

  “I’m listening.”

  She smiled at him, suddenly confident. “If you get Rob released, and he comes home with me to England, then she can’t marry anyone, can she? She’s still married to him. Her plan to break her promise to you, and steal your goods, and marry another man and take Matteo with her—it all fails. She can’t marry Sir James: she’s already married.”

  There was silence in the cold room. Outside on the canal, a boatman went by singing a love song. Gently, Felipe took up her hand from the table and kissed it. She could feel the warmth of his lips on her fingers. “What a clever girl you are,” he said caressingly. “Under that straight gaze, under that fair skin, what a clever mind works so quickly! Almost, you could be Italian. Almost you could be the Nobildonna herself. She made a grave mistake when she did not enchant you along with all the rest of your family!”<
br />
  Sarah felt her cheeks warm at the kiss on her hand, and at his words of praise. “I don’t think she even saw me,” she told him. “She was far too busy being charming to my mother, and my brother, and then Sir James.”

  “Foolish,” the Signor said. “Foolish to miss such a one as you. I imagine you are as clever as all of them together.”

  DECEMBER 1670, LONDON

  James Avery rushed to pull out a chair for Livia. “Please, sit!” he begged her.

  She sank down into the chair opposite him and found her sweetest smile. “I’m so glad you are home!” she said. “I could not wait to see you! I could not wait another moment for you to send for me!”

  He flushed, shuffled papers, stacked them into a pile, and then put them in a drawer. “I should have sent the coach tomorrow,” he said. “I have only just arrived. The house is not ready for visitors.”

  “I’m no visitor!” She made her eyes warm on his face, her gaze on his mouth to make him think of kisses. “I am the mistress of the house. I am ready, Beloved.”

  “There were difficulties at home,” he said awkwardly.

  “This is your home.”

  “No, no, this is my London house. The London house of my family. I always think of my home as Northallerton. Northside Manor, Northallerton. And there were difficulties. My aunt…”

  She laughed as she stripped off her black leather gloves and dropped them, like a gauntlet in a challenge, on the desk. She unwound a shawl of black lace from her neck, as if she were undressing before him, as if next she would open her bodice. “Your aunt?” she repeated, as if to invite him to share a joke. “The English aunt?”

  “She requests, indeed, she insists, that she meet you before the banns are called. So she is…”

  She widened her eyes. “The aunt wishes to inspect me? As if I am a horse?”

  “No! No! It’s just that she has been as a mother to me, and she longs to greet you as a daughter.”

  “And I her.”

  “And she wants to prepare you for your life as the lady of Northside Manor.”

  “Does she know that I am a Nobildonna, and that I had a palace in Venice?”

  “Yes, I told her,” he said miserably. “I did tell her.”

  She raised her beautifully arched eyebrows and she smiled at him. He felt his anxieties melt away under the warmth of her beauty and confidence. “I think I can run a little house like yours,” she assured him.

  “She insists,” he said haplessly.

  “Then we will welcome her,” she assured him. “Together. When does she arrive?”

  “She’s here now. We came together in my coach.”

  She raised a white finger to reprove him; she did not show her temper. “Now that was very wrong, my love, to invite her here without agreeing with me. But—ecco!—I forgive you. I should have liked to have been here to welcome her—but no matter. The English have no manners, and I daresay she is not offended. I shall order the cook to prepare dinner for us and she shall dine with us. Where is she now?”

  “Out,” he said shortly.

  “Out where, cara mia?”

  “She has gone to visit my brother-in-law.”

  “The brother of your former wife?” she specified, as if she did not know in a moment who he meant.

  “Yes.”

  “The gentleman who accused me of fraud, and malpractice?”

  “You remember, he withdrew his words, and apologized?”

  She shot him one sharp look and then she looked down, her long dark eyelashes brushing her cheeks. “I remember everything,” she whispered. “I remember what you did. I remember what you did to me—that afternoon in your bedroom. I remember what you promised me.”

  “I did,” he said grimly. “I was wrong, but I do not forget it.”

  “I will never forget it,” she told him. “It was the happiest of ordeals for me as it proved to me that you loved me—beyond restraint.” She let that sink in. “So I shall tell the cook to prepare the dinner for later—when the aunt returns. I suppose she dines in the afternoon? Will she bring the brother-in-law with her?”

  “She may invite him. She has every right to invite him to this house. She is my honored guest and she has lived with me for many years. This house is as her home.”

  Livia rose in a rustle of black silk. “Of course. What a pleasant dinner we shall have.”

  DECEMBER 1670, VENICE

  Felipe Russo walked down to the ship with Sarah to meet Captain Shore. “I will take this young lady to an officer of immigration, he can be trusted to change her papers,” he said, almost as soon as they had climbed the steep gangplank. Captain Shore greeted them at the top, as if he did not wish them to come on board.

  “I’d rather we kept this between ourselves,” he said, shooting a horrified look at Sarah. “She didn’t tell me she had another name when we sailed from London. We sail tomorrow. No reason to trouble the authorities. She’s done nothing wrong beyond giving another name. A girl’s trick. Not important. If we can get in and out again without bringing it to the attention of the authorities I’d much prefer it.”

  “On the contrary,” Felipe overruled him. “She’s going to right a great wrong. She’s going to attend the Doge’s Palace and give a deposition. She’s going to free an innocent man.”

  “Nothing to do with me,” Captain Shore said sternly. “Look, signor, we’ve worked together in the past. I’ve shipped some valuables for you and never questioned you on the source of them, or the license to export. I’ve shipped what you’ve loaded, accepted the description on the docket, and never opened a case to check it. Neither of us have been overly fussy about the paperwork.”

  “We have always worked well together,” Felipe conceded.

  “I’d rather not draw attention to myself.”

  “No more would I,” Felipe agreed. “But it’s not as if we were smuggling—”

  “Ssh! Sssh!” Captain Shore cast an anguished glance at the quayside where idle men could be loitering and listening. “Not I! Never out of this port! The closest I’ve ever got has been your business! Your own business! When you dispatch huge boxes, and tell me it’s the private property of an ambassador. When you wrap a ton of statues and tell me it’s the lady’s private furniture. Again! She has a lot of furniture, I must say. And all of it in crates as heavy as stone! And this is the second time I’ve shipped her poor widow’s mite to London. And do you know what she does with it there?”

  Felipe shrugged. “Sits on it? Dines off it? Since it is her furniture?”

  “You know very well what she does with it.”

  “You have nothing to fear. I assure you. I am an agent of the state myself. I will change the registration of this lady—”

  “Just a milliner, really,” Sarah added.

  “I will go with her into the Doge’s Palace and she will make a deposition.”

  “So why are you so right and tight and aboveboard all of a sudden?” Captain Shore growled.

  “This lady has convinced me,” Felipe said, smiling down at Sarah. “I am persuaded.”

  “Is this what you want?” Captain Shore asked Sarah with desperate honesty. “Because if it’s a Banbury game, say so now.” He was gambling that the elegant Italian would not understand the London slang words for “a lie.”

  Felipe looked from one to the other. “Speak alone,” he said, waving them for’ard. “You need not speak in your barbaric language to elude me. Speak freely.”

  Captain Shore took two paces with Sarah. “What’s going on?”

  “He is who he says he is,” she said breathlessly. “A state spy. He put my uncle in prison, and he can get him out again.”

  “Lord!” the older man said miserably. “But why would he?”

  “He’s on my side now,” she claimed. “I’m going to change my name on the ship’s papers and go as myself, into the Doge’s Palace and set my uncle free.”

  “Child,” the Captain said to her. “You don’t know what you’re doin
g. You go in there, you’ll never get out again, and your grandmother will mourn for the two of you dead, and your mother will never forgive me. You’ll breathe your last in the icy air under the piombi as so many good men and women have done before you.”

  Captain Shore thought she was like her mother: brave and determined, her jaw set square, looking as her mother did when she received a bill she could not manage. “No, I won’t. For I’m going to free my uncle and get him home.”

  “Why would he help you? A cutthroat like him?”

  Her whole face lit up, as she leaned forward to whisper to him. “He’s sweet on me.”

  “Lord!” he moaned. “There’s no safety in that!”

  “I have to take the chance on it,” she said, her eyes still bright. “He’s the only chance I’ve got.”

  “Look,” he said. “If you go in there, with or without him, sweet or not, I won’t be able to get you out. I’ll have to sail without you. Don’t think I’ll be any help because I won’t be, I can’t be. Your uncle is almost certainly dead already, God rest his soul. And I can’t take that news back to your mother and tell her you’re gone too.”

  She gritted her teeth. “I’m doing it,” she said. “I’m going in there.”

  The fight went out of him in a muttered curse and he turned back to the Italian who was waiting at the head of the gangplank, watching the quay below where a load of carpets was being noisily valued and crated for export.

  “I hear you’re a reformed character,” the Captain said bluntly to him. “Transformed by love. Sweet on her?”