Dark Tides

by Philippa Gregory

  “Is that what you think?” Felipe asked Sarah, a laugh in his voice.

  She met his gaze. “Yes, I do. Is it not true?”

  “Sweet?” he confirmed the English word. “You mean to tell him that I am in love with you?”

  She shot him a flirtatious glance. “Not yet,” she said carefully. “It’s as if you’re disposed to fall in love with me.”

  He nodded. “That’s quite right. I am disposed to it, Miss Jolie. And you? Are you sweet on me?”

  “If you could do this some other time,” the Captain interrupted. “I could get on with loading my ship.”

  Sarah dragged her gaze from Felipe and giggled. “I’m sorry. Of course. I’ll just take my papers and we’ll change my passport.”

  “I’ll follow behind you,” Captain Shore promised her. “I’ll see you in. I’ll wait outside. If you’re not out within the hour, I’ll go to the English ambassador.”

  “What can he do?” Signor Russo asked with interest.

  “Nothing,” Captain Shore said miserably. “As you very well know. But he’s the only man in the whole of this city who ought to take an interest in this woman—young enough to be my daughter—walking into that circle of hell. And you taking her. What’s to say you’re not arresting her and getting the bounty for her innocent neck?”

  “This innocent neck was certainly born to be hanged,” Felipe told him. “And besides, we are all agreed I am sweet on her. Have you got her false papers?”

  Captain Shore opened the ship’s log and handed Sarah’s papers over.

  “First we’ll correct them at the Custom House and then we’ll go up to the palace.”

  “Aye,” the Captain said. “And pray God you come strolling back again. I’ll come to the gate, and watch for her to come out, God spare her. And to watch you.” Sarah and Felipe went down the gangplank, and as the Captain followed he muttered under his breath. “And I’m not the only one that hopes they arrest you and fling you down somewhere very deep.”

  * * *

  Correcting the papers was easy with Felipe Russo’s fluent explanation about Sarah concealing her name until she could claim his help. “A friend of the family,” he murmured as the papers were stamped and sealed with wax.

  The three of them took a traghetto across the canal, and then walked, with Captain Shore trailing behind, to the entrance to the Doge’s Palace. Sarah gave a little shudder as the shadow of the great gateway fell on her, and Felipe took her elbow and guided her in.

  “Here to see His Excellency Giordano,” he said pleasantly. “Signor Russo and a guest.”

  The clerk at the gatehouse entered their names in a register and stamped a pass. “You know where to go?” he asked.

  “Of course, we are old friends,” Felipe said, and guided Sarah across the courtyard, through the double doors, and up a marble staircase.

  “Are all these rooms prisons?” she whispered.

  He laughed, his voice echoing on the quiet stair. “Oh! No! These are all offices. A thousand clerks work here like maggots in cheese, reporting on everything: trade, plague, religion, inventions, people, gold, Ottomans (we keep a watch on the Ottomans for the rest of the world), silks, sea currents, heresies. Whatever there is in the Republic we watch it and note it and report on it. The Council of Ten know everything there is to be known, and their advice to the Doge guides his decision, which is never wrong.”

  “It was wrong when they arrested my uncle,” Sarah said stoutly, though she was unsteady on her feet with fear.

  “The advice was wrong then,” Signor Russo agreed. “My advice, actually. But the Doge cannot be wrong. Remember that. It’s illegal to say he is.”

  Sarah paused and looked at him incredulously.

  “Remember it,” was all he said.

  “What will they do to you?” Sarah asked nervously as they climbed up and up the stairs. “For bad advice?”

  “Oh, they’ll make me rewrite my report,” he said casually. “And set me to capture the real murderer.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that!” She suddenly paused. “The Nobildonna’s husband was truly murdered? So there is a real murderer out there?”

  “Almost certainly,” he said nonchalantly. “Come on now. They know how long it takes to get from the gate to the office, we can’t be late.”

  “They’re watching us now?”

  His face was completely serious as he nodded to the darkened internal windows all along the corridor. “Oh yes. They are watching us now.”

  DECEMBER 1670, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND

  Ned set off early up the road of snow to the minister’s house, with only some dried fruit in a little box in his basket. He did not want to stop on the way for trade or conversation, he was haunted by what Wussausmon had told him, that the English had been guided to their New World by men who named themselves devils. He was desperate to talk to the minister, to confirm that it was God’s will that the English came to the New World, that it was their destiny, Ned’s own destiny, to conquer the land and to show the rest of the world what a divinely inspired nation could be.

  He timed his visit for the morning prayer meeting in the minister’s home. He wanted to hear the simple clarity of the prayers, he wanted to hear the long sermon. Since it was winter and everyone had work to do, John Russell kept to the point: these were the hardest days in a hard year, the darkest of nights in uncertain times, God was guiding them, they must never doubt but that God was with them.

  “Amen,” John concluded the prayers, and said good-bye to his congregation as they went out into the cold.

  Ned paused in the hall. “Minister, I have doubts,” he said very quietly.

  “God be with you, Ned. Doubts come from the devil,” John Russell replied simply. “Do you doubt that you are elect, one of God’s chosen?”

  “No,” Ned said uncertainly. “I am doubting our mission here, my work in the world.”

  The minister nodded. “Come on upstairs,” he said. “All of us doubt our mission, and those of us who have been defeated and have to endure the calumny of the world have a hard road to tread.” He led the way up the stairs. The spare-room door was open, for William and Edward to follow the service, listening in silence. Ned greeted them.

  “Did you get my warning to the Councils?” he asked. “Will it have to wait for spring?”

  “I wrote, and sent a letter downstream,” John said. “The river is open lower down and a native in a mishoon was going, even in this cold weather; he said he’d take it to the coast. The ships for the coastal trade should be sailing, between storms, so it should get to Plymouth and then Boston, it’ll take days, or even weeks. But yesterday I had a message overland from the Council brought by the militia they were so anxious to get news to the outlying towns. It’s bad news. Very bad. They confirm what you say, Ned.”

  Ned looked at the grave faces of the three other men.

  “They’ve had reports from all around the country that King Philip has been holding feasts and dances at his winter quarters,” John Russell said grimly. “Not even this weather can stop him.”

  Ned nodded in silence.

  “They didn’t know he was sending scouts out. How do they even get messages through?”

  “They have ways,” Ned said, thinking of the snowsnake track, and the smoke signals. “They’re not afraid of the forest, they walk on the frozen river. They aren’t trapped in their houses like we are by the cold.”

  “The Council says that someone has seen that King Philip is stockpiling weapons and his pnieses—his men at arms—are in black warpaint.”

  “What does that mean?” Edward asked.

  “It means they’re preparing for war,” Ned said unhappily. “If the Council would just talk to him…”

  “As soon as it thaws they will summon him to Plymouth and he will have to answer for his acts. They swear that this time they will teach him a lesson he’ll not forget. He’s not allowed to prepare for war—that’s rebellion against our rule. We will accuse him
of rebellion and he will face the greatest punishment.”

  William nodded. “Hanging,” he said shortly.

  Ned, shocked, looked from one royal rebel to the other. “We can’t hang him for rebellion. He’s not subject to our laws, he’s not under our rule. He’s a leader on his own lands. The treaty—”

  “The treaty said that he should stay on his lands and we on ours,” John Russell interrupted. “That we should live in peace. That his enemies would be ours, and ours would be his.”

  “And they’re stockpiling weapons,” William pointed out.

  “We sell them weapons!” Ned said despairingly. “We sell them the very weapons we’re complaining about!”

  “We sell them for hunting,” Edward ruled. “Not for them to be turned on us.”

  Ned turned to John Russell. “All this could be peaceably resolved,” he said. “But if they summon King Philip and treat him like a traitor, they will shame him before his people; that will anger him, things will get worse. If they would meet him halfway somewhere, and give him gifts and treat him like the friend that his father was. If they would speak to him like an equal and promise to stop buying land and cheating his people out of land! If they would take away the cause of war, then it won’t come to war. Surely! Isn’t that in our interest? Isn’t that the best outcome for us all?”

  William shook his head. “It’s too late, Ned. Remember the old king, Bloody Charles? There comes a point where you can’t keep asking someone to give their word and change their ways. There comes a point where you have to capture them, arrest them, and kill them.”

  “It’ll be the same with this king,” Edward agreed. “He’s growing overmighty. We have to stop him now.”

  “He doesn’t even call himself a king!” Ned protested.

  Grimly, the three men shook their heads. “It’s God’s will,” John Russell said simply. “Who are we to question?” He dropped a heavy hand on Ned’s shoulder. “Are these the doubts?” he asked gently. “Are these your doubts, Ned? Are you doubting God’s intention for us?”

  Ned knew he could not argue with God. “Mercy…” he said quietly. “Mercy for the Massasoit…”

  “As soon as the thaw comes we’re ordered to muster and train the town militia,” John Russell told him. “You’ll be summoned, Ned, and we’ll need you more than anyone. You’re one of the few who has seen action. You’ll be made a captain.”

  Edward leaned forwards and clapped Ned on the shoulder. “You’ll be a commander, Ned! And we’ll advise. We’ll stay out of sight but we’ll order the drilling and training, and we’ll plan defenses.”

  Ned remembered Wussausmon saying that the fences would not stop a deer and that the People could command fire to go where they wanted. “We’ve only got stock fences,” he said. “Nothing that could defend us against an attack.”

  “They won’t directly attack us,” John Russell said. “They wouldn’t dare. I expect them to creep up on a few deserted farmhouses. They’d no more attack us than fall on Springfield. They know we’re too strong for them.”

  “But you should come into town, Ned,” William said. “You’re too remote, out there by the river, and they could scalp you in the night and get away by canoe and we’d not even know it. You’d better come into town and then you can supervise the defenses.”

  Ned thought for a moment he must have taken a fever he felt such a rush of sickness and weariness. “I can’t leave the ferry,” he said miserably. “If the people from Hatfield want to come over in spring, especially if they feel in danger, I have to be there to bring them over. And I can’t leave my beasts in the winter and I can’t drive them in through the snow.”

  “The Hatfield people must fall back inside our palisade as soon as they can travel,” Edward ordered. “And the ferry ropes cut, and the raft sunk, so the enemy cannot use it.”

  Ned shook his head, at the thought of destroying his ferry, at the thought of Quiet Squirrel and her people being named as enemies, at his sense of the world falling out of control, falling from godliness and certainty into fear and war.

  “You’ll have to come into town,” his old commander told him, and Ned heard the order. “Your place is here, with your own people. Now that it’s war.”

  DECEMBER 1670, LONDON

  Dinner with his aunt and Livia was even worse than James had feared. From the first introduction it was a joust of beautiful manners.

  “May I present the Nobildonna da Ricci—” he started.

  “Peachey,” Livia corrected him.

  “You don’t know her name?” his aunt turned to him.

  “My fidanzato mistakes,” Livia said smiling, curtseying low. “It is my accent! I am learning to speak English, you know. My name is pronounced Peachey.”

  James’s aunt, who had known Sir William Peachey of Sussex in the days before the war, gave her nephew a long considering look, and curtseyed very slightly to the widow. “Any relation to the Sussex Peacheys?”

  “Very distant,” Livia answered truthfully.

  “This is my aunt, Dowager Lady Eliot,” James said.

  Livia returned the curtsey. “Ah! You are a widow like me?” Livia tipped her head on one side to convey sympathy and smiled tenderly.

  “Indeed,” her ladyship said, immune both to sympathy and the smile.

  “And you have children?”

  “Four: Sir Charles my son, my daughter Lady Bellamy, and my daughter Lady de Vere, and another daughter.”

  “Not married?” Livia was as fast as a hound on the scent of the sole disappointment in this list of social triumph.

  “Married but not to a nobleman; she is Mrs. Winters.”

  “I am surprised you do not live with them?”

  “A glass of wine?” James interposed. “Before dinner?”

  “I live at Northside Manor. To keep James company after his loss.”

  “And now I will be able to comfort him,” Livia assured her. “And you can be released to their ladyships and the little Mrs.”

  “I expect I will stay at Northside,” her ladyship said firmly. “I lived very happily with dear Agatha.”

  “White or red?”

  “Agatha?” Livia’s laugh tinkled out. “Ah, forgive me, this I cannot say at all. Who is dear Athaga? Agatta?”

  “Lady Agatha Avery, James’s late wife, as dear as a daughter to me.”

  Livia’s head tilted to the side again. “And at last you can return to your own daughters,” she said. “How they must have missed you, while you were staying on and on in my dear Sir James’s house!”

  “When you are settled in, and you know how things go on, in one of the great homes of Yorkshire, I shall perhaps move; but only to the Dower House nearby,” her ladyship said firmly. “I have agreed it with Sir James.”

  “My fidanzato cannot be wrong,” Livia declared with a little smile at him. “His judgment is perfect. If that is what he prefers I am sure it should take place at once. Perhaps you had better go to the Dower House now?”

  “Surely, they will serve dinner soon!” James remarked.

  “It is delayed?” Livia was all concern. She smiled at Lady Eliot. “Is this how you keep order in the great house of Yorkshire? I shall have to learn your patience! In my home, in the Palazzo Fiori, I was very strict.”

  DECEMBER 1670, VENICE

  The Doge’s Palace was like a warren of stone. Felipe and Sarah took a small stone staircase at the side of the building that climbed up and up with unending little passages running off to one side and another. Felipe followed the official, Sarah behind him, and a guard brought up the rear. The official turned into a set of rooms and they followed a twisting corridor paneled with wood, which went past one tiny office and another. All of them had open fanlights so every office could eavesdrop on the talk in the corridor; all of them had windows set at an angle so they could observe who went past, without the visitors seeing inside the offices. All of them had double doors so that no one loitering outside could listen to a quiet conversati
on in the room.

  They came to a double doorway; Felipe tapped and confidently led Sarah through the first door into the tiny lobby and then through the second. It was a small room, with space only for a fireplace and a desk. A clerk sat behind a table, pen poised; he rose as Felipe entered and greeted him as a friend. Briefly, Felipe explained that his accusation had been incorrect, that Roberto Reekie was innocent and here was his niece come to beg for his release. Sarah apologized for giving a false name on arrival in Venice and said that she was seeking her uncle who had been wrongly arrested. The clerk made her sign the document in triplicate and then Felipe Russo opened the door and she waited outside in the twilight, a narrow slit of a window far above her head. She could hear nothing through the thick double doors but inside the room Felipe explained to the clerk that Roberto Ricci was innocent and should be released. He was in there for more than an hour and when he came out his face was grave.

  “My uncle?” she demanded, her hand against the carved paneling, to keep her steady. “He’s not… he’s not…”

  “He’s not dead yet,” he said flatly. “But I’m sorry, we’re not in time to save him.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “Please tell me,” she whispered. “Please tell me what’s happened.”

  He took her arm and started down the winding corridor, his voice very low. “They knew he was a doctor, they knew that he worked with patients with quatrain fever, studied old documents with the Jewish doctors and translators of the Arab physicians.”

  “Is that wrong?”

  “No, that’s allowed—you have to have a license—but he had one. But since he was an expert, accused of a crime and formally denounced by witnesses, they sent him to the Isola del Lazzaretto Nuovo—the quarantine island for people suspected of the plague or sick with other fevers. You’ll have come past it when you sailed in—did you see the ships flying a yellow flag to show infection?”

  Sarah was still stunned. “Yes, yes.”