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“Your face. Like a ghost.”
“I feel like a ghost.”
REEKIE WHARF, LONDON, SPRING 1686
Johnnie, hurrying from his work with the East India Company in Leadenhall Street, a letter crackling in his pocket, strode to the river, summoned a wherry with a shrill whistle, and directed it to the Horsleydown Stairs.
At the warehouse he put his head around the door of the countinghouse. “Ma—I’ve come to see Grandmother. I’ve got news of Rowan, and she’ll want my uncle Ned to know.”
His mother came out into the hall, wiping her hands on her apron. “What news?” she asked shortly.
“She’s been sold to a Mr. Peabody, he’s got a sugar plantation in the north of the island. So at least we know she survived the voyage. She’s alive! I came as soon as I got the message.”
“God bless her,” his mother said unenthusiastically. “Thanks be. So—we are satisfied now?”
He shook his head. “I’m going out there,” he said. He put his hand out to stop her instant disagreement. “Let me tell Grandmother first, and then you can break a peal over my head. But I think I should, Ma. I can’t settle till I know.”
“Since when was she your burden?” his mother began, but he had slipped upstairs to where Alinor was sitting in the table at her window, and his uncle Ned was propped up on the sofa, his eyes closed, his limbs limp.
Johnnie beckoned Alinor from the room with a jerk of his head and whispered the news to her.
“You shall tell him yourself,” she said.
“Can he hear?”
“Surely.” She took Johnnie by the hand and led him up to the sofa.Ned, shaved and neatly dressed, looked as if he were sleeping, but Johnnie knew that he never opened his eyes.
“Ned, here’s our Johnnie with news of Rowan,” Alinor said. Johnnie noticed that she did not speak with special distinction, nor did she raise her voice.
“He can understand?” he confirmed.
She smiled at him. “He’s in there,” she said gently. “He’s just the same as ever. He’ll speak when he can.”
Johnnie looked doubtfully at the waxen pallor of the older man.
“Ned,” she said again, even more quietly. “Here’s Johnnie. He has news of Rowan. Of Rowan.”
Only Alinor could have seen the tiny signs of awareness in his face at Rowan’s name.
“Go on, Johnnie, tell him!”
Alys appeared in the doorway, a hot drink in her hand. “Should he have this?”
“In a minute.” Alinor took it from her.
Johnnie pulled the letter from his pocket. “She’s alive,” he said. “At any rate, she survived the journey.”
Ned’s eyes were still closed.
“She’s been sold to a planter on Barbados, Mr. Peabody.” Johnnie proffered the letter to Ned’s sightless face, and then showed it to Alinor instead. “The captain writes his name clear. Peabody’s Plantation, in St. Thomas’s Parish.”
With enormous effort Ned nodded his head. They could see the muscles in his face strain as his eyelashes fluttered. Slowly, his lips moved, he took an effortful breath, then he spoke. “Rowan!” he said.
Johnnie shot a glance at his grandmother. Alinor and Alys were holding each other, arms around each other’s waists, watching Ned.
“Is that his first word?” he asked, quite awed.
“Praise God,” Alys whispered.
