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FOULMIRE PRIORY, SUSSEX, SUMMER 1686
As soon as she had seen Johnnie set sail, Alinor was anxious to take Ned to Foulmire—their childhood home.
“On your own?” Matthew asked.
Alinor smiled at him. “There’s a house full of servants.”
“Of course.” He hesitated. “Does Ma say it’s all right for you and Uncle Ned to go?”
“You know full well she doesn’t!” Alinor told him with a twinkle in her eye. “But I’m going if you say I may—it’s your house, Matthew, I’m not going to take squatters’ rights.”
“No! No! Of course you can go. I’ll hire a carriage to take you. But what if Uncle Ned gets worse while you’re down there?”
“He won’t get worse,” Alinor said confidently. “He’s going to get better.”
The carriage journey was hard for Ned, jolting on the poor roads. Alinor had told him where they were going; but he made no sign of understanding, and lay across the seat, his eyes closed against the bright light and the pain.
Only when the carriage stopped at the causeway did he open his eyes when the briny air flooded into the carriage and the wide sky arched over them. He heard the crying of the gulls and the twitter of the little terns over the bright water of the harbor. Incredulously, he turned his head to Alinor and met her radiant smile.
“I’ve brought you home,” she told him.
Every night as she put him to bed, she prayed for Rowan’s safety, naming her clearly in the prayers, and Ned said “Amen,” the word more distinct and his voice stronger every night. Every day, she walked beside his wheeled chair, showing him the lush growth of summer in the tidelands, the scramble of dog roses through the hedges, the thickness of the grass in the meadow and the lambs prancing in the fields like little dancers. Huge flocks of seabirds came and went with the tides and the little terns hovered over the blue waters of the harbor and nested, laying eggs like speckled pebbles on the shingle banks, so that Alinor stopped walking there until the tiny birds were fledged and flying, skimming the water like silver-winged swallows. She talked to Ned all the time of the little changes in the garden and on the land and at sea, until slowly, over the summer, he learned, like a child, to walk and speak again.
On Midsummer Eve, Alinor went to the churchyard at midnight and stood in the graveyard while the bell in the tower tolled twelve times. She looked towards the graveyard, her hand shading her eyes, dreading that someone she loved would come slowly through the gravestones. She was afraid she would see her brother, Ned, as a warning that he would not outlast the year. But deeper than any other fear was that she would see her lover, James Avery, come slowly through the moonlit churchyard where he had once walked before.
But she saw no one: not Johnnie at sea nor Rowan, enslaved, so far away. Content that her family and those she loved would live another year, Alinor went home under a huge round strawberry moon so brightthat she blew out the lantern and walked along the hedgerow, a silent white-winged barn owl going before her, a moon shadow behind her.
REEKIE WHARF, LONDON, SUMMER 1686
Twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Alys put Mia and Gabrielle into Mr. Jonas Rode’s wherry and waved them off from the Horsleydown Stairs, watching him row upriver, sometimes going easily with the tide, sometimes working against it. Where the water was rough under London Bridge, he set them onshore and picked them up again on the far side at Beaufort Waterman’s Stairs, even when they begged him to let them shoot the bridge in the boat, like daredevils.
“And have your grandmother gut me like a pilchard?” was all he would say, rowing them upriver past the old dock of Queenhithe, and Puddle Dock.
“And here we are, Venice itself!” he announced proudly, every time that he turned the wherry into the New Canal.
Dutifully, the two girls laughed at his joke; but it was true that the broad quays on either side of the wide water had been designed to resemble the pavements of Venice, the water and the bridges to resemble the canals. The New Canal in London was not nearly as busy as the Grand Canal in Venice; there were no gondolas arrowing through the water, no queues ofsandoli, flat-bottomed boats carrying goods to market; there were no singers warbling in closed cabins, or beautiful masked women parading on the quaysides. To the girls, it was eerily quiet, a beautiful broad waterway through the city, passing underone elegant new bridge after another, between wide wharves of stone, fronted by warehouses still standing empty, as tenants swore the rents were overpriced. At Holborn Stairs, Mr. Rode, the wherryman, held the iron ring to keep the craft against the steps, glaring upwards to make sure that Matthew was waiting to meet them.
“Aye, there he is,” he would say. “Always punctual, I’ll say that for him. Young ladies, you can disembark. All ashore!”
“Thank you,” Gabrielle said politely as Mia stepped from the wherry and went up the steps to Matthew.
“And I’ll be here to take you home an’ all,” the wherryman assured her. “Don’t you step into another boat. I am to come for you. Your grandma, Mrs. Shore, paid me for the return journey.”
Grandly, Matthew offered his arm to each girl and escorted them along Holborn, past vendors of little goods, milkmaids, and beggars, across the busy thoroughfare to the quieter and more elegant area of Hatton Garden. They walked three abreast, Matthew in the middle with the girls on either side of him, and more than once, some street wag shouted: “Don’t be greedy!” Or “Share ’em out!” Both girls, strictly raised by their mother, neither glanced nor responded to catcalls, and though Matthew bristled slightly at the impertinence, he felt a hidden glow of pride that he was escorting two pretty girls. They were good companions, striding easily at his pace, always chattering, whether it was news from the warehouse, what they were studying, or gossip from the scandal sheets about the royal court.
“How d’you even know such things?” Matthew demanded when they gave him the details of the queen’s dress at a dinner where she had eaten nothing.
“Prynne gets the newssheet, and hides it from Hester, in a Latin book in the doctor’s library,” Mia said demurely. “We read it when we’re supposed to be drinking chocolate and resting from the enormous effort of reading a book.”
Matthew could not contain his laugher. “You are a pair of romps.”
They paused to cross Hatton Garden to Rob Reekie’s door, which proudly showed the doctor’s special brass door knocker.
“I’ll come home again on Thursday to walk you over,” Matthew promised. “But after that, Trinity term ends for the summer.” Hehesitated, suddenly awkward, intensely aware of the two girls. “Shall we all go down to Foulmire and stay with Mother Alinor and Uncle Ned? They’re down there for the summer.” He felt himself flushing and looked from one bright face to another. “I mean… I am going… I have to go anyway… Would you like…”
“Oh yes!” Gabrielle said. “I do love it there. Do let’s go.”
“You do?” Matthew asked, trying to recover.
