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“I would,” Rob said earnestly. “I truly would.”
Dinner at the Priory was an informal family meal; but with a guest from court and Julia Reekie present, Alinor summoned her son, Rob, to the parlor to consult him on etiquette.
“We can’t lay on a show,” she said simply. “We can’t pretend we’re anything we’re not—but I don’t want to be rude. Should you take Lady Avery in? And Matthew take Julia? Cook’ll do her best, but there won’t be enough dishes for a fine dinner like she’s used to, and there’s no bakehouse or pastry maker for miles. The wines are good, I know that, as they’re in the cellar already. But we don’t have sweetmeats or anything but fruit.”
“I’m not taking her in to dinner,” he refused flatly. “We’ll just go in, and sit as we like. Don’t put her at the head of the table… it can be Matthew at one end and you at the other—if Ned’s not joining us?”
She laughed. “He’s sworn off.”
“Well, don’t put her beside me. Or opposite me. Spread the children out between us—” He broke off. “Ma—what’s she even doing here? What does she want?”
Alinor had a twinkle of laughter in her eyes. “Ah, Rob, she’s a rarity! I should hate her; but I can’t. She just arrived all smiles, and brought a great dressed turkey from London that’s too big to cook for tonight, and a caddy of the queen’s own tea. She chattered away to the girls in Italian, and was sweet as sugar to me and Ned.”
“I can’t stand to see her!” he burst out.
His mother looked at him. “It’s her son’s house. She got it for him.”
“You should never have let her come to the wharf. This is what comes of having anything to do with her!”
“Nay, this is what comes of raising Matthew as our own. We always knew she might come back for him. We knew she was a woman who would stoop to anything. That’s the risk we took for love of Matthew.” She stole a quick measuring look at his angry face. “Have you told Julia anything at all about her?”
“Only that she caused trouble for me in Venice, years ago. I told her father, the Alderman, all about it when we drew up the marriage contract—told him that I had been tricked by Livia into an invalid marriage. He told me to say nothing about it. Not to anyone, not even Julia. He said Julia would only be upset by it, and it was old history, and I should forget it.”
“Should you tell her now?” she asked.
“Ma, I can’t now,” he said, as frank as a boy. “She looks down on me as it is. I’m not going to tell her that Livia tricked me, and thenAlys. I’m not going to tell her that Livia cuckolded me, and had me locked up, that I could have died but for Sarah coming for me—” He broke off, his face dark with anger.
She put her hand on his. “Son, if you’re not going to speak of it to Julia, then don’t think of it. Livia’s not going to bring it up! Not now that she’s Lady Avery, gracing the court and so close to the queen. We’ll all do what your father-in-law, Alderman Johnson, advised: forget the past.”
He turned to the window to stare out at the rose garden and the flutter of falling petals from late roses. “Sarah will never forgive us for letting her girls near Livia.”
“Sarah’d understand that we can’t stop Livia coming to see her son in the house that she got him,” Alinor said steadily. “And anyway—she’s not staying. We just have to get through dinner, and through breakfast tomorrow, and then she’ll go. I think she just came for curiosity, to see the girls with Matthew.”
“Hester is to have nothing to do with her.”
Alinor smiled and put her hands over his. “She’ll see her at dinner and that’s all. Probably never see her again in her life. You do what your father-in-law said: forget the past.”
DEEP CAVE, BARBADOS, AUTUMN 1686
The two women and the little boy reached the spring water cave as the sun was rising. For the first time in years, Rowan faced the rising sun and said her prayers in a soft chorus with other voices. She splashed the water on her face and breast and heard the others beside her washing too. For a moment, she was back in the Quinnehtukqut River with her mother and her grandmother, her sisters and her brothers, the people from her village with a sense of herself as one of a community, not asingle individual like a lonely white man. Then she came back to herself and these two who had survived, and showed Caskwadadas the cleft in the rock, the dry cave behind it, and the gallery behind that.
“I think there are many caves, and many ways through the rock,” she said quietly, her voice echoing in the dry still air.
Wómpatuck’s eyes were bright with excitement, shining in the darkness of the cave. “Can I go and explore?” he asked.
“Not till we tie a twine around you, so that you can find your way back,” Caskwadadas said. “And no farther than this cave, till we know our way round.”
“There are steep cliffs,” Rowan warned. “And a quicksand.”
“A quicksand in the cave!” He was thrilled.
“All the safer for us,” Caskwadadas said. “If we can find a hiding place behind the quicksand, we could never be taken.”
“I know. But first we have to find some food. I’ve eaten nothing for two nights.”
Caskwadadas fished into a pocket and pulled out some pone bread wrapped in plantain leaves. “I saved this from my dinner. You share it with the boy. And then we’ll go deep into the caves and sleep till dusk. They’ll be looking for us today, but the next day or the day after they’ll give up. They’ll go first to the nearby farms. Most runaways hide in the slave houses and then go to Bridge and try to get on a ship.”
Rowan took a tiny piece of dry bread and ate it slowly, sipping the spring water from the palm of her hand as she ate. “People get on board a ship and get home?”
