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She laughed at the newcomer’s answer, the frill on her white cap bobbing around her flushed red face. “You will!” she told him. “Or you’ll take a note of hand for it. It’s the easiest way to make money in the world. You buy sugar at harvesttime, you keep it cool in your store, and you sell it six months later, when the price has gone up again.”
“I have an interest in sugar,” Johnnie admitted. “Do you know of a sugar planter by the name of Mr. Peabody?”
“Course I do!” she said instantly. “Doesn’t he choose to stay here whenever he comes into town? Wasn’t he here just last month?”
“Was he?”
“Oh aye. Are you a friend of his?”
“No, no,” Johnnie said, realizing that he did not want to tell thehotelkeeper of his hopes to free Rowan. “I just know his name. From the captain.”
“I can introduce you when he next comes to town,” she promised. “Are you making a long stay with us, sir?”
“I’m setting up a small warehouse for goods,” Johnnie told her. “My family trade in silks and antiquities and elegant furnishings, and I am opening a shop here, like the Royal Exchange that we have in London.”
“Pretty things?” she said eagerly. “New things? London fashion?”
“Just what the ladies were wearing in London as I left.”
“May I have a sight of them?”
“When I open my store. They’re all in bond right now.”
“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” she assured him. “Half the island has pockets bursting with money and nothing to buy.”
“And the other half?” Johnnie asked, smiling.
She laughed in his face. “The other half are goods, themselves. We have our trade too, sir! But they’re all lost souls.”
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON, WINTER 1686
The magnificent chapel that had cost thousands of pounds in marble and gilding, in the heart of the royal palace of Whitehall, was finally completed, and Father Petre, rising unstoppably in the king’s favor, was to be Grand Almoner.
A great procession to midnight Mass was led by the Duke of Norfolk bearing the sword of state, to lay on the altar to show the kingdom of England’s obeisance to the Church of Rome. But at the doorway tothe Roman Catholic chapel, the duke hesitated, checked like a horse that refuses a jump.
“Go on!” the king said impatiently, just behind him, weighed down with robes of gold thread.
“I can’t,” the duke said unhappily. “Forgive me, sire. But I can’t do it. I cannot go in.”
“Go in! Go in!”
He was visibly distressed; the sword of state, held before him, shook in his hands. He had planned to do this ceremony, he had thought he could bring himself to it. Now, he was trapped between his loyalty to the king and to his faith. “I cannot, on my soul, enter a Roman Catholic church.”
The king was speechless for a moment then he burst out furiously: “Your father was a better man, and would have gone further!”
The duke bowed. “And your father would not have gone so far.”
There was a little gasp from the courtiers who were close enough to hear. The queen stepped forward. “If you will not come in, you can stay outside,” she said sharply to the duke. “You will not be missed.” She gestured to the many courtiers waiting to enter.
He bowed low to her, and he turned to the king. “I surrender the sword of state, and my commission in the army.” His voice was trembling with emotion as he resigned from his duty and abandoned his family’s tradition. James had none of the charm of his brother or his father. Either of them would have rescued the man from the conflict of his loyalty to his religion and to his king, neither of them would have put him in such a place, but James pushed past him without a word and went into the chapel, the queen and court following.
It was a blaze of gold, illuminated by thousands of candles, the choir were singing an anthem—it was a glorious moment that James was determined should not be spoiled by someone’s conscience. He, himself, was utterly convinced that this was the will of God.
The service was—as Livia had foreseen—long and filled with ritual, the priests almost invisible behind the richly gilded rood screen, the sermon a lengthy attack on the heresies of Protestantism. Even thequeen, the most devout of women, was tired by the time the Mass was over, and she could return to her bedroom.
The ladies responsible for undressing her opened the cedarwood chest and took out her fine nightgown, as she sat before the looking glass while another lady unpinned the jewels from her hair and gently removed the false ringlets.
“What is it?” Mary Beatrice asked Livia. “I can tell that you are waiting to say something.”
