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There was an aghast silence.
“Rowan? You’ve seen her? She’s alive?”
“She’s gone,” Ned lied without a moment’s hesitation. “She’s taken ship. Stowed away.”
“I can’t believe it! Where was she hiding all this time?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did you see her?”
“My second night here. After the dinner for the new governor.”
“You didn’t wake me?”
“The last trump wouldn’t have woke you. You were drunk as a lord that night. She came to see us both. To say good-bye.”
“You never told me? And she went away without seeing me?” He had a sudden thought. “She didn’t see me like that, drunk and celebrating the governor, did she?”
“No. She wouldn’t have minded the drink. It’s how you live when you’re sober that’s worse. There are sides in this world, Johnnie. She’s on the side of the imprisoned, the enslaved, the poor. And you’re on the other. The slave masters, the slave drivers, those that profit from cruelty.”
“Everyone profits from it!” Johnnie raged. “Me! The wharf! My ma! You!”
Ned was stubborn. “A lie—a vile lie. The slaves don’t profit, the poor don’t profit. I won’t. It is possible to eat and not taste blood. To wear clothes that are not hemmed with some poor woman’s sweat.”
“Well, I won’t,” Johnnie swore. “I won’t choose to be poor. Not for you. Not even for her. I can’t choose to be poor. It matters to me morethan life itself, Ned. I watched my ma fight for every penny she earned, and I swore that I wouldn’t be poor like her, afraid of debt like her. I will do anything before I lose family money. And now I am making money, a fortune, day after day. I can’t turn my back on it.”
“And I’ll never side with the rich,” Ned said grimly. “I’ll never side with the rich and powerful against the poor and those struggling.”
There was a long silence between the two men.
“So, you’ll go home?” Johnnie asked. “There’s no place for you here. You’re either white and a slave driver; or black and a slave. There’s no in-between place. There’s no white man on the side of the slaves.”
“Not yet. But there will be. I know it. You’ll stay here?”
“Until I am rich enough.”
“You’ll never be rich enough.” Ned’s prediction was like a sorrowful curse. “That’s the thing about wealth and power. Once you’ve learned to want it—that’s all you learn. You don’t learn satisfaction, you just want more. There’s never enough. You’ll never be rich enough, Johnnie, and you’ll die in dissatisfaction.”
“And you’ll go home, and declare war against the Stuarts and tyranny? Get yourself half killed again on a lost cause?”
Ned laughed in genuine amusement. “Aye. If the call comes, I’ll answer it. Every time. And one day enough of us will answer, and we will win.”
Johnnie sighed at his uncle’s vision. “The call?”
“Liberty! Like always. Liberty!”
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1688
Livia sent a note to Matthew’s new legal firm to ask him to call on her at the palace at his own convenience. In case he was so mistaken as to think she wanted him to consult his convenience, she added a postscript: “Six o’clock this evening.”
“Signora Madre?” He came into her private rooms and bowed over her hand. She rose up and drew his handsome face down and kissed him on the forehead and both cheeks.
“My son.Caro figlio!”
“You sent for me?”
“I did indeed, but let me look at you before we sit down.”
