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The man tore away, up to the corner of the street where people were building a bonfire to celebrate. Householders threw firewood into the street from their own stores, candles were lit at every window, cooks brought out food and wine and ale, and the house owners were as wildly joyful as the people running through the streets. People were bellowing hymns to celebrate the victory of the English church over the English king, and then a fiddler struck up the mocking jig—“Lillibullero.”
“A big loss for the king,” Alys said tightly once the Alderman himself had bawled the news to his countinghouse and everyone threw their hats in the air and were dismissed for the day.
He was exultant. “It’s the end for the king,” Jeremiah Johnson toldher solemnly. “If he’d been a king and not a tyrant, he’d have allowed parliament to sit, and they would have voted him out, as they did his father. As it is, he closed parliament, but he couldn’t close down the people. If he can’t pack a jury, if he can’t control the judges, if he can’t make the bishops preach his sermon, then he can’t rule. Mark my words: the great lords will send for Princess Mary and her husband—and him the greatest soldier in Europe. You get yourself down to Sussex, Mrs. Shore, and I’ll send my daughter and my granddaughter to you. This is the end for the king. There’ll be another war to get rid of him. The baby was not his savior but the final straw. William of Orange is coming with his army, and he’ll pull the last Stuart from his throne by brute force. And you and Julia had better not be in London when that happens!”
FAIRMERE PRIORY, SUSSEX, SUMMER 1688
Alys, safely at the Priory with Matthew, Mia, and Gabrielle, welcomed Hester and Julia Reekie as if they were refugees from a city in flames.
“The city!” Julia exclaimed, stepping out of the Reekie coach. “My heart!”
“Come in,” Alys said, guiding her through the front door and into the parlor.
Julia cast one scathing look at Matthew and beckoned Hester to come with her. “My laudanum!” she demanded.
“Was the journey very bad?” Alys asked Hester quietly.
The girl was calm. “No,” she said. “We went west before we took the road south to Chichester, so we were nowhere near the riots, and Papa sent outriders for the first hour. But Mama is easily frightened.And Papa would not come because he has patients. And then he said that if there was to be an invasion, doctors would be needed and that was when she had the vapors.”
“Well, you’re both safe now,” Alys said warmly to her niece. “Go and find the girls, they’ve been waiting for you. I can take care of your mother.”
Hester, Mia, and Gabrielle turned the lock on Hester’s bedroom door to ensure that they would not be disturbed, and Hester, fighting her tears, told them of her brief betrothal to Matthew and the abrupt ending.
“I don’t understand it,” Gabrielle said, looking out of the window of Hester’s bedroom over the rose garden, which was bobbing with a sea of blooms. “I was certain that he was in love with Mia, and then he told us that it was a question of honor, a family feud.”
“He was clearing the way to marry Hester for her money,” Mia said spitefully.
Hester flushed red. “I am sorry,” she said. “My mama and his arranged it, I would never have… and I truly think—”
“Of course we know!” Gabrielle said, impulsively taking her hand. “Mia, don’t speak like that. Hester, of course we know you had no say in it, either a proposal or a refusal. Don’t listen to Mia, she’s still hurt…” She looked from one to the other and declared: “Now you see why women should always be true to each other! It all goes wrong when two women want the same man!”
“Only two?” Mia said pointedly, and when her sister flinched, she burst out: “Oh, forgive me, Gabrielle. Forgive me, Hester! Let’s be as we were when we all first met, and no one was in love with anyone, and no one was going to marry anyone, and we came for lessons at your house, and Matthew walked us there and back, and we were all such good friends!”
“Can you go back in time?” Hester asked. “Because I can’t just forget it. I told him I wanted his proposal, he said…” She broke off.
“Of course you can go back in time,” Gabrielle claimed. “You can’tlive here and go to church past all those graves, and listen to the sea, and not wander into the past. You can put the proposal behind you and know that it is just one shadow in a life that will have light and shade. The past is all around us: the priest and the mermaid, our bisnonna and the man she loved. Even our grandmother and her crime that made them leave. It’s all here, the tracks are still in the mud.”
“She’s gone to the faeries,” Mia mock-whispered to Hester. “It’s in the blood. It’s the full moon again.”
Hester managed a watery giggle. “We three can be friends as we were,” she said. “But how can we be friendly with Matthew? I can’t look at him, I feel so ashamed. I’d never have come here again if my papa had not insisted. He said London was too dangerous for us to stay.”
“Gabrielle can tell him that he has to apologize to you and make amends,” Mia ruled. “She’s the only one he hasn’t insulted.”
“I wouldn’t say I was insulted…” Hester began. “Papa said it was a problem from the lawyers, a question of settlements…”
“He told me it was a question of honor,” Mia said. “So Gabrielle is the only one who he hasn’t been prevented from marrying by something that none of us understand. And that he won’t explain. She has to tell him that we can be friends if he will say sorry to our faces and be as he was.”
“I really can’t have a conversation like that,” Gabrielle demurred.
“No, you must,” Hester told her. “The two of us can’t say anything to him. And none of us will be happy unless we can all be friends again.”
“Tonight,” Mia insisted, “we’ll go to bed when Nonna does. You stay up with him and tell him then.”
Matthew was tongue-tied at dinner, and the girls talked among themselves. Alys looked from one young person to another and thought that it was inevitable that Livia would meddle with her son’s happinessand hurt him in the process. There was no use warning him against his mother’s influence, he would have to learn to not trust her. Alys felt bound by the agreement that she had made with Alinor, that they would raise Livia’s child to respect his mother, and never reveal her secrets, just as they had never revealed their own.
She saw that Gabrielle hung back when the girls picked up their bedtime candles from the table in the hall, and she said good night to them all, only reminding Matthew to rake out the fire and put up the fire guard.
“Shall I draw the runes against wildfire in the ashes?” Gabrielle smiled, making Alys laugh.
