“Heavens! You let her live away from home? In Venice we would never allow a girl such freedom.”
Alys shrugged. “She’s had to earn her own living, she has to have a trade. She’s a sensible girl, I trust her.”
Livia’s laughter grated on Alys. “Allora! It is the young men I do not trust!”
Alys managed a smile; but said nothing.
“You do not arrange for her marriage to a wealthy gentleman?”
Alys shook her head. “No. It is better for her that she has her own trade, we think. And we don’t know any wealthy gentlemen.”
“But what about your visitor? Is he not wealthy?”
“We don’t really know him.” Alys ended this inquiry. “You must be very tired from your journey? But tomorrow I would be glad if you could tell me about your life with Rob. And… and… how he died.”
“You surely had our letters?”
“We had letters from him when he first took up his post in Venice, and then he wrote that you would marry. He told us of little Matteo’s birth and your happiness. But then we heard nothing until you wrote that he had drowned. We only got that letter last week. And then three days ago we had your letter from Greenwich telling of your arrival.”
“Ah, I am so sorry! So sorry! I wrote from Venice at once, after my loss, and sent it at once. I did not think it would be so slow! I wrote again the moment that I landed. How good you are to welcome me when I bring such bad news!”
The maid came into the room and cleared the dishes. Nobildonna da Ricci looked around as if she were expecting more than the single plate of fruit and pastries.
“May I call you Livia?” Alys asked her. “You shall call me Sister Alys, if you wish.”
“Roberto used to call me Lizzie, which made me laugh. He said he would make me into a real Englishwoman.”
“You speak English so beautifully.”
“Ah, my mother was an Englishwoman.”
“Really? And your title?”
“It is my family title,” she said. “An ancient name. So when I married, I added it to Ricci. That’s the correct thing to do, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Alys said. “We’ve not got a title, we’re not like that. Just a small family with nothing but this warehouse and two horses and the cart.”
“But Roberto told me that Sir William Peachey was his patron, and James Summer was his great friend and tutor. He promised that when we came home we would have a great house in London, that he would be a famous physician.”
“Rob was always ambitious,” Alys conceded awkwardly. “But there’s no great house. Just here.” She looked around the small room and the cold grate. “This is an achievement for us… when I think where we came from…”
“Where did you come from?” Livia was curious. “For Roberto told me of land like the Venice lagoon—half land and half water, changing every tide, with the birds calling between sky and sea.”
“It was like that,” Alys agreed. “We were always on the edge, between poverty and surviving, between friends and enemies, in the tidelands between water and fields. We were on the edge of everything. At least here we are in a world with a firm footing. At least Uncle Ned is making a new life in a new land as he wants.”
“But I want nothing more.” Livia clasped Alys’s hands, as if to swear a promise. “Nothing more than to enter the world with a firm footing. Nothing more than to make a new life, a better life. And we shall call each other sister and love each other as sisters should.”
JUNE 1670, LONDON
The first morning after her arrival, Alinor invited Livia to take breakfast with her, and Alys helped the maid carry the heavy trays up the winding stairs. A small round table was laid with plain cutlery in the turret window and Alinor sat with her back to the river, with the glazed door open on the latch behind her, so that the ribbons of her cap stirred a little in the breeze. She could hear the gulls calling. It was a slack tide and the skiffs went quickly upstream, the sunlight shone on the water, and the ceiling of the room was dappled with the reflected ripples of light. “Tell me about your life in Venice,” she invited Livia. “When did you meet my son?”
“We met in Venice. Italian families are very strict, you know? I was married very young to a much older man, a friend of my grandfather’s. When the Conte, my husband, was taken ill, I had to call in a doctor; and everyone said that the young English doctor was the best in the world for my husband’s condition.”
“He trained at the university in Padua,” Alinor said proudly.
“He came every day, he was so very kind. My husband had always been—” She broke off and looked at the older woman as if she could trust her to understand. “My husband was very… harsh with me. To tell you the truth: he was cruel, and Roberto was so kind. I fell in love with him.” She looked from the older woman to the younger one. “I tried not to. I knew it was wrong, but I could not help myself.”
Neither mother nor daughter exchanged the smallest glance. Alys fixed her eyes on the table as her mother watched Livia. “It is sometimes hard for a woman,” Alinor agreed quietly. “Did Rob love you?”
“Not at first,” she said. “He was always so careful, so correct. So English! You know what I mean?” She looked at their closed faces. “No, I suppose not! He used to come to the house wearing”—she broke off with a pretty little laugh—“such great boots! For going out on the marshes, you know? He used to walk on the sandbanks and islands, at low tide, where there were no paths or even tracks, he used to walk out and pick herbs and reeds. He would take a boat across the lagoon and then find his own way around the little islands. He knew his way as well as the fishermen that live on the lagoon. He would come into our old shuttered palace that was always so dark and so cool and I could smell the salt air, the open air on his jacket, in his hair—” She looked from one woman to the other. “It was like he was free, free as the birds of the lagoon and the salt marshes.”
Alys glanced at her mother, who was leaning forward, drinking in the news of her son. “It sounds like our old home,” she said.
“He was walking the tidelands,” her mother agreed. “Like at Foulmire. He was walking in the paths between sea and land.”
“He was!” Livia agreed. “There he was, living in the richest city in the world, but every afternoon he turned his back on it and went out into the lagoon and walked and listened to the cry of the birds. He liked our white birds, egrets, you know? He liked to watch them. He liked the waterside paths better than the gold markets and streets! He was so funny! Not like anyone else. He caught his own fish, imagine it! And he was not ashamed of being a countryman; he told people that he felt at home on the water and walking on the sandbanks and islands. And when my old husband became more and more ill, Roberto came to stay in the house to help to care for him, and when he died, Roberto was a great comfort.”
Alys examined the bread rolls, not looking at her mother.
“I turned to him in my grief, and that was when I told him that I loved him,” Livia whispered. “I should not have spoken, I know. But I was so lonely and so afraid in the great palace on the canal. It was so cold and so quiet, and when the family came for the funeral, I knew that they would throw me out and put the heir in my home. I knew they hated me: my husband had married me because I was young and beautiful.” She gave a little laugh. “I was very beautiful when I was young.”