Neither of her listeners assured her she was beautiful still, so Livia went on: “I only had one friend in the world.” She looked imploringly at Alinor and reached out to clasp her hand. “Your son, Roberto.”
Alys saw her mother withdraw her hand from the young woman’s touch and wondered at her irritability. “Are you tired, Ma?” she asked her in an undertone.
“No, no,” Alinor replied. She clasped her hands together in her lap, out of reach. “You must forgive me,” she said to Livia. “I am an invalid. And Alys worries about me. Go on. Did Rob know you were in love with him?”
“Not at first,” Livia said with a rueful little smile. “It’s not how it should be at all. I know that in England it is the gentleman that speaks first? Isn’t it so?”
Neither woman replied.
“I truly think that he was just sorry for me. He is—he was—so tenderhearted. Isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Alys said when her mother said nothing. “Yes, he was.”
“When I had to leave Venice and go back to my family house in the hills outside Florence I thought I would never see him again. But he followed me.” She put her hand to her heart. “He came to my family house and he told my cousin, the Signor, the head of my family, a very great family, that he loved me. It was the happiest moment of my life. The happiest ever.”
“He wrote to us that he had met you, and that he admired you,” Alys confirmed.
“Yes, he did,” Alinor said. “And when he wrote to us that he would marry, we sent you some lace to trim your gown. Did you get it?”
“Oh yes, it was so beautiful! And I wrote in reply with my thanks. Did you receive that letter?”
Alys shook her head.
“I’m so sorry! I would not want you to think I was not grateful, and so glad of your good wishes. I wrote you a long letter. I sent it by a merchant. But who knows what happens to these ships! Such a long voyage and such dangerous seas!”
“Yes,” Alinor agreed. “We’ve always lived on the edge of deep waters.”
“So, we married quietly in Venice and we defended ourselves against my first husband’s family.”
“Against what?” Alys asked.
“Oh, they were jealous! And they said all sorts of things against me. Then, I found I was with child, and we were so glad. When little Matteo was born we knew that we had found true happiness. Then—ah, but you know the rest—”
“No, I don’t,” Alinor interrupted. “You have told me nothing!”
“You only wrote that he had drowned,” Alys reminded her.
Livia took a sobbing breath. Clearly, it was an ordeal for the widow to speak. “Roberto was called out to one of the islands on a stormy night. I went with him, I often went with him. There was a terrible wind and our ship overturned. They pulled me out of the water at dawn, it was a miracle that I survived.” She turned her face from the brightness of the window and hid it in her little black-trimmed handkerchief. “I wished that I had not survived,” she whispered. “When they told me that he was dead… I told them to throw me back into the waters.”
Alys looked at her mother, waiting for her to speak with her usual compassion; but the older woman said nothing, just watched, her gray eyes slightly narrowed, as if she were waiting to hear something more.
“So terrible,” Alys whispered.
Livia nodded, dried her eyes, and managed a trembling smile. “I wrote to you of his death—I am sure I made no sense at all, I was so grieved! I knew I should come to you, I knew Roberto would have wanted it. So, though I was quite alone in the world, I packed up our little house, I spent all our savings on my passage on the ship, and here we are. I wrote to you as soon as we landed, and then I hired the coach and came. I have brought my English boy to his home.”
There was a silence.
“And we’re so glad you’ve come,” said Alys too loudly into the quiet room. “Aren’t we? Aren’t we? Ma?”
“Yes,” Alinor said. “Did they find the body?”
The question was so coldly abrupt that both young women stared at her.
“The body?” Livia repeated.
“Yes. Rob’s drowned body. Did they find it? Drag it from the water, bury him with the proper rites? As a Protestant?”
“Ma!” Alys exclaimed.
“No,” Livia said, the tears welling up again. “They didn’t. It’s so deep, and there are currents. They did not expect to find it—him—not after he had… sunk.”
“Sunk,” Alinor repeated slowly. “You tell me that my son—sunk?”
Alys put out her hand as if to stop the words but neither woman noticed her.
“We held a service of memorial at the place that he was lost,” Livia said, her musical voice very low. “When the sea was calm, I went out on a little rowing boat; it was halfway between Venice and the island of Torcello. I put flowers on the water for you: white lilies on the dark tides.”
“Oh really,” Alinor said indifferently. She turned her head and looked down to the quayside. “There’s that ship factor again,” she said.
Livia leaned towards the window and glimpsed James Avery on the doorstep, being admitted to the house. “Oh, that is not a ship’s factor,” she said. “That’s Sir James Avery, Roberto’s tutor and friend. I met him yesterday.”
The room froze. Nobody spoke. Alys could hear the maid slowly laboring up the stairs from the hall and then the creak as she opened the door. “Am I to clear the crocks?” she asked into the stunned silence.
“Yes, yes,” Livia said, when no one else answered. She looked from Alinor’s white face to Alys’s fixed grimace. “Have I said something wrong? What is wrong?”
“James Avery is here? That was the visitor: James Avery?” Alinor demanded.
“Yes,” Alys said tightly. “I didn’t even know if you would recognize his real name?”
“Yes. It was to be my name. Of course I recognize it.”
“He is Sir James. Turns out he has a title. Did you think it would be yours?” Alys demanded.
“Yes. He came here to see me?”
Alys silently nodded.
Mother and daughter looked at each other as if they were blind to the maid clattering around the table and Livia’s avid face.
“Alys, when were you going to tell me?”
“I was never going to tell you.”
The maid took the heavily laden tray and walked out of the room, leaving the door open. They heard her slow progress down the stairs and then the knock of the whip handle on the front door. They could hear her sigh, and the rattle of crockery as she put the tray down on the hall table. They listened as she opened the front door and said impatiently: “Go in! Go in!” sending Sir James into the empty parlor as she hefted the tray again and went down the hall to the kitchen to yell from the back door for the wagoner to take the gentleman’s horse again.
“Has he been before?”
“Not before yesterday. I swear he has not.”
“Or written?”
Alys’s silence was a confession.
“He wrote to me? He has written to me?”