* * *

Alinor was sitting at the table in the airy room with the glazed door open to the little balcony. Before her, on the table, was a bouquet of fresh lavender; she was stripping the violet seed heads from the stalks. She looked up as the two of them entered and Livia closed the door behind her, and stood in front of it, her hands held before her, as if she were a lady-in-waiting.

“You are staying?” Alinor asked her directly.

“As a chaperone,” the young woman replied gravely. “As it is a matter of honor.”

Alinor turned her attention to Sir James. “You’re back again?”

“I have to come again and again until you will tell me how I can be of service to you. Until I can speak openly…” He glanced at Livia and fell silent.

“I need nothing,” Alinor said steadily. “You can’t be of service to me.”

“A doctor?”

“I’ve seen doctors.”

“A specialist doctor, Italian trained…”

“My son was a specialist doctor, Italian trained,” she pointed out.

“But can I not find someone to consult?”

“I’m drowned,” she said simply. “They pulled me out; but the water’s still in my body. I’m a drowned woman, James. You’re wasting your time on a drowned woman.”

“I didn’t know,” he said miserably.

“You were there!” she exclaimed brutally. “It was you pulled me out! You know well enough.”

“Alinor, come to my house where you can breathe the clean air,” he urged her. “It’s high, near the moorland, there is a beautiful garden, I have always thought of you in my herb garden. You should have it just as you wish. You shall come as my honored guest, even if you will not accept anything more.”

In the doorway Livia froze, waiting for Alinor’s reply.

“I am a wealthy man now, my beautiful house would be yours to command. And a carriage, and a parlor all your own. Your children could come too. I would never trouble you. Everything should be as you wish.”

“I live as I wish here,” she replied steadily.

If they had been alone together James would have dropped to his knees and pressed his hot face into her lap; as it was, he clenched his hat and fought to find his voice. “Alinor, I have so much to give you,” he whispered. “My fortune, my houses—it’s a burden to me if it is not yours. And I so want… my child.”

“I’ve told you,” she said to him. “I know you’re a man in the habit of having your own way, and you royalists have won, in everything else you’ve triumphed! But in this one matter: you must fail. You didn’t want the child then, you didn’t want me then, that was your decision then—it’s too late to change it now.”

In the doorway Livia clasped her hands together, the image of a praying Madonna, and was perfectly still.

“Am I to be punished forever, for one mistake?”

“Am I?”

“We have both been punished enough!” he exclaimed. “But now I am restored, and I can restore you.”

She shook her head. “I don’t need your restoration. I’m not like your king. I was not expelled from my home. I just moved from a forlorn mire to a dirty river. I’ve made my own life here, as if I sieved it from the mud of the harbor and built it from sea wrack. I didn’t think I’d live; but when I could breathe again I had lost the fear of death—the fear of anything. I can’t be destroyed, I just change. The water didn’t drown me, it flows through me. I am my own tidelands, I carry the water in my own lungs.” She paused for a breath, her hand to her throat. “You find your own life, James. I can tell you: it’s not here.”

“There is no life for me, without you, and without my child!”

She nodded, her eyes never leaving his face. “That was your own choice,” she said. “Freely made, and knowingly made. You did not want a child and now you have none. It’s like a spell. It was your wish. You can’t take it back, and it can’t be unsaid.”

“Is this your last word?”

Wearily she turned her head away from him and caught Livia’s dark intent gaze on her. The younger woman’s eyes were filled with tears; Livia was following every word, moved to deep emotion. “She said so,” Livia spoke gently from the doorway. “She has given you her last word. You can ask for nothing more from her.”

He looked at Alinor, as Livia opened the door in silence, and there was nothing he could do but leave. Livia followed him out and closed the door quietly behind them.

On the narrow landing, he caught her sleeve and she turned her beautiful face up to his.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “I love her, and together we have a child. I promised her marriage and now I need a wife, and I need my child to inherit.”

Gently she put her warm hand over his. “But I do understand,” she said surprisingly. “And I will help you. Come tomorrow and walk with me.”

“On a Sunday?” he asked.

She had been raised as a Roman Catholic, and had never observed the Sabbath like a puritan. She shrugged. “Meet me tomorrow after dinner, and we can decide what is best to do.”

JUNE 1670, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND

Ned, planning to send a barrel of goods and herbs to England at the end of summer, traded a whole freshly caught salmon for a pair of barrels from the cooper. The minister’s housekeeper was there, ordering a barrel for the manse.

“Good morning, Mr. Ferryman, I’ll take some fresh fish for the minister, if you’ve got anything nice,” she said.

“Of course,” Ned said. “I’ve set my traps again and I’ve got some beautiful fat trout. Shall I carry it to your door?”

“I’d be grateful,” she said.

“May I carry your basket for you? Are you finished here, Mrs. Rose?”

She put her initials in the cooper’s book for the minister’s order, and then gave Ned her basket as they walked around the cooper’s house, out of his gate, and back into the broad street, past the meetinghouse, to where the minister’s house was set at the junction. The wide green common grazing land ran north to south past his front door and at the side of his house was the west-to-east lane called the Middle Highway running out of town to the woods. The town fence protected his land and house from the grazing animals; his own gate led to a path to his front door, fastened with ironwork—a handsome latch.

“Fair weather,” Ned said shyly, casting about for something to say to her, knowing that the whole town had watched them walk up the lane together. Everyone expected them to marry. Single men were not welcomed in these frontier plantations where a man could only survive with the work of his wife and children, and a woman had to have the protection of a man. There were only two other bachelors in the town and each had been given a plot in return for plying his trade, his specialist skills; both of them would be expected to marry. The minister John Russell had invited Ned to join the community and given him the riverside lot outside the town fence and the ferry beside it, for his loyal service in Oliver Cromwell’s army. Mr. Russell wanted a man he could trust to watch the north road and guard his secret guests. If Ned wanted to settle in Hadley and be granted more land, and a bigger house, he must marry. Mrs. Rose was a widowed indentured servant at the manse. When her contracted time was served, she would have to find another post and work for another household or marry one of the settlers to get a house and land.