“Yes, but I’ll meet you at the Holborn Stairs to walk you here on Thursday,” he told her, and saw a little color rise in her cheek. “Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“All right,” she said.
“Please come in, on Thursday morning too,” Hester told him.
“Thank you,” Matthew said awkwardly. “But perhaps I…”
“Why ever not?” Mia challenged him. “We’re all cousins, aren’t we?”
He looked from one young face to another. “Not really,” he said. “You three are cousins, but I’m only your foster cousin. So I shouldn’t visit Hester unless her father invites me. And not without a chaperone.”
Hester’s face cleared at once. “Oh, I’ll ask Papa to invite you,” she said simply.
“What’s wrong with that?” Mia demanded, seeing he was not reassured.
“I don’t know what he’ll say,” he confessed. “It’s not as if I was really a member of the family.”
Gabrielle gently touched his shoulder, as if she could not stop herself. “Doesn’t matter to us,” she told him. “You can still walk us here. If we have to say good-bye on the doorstep, then at least we’ve seen you.”
“But if he only walks you, then when will I see him?” Hester asked plaintively.
Mia looked from one to the other. “You’re in demand,” she said to Matthew with a knowing smile. “A seller’s market.”
REEKIE WHARF, LONDON, SPRING 1686
Johnnie’s trade goods for Barbados were packed and ready for shipping at Reekie Wharf. Sarah had sent a new consignment of silk and china from Venice and a collection of small furniture pieces, writing boxes, potpourri boxes, trinket boxes, and sandalwood chests for hats and gloves.
“They’re hard to pack safely,” Alys said, going through the cargomanifest. “She’s put them inside one another wherever she could and sewed them into oilcloth. But you’ll have to keep them dry, or they’ll warp on the way.”
Johnnie nodded.
“And your grandmother has made up a stock of tisane bags, and put up some seeds of herbs for you to sell. She’s sent cases of bottles from the stillroom at Foulmire.”
“Do we have any of my uncle Ned’s herbs left? The sassafras?”
“Yes. I’ve given you a barrel. But I don’t know what they grow themselves.”
“They’ve turned over the whole island to sugar,” Johnnie told her. “That’s what one of the sugar merchants told me. They grow nothing but sugar on every field. It pays so well that they neither make nor grow anything for themselves. That’s why it’s so profitable for us to trade there.”
“Until the crop fails on them,” she said sourly. “Like the coffee did. Like the tobacco did.”
“Sugar won’t fail,” Johnnie promised. “Everyone wants it, and only the Sugar Islands can grow it. Only slaves can brew it. The wealth of the planters has to be seen to be believed, he was telling me.”
“The great men are wealthy, but what about the others?”
Johnnie checked. “You’re not becoming a Leveller like your uncle, are you, Ma? If there weren’t rich and poor, how would any of us make a profit?”
“There’s such a thing as usury profit,” she said. “Grievous profit.”
“I’m going to put my profit to good use,” he protested. “I’ll buy Rowan out of her service, and she can manage my warehouse for me, the profit will set her free and make us a living.”
“You won’t stay there till her time is up,” she said flatly. “Not for ten years. Say you won’t. I didn’t raise you to see you go overseas to a fever coast for half your life.”
“No, no,” he assured her. “I’ll come home as soon as I’ve found her. Then I’ll go out again when it’s time to fetch her. We’re traders!” Johnnie told her. “We’re bound to go where the market goes. And there’s nowhere in the world richer than Barbados.”
ST. JAMES’S PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1686
The court was in a solemn mood, attending the opening of yet another new chapel near the palace, this one commissioned and sanctified by the papal nuncio, Ferdinand d’Adda. A long procession of clerics and priests preceded the king and queen down the aisle. The choristers took their places in the beautifully carved wooden choir stalls, the priests behind the gilt rood screen, the king and queen in thrones on the chancel steps, the court in strict order of precedence in the pews: ladies before the lady chapel where a statue of Mary smiled down at them, gentlemen behind the king on the west side.