She had to wait until they had the gangplank run ashore, and as soon as it was extended from the ship she ran up it, and onto the deck, to draw the two girls into her arms. “Welcome! Welcome to your home! Welcome to London! Welcome to England!” she cried, then she turned to her husband and beamed at him. “And welcome home to you, Captain Shore.”
He brushed the two girls aside and kissed her on the mouth. “Glad to be home,” he said shortly and then he went for’ard to check the lines and that the rope fenders were out to protect the ship from the wall of the quay.
Alys looked at the two girls, the granddaughters she had never met. Gabrielle was the older, a girl of thirteen, with the dark brown hair, strong mouth, and straight gaze of her mother. Her sister, Mia, onlya year younger, took after the Italian side of the family with caramel skin, black hair and eyes, and a sidelong smile.
“What a pair of beauties you are!” Alys exclaimed. “I can’t believe this is the first time we’ve met! I’ve thought of you so often, and prayed this day would come…” She drew them to the head of the gangplank and then hesitated. “Your ma will have told you what to expect? We don’t have a great London house, this is a working wharf and we live beside the warehouse.”
“Ah, we know, we know!” Gabrielle assured her. She spoke with a slight Italian accent that made Alys shiver for a moment, thinking of the calculated charm of the Nobildonna, also from Venice, who had come to the warehouse saying that it was her sanctuary, and then nearly destroyed it in her determination to rise higher.
“Ma told us all about her childhood here,” Mia chimed in. “And at home, though it’s a great house, we have the stonemasons working in the rooms below, and the studio is next door. We both work there, we’re not idle. In Venice, everyone works. Ma says it’s only in London that people like to pretend their money fell down with rain.”
“It’s true,” Alys agreed, leading them down the gangplank. “But your ma says you want to study here?”
“She said English girls are allowed?” Gabrielle asked her.
“You can start at your uncle Rob’s house with his daughter’s governess, and then go to school, and nobody knows more about herbs than your great-grandmother. She’s not at home right now, she’s in the country… And so here is your new home.”
She opened the front door. “Mind the ledge—that keeps the floodwater out.”
The girls stepped over the threshold into the hall.
“Here’s the parlor.” Alys gestured to the room on the left of the front door. “That’s where we eat. To the right here, that’s the warehouse. At the back is the kitchen, and beyond that the yard and the stables. Upstairs: your bedrooms.” She led the way up the tightly turned wooden stairs.
The girls exchanged a glance; this was very unlike their home in Venice, where the floors were marble and the ceilings high and the walls paneled or painted with frescoes.
“You’re both in the spare bedroom next to me,” Alys said, showing them their room. “It’s your mother’s old room when she was a girl, and while my ma is in the country you can have her room as your sitting room.” She opened the door to the room with the glazed balcony that looked out over the two aspects: the Neckinger drain and the River Thames.
“Pretty,” Mia said, admiring the lightness of the room and the view of the river. “When will our great-grandmother come home?”
“She’ll want to see you at once, so perhaps we’ll go down to Sussex in a few days’ time and bring her home with us. Gracious! I’ve been waiting for you for so long that now you’re here I can’t believe it. You’ll be hungry, I’ll get Cook to serve an early dinner. Captain Shore always has roast beef on his first night home.”
Alys left them in their room and went downstairs where the lumpers were unloading the girls’ luggage into the hall and the cargo into the warehouse. “There’s a jug and bowl for you to wash your face and hands,” she called back up to them.
The two girls drifted into Alinor’s room, which overlooked the quay, and watched the men throwing the sacks of silk from hand to hand, rolling the casks of fine wines, and heaving crates of statues and paintings on barrows to take them into the warehouse.
Captain Shore stood at the entrance to the warehouse double doors checking everything off his cargo list with a custom officer agreeing the tally. As the girls watched from the upper window, they saw Alys come to the warehouse doors and direct where things should be stored.
“She’s nothing like Mama,” Mia said. “But just as Mama described her. Busy, hurried, nice.”
“Thank God we’re out of Venice,” Gabrielle said. “Every day we were farther away I felt more and more free. Look at her down there, giving orders, raising her voice! She runs the wharf, Mama said, not Captain Shore.”
“Mama said London is full of women with their own businesses. What if we were to be wharfingers ourselves!”
Gabrielle shook her head. “Physicians,” she said. “I want to study herbs with our great-grandmother and doctoring with Uncle Rob.”
“And there’s the exhibitions and the studios and the libraries, churches and concerts,” Mia pointed out. “And women can go to them. We can even walk out alone.”
“It’s like a new world,” Gabrielle said. “Streets everywhere, roads everywhere, horses everywhere. And everyone speaking English and sounding like Mama!”
“A different world and yet a homecoming,” Mia said.
ON THE ROAD TO LONDON, AUTUMN 1685
Johnnie hired a coach to take him and Ned to London. “We can’t do any more here,” he told Ned. “She’ll be held at Bristol till her ship, theRebecca, sails. All the Taunton prisoners are the property of the queen and she’s giving them to her favorites. And that’s where we get our chance. The courtiers are selling pardons!”
“They are?” Suddenly interested, Ned turned from watching the granite walls of Taunton high street jolt past the window.
“Far beyond the price of common people, but for gentry or lords who can raise the funds, who’d rather pay than see a cousin or a younger brother in such a state, they’re selling a royal pardon for a couple of hundred pounds.”