Page 205 of A Column of Fire

‘I’m not married.’

She made a surprised face.

He said: ‘There was a girl I wanted to marry, in Kingsbridge, where I come from.’

‘Is she the girl in the picture?’

Ned looked startled, as if it had not occurred to him that Sylvie could see the little painting beside the mirror and draw the obvious conclusion. ‘Yes, but she married someone else.’

‘How sad.’

‘It was a long time ago.’

‘How long?’

‘Fourteen years.’

Sylvie wanted to sayAnd you still have her picture?But she bit back the comment and opened her satchel.

She took out the two books. ‘The plain Bible is excellent,’ she said. ‘A good translation, printed clearly, perfect for a family without money to spare.’ She opened the luxury edition, the one she really wanted to sell him. ‘This edition is magnificent. It looks like what it is, a volume containing the word of God.’ She liked Ned, but she still needed to make money, and in her experience the way to do that was to make a man feel that the expensive book would mark him, in the minds of others, as a man of distinction.

Modest though he was, he was not immune to her sales talk, and he bought the high-priced Bible.

She added up the total he owed and he paid her, then he walked her to the front door of the house. ‘Where’s your shop?’ he asked. ‘I might drop in one day.’

‘Rue de la Serpente. We’d love to see you.’ She meant it. ‘Goodbye.’

She felt light of heart as she pushed the empty handcart home. A Catholic princess was going to marry a Protestant king right here in Paris! Perhaps the days of persecution really were over.

And she had found a new customer and made a good sale. Ned’s gold livres chinked in her pocket.

He was so nice. She wondered if he really would come to the shop. How much did he still love the girl whose picture he had kept for so long?

She looked forward to telling her mother the news about the royal wedding. She was not sure what to say about Ned. She and her mother were very close, no doubt because they had been together through danger and destitution. Sylvie was rarely tempted to keep anything from Isabelle. But the problem was that she really did not know how she felt.

She got home and parked the handcart in the shed at the back of the house, then went in. ‘I’m home,’ she called. She went into the shop. A customer was just leaving.

Her mother turned and looked at her. ‘My goodness, you look happy,’ she said. ‘Have you fallen in love?’

18

Barney Willard anchored theAlicein the bay of the nameless town on the north coast of Hispaniola. He had come to see Bella.

He did not tie up at the jetty: that would make it too easy for a hostile force to board the ship from the land. He lined up with his starboard guns pointing directly at the little coral limestone palace that was still the main building. The guns on the port side usefully pointed out to sea at any vessel that might approach.

Barney was being cautious. He did not really expect trouble here.

Alicewas a three-masted merchant ship, a hundred and sixty tons and ninety feet long. Barney had modernized the design, lowering the fore and aft castles. He had installed sixteen of the mid-weight cannons called culverins that fired eighteen-pound balls. He had specified long fifteen-foot barrels. Because the ship was only thirty feet across at its widest, the guns had to be staggered along the gun deck so that they did not crash into one another when they recoiled. But long barrels fired farther and more accurately, and Barney knew, from experience, that the only way to defeat a mighty Spanish galleon was to cripple it before it got close to you.

TheAlicehad only twenty crew. Most ships of the same size had forty or more. The vessel did not need so many, but captains usually made generous allowance for deaths on voyage, not just from battle but from the fevers that so often broke out. Barney took a different approach. He thought men were more likely to catch infections in crowded ships, and had proved to his own satisfaction that it was better to start with fewer men in cleaner conditions. He also carried live cattle and barrels of apples and pears, so that the men had fresh food, a policy he had copied from the pirate Sir John Hawkins. And when he did lose men, despite his precautions, he replaced them with new recruits, always available in port cities – which was how come theAlicenow had three dark-skinned African sailors picked up at Agadir.

Towards the end of the afternoon he sent a boat party ashore. They bought chickens and pineapples, and scrubbed and filled the ship’s water barrels at the bright stream that flowed through the town. They reported that the residents were excited to hear about theAlice’s cargo: scissors and knives made of Toledo steel; bolts of fine Netherlands cloth; hats, shoes, and gloves – luxuries and essentials that could not be manufactured on this Caribbean island.

Barney was sorely tempted to go ashore right away and look for Bella. On the long transatlantic journey, eager curiosity had grown into yearning. But he forced himself to wait. He did not know what to expect. It would be undignified for him to crash into what might be a cosy domestic scene. When he left Hispaniola she had been young and pretty; why would she not have married? On the other hand, she had a business of her own that made money, so she did not need a man to support her. Barney’s hope was that she might have been reluctant to yield her independence to a husband. She was certainly feisty enough to take such an attitude.

If he approached her as an old friend, he would be able to deal with whatever he found. Should she have a husband, Barney would conceal his disappointment, shake hands, and congratulate the man on his good fortune. If she was single and alone – please, God! – he would take her in his arms.

In the morning he put on a green coat with gold buttons. It gave him a formal air and partly concealed the sword hanging from his belt, not hiding it but making it a little less ostentatious. Then he and Jonathan Greenland went to call on the mayor.