Page 13 of Dawnlands

Julia gave a little cry of alarm and sat up. “Not the native!” she exclaimed. “I beg that he doesn’t come in here—”

“Send Susie,” Alinor interrupted with a warning look at Ned. “Julia, dear, don’t be—”

“What’s supposed to be wrong with my lad?” Ned asked quietly.

“I would be so afraid,” Julia said. “The things we’ve heard of them. The way they have gone wild!” She turned to Alinor. “Do you keep him in the house at night? Aren’t you afraid he might…? I mean, they can never be trusted.”

“Ned!” Alinor cut across his angry retort. To Julia, she said gently: “My dear, you shouldn’t believe all that you read in the newssheets. Rowan is our guest, and we are glad to have her.”

“Her?” Julia repeated on a rising note. “Never tell me it’s a girl?” She shot a horrified glance at Ned. “You brought a native woman into your home?”

Ned folded his arms and watched his sister try to recover.

“Him,” Alinor corrected herself. “Well, anyway. You know what I mean! Anyway—Ned, send Susie up with the drinks.”

Ned, Alys, and Rob, drinking a cup of small ale in the countinghouse, heard the front door open. “That’ll be Johnnie,” Alys said. “He comes to do the books every week.”

In the narrow hall, Johnnie took off his thick jacket and hat and handed them to Rowan. “Here you are again,” he said. “Are you finding your way around London? Do you know the name of this street?”

She nodded. “It’s Shad Thames Street.”

“Very good,” he said. “And I remember due east.” He pointed. “Have you been out to see other streets? Have you been over the river to the City?”

“I’ve been to the market with Tabs.”

“The market? What did you think of it? Very busy?”

“It smells of dead food,” she said bluntly and made him laugh.

“You should see London Bridge, you should see the Tower of London.” He paused. “Shall I—” He broke off. “I could—”

Alys called from the warehouse. “Is that you, Son?”

“I have to go,” he said.

Rowan stepped to one side. Still, Johnnie did not go down the hall.

“Do you get a day off?”

“Off?” she repeated. “Off what?”

He realized she did not understand what he meant, and the gulf between their worlds was unbridgeable. “Nothing,” he said, and he smiled and left her in the hall.

“Ah, our Company man! Are you rushed off your feet with business?” Rob joked, as Johnnie kissed his mother and shook hands with his great-uncle Ned.

“I’m waiting on a shipment of tea,” Johnnie said equably. “I’ve got nothing to do till it arrives. But I’ll take no aspersions from a doctor, whose patients only labor every nine months.”

“Did you visit the Gregsons?” Alys asked him.

Johnnie exchanged a glance with Rob. His mother’s hopes that he would marry a young woman with a profitable business were well known to everyone. “Not yet. I am to go to dinner next week. But more important than that—I have a letter for you, Ma. From my sister.”

Alys exclaimed with pleasure, broke the seal, and read aloud:

Dear Ma and dearest Grandmother,

I am sorry not to have written for so long, we’ve been busier than usual as a church nearby is changing their hangings and we are chosen to sell their old silks when they buy new, so now I have a warehouse full of dusty old silk altar cloths and beautiful vestments, hangings, curtains for statues, and drapes for tombs that will indeed be worth a fortune when they are cleaned and darned. Felipe is selling, in their place, most of the consignment of silks that Johnnie had shipped to us from his Dutch trader in Japan. I suppose the new king and queen need vestments and altar cloths for the new royal chapels? We hear that they are turning the whole country papist!

Alys broke off. “The rest is about the silks… Oh!” she said in quite a different tone. “She says: