Page 175 of Dawnlands

Gabrielle felt his arms around her and made herself stand still, not pressing against him, nor looking up for a kiss. Matthew felt the rise of his own desire and released her at once; they stepped apart.

“We are friends,” Gabrielle told him. “They both asked me to speak to you this evening to say that we all want to be friends as we were, as we have always been.”

“That’s generous,” he said. He dropped onto a stool before the fire and pulled another over for her to sit beside him. “I can’t pin the blame on my mother,” he said. “I don’t hide behind her apron strings.”

“No. But none of this was of selfishness. You offered Mia your heart and the Nobildonna forbade it. You said sorry to Mia, and she forgave you. The proposal to Hester was an arranged marriage that both parents were making for you, without either of you having a say in it. Nobody can blame you if they changed their minds.”

“I am so sorry,” he said wretchedly.

“You must tell her, and then we can be friends again.” She rose up and offered him her hand. “Agreed?”

He took her hand but, instead of shaking it, he drew her to him and he kissed her gently, just once, on the lips.

BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS, SUMMER 1688

The cannons exploded from the fort and the bells of all the town’s churches started to ring. Johnnie’s customers put down the goods they were choosing and went to the shop door. They could hear the cheers from the Exchange and the rattle of people firing muskets into the air from the quay.

“What is it?” asked one of the ladies. “Good news?”

“It must be the royal birth,” another said.

“Please God it is a prince, only a prince will keep Barbados safe from France.”

Johnnie stepped past them and grabbed a man who was running from the quay to the Exchange.

“What news?”

“It’s a boy!” the man bawled. “It’s a prince! The king has an heir and confounded his enemies!”

“God bless the queen, God save the king!” Johnnie said quickly, wondering where Ned was and how this news would affect him. “Is it news just in?”

“A ship from Plymouth, the baby was born in mid-June. Strong and well. They’re serving rum out of the governor’s house to drink his health.”

The women in Johnnie’s doorway were hugging each other. “Mr. Stoney, what news!” they exclaimed.

“Hurrah!” Johnnie said politely. “Let me pour you a glass of punch, we should toast the new prince. And I have had a bolt of silk—Prince of Wales purple. Now at last I can allow it to be seen.”

“New?”

“New in from London for this very occasion.”

“And you bought it in ready? How clever of you.”

Johnnie gestured to one of the slaves to fetch the bolt of silk from the back, and she spread it, in a ripple of color, on the measuring table. It had been sitting for months on the shelves of the shop, overpriced and a hard color to wear. But now it was “Prince of Wales purple,” and Johnnie knew he would sell out.

REEKIE WHARF, LONDON, SUMMER 1688

London was gripped by riotous crowds, the people seemed ready to turn on the palaces and break into them as they had already raided Roman Catholic chapels and businesses and embassies of France and Spain and nobody, not the magistrates of the city, not the Aldermen or the heads of the guilds, not even the Lord Mayor of London could halt the rapturous progress of outraged crowds through the streets.

Alys made a flying visit overnight from Foulmire, unable to settle in the country without confirming that the wharf was safe, and found her neighbors all but barricaded into their wharves, unloading ships at speed, and sometimes even refusing cargos from Rome and Italy for fear of triggering a protest among their own lumpers, who were refusing to touch “papist goods.”

Alys went down the quayside to the boarded-up coffeehouse for news and was told by more than one person, with complete conviction, that the Lord Mayor had sent the keys of the City to William of Orange, that Rear Admiral Herbert, dismissed by the king for his Protestant faith, had been replaced by a Roman Catholic commander of the navy. The sailors threatened mutiny when the new admiral brought priests on board his flagship and held a Mass in the face of his determinedly Protestant crew. Everyone said that the dismissedAdmiral Herbert had sailed for Holland to be appointed chief admiral of the Dutch navy.

“And that’s a man who knows every inch of the coast,” Alys said to one of her regular captains. “If he commands the Dutch navy in an invasion of England, he knows exactly where to come, he’s got the charts of every port. He can sail right in.”

“He could sail right in anyway. No port in England’d turn their cannons on the Protestant Princess Mary and her husband, William,” he replied. “They’re the true heirs, not some papist changeling. He can land where he likes.”

The whole country, even the royal forces, had turned against the king and queen. The army, at camp on Hounslow Heath, were ordered and paid to celebrate the birth of the prince; but they cheered and set off cannon when the protesting bishops were freed. Oxford University openly defied the king’s threats, refused his nominee for the new chancellor, and elected their own choice.