Page 23 of Dawnlands

“So was his father,” Alinor said cheerfully. “And your uncle Ned saw him beheaded and came home and told us all about it: and we were glad.”

“Hush,” Alys said, turning from the window. “I won’t have a word of it in this house. It’s nothing to us! Trade is good, the country is quiet, they’re still rebuilding after the fire, and everyone wants our stonework and statues for their houses and gardens, our art for their galleries, and our silk for their walls. Even your tea sells faster than you can make it for the slaving ships. We’ve got nothing against this king. He can pray as he likes, and as long as he doesn’t tax like a papist, I won’t hear a word against him.”

“You won’t hear a word against him from me,” Alinor pointed out mildly. “I’m not the ranting sort.”

Alys was forced to laugh at her mother, sitting so quietly behind her table with her pile of sweet-smelling herbs and her muslin purses. “You!” she said. “You’ve got a wild streak in you, Ma—and I see it in my uncle Ned, and in our Sarah when it took her to Venice, and I pray to God that I never see it in Johnnie or Matthew.”

Alinor did not deny the wildness. “It was a long time ago—men questioning their king, women questioning their husbands, and everyone questioning their God. Everyone thought that anything could happen. Everyone was drunk with questions.”

“Those times are gone,” Alys told her severely. “We all want peace now and a sober life.”

“Not all of us,” Alinor warned her with a gleam of a smile. “Some of us would be glad to be drunk with questions all over again.”

AMSTERDAM, HOLLAND, SPRING 1685

Ned and Thomas Dare, followed by Rowan, turned into a dark doorway and went down a short flight of stairs into a metalwork shop. The forge was blazing bright in the yard outside, and the workshop was ringing like a belfry with the noise of men hammering hot iron. The acrid smell of charcoal smoke drifted into the low-ceilinged room.

“Take a good look at the muskets before I pay,” Thomas Dare told him. “Put aside anything faulty. We only want the very best.”

Ned had seen colonial-made muskets blow off a rifleman’s hand. “The lad knows good workmanship,” he remarked.

“I thought they weren’t allowed weapons?”

“We only sell them faulty ones,” Ned said with grim humor. “That’s how he knows.”

The owner of the shop greeted Thomas, nodded to Ned, and waved them to a pile of muskets ready to be wrapped in sacking and packed into boxes. There were more than a thousand, piled in the corner of the room. Ned made a soundless whistle with his lips and Rowan glanced at him.

“Check one in every ten,” he told her.

“You’ll find they’re good,” the forgemaster said as he came over, his leather apron stained with scorch marks and his hands rough with old burns. “I sell my muskets to the Dutch East India Company—they don’t pay me to fail!”

“They better be,” Thomas Dare replied. “I’ll leave you here, Ned, while I get this purse pawned.”

“Very well.” Ned and Rowan pulled weapons from the stack, checking the sighting, peering down the powder pan, and moving the trigger. They tried the ramrod down the barrels to ensure they were straight. They worked their way through the weapons, and as they passed them to one side, one of the smiths came in and wrapped them in sacking and packed them into wooden crates and nailed them shut.

Ned’s head was half deafened by the noise of the yard by the time they had checked the whole pile, and Rowan was pale under the bronze of her skin.

“All good?” Thomas Dare demanded, darkening the room as he came in the doorway.

“All but those.” Ned indicated the handful of weapons that had faults.

Thomas Dare handed over a heavy purse; the forgemaster tipped the coins into his scales and weighed them, pulling one or two out to bite in his teeth to see that they had the softness of true gold. Then he and Dare shook hands, and he promised that the weapons should be delivered to the quay at Texel at once.

Dare, Ned, and Rowan emerged with relief into the sunlight of the street.

“What now?” Ned asked.

“Leather jackets,” Dare replied. “We need a thousand; they’re being made at the tanners’ canal, at Jordaan. Shop in the name of Jan Muis—sign outside is a mouse. You can get them, pay for them, and get them delivered to the ship. And powder horns, get as many as you can for the money.”

He reached into his pocket, took out a purse, hefted it in his hand, and passed it over to Ned. “See if you can get the price down, for the Lord’s sake. Check everything, only pay for good work.”

Ned nodded.

“And there’s a special leather jacket for his lordship on order. Make sure they deliver them together to theHelderenberg, on the dock at the Island of Texel. You’d better go with them. I’ll meet you there.”

LINCOLN’S INN, LONDON, SPRING 1685

The usher brought a note to Matthew when he was studying in his room, the window thrown open for air, the sultry stink of the City drifting in.