Page 31 of Dawnlands

Accordingly, I am sending my carriage with outriders today, to bring you home to safety. I order you, madam, to make your excuses to Their Majesties, and come home.

Your obdt. servant and husband,

James Avery

Livia refolded the letter and tapped it, thoughtfully, against her rouged lips. Disobeying her husband would be a great risk; he had an undeniable legal right to order her home, but if she defied him and stayed, and the third civil war broke out and the royalists lost—as they had done twice before—then Livia would be on the losing side, in a royal household at the time of its fall.

Whether she should take the Avery carriage and run home to safety, or gamble everything on a royal victory, was something she could not decide, though she walked up and down the queen’s gallery, tapping the letter against her lips until it looked as if it were bloodstained in her hand.

The double doors opened and the queen came in, ladies around her, courtiers behind them. Her pale face was set in a rigid smile, as if she would deny her fears. She called for the card tables to be set up,and for a glass of wine; gaily, she challenged her courtiers to a game of ombre, and the musicians started to play. Livia was not deceived; she drew the queen into a window seat.

“Your Majesty—is there bad news?”

Queen Mary held up her fan to hide her words. “Our commander Lord Dumbarton is marching to Scotland with our army.”

“He’s just set out north, in the hopes of finding the invasion?” Livia asked incredulously.

“What else can he do? Better to march north than do nothing.”

The two women looked blankly at each other. “I know nothing about warfare,” Livia said.

“And now the king tells me that there are uprisings in the south also.”

“What sort of uprisings?” Livia cried. “Why are they not put down? They wouldn’t allow any uprising in Venice. You’re not allowed to even think against the Doge in Venice. Why does the king allow it?”

“Have you heard of a town by the name of ‘Taunton’?”

Livia shook her head, her sense of the huge strangeness of England all around them.

“It’s beyond Bath,” the queen said, as if she were describing New England far away in the Americas, over the ocean. “Farther west even than Bath. They have called out the militia against rebels there, in Somerset.”

“Is the militia loyal to us there?”

“I don’t think so. They sound frightened. They write to the king that there have been births of monstrous girls, and an earthquake, and three suns in the sky. They say this foretells the fall of the throne.”

“I don’t believe that there were three suns in the sky. How could there be?”

“It’s what they’re saying!” the queen repeated unhappily.

In the room before them someone threw down their cards and laughed at their bad luck. Livia cast an irritated glance before she remembered that she was supposed to be carefree. She smiled as if the queen had said something amusing. She put her hand to her throat as if she were overwhelmed, and she laughed and laughed, flicking out her fan.

The queen caught sight of the stained letter in Livia’s hand. “Oh! What have you there? Is it news of our ship?”

“Yes,” Livia lied smoothly. “As I promised, I have a ship for you. We need not be afraid of suns and monsters. We will be safe, whatever happens.”

“We can sail away? We can go to Rome? The ship will take me to my mama, Duchess Laura, at Rome? I can tell her I am coming home?”

“Yes,” Livia said boldly. “And my carriage is coming from Yorkshire. At the first bad news we will get safely away, either by road in my carriage or by sea in my ship.”

AT SEA, SPRING 1685

Monmouth set a watch and turned in to his cabin for the night; the senior men had bunks in shared cabins, and the rest slept in corners of the hold, curled up in spaces between the cargo, or wrapped themselves in their new jackets against the onshore wind and slept on the deck. Ned and Rowan found a corner on a folded sail and made a comfortable nest. Rowan lay on her back and looked up at the night sky, the sail sometimes billowing out to hide the stars from her, sometimes dropping back when the wind eased. Ned folded his arms behind his head and watched her profile as he fell asleep.

Suddenly there was a shout from the lookout, and the sound of a cannon firing, the whistle of a cannonball and the great splash as it landed in the sea just astern. The ship rolled as the steersmen dragged on the wheel to change direction.

Ned was on his feet in a moment, Rowan beside him. The watch clanged the bell to muster the soldiers, and the lookout on the mast pointed to a yacht that had suddenly loomed out of the darknessbehind them. Ned, glancing back at the quarterdeck, saw Monmouth, bare-headed, wearing nothing but a white shirt and his breeches, dashing up the companionway. Ned jumped up and ran after him, Rowan beside him. “Get down!” he threw at her over his shoulder. “Get behind the mast!”

“Ferryman!” Monmouth yelled down from the quarterdeck. “Is that the Amsterdam magistrates?”