Page 95 of Dawnlands

“Send Captain Shore out in a mortgaged ship?” she asked him, genuinely shocked. “Johnnie, we never trade in debt. We only did it the once, and the Nobildonna nearly ruined us. I don’t dare, Johnnie. I’m sorry to refuse you, Son. But I can’t.”

“It’s not debt,” he said. “It’s credit. Everyone trades on credit.”

“They’re one and the same to me,” she said staunchly.

“Then what am I to do?” he said simply. “I can’t let her be sold like a slave on the quayside!”

She was flushed with distress. “It’s not your doing!” she exclaimed. “It’s Uncle Ned’s doing. And hers. She took his place in prison. It’s him who should free her.”

“You know he hasn’t a penny in the world.”

“That’s his choice too,” she said firmly. “He believes in a world without masters or lords. He believes in a world without rich and poor. But we live in a world where money is the greatest master.”

This was so much in agreement with Johnnie’s view that he could not argue against her. “He’s waiting for me to come to Bristol with a pardon. He expects me to raise the money.”

“I doubt that,” she said dourly. “He knows we’re not a family that has ever had money.”

ST. JAMES’S PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1685

Livia, the queen, and a woman wearing a cloak with her hood pulled over to hide her face were alone in the queen’s bedchamber, the door firmly locked on the other ladies-in-waiting.

“This is Mrs. Cellier,” Livia introduced the hooded woman. “You can take your hood down,” she told her. She turned back to the queen. “She’s a highly regarded midwife, and of the true faith.”

The queen extended her hand, and Elizabeth Cellier kissed it. “A great honor,” she said.

“Her Majesty has conceived before, but miscarried,” Livia said when the queen was silent.

“How many miscarriages?”

“Five,” the queen said quietly.

“And she has also lost four babies at birth, and a little girl at four years old.”

“God’s will,” Elizabeth Cellier said piously and crossed herself.

“It is God’s will that I have a live son for England,” the queen stated.

“It is indeed,” the midwife said. “Has He blessed you with good health?”

It was obvious to anyone that God had not blessed the queen with good health. Her face had lost the rounded prettiness of the girl who had come to England to give England a Roman Catholic Prince of Wales. She was pale and thin, and she gathered her velvet stole around her as if she felt cold in the overheated rooms.

“I have faintness,” she said. “And I am tired. I am only happy when I am riding, and I have not ridden since I fell at Windsor.”

“Not tired when riding?” the midwife asked.

“No, for then I am free, and thinking of nothing. I am just riding, galloping, and no one can keep up with me, and no one can talk to me, and no one can blame me—” She broke off.

“Her Majesty is not a happy wife?”

The queen bit her lip and shook her head in silence.

“His Majesty is not attentive?” the midwife asked tactfully.

The queen turned her head away, but Livia said shortly: “He is not.”

“Her Majesty’s courses are regular?”

“Not timely,” Livia said. “And that gives us false hope too—and then disappointment.”