Page 99 of Dawnlands

She flushed with pleasure as a thought came to her. “I could walk them to the New Canal after our lesson every day? That would be more walking than I do now.”

“You’ll have to have Prynne or a footman to go with you. And stop if you get overtired.”

“Oh yes! Papa! Yes!”

He smiled. “When do they want to come again?”

She gave a little gasp. “The day after tomorrow, if you say so?”

“I’ll send a message to the wharf,” he said easily. “And you and Miss Prynne can meet their wherry at the Holborn water stairs.”

“They can come on their own in a wherry?” she confirmed.

“Why not?” he chucked her under the chin. “Since they are philosophers who know so much already?”

REEKIE WHARF, LONDON, AUTUMN 1685

The hired carriage from Bristol drove through the Reekie gates and halted in the yard. The lad jumped down onto the cobbles, opened the door, and let down the steps.

“Wait,” Johnnie told him and went to the back door. “Here, Tabs, come and give me a hand. Susie, fetch my mother and someone to help carry. I’ve got my uncle in the coach, and he’s in a bad way.”

“Lord save us,” the cook said and came out into the yard and peered into the coach.

Ned was propped on the seat, his body slumped. His face was frozen in a scowl, his forehead was puckered, his eyelids closed, his color as pale as a drowned man’s.

“God bless us, is he dead?” she whispered.

Alys came out into the yard with one of the lumpers from the quayside.

“Lord save him,” she said quietly. “Poor Uncle Ned.”

“He’s had some sort of seizure,” Johnnie told her. “The Bristol surgeon said to treat him like a drunk man. Handle him carefully, get him into his bed, and hope that he comes round. We should put him in a chair to carry him. Where’s he to go?”

“He’d better go in your grandmother’s room for now. I’ll send the warehouse lad for Rob.”

The lumper from the quay and Tabs brought a sturdy high-backed chair from the kitchen, and Johnnie went inside the coach and took hold of Ned’s shoulders. The lumper lifted his legs, and the two of them hauled him out of the carriage and seated him in the chair.

“Does he have a wound?” Alys asked, looking doubtfully at the gray color of his twisted face.

“Only his head, from before,” Johnnie said. “The surgeon said it was a seizure inside his brain and it might right itself in time.”

He straightened up and nodded at the lumper. “You take the back of the chair, I’ll take the front. We’ll carry him in and up the stairs. Keep it tipped back so he doesn’t fall forward.”

“Aye, aye,” the man said.

The two of them lifted the chair and carried it into the house, the women bringing in the bags from the carriage while Alys paid off the hire. Carefully, they made their way up the tight turn of the narrow stairs. Alinor opened the door to her room and had them lay him on her sofa.

She spoke not one word of shock, but took his wrist and felt his pulse, steady and strong, put a hand on his pale face, and felt he was cool but not clammy. She touched, with deep tenderness, the twisted grimace on his face.

“I’ve sent for Rob,” Alys told her. “Are you all right, Ma?”

Alinor nodded. “D’you know what caused it?”

“He saw Rowan loaded onto the ship as it set sail,” he said. “He fell down as if his heart was broken.”

BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS, WINTER 1686

Rowan, half-starved and shaking from the fever that she had caught in the jail at Bristol, shaded her eyes from the blinding light of the Caribbean sun, and fell back when someone—she could see nothing more than a looming shadow before her—slapped her hand away. “Show your face, lad,” he growled. “Open your mouth.”