The Golden Cross (11 page)

“I’ll let you know tomorrow.” She tugged on her friend’s sleeve. Orabel snatched up a handful of cookies, bobbed toward Schuyler in a quick curtsy, and followed Aidan O’Connor out the door.

Sitting in the corner of the women’s room, Lili watched her daughter pace back and forth like a dog on a chain. Aidan’s green eyes snapped with impatience and indecision, her body tense as a
bowstring. In the hour since she and Orabel had returned from Heer Van Dyck’s house, Aidan had only grown more upset, more confused, and more indecisive.

“I only asked him for a suggestion or two.” Aidan’s words were directed as much to the other women in the room as to her mother. “I thought maybe he’d give me a moment of his time. I never dreamed that he’d offer more—or that he’d want me to live in his house. I want to draw, I want to learn—but he’ll be leaving soon, and then what will I do?”

She had explained Heer Van Dyck’s offer in simple terms and spent the better part of the last hour half-listening to the other women’s suggestions. Sofie and Orabel urged Aidan to take the old gentleman at his word, for such generous offers didn’t come along every day. “Who knows what treasures you’ll find in that house?” Sofie remarked, giving Aidan a sly wink. “If it doesn’t work out, take whatever suits your fancy and slip out in the middle of the night. The old fool will be too proud to report you to the authorities. The constable would only say he got what he deserved for taking a ragamuffin in.”

Aidan stiffened at Sofie’s remark, and Lili pursed her lips, at once proud and ashamed. Proud that her daughter still retained enough conscience to consider stealing an embarrassment, ashamed that she had ever been forced to steal in order to survive.

When Lili married the handsome, copper-haired Cory O’Connor, she never dreamed that he would lead her to the wharf of a sweltering Dutch colony near the equator. As always, life had surprised her. To escape hard times in Ireland, she and Cory had fled to England, where just outside London Aidan was born an English subject of King James. Cory found an honest job working for a prosperous cooper, but when the Black Plague struck London in 1636, killing the cooper, Cory signed on with the Dutch East India Company to move his family out of reach of the disease. Aidan was but thirteen when they sailed, and observed her
fourteenth birthday aboard ship on the very day her father died, a late victim of the plague he had tried to flee.

Lili and Aidan landed in Batavia with no protector, no home, no means of employment. Lili had spent several frustrating weeks ashore seeking employment as a lady’s maid, but none of the Dutch housewives wanted a maid with a honey-thick Irish brogue and a comely fourteen-year-old daughter.

And so Lili had survived in the only way she could. She cut her first purse from a drunken sailor’s belt in an act of sheer desperation, and in time the act of pilfering hurt her conscience less and less. Soon she had developed an entire routine: Incoming sailors, eager for a little feminine company and alcoholic spirits, smiled at her, bought her drinks, and fell happily and drunkenly asleep upon her bosom. ’Twas a simple matter to empty their purses and rifle their money belts, and Lili took pains to always leave the men a stuiver or two. She left no man penniless; in fact, she wondered if any of them ever sobered up enough to realize that she’d whittled away at their earthly lucre.

Within six months of landing in Batavia she met Bram, who agreed to lease a room for her and Aidan if she would serve as his procuress. As the months passed, Lili drew other defenseless and desperate women under the umbrella of her protection. To the naive and unskilled she taught certain tricks of her trade—how to be safe from pregnancy, how to escape if a seaman became violent, where to hide from the constables when the townsfolk occasionally decided to purge the wharf of evil and unrighteousness. She did not hesitate to speak the bald truth as she saw it, and once laughed in the face of a minister who dared to upbraid her for poverty and scandalous behavior.

“Well, naturally, you blame us poor and derelict for needing the charity of the rich,” she told the clergyman, shooting him the coldest look she could muster. “But you forget, Reverend, that the rich need us poor folks for the quiet of their souls. How can they
lie down to sleep unless they’ve tossed a beggar a stuiver or two to ease their guilt over the twenty guilders they spent on some useless frippery?” Leaving the minister speechless in the street, Lili wrapped the rags of her dignity around her like a fine lady’s cape, turned her back on the preacher, and stalked away.

Now Lady Lili was a legend of sorts in the Dutch city, and she took quiet pride in her accomplishments. She’d saved at least twenty women from outright starvation and had actually seen half a dozen married to seamen and happily transported back to Europe. The others she’d taught were survivors at any cost—all except Aidan, whom Lili had sheltered as much as she dared.

Her own daughter, Lili realized more clearly with every passing day, was unique. The girl’s artistic gift had first manifested itself when she was only four or five. While other children splashed in the muddy streets of London and painted themselves brown and gray, Aidan decorated the side of the building with whatever materials she could find in the street. Once Lili had to literally haul her screaming child away from a particularly putrid puddle—someone had emptied the chamber pots from the house above onto the street, and Aidan had wanted to investigate the colors of the stinking mess.

Aidan constantly rebelled against her mother’s boundaries. Even though Lili
thought
Aidan appreciated the fact that she didn’t have to work the streets because Bram employed her as a regular barmaid, she nevertheless disliked being singled out from the other girls. Still Aidan worked hard—sloshing drinks for thirsty seamen, dodging their drunken caresses, and earning enough in the process to keep the other girls from complaining that she didn’t pull her fair share.

Having saved her daughter from life on the streets, Lili had been quietly content with Aidan’s progress, hopeful that she would someday find a husband among the visitors to the tavern. Years ago in England, Lili would never have imagined the life she’d come to lead, but at least Aidan had been spared the worst of it.
Lili still had courage enough to hope that her daughter would find a husband … and a better life.

The trouble was—Lili glanced at Aidan now as the girl sat near the doorway, lost in thought—Aidan exhibited a young woman’s typical independence. The pulling away that began at age twelve had evolved into a genuine stubbornness. Now the fastest way to get Aidan to do something was for Lili to beg her not to do it.

Sighing, Lili pulled her handkerchief from her bosom and absently blotted perspiration from her skin. Aidan ought to go with this Heer Van Dyck. She would find a better life in his house than she would ever find here at the wharf. But if Lili suggested that such a move might be wise, Aidan would undoubtedly stiffen her neck and dig in her heels. She’d plead loyalty to Orabel, or proclaim Heer Van Dyck a snob, or cry that she feared being sent to the workhouse if she didn’t meet her master’s expectations.

Maybe she should be afraid. The world on the opposite side of Market Street was completely alien. The Van Dycks and Van Diemens and Vander Hagens preached purity and cleanliness, scrubbing themselves, their houses, and their souls with equal fervor. Aidan had not grown up in that climate, and she might not know how to cope with such ruthless single-mindedness. Lili had heard too many cutting comments to think that she could ever live in that world.

But if anyone could adjust, Aidan could. Aidan had not despoiled herself; she was still chaste, still honorable. And there was something special about her, some elusive quality born of sorrow or blood. Lili felt the distinction, as if some spirit had stolen the child from her womb and replaced it with a changeling.

But Aidan
was
her daughter—of that there could be no doubt. One had only to look at those green eyes, that stubborn chin. She and Lili were cut out of the same cloth.

Lili hugged her arms to her and looked away, trying to decide how to respond to Aidan’s dilemma. Why was motherhood so
difficult? You brought a little girl into the world and hoped she’d be everything you were not, knowing that one day she would look at you with wide eyes that see all that you are. And that seeing, that
understanding
of your frailties and faults, would tear her from your grasp and keep her forever at arm’s length …

Aidan had to go with Heer Van Dyck. This was her chance, and Lili would have to make her take it.

Her heart squeezing in anguish, Lili wiped her brow with the sticky handkerchief and straightened her back. “There’s only one thing to be done, of course,” she said brusquely. “You simply can’t go with the man, lass. I’m thinking there’s some folly going on in his house, for what kind of man would ask a girl young enough to be his granddaughter to live with him?”

“I’m twenty, Mama,” Aidan answered, her eyes like emeralds, cold and sharp, as she looked up. “And Heer Van Dyck is not my grandfather.”

“All the same, I wouldn’t do it.” Lili sighed heavily and blew a wayward curl from her forehead. “Bram will have to find a new girl to work behind the bar, and Orabel hasn’t the strength to haul trays all day. Sofie might serve to take your place, but she’d steal Bram blind, and he won’t have it.” Her voice was firm and final. “No, you can’t leave Bram, nor all the young men who come in for a drink just because they fancy Irish Annie.”

“What?” Aidan countered.

Icy fear twisted around Lili’s heart, and she shifted her gaze to meet her daughter, trying to maintain her fragile control. “How will you ever catch a husband if you’re painting all day in some old man’s house? The tavern is where you’ll find the solid men. You’re not a young lass any more, Aidan, and if you don’t find a husband—” Shrugging, she let her voice fade away, implying that all hope was lost if Aidan didn’t marry soon.

Aidan’s face sharpened in a scowl. “Am I to be drawing ale for the rest of my life then?” she demanded, rising to her feet. “Is that
all you think I can do? I could do more, Mama. Heer Van Dyck says I have the eye of a great artist.”

“Hrumph.” Lili picked up a stiff fan and waved it to cool her face. “I don’t know how you got such an eye, for your father couldn’t draw a straight line. And I’m as likely to wake up with King Charlie of England on the morrow as to produce a babe who can paint an honest picture.”

“I can!” A swift shadow of anger swept across Aidan’s face, and Lili braced herself for the explosion that was sure to follow. But when she looked up at Aidan again, the girl’s eyes welled with hurt.

“I can paint, Mama, and I think I can be good,” she answered thickly. “Not great, perhaps, but very good. And this is my chance … to be respectable.”

Aidan looked away, a glazed look of despair beginning to spread over her face, and Lili felt a vague shudder of humiliation pass through her. Aidan hadn’t actually come out and said that they weren’t respectable now, but there was no denying the truth that underlined her words.

Lili
wasn’t
respectable, not anymore. She was no longer a good mother, a moral Christian, or a virtuous lady. Life—harsh, rough, and unrelenting—had chiseled all the fine edges and useless vanities out of her soul. And though she had no doubt that Aidan loved her, her daughter was also deeply ashamed of what they had become.

She looked away, hardening her heart against the tears that rose in her throat. If she showed her true feelings or exposed any sign of weakness, Aidan might surrender to sentimentality and refuse to take this unheard-of opportunity. One sign of affection now might ruin her daughter’s life forever.

At last Lili threw her head back and pulled herself up from the pallet she’d been sitting on. “Go be respectable then,” she snapped. Her voice came out cold and hard, and she could feel the
other women’s looks of surprise and alarm. “Be gone from here, you ungrateful girl. I dare you to make something of yourself! But don’t you come back if you quit, or the girls and I will never let you forget it.”

Aidan’s mouth clamped tight for a moment, and her slender throat bobbed once as she swallowed. “Mama—”

Turning away, Lili moved through the doorway in a flash of skirts, one soft sob escaping from her as she pushed her way through the crowd outside the tavern.

“Go with God, lass,” Lili murmured, reaching out to steady herself against a streetlamp as she rigidly held her tears in check. “I will pray for your every happiness and joy.”