The Necklace Read online

  The

  Necklace

  By Carla Kelly

  Kenmore, WA

  A Camel Press book published by Epicenter Press

  Epicenter Press

  6524 NE 181st St. Suite 2

  Kenmore, WA 98028.

  www.Epicenterpress.com

  www.Coffeetownpress.com

  www.Camelpress.com

  For more information go to: www.camelpress.com

  www.carlakellyauthor.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  The Necklace

  Copyright © 2021 by Carla Kelly

  ISBN: 9781603813549 (trade paper)

  ISBN: 9781603813778 (ebook)

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Martha Abell, who had faith in this story. Thanks, Marty.

  And to my editor, Jennifer McCord, who did, too.

  Books by Carla Kelly

  Fiction

  Daughter of Fortune

  Summer Campaign

  Miss Chartley’s Guided Tour

  Marian’s Christmas Wish

  Mrs. McVinnie’s London Season

  Libby’s London Merchant

  Miss Grimsley’s Oxford Career

  Miss Billings Treads the Boards

  Miss Milton Speaks Her Mind

  Miss Wittier Makes a List

  Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand

  Reforming Lord Ragsdale

  The Lady’s Companion

  With This Ring

  One Good Turn

  The Wedding Journey

  Here’s to the Ladies: Stories of the Frontier Army

  Beau Crusoe

  Marrying the Captain

  The Surgeon’s Lady

  Marrying the Royal Marine

  The Admiral’s Penniless Bride

  Borrowed Light

  Enduring Light

  Coming Home for Christmas: The Holiday Stories

  Regency Christmas Gifts

  Season’s Regency Greetings

  Marriage of Mercy

  My Loving Vigil Keeping

  Double Cross

  Marco and the Devil’s Bargain

  Paloma and the Horse Traders

  Star in the Meadow

  Unlikely Master Genius

  Unlikely Spy Catchers

  Safe Passage

  Softly Falling

  One Step Enough

  Courting Carrie in Wonderland

  A Regency Royal Navy Christmas

  Unlikely Heroes

  A Hopeful Christmas

  I Told Thee, Soul

  I told thee, soul, that joy and woe,

  Were but a gust, a passing dew.

  I told thee so, I told thee so,

  And oh, my soul, the tale was true.

  Canción, Middle Ages

  In 711 A.D., the kingdoms of Visigothic Spain suffered a Moorish invasion from North Africa, fueled by the desire for conquest in the name of Allah, and by the prospect of wealth and land. The Spaniards were overwhelmed and driven far to the north in their peninsula. During the next five hundred years, they slowly reclaimed their land in what later became known as the Reconquest.

  By 1211, the Christian frontier was guarded by a thin line of fortresses south of Toledo, where Spanish warlords fought savagely to maintain control of their hard-won lands wrested from the Almohades, other warriors who followed the Moorish conquerors.

  To wage war, the Spaniards needed soldiers, horses, weapons, supplies. Centuries of battle had drained their resources. Sometimes the only way to fill empty coffers was to marry well, even below one’s station. And if the bride was the daughter of a herring merchant from The Low Countries, or Netherlands? Money is money and war doesn’t care.

  Prologue

  When he read the letter from his cousin King Alfonso, that royal part of his otherwise-ordinary family tree, Santiago Gonzalez de la Victoria understood it as a document from a scheming relative to a susceptible relative. Who else but a landless man of some ambition would consider marrying a herring merchant’s daughter from the Netherlands for her dowry?

  Santiago nearly burned the letter before Manolo read it, or Engracia, who could not read, pelted him for more information. Like him, his brother and sister-in-law had watched the arrival of the courier. Letters were rare.

  Here at Las Claves, on the remote frontera they shared unwillingly with the Almohades, latest invaders from North Africa, news of a letter traveled fast. For all he knew, the people who farmed Manolo’s land and tended his flocks wondered what the king had to say. Maybe even Yussef el Ghalib – Almohad and his worst enemy – wanted to know.

  Santiago read the letter to Manolo, after his crippled brother made himself comfortable, then waited. Thin and wasted he may have been from a lifetime of pain – Santiago’s fault, according to Juana, miserable servant and curse – Manolo commanded the estate. Santiago was his younger brother.

  “Santiago, such a dowry will buy you an army to add to Alfonso’s, and the armies of our Leon and Aragon cousins,” Manolo said. “We know the caliphate of the Almohades is weakening. Caliph Muhammad al-Nasir commands less and less respect from his own Almohad warriors. Another army from this dowry could mean all the difference.”

  Then came the clinching argument: “You would possess land of your own to the south, and the chance to prosper, once the land is Spain’s entirely. Even more, armies mean Spain will be Christian from the Pyrenees to Gibraltar.”

  “Suppose I don’t like her?” Santiago asked, since they had come this far. For a moment – solo un momento – he envied Manolo of his wife. Manolo’s marriage to a merchant’s daughter, and her vulgar dowry had come in time to bolster the dwindling fortunes of Las Claves. His envy quickly passed. Engracia loved his brother. And what’s more, Engracia was ample of bosom but small of brain.

  He didn’t know what else to say, so Manolo filled in the silence. “Have you a better idea how to raise an army?”

  No, he did not.

  “I will do it.” Santiago said the words quickly, to make them go away. “How bad can this be?”

  After the harvest, Santiago sent his letter of agreement north to Valladolid with Antonio Baltierra, a man he trusted as no other. Santiago also sent along Father Bendicio, a timid priest whose paltry virtues included skill with languages, and a possible flair for negotiation.

  Antonio returned two months later, ragged and bearded. He handed over King Alfonso’s reply, with the news that the king had dispatched Father Bendicio, in the company of Father Domitius, to Vlissingen, prosperous port in the Netherlands.

  In his letter, King Alfonso assured Santiago that the two priests – Domitius was a lawyer – were equal to the task of dealing with a simple herring merchant with pretentions. “’Here is the copy of the document I sent,’” Santiago read aloud to Manolo and Engracia. “’You will have your army, courtesy of my agreement to a Dutch monopoly in Spanish ports of cod, herring and eels. And a wife, of course.’”

  Santiago looked up from the document. “Manolo, here we are in the Year of Our Lord 1210. It lacks one year of five hundred years since the Moors conquered Spain.”

  He handed the let
ter to Manolo, who read it with a smile. “You have a year’s reprieve, brother,” Manolo said. “Father Bendicio will remain in Vlissingen, teaching this woman our language.” He looked closer. “In the spring of 1211, she will arrive at the northern port of Santander with the dowry and we will buy an army.”

  “I hope you will like her,” Engracia said.

  The brothers smiled at each other. Did that matter?

  “What is her name?” Engracia asked.

  Manolo handed back the document and Santiago turned the pages until he found a name. “I cannot even pronounce it. How would you say it?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “H-a-n-n-e-k-e A-a-r-d-e-m-a,” Santiago spelled. He shrugged. “I do not know. Perhaps Ana?”

  As he stared at the document, Santiago knew he had made a mistake. “It’s a devil’s bargain,” he said softly, so Manolo couldn’t hear. “What was I thinking?”

  Chapter One

  All romantic notions aside – Hanneke Aardema had few – marrying a cousin of the king of Castile and Leon seemed precisely what a man as ambitious as her father might attempt. Why hadn’t she suspected he might do something like this?

  The daughter of a Netherlands herring merchant, Hanneke had assumed that Papa would bring home a catch for her someday in the form of another merchant, or possibly an up and coming fisherman such as he had been.

  Mama had assured her of that. “Listen, my love,” she had said a few years earlier, when Hanneke became a woman. “If I know your father, he will trot out three or four sons of equally rich merchants. He will let you choose.”

  As it turned out, Antje Aardema didn’t know Hans Aardema as well as she thought. The trouble came when Papa, once the most amiable of men, became ambitious, pretentious, and secretive. To Hanneke’s surprise and then her consternation, no sons of wealthy merchants came around. When she turned sixteen, people began to talk.

  “Mama, I’m becoming the subject of gossip,” Hanneke said one morning. “’What is wrong with the herring merchant’s daughter? Does no man want her?’ people are saying.”

  “I regret to tell you that Papa is ambitious,” Mama had managed to say between coughs that produced an alarming amount of blood each time. “He told me in confidence that he has his eye on Spain, and a monopoly on trade.”

  “How can that possibly affect me?”

  “I don’t know,” Mama whispered, exhausted and ready to die.

  When Mama perished within the month, Hanneke had no trouble stuffing Mama’s uncertainty into a dark corner of her mind. There was a household to manage, even though she had been running it since Mama’s illness began. Maybe Papa would forget about a marriage.

  He did not forget. Hans Aardema also did not squander more than two months as a widower. Soon another Mevrouw Aardema slept in Mama’s bed, counted the silver spoons and scolded the servants. This new wife usurped Hanneke’s household reign, an efficient takeover that allowed Hans Aardema to resume his search for a way to turn his only living child into a useful commodity.

  Letters went here and there. In late winter of 1210, two black-robed Spanish priests came to their brick manor in Vlissingen, the most prosperous port in the Netherlands.

  In passable Dutch, Father Bendicio introduced himself as a priest from Las Claves, a fortress-castle on the line dividing Christian Castile from Moslem Al-Andalus. Father Domitius proclaimed himself a lawyer from the court of King Alfonso of Castile. Uneasy, Hanneke noted the fleeting but triumphant glance between husband and second wife, and knew her life was going to change.

  How, she wasn’t certain. After one day with the door closed, followed by the priests storming out, and then another similar day, she began to relax. She knew how stubborn Papa could be in the pursuit of more ships and fisherman. How could bartering away a daughter be any different?

  To her dismay, after a week of threats, and angry letters back and forth, the priests returned, looking as determined as Papa. It ended with smiles all around, except for hers.

  Her stepmother summoned Hanneke from her room, where she had been attempting to unsnarl a ball of yarn. Mevrouw Aardema pushed her into Papa’s office and closed the door.

  In silence, both priests walked around her. She had seen Papa do that when he bought draft horses to pull his fish wagons, and it unnerved her.

  “She is so short,” Father Domitius said, in heavily accented Dutch.

  “She is almost seventeen,” Papa said. “She will grow.”

  “She looks fragile,” Father Bendicio said. “And so old.”

  “Strong as an ox.”

  The Spaniards withdrew to talk in low tones, darting critical glances her way until she found herself edging closer to Papa, even though he was the author of her misery. At least she knew him.

  With a put-upon sigh, the lawyer strode across the room and bowed to Hans Aardema. “Very well.”

  Papa clapped his hands, his face nearly angelic with the same smile Hanneke recognized from word of a good catch, when his fleet of herring boats made port. Hans Aardema, king of salted fish, was a happy man.

  “I am rich!” he had exclaimed, after ushering out the priests, who would return tomorrow with documents to sign. He pulled Hanneke close. “You will become the bride of someone the king is related to, a cousin, I think.” He thumped his chest. “You are looking at the proud possessor of a monopoly – what they call a privilegio - in salted fish for every port of Spain not controlled by the Muslims. I am a wealthy man.”

  “Papa, you already were,” Hanneke said. She might have been a cricket chirping on the hearth, for all the attention he paid her.

  Could she cajole some sense into him? “Papa, couldn’t I choose from one of the sons of your wealthy friends?” she asked. “After all, if I am to go to Spain, you will never see your only child again.”

  Did she touch a sympathetic nerve? No. Papa laughed until he had to wipe his eyes. “Choose? Since when is that done? Write me a letter now and then. That will suffice.”

  She left the room in silence. Papa’s laughter followed her.

  Now, six months later, she stood on the deck of a filthy Spanish scow, bumbling toward Spain, blown two leagues backward for every four leagues forward, or so it seemed. When the vessel took on water, that meant endless weeks in Caen among the less-than-accommodating French.

  Their Spanish sea captain raged and sputtered, and French shipbuilders ignored him, declaring, “Your problem is not our problem.” They even had the nerve to laugh at the priest when Father Bendicio explained that King Alfonso expected them a month ago. Shamed, Father Bendicio scurried below, while Hanneke turned away, heartily tired of everyone.

  Finally, the wretched vessel ventured away from the French coast as June arrived. She stared down at the water. Spring had turned to summer. She was seventeen now, truly old. She had just fled to the deck, weary of one more language lesson. Did the priest have to continue them on the ship?

  It was partly her fault, which she acknowledged as she rested her elbows on the railing. Before Father Bendicio had begun his tutelage in Castilian, she knew she possessed a flair for languages. She had pretended ignorance, forcing the priest from Las Claves to sink to humiliating depths as he tried to teach her Castilian and blamed himself when she pretended ignorance. Hans Aardema had scolded the prissy fellow for being a poor teacher.

  That was unkind of me, she thought, not for the first time. It is something a powerless person does, though. Father Bendicio had tried so hard. She would never have admitted that the language of Spain was easier than French and interested her.

  “There you are.”

  Hanneke did not turn from her contemplation of the water. “I cannot go far.”

  Now was the time for her revenge, one or two sentences in flawless Castilian. “Father, do you think the time will ever come when I speak your language as well as you? I would fear t
o disappoint King Alfonso.”

  When he blinked in surprise, started to speak, then looked away, she knew his humiliation should weigh on her conscience. Should.

  “Hanneke, you surprise me,” he said finally, all the hurt evident.

  “Sometimes I surprise myself,” she said, happy to watch her triumph.

  What she saw made her regret her smallness of soul. She saw the dismay in his eyes, he who had tried so hard to teach her. Even on this voyage, when seasickness rendered him pale and unable to eat, he had doggedly persisted with the hated lessons. She saw in his eyes the awareness that she had been toying with him.

  Better to change the subject. “How much longer, Father?”

  “How much longer?” he echoed, quietly and humbly. What a prickly thing a conscience was. She writhed inside at her mistreatment of this priest she had decided to hate, simply because he was Spanish and she disliked where fate was taking her. Was her heart so small?

  Poor man, why do I torment him? she asked herself. “You look ill. You should go below,” she said in her kindest voice, one she hadn’t used with him before.

  “I am not a man for hard times,” he admitted, and left her at the railing.

  Dismayed with herself, she couldn’t go below, where the air stank of rotten things, and the smell of unwashed bodies, hers included. She looked around at the crates lashed to the deck, each of them holding some portion of her dowry, beyond the sizeable stash of gold coins Father Bendicio had hidden somewhere. The crates held everything from finely woven fabric to candlesticks, to beautiful blue and white pottery from Delft. There was even Dutch cheese, the best in the world.

  She sat on one of the crates and drew her knees up to her chest, thinking about vulgar excess and a salt fish monopoly, and the morning they sailed from Vlissingen. Papa had surprised her by taking her hand and declaring, “You are so much like me.”

  “Never,” she declared, her heart breaking.

  “You might not want to admit it,” he said, “but we are both resourceful and brave. Maybe even shrewd.”