“To attack,” the man said. “To march with other militia under commanders appointed by the Council. A force of all New England, advancing together. You’re to be captain.”

“Marching against who?” Ned asked.

“Against the savages,” the man said generally.

“Who?” Ned demanded. “What tribe?”

The man made a lordly wave. “All of ’em,” he said. “They’re all as bad as each other. D’you accept your summons?”

“Yes,” Ned said. “Of course.”

The man turned, opened the door, and grunted as he heaved himself up the big bank of snow. He set off at once, without saying good-bye, struggling through the thick snow, falling, picking himself up again. Ned shut the door against the cold and Quiet Squirrel came out from his cape.

“What will you do?” she asked him, her face as tender as a mother to her son. “Nippe Sannup—what will you do?”

FEBRUARY 1671, AT SEA

True to his word, Rob had gone straight into the cabin that Felipe hastily vacated and did not come out for forty days, a self-imposed quarantine that he would not break. His food and beer were left at the door, and he returned the plates scraped clean, throwing the scraps and his slop bucket from the porthole. A bowl of vinegar stood outside his door and his plates and cups were soaked in it before they were collected. An old sailor, who had survived the triangular trade to the killing coasts of West Africa with one of Mrs. Reekie’s plague purses sewn around his neck, swore he would catch nothing, and served Rob, steeping his clothes in seawater and vinegar and then boiling them in hot water, pressing them with a scorching iron to kill the lice.

“He’s cleaner than I am,” he said with satisfaction on the fortieth day of the voyage when it was thought safe that Rob should come out.

“Really, that’s not the highest accolade in the world,” Felipe said.

Sarah giggled, but tapped on Rob’s cabin door. “Will you come out?” she said.

“Does the Captain give permission?” he asked from inside.

“He does.”

They heard the noise of the bolt being shot and then Rob opened the door and stood before them, newly washed, newly shaved, in pressed plain clothes. He was a strikingly handsome young man of thirty-four years old, brown-haired, brown-eyed, with a square open trusting face and an easy smile that warmed his face and lit his eyes when he saw Sarah. “My little angel,” he said. “You were just a child when I left London and look at you now!” But then he saw Felipe, and the smile was wiped from his face and he fell back.

“You! What are you doing here? You damned serpent! God! What trick is this that you have played on me?” Furiously he turned on Sarah. “What have you done? Tricked me? Where are we going? How could you?”

“I didn’t, I didn’t,” Sarah said hastily.

He would have flung himself back in his cabin and slammed the door on them but they both went forward with him and Felipe caught the door with his shoulder.

“She hasn’t betrayed you, fool,” he said sharply. “You blame the wrong woman. You misunderstand—as usual. Dio! I had forgotten how persistently stupid you are!”

“Traitor!” Rob accused Sarah. “You sent me my mother’s coins and I trusted—”

“I freed you,” Sarah said quickly. “That’s the truth. The ship’s sailing to London and the Captain is honest. I am who I say I am, your niece and your friend. It’s all as you thought. It’s Felipe that is different. He’s with us now.”

“My enemy!”

“Not now. He’s on our side.”

“He’s only ever on his own side!” Rob accused.

Felipe gave a little ironic bow. “Alas, that was once too true. But listen and stop raving. I helped Sarah set you free, I didn’t realize she was going to be quite so”—he paused to search for the word—“dramatic. I didn’t realize she was going to fling herself off the boat, nearly drown herself, nearly freeze to death, and bring back a plague carrier. But I did tell her where you were, I did help her find you.”

“It wasn’t very hard to find me!” Rob spat. “Since I was committed to the prison where you sent me.”

“True,” Felipe conceded. “But nonetheless we did find you.”

“You left me to die in there.”

“I did, but she rescued you. You’ve nothing to fear from her. She’s always been true to you, came here to find you, and wouldn’t stop till she did.”

“You are?” Rob turned to Sarah, desperate to believe in her. “You are true to me? You are my niece? You did come for me?”

Sarah nodded, and put her hand to her heart. “I did come to find you, I did rescue you. I promised your ma that I would find you, or I would put flowers on your grave.”

Rob nodded. “But him? Do you know what this man is? This coldhearted brute?”

“Yes,” she said boldly, “I know the worst of him; but he helped me. I could not have found you if he hadn’t helped me. And he’s coming to London to accuse Livia. He’s turned against her. It was her who stole the goods from her husband’s collection and now she’s using our family to sell the goods.”

“You have nothing to fear from me. I am your friend,” Felipe told him cheerfully.

“You will never be my friend,” Rob assured him.

Felipe hesitated in the face of such determined hostility. “Very well, as you wish; but we share an enemy.” He glanced down at Sarah. “And we share a most gallant friend.”

Rob turned from him and took Sarah’s hands. “You are truly my niece, Sarah?”

“Yes, I am.”

“And you came here to Venice to find me?”

“Yes. It was your mother who asked me to come.”

“You have been misled and betrayed by this man,” Rob warned her. “He can be no friend to you.”

“No, he’s told me everything, I think.”

“Sarah, it was he that arrested me and threw me into the well. Nobody gets out of the well. They only freed me to go to my death on the Lazzaretto Nuovo.”

“Could have sent you to the Lazzaretto Vecchio,” Felipe pointed out, provocatively. “Far worse. Far more certain a death. And life is always a chance, here or in the well.”

Rob ignored him. “He plotted my death so that he could steal and trade antiquities with my wife,” he told Sarah. He expected her to be shocked but the face she turned to him was completely calm.

“I know this,” she said. “He told me himself. And now, in turn, Livia has betrayed him. She’s in England, selling the antiquities for her own profit and planning to marry an English lord.”

“Livia? She’s in England?”

“She came to us,” Sarah told him. “She went to your ma and told her you were dead—drowned.”

Rob was horrified. “She never told Ma that I was drowned! Not drowned!”

“It wasn’t as wicked as it seems,” Sarah said fairly. “She didn’t know your ma wouldn’t be able to bear such a thought. She didn’t know what she was saying to people like us, people from Foulmire.”