“He is my sister-in-law’s steward,” Alys repeated. “He’s got her goods in his storehouse. She trusts him.”

“As you wish,” he nodded. “But if it all miscarries in Venice and I have to leave empty-handed, I’ll come back to you for a guinea for my time.”

“Agreed,” Alys said. “But I expect you to deliver the crates. There should be about twenty.”

“I’ve got room,” he said. “I’m carrying coffee.”

“How long?” Alys asked the question that every merchant always asked, knowing that they would never get an answer.

“As long as it takes,” he said. “What are we now? July? I sail this week, get there early August, then load, then come back. I’ll stop at Lisbon going out and Cadiz coming back. I should be with you end of September.” He rapped the table with his knuckles for luck. “God willing.”

Alys rose to her feet and spat into her hand and extended it, the Captain did the same. She felt without distaste the warm squish of saliva and his roughened cracked palm. “Godspeed,” she said.

“Aye,” he said, taciturn, and tucked the order into his wallet and took a pull of small ale.

AUGUST 1670, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND

Mrs. Rose, the minister’s housekeeper, brought a letter for Ned out to the ferry-house as the burning sun cooled at the end of the day and there was finally some relief from the heat.

“I thank you for your trouble,” Ned said, surprised to see her.

“Mr. Russell was going to send one of the slaves, but I thought I’d take a walk,” she said, looking at the dog, and the garden, anywhere but Ned’s face. “Now that the sun’s going down and it’s a little cooler. Is it from your sister?”

“Yes,” he said, glancing at the handwriting. “Out of season. Usually she replies to my letter spring and autumn.”

“You write by the tides?” she asked. “Though you’re so far inland now?”

“The big moons,” he said. “I see them, and they remind me to write.”

“Well, I’ll leave you to read it,” she said, turning back towards town.

“No! Don’t go at once,” he invited her. “I’m so glad you came.”

“Well, I thought I would,” she said.

“Would you like a drink?” Ned indicated the path through the garden towards the river. “You could sit and take a drink? Sumach? Or milk? I’ve got milk?”

She hesitated, as if she would like to stay.

“Please,” Ned said. “Take a seat, watch the river, you don’t have to walk back straightaway, do you?”

“I can stay for a while,” she said cautiously, and took a seat.

Ned went inside and reappeared with two wooden beakers, beautifully carved, and a jug of sumach berry water. “Here,” he said, and poured her a cup.

She sipped. “Very good,” she said. “How long do you leave the berries to steep?”

“Overnight,” Ned replied.

“Are you not lonely out here?” she asked, watching the sudden turquoise flash of a kingfisher, low over the water, bright as a dragonfly.

“There’s always someone wanting the ferry,” he said. “Or with something to trade. And the dugouts pass by, quite often they stop to talk, or they have something to show me, or to sell, or a message they want me to tell someone coming after.”

She gave an exaggerated shudder. “You mean natives? I don’t know how you dare talk to them,” she said. “What messages can you carry for them? I’d be afraid.”

Ned found himself puffing up a little at her admiration. He checked himself. “We’re neighbors,” he said. “It’s right to be neighborly.”

“Not with them,” she contradicted him. “I came here to make a new England; not live like a savage.”

“I hoped for a new England too,” he said. He found himself looking for a common ground with this woman who held such strong opinions; but had never expressed them to him before. “One without masters or lords or even a king.”

Now she looked up at him with a smile. “You and me both know that you can get rid of a king, but there are always masters, and servants,” she said. “And even though we were well rid of one king, his son came back.”

“Pray he doesn’t come over here,” Ned said, hoping for a smile.

“We can trust the governor to keep us free of him, and his heresies. God’s law is greater than man’s—even a king’s—and we have our charter.”

“Amen,” Ned said politely, well aware that New England was righteously devout and the minister’s housekeeper more than most.

“But how do you cook here?” she demanded.

“As anyone does, over the fire. I’ve let it go out in this hot weather. I might light a little fire outside later, and roast a fish on a spit. I could catch another, if you’d like to stay.”

She hesitated. “I have to get back to cook dinner. Perhaps another time.”

Ned nodded.

“And how do you do your washing?”

“There you have me!” Ned admitted. “I pay one of the women to come and do my washing.”

“Not savages?” she asked, a little shocked, and when he nodded she shook her head. “Savages won’t get your linen white. You can bring your collars to the minister’s house and I’ll do them in our weekly wash.”

“I’m obliged to you,” Ned said politely. “But I won’t impose. Not now that you have a little holiday, with your guests gone away for the summer.”

“They’re no trouble,” she said. “Men of God, both of them, and exiles for a great cause.”

“Have you always been in service?” Ned asked shyly.

“From when I was a girl in Devon. My master was called by God to come here and brought us, his household servants, with him. He died on the voyage, my husband too, and we that were left had to find new places. It wasn’t hard—everyone wants a servant over here, and I chose to work for the minister as he promised me a plot of land in his new settlement, if I found a husband at the end of my time with him.”

“You want your own land?” Ned asked.

“Of course,” she said simply. “Everyone does.”

“You would farm it yourself?”

She risked a glance at his face. “I hope to marry a good husband and we’ll farm it together,” she said bluntly.

Ned hesitated, not knowing how to answer her, and at once she finished her cup and rose to her feet.

“I’ll leave you to read your letter.”

“I would walk you back into town—”

“I know you can’t leave the ferry,” she said. She hesitated and then told him what she had been thinking from the very first day she had seen the ferry-house go up and Ned spreading reeds for thatch on the roof. “You could make it a good business here. You could build a bigger house and open it as an inn for travelers going north, you could hire men to farm your plot, and maids to serve. If you had a wife who knew her trade in the kitchen this could be the best house on the river.”