“They don’t cheat?” she asked incredulously.

“They don’t dare. They’d be reported at once. And come back inside two weeks. We sail as soon as we are loaded, we’re not allowed to stay beyond our time. Already they’ve issued our papers. If you’re not here, I’ll go without you. And get the goods here sooner rather than later; they’ll want to inspect them.”

“I will.”

“And if you hope to bring your husband home with you, he’ll have to have his papers in order.”

“Yes, yes,” she said.

“And take care,” he warned her. “Everyone here is either a spy or a villain. Or both.”

She hesitated at the top of the gangplank. “You make it sound like a nightmare.”

“It is,” he said dourly. “Your own husband will report you. If he’s still alive.”

DECEMBER 1670, LONDON

In the absence of Sarah and her neat stitches, Alys was sewing bags for sassafras tea with her mother. They worked at the round table in the glazed balcony of Alinor’s room so they could catch the wintry light as the gray mist sighed against the windows and the low cloud billowed on the roof.

“Can you see to work?” Alys asked. “Shall I get candles?”

“We can’t have candles in the middle of the day,” Alinor replied. “I can see well enough.” She took a pinch of herbs and laid them on a new square of cheesecloth. “Has she finished selling her goods? Are they all gone?”

Alys noted that now her mother never named Livia, just as she never named Sir James.

“Yes, they’re all sold. I believe he’s going to his home in the north, for the winter season. When he comes back to London, I suppose she’ll put the new load up for sale in his house again.”

“Has she given you the money she made?”

“No, it’s at his goldsmith’s for safekeeping,” Alys said without a tremor.

“He’s her partner? And you don’t object?” her mother asked curiously.

“How can I object? I don’t have a beautiful warehouse where she can show her things, I don’t have an account at a goldsmith’s where she can keep her money. I can’t make demands of her or bring her down to our—”

“You’re besotted with her,” Alinor said quietly, and saw the deep blush spread across her daughter’s face.

“I love her as a sister,” Alys said stiffly.

“And does she love you?”

“Yes, when she’s not at his house or chasing after his friends to buy her goods, I think she is happiest. When it is just her and me, she’s at peace. In the future—if we can buy our own warehouse and run the business together—we’ll be completely happy.”

“You have to buy her a warehouse?”

“If I can, I will,” Alys said. “It’s our future.”

“What if it turns out that she has deceived us?” Alinor named the worst fear.

“She hasn’t,” Alys said. “She wouldn’t deceive me.”

DECEMBER 1670, VENICE

The quay was bordered with hard white paving stones, the very pavements of Venice were priceless stone. Jostled by porters and gondoliers, passersby and street sellers, Sarah walked slowly, feeling unsteady after so long at sea, as if the ground was heaving like waves. She did not feel safe to linger before the Custom House, among the watching officials, so busy and stern. A guard on one of the bolted warehouse gates stared at her and she moved away, knowing that he was watching her go.

She rested her hatbox at the side of a stone bridge and looked inland, along a canal, marveling how the walls of the houses went sheer into the water, like brightly painted cliffs. Every great house had a water gate with an upright striped mooring pole for the private black gondola. One or two houses had left their water gates opened wide to the glassy canal, and she could see the shadowy interior, the water lapping gently against the marble stair as if the lagoon itself was a tenant.

Sarah felt in the pocket of her cape for the address of the house of Livia’s old steward. When Johnnie had put it in her hand she thought it would be easy to find; but now, with streets of water and a spiderweb of narrow alleyways, she thought she was certain to get lost.

“Hey!” She beckoned one of the begging children and two little boys approached her. She showed them the piece of paper but neither of them could read. “Ca’ Garzoni,” she said. “Signor Russo. Russo!”

One boy turned to the other and spoke a stream of Venetian Italian, quite incomprehensible to Sarah. She tightened her grip on her hatbox and the little boy nodded to her and set off at a rapid pace, glancing back and beckoning that she should follow him. He went down to the quayside where a traghetto was taking on passengers to cross. The ferryman showed her an open palm, the international gesture for money, and she gave him an English halfpenny for herself and the two boys, and cautiously stepped from the wet steps into the rocking craft. The boatman poled them across, weaving around the canal traffic to the steps on the other side. The little boys sprang out and Sarah followed them, squeezing around women with baskets of shopping, market women with big panniers of goods, the watermaids with yokes on their shoulders loaded with slopping buckets of fresh water.

Sarah followed the boys down a narrow lane, houses on either side, some serving as little shops, a shutter propped over an open window, the windowsill serving as a counter for goods. Some were workshops, with a tailor seated cross-legged in the window for the light, or a cobbler bent over his last. She dawdled by the hat shop, marveling at the delicacy of the work and the richness of the fabrics, longing to go in and see the premises, the girls, and the exquisite patterns.

Every street led to water, every pavement ran alongside the smooth surface of a canal, or headed to a wooden bridge to connect one tiny lane to another. The canals were crowded with the little boats of traders going into the markets of the city carrying fruit and flowers and fish, local people ferrying their goods and delivering their products, and threading through it all, the sleek pitch-black gondolas with the gondoliers standing carelessly beautiful, high in the stern and propelling themselves and their passengers steadily forward, poling their craft through the canal traffic like needles through patchwork, calling a warning at every corner like the cry of a strange seabird: “Gondola! Gondola! Gondola!”

Every house had a tiny door on the narrow street for tradesmen or servants, but the grand door, the front door for visitors, residents, and guests, faced onto the water and opened to the lapping canal, so a boat could enter the house like a horse going into a stable and visitors could disembark on the private indoor quay. Sarah, peering through the open water gates, could see one or two gondoliers waiting for their masters, dressed in the house livery, straw hat in one hand, the other hand on the rearing prow of his craft, like a groom holding a horse. Someone jostled Sarah and she stopped staring and walked on.

The boys went through lane after lane and up and down over bridges and finally came to a great square with a central domed stone well in the center, caged in a heavy iron grating, surrounded by tall buildings. The little boys pointed to one with a small dark doorway and RUSSO carved in the stone over the arched door.