“Sassafras,” she said. “No wonder it brings such health.”

“No wonder it’s so expensive,” Alys exulted. “Uncle Ned has sent us a fortune, just as we need it. Will you make posset bags with it?”

Alinor was rifling in a box of bark and roots. “And here are some seeds for us to set, and some other herbs.”

Johnnie loosened the ring and took the lid off a barrel. “Dried fruits,” he said.

“God bless him,” said Alys. “It couldn’t have come at a better time.”

“You read his letter.” Alinor dusted it and handed it to Alys as Johnnie carefully replaced the lids and followed his mother and grandmother into the warm parlor. Livia slipped ahead and took a seat beside the fire.

Alys cut the seal, opened the single sheet of paper, and read the letter telling of his preparation for winter. Alinor looked out of the window towards the river, listening intently to the list of goods, his preparations for the season, and his blessing. When Alys had finished she said only: “Read it again.” After the second reading she breathed out slowly, as if she had almost been holding her breath, and said: “I always used to garden with him, it’s strange to think of him working alone.”

“It sounds as if he is doing well,” Alys said cheerfully.

“Aye—what does he call the marrows?”

“Squash. And the berries are called cranberries. But other things sound the same—thatch and hens—Ma. Think of him having bees? Just like you used to do! Some things sound just the same as England. And some things sound better? Being free, without a master and without a king.”

Her mother nodded. “He’ll like that,” she said. “And what he says about how you can just pick up your bed roll and musket and go. He always wanted to be free to leave Foulmire; and now he is. I must be glad that he’s free.”

“And he thinks of us,” Alys pointed out. “He thinks of you when you think of him, at the full moon.”

Alinor smiled. “I suppose it’s the same moon,” she said. “The same moon shines on my brother as it does on me. It shines on us all, wherever we are.” She took the letter and turned it over in her hands.

“I’d give so much to travel!” Johnnie said. “But I’d go East rather than West.”

“Oh, would you?” Livia asked limpidly.

“He’s always wanted to join the Honorable East India Company,” Alys told her. “But you need to have a patron to get a place in the Company. That’s what they call it—as if it needs no other title—the Company.”

“A patron?” Livia asked, as if this were news to her, and Alinor glanced at her. “What sort of patron?”

Johnnie was excruciatingly embarrassed; but could do nothing but answer her. “You can only enter the Company with a patron, Aunt Livia.”

“Someone like the noblemen who purchased my antiquities?”

“Yes, those sort of gentlemen,” he agreed shortly, wondering why she was leading him on to lie to his mother. “Someone like them, I suppose.”

“But I know people like this!” Livia exclaimed smiling. “They buy my goods—they would not buy anything from here, but they buy my goods on the Strand.”

“I know,” he said awkwardly. “But it’s a far cry from buying your antiquities to sponsoring a young man from nowhere. There’s no reason they should recommend me, just because they like a column twined with ivy.”

Livia flickered a dark gaze at him like a lover’s secret glance. “Not so far,” she said. “And it was honeysuckle.”

“We know no one whose help we want,” Alys ruled, looking from Livia’s half-hidden smile to her mother’s gray gaze which was fixed, speculatively, on Livia’s downturned face.

“We’d rather make our own way than depend on someone’s favor,” Alinor supported her daughter. “Wouldn’t you, Livia?”

“Oh, I suppose so,” Livia concurred, glancing up at Johnnie almost as if she would wink.

DECEMBER 1670, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND

On his Christmas Eve in Hadley Ned was surprised to hear a whisper of displaced snow at his door and a quiet tap from a mittened hand.

“Who’s there?” he shouted. He did not reach for the musket, but nor did he think for a moment that it was Mrs. Rose.

“I don’t know!” came the laughing response in a deep voice. “Am I John Sassamon, or Wussausmon?”

“I think it depends what you’re wearing?” Ned said, opening the door and welcoming the tall man dressed in Indian winter clothes into his room.

He brushed snow from his head, from his shoulders, from the iced fringes of his buckskin leggings and then stepped inside. “I will make a lake here, where I melt,” he said.

“I see you, Lake,” Ned said. “But come in anyway, and get warm. Will you stay the night?”

“If you will have me? I leave for my home at dawn. I said I’d be there for Christmas Day.”

“Lord, is it Christmas Day tomorrow?” Ned asked.

“Heathen,” Wussausmon said comfortably. “Did you not know?”

“It makes no difference to a godly man.” Ned followed the old ruling of Oliver Cromwell. “It’s not a celebration ordered in the Bible so it’s an ordinary day of prayer to me and all true Christians. Certainly to all of us in Hadley. So who’s the heathen now?”

Wussausmon laughed shortly, shook off his undercape, and came to the fire. “Ah, you’ve let your dog in,” he said as Red came to sniff him. “I wondered if he would spend the winter outside.”

“He sleeps out,” Ned said defensively. “I’m not making him soft. He’s a working dog.”

The Indian raised his hands. “Why would I care?” he asked. “You Coatmen are so strange with your animals. Both tender and cruel. You put your dog out but you sleep with hens?”

Ned laughed. “I do,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“It shall be our secret,” Wussausmon promised. “Please God we never share any worse between us.”

“Will you take a glass of cider?” Ned invited. “A small glass, and don’t get drunk and sell me your fields at Natick?”

“A small glass, and then I must sleep. I will have to leave at dawn.”

Ned poured a tiny measure for him and his guest and the two men stretched their feet to the fire and sipped.

“D’you know the name of the translators for the Coatmen who first came?” Wussausmon asked Ned.

“No,” Ned replied. “No, wait, someone told me. When the English first arrived on the first ship, the Mayflower? You mean, translators like you?”

Wussausmon smiled. “Maybe they were like me. I hope to God that they were not. One was called Squanto and one Hobbamok; they were rivals, they each told the English that the other was a Judas, a betrayer. Nobody could decide who to believe. Perhaps they were both liars, perhaps they were both betrayers of their people and their birthright.”

“I told John Russell of your fears.” Ned guessed that Wussausmon was speaking of his sense of being in two worlds and belonging to neither. “I told him of Norwottuck arming, I warned him as you wanted me to do.”