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“Robbin’s Landing.”

“In what town, sir?”

“In no town. ’Tis the village of Satucket, on Cape Cod.”

Cape Cod. Alice had heard Verley speak of it, of a trip he’d been forced to make to it; he’d called the place “all sand and wind and contrary opinions.” Because Verley hadn’t liked it, Alice at once felt safer there.

“Perhaps now is the time for you to tell me something,” the man said. “Such as who you are and where you come from and what you’re doing in my sail locker.”

“I’m Alice—” she began but at once saw her mistake. She looked down at the table and spied the remains of a loaf wrapped incompletely in a cloth. She put her hands under the table so she wouldn’t grab it. She said, “Baker. Alice Baker.”

The man peered at her some more. “And where do you come from, Miss Baker?”

“I got on at Boston, sir.”

“And here I thought you’d flown aboard somewhere along the way on the back of a seagull. I mean to say, Miss Baker, where do you live?”

Alice thought. She must make no trail back to Verley. This man knew her at Boston, but nowhere other. She said, “I live at Boston, sir.”

“I see. And what urged you to secrete yourself aboard this vessel?”

“I’d not the fare, sir.”

He peered again. “I suspect you to be a clever girl, Alice, if I may judge by the wit behind your answers, and I suspect you’ve no plan to be any less witty in the future. ’Tis of course the shipmaster’s task to handle such things as stowaways; I only thought to do him the favor, considering my position as partner in the vessel, but once he finishes shouting at his men he’ll certainly come down here and settle the matter. I assure you he’s a plain-speaking man, uncluttered with such useless things as humor; no doubt you’ll get on with him better.”

The man stood up. From the deck above them Alice could indeed hear the shipmaster shouting at his men with gusto.
Stand by to furl mainsail! Furl mainsail! Stand by to take in headsail! Haul away!

Alice looked up at the loose frame before her, the face atop it all long, still angles, the eyes as calm as well water. She said, “I’ve just finished out my time at Boston. I’ve come here to look for work.”

“In Satucket?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I see. And you are how old, Miss Baker?”

That was easier. “Eighteen, sir.”

The man said nothing. He stood up, pushed the loaf three inches closer to her, and retreated up the companionway.

S
he knelt at the foot of the companionway, the last crust of bread tight in her fingers, ready to leap back at the first sound of boots approaching, and listened to the three people talking above her. The woman called the man who had picked Alice out of street and locker Mr. Freeman; she called the shipmaster Cousin Shubael; Freeman called the shipmaster Brother Shubael and the woman Widow Berry. Not his wife, then. Beyond that Alice couldn’t determine the relation.

FREEMAN
: “She says she’s eighteen, a servant just out of her time and looking for work.”

WIDOW
: “In Satucket?”

FREEMAN
: “I promise you, she’s not a day over sixteen. I also promise you she’s got a master someplace yet.”

WIDOW
: “If she’s got a master he’s sore abused her, I’ll promise you that, Mr. Freeman.”

FREEMAN
: “So we return her to Boston and let the justices sort it out.”

SHIPMASTER
: “We can’t return her to Boston tonight, nor tomorrow, nor the next day. Not till the vessel’s unladed and we’ve got the herring from the mill creek and the clams off Namskaket.”

FREEMAN
: “Well, then, we give her over to the constable.”

WIDOW
: “The constable! I’d like to know what this girl’s done to deserve the constable!”

FREEMAN
: “She’s stolen a passage, for one. And for another, the amount of truth in her story is smaller than your smallest fingernail. Mark me, she’s run off from someone, which leaves Brother Shubael with the crime of transporting without papers.”

WIDOW
: “I should like to know how a simple case of finding a poor, abused girl inside a sail locker becomes a crime.”

FREEMAN
: “Look at her. Listen to that tale she tells. I’d be a simple case indeed if I took that girl for anything other than a servant run off from her master.”

WIDOW
: “So you would send her back to the person who’s abused her.”

FREEMAN
: “You make some grave assumptions, Widow Berry, both of a stranger and of a man you should know better. I wish to do what’s best for the girl. As will the justices who hear her. To set her loose without protection would be an abuse greater than any she’s met thus far.”

WIDOW
: “And when did I ever speak of setting her loose? I speak of taking her home and giving her food and a bed and some care for her wounds. That hand, for one, needs quick attention.”

FREEMAN
: “My dear Widow—”

WIDOW
: “’Tis no more than you would do for your horse, sir.”

FREEMAN
: “May I remind you that the law—”

WIDOW
: “Oh, how neat you plead the law when it serves your purpose! I heard no such scruple when you and Mr. Otis sat plotting to shut down all trade with England!”

FREEMAN
: “Mr. Otis and I scheme at nothing that doesn’t lie within the law.”

SHIPMASTER
: “Here now, we get off the subject altogether. The girl may leave this vessel in any direction she chooses for all it matters to me, but leave it she must—I’ve a hold needs unlading.”

FREEMAN
: “This ship is in your command, Brother Shubael, and I naught but partner in the venture. Your home is likewise in your command, Widow Berry, and I naught but boarder there. My role as a man of law is solely to point out where the legality sits in the matter. You may do as you like, of course.”

They did so, with a speed that hinted they must have heard a like speech before, the shipmaster calling for the lowering of the dory, the widow musing aloud over the preferred salve for blisters. Footsteps approached the companionway; Alice leaped back to the bench where the man Freeman had first put her, and watched his careful descent down the companionway, the effect of silver shoe buckles and silk stockings reduced by the hatless, wigless, wind-roughed hair. He motioned to Alice, and she climbed after him onto the deck, her first gulp of fresh air tasting as good as a first swig out of a new beer barrel.

Alice shielded her eyes against the brightness and looked around her. To one side of her lay the furrowed surface of the water she’d just crossed, to the other lay a high, white swath of sand fringed at one end by bright green marsh grass and at the other by sedge and pitch pine.

The widow stepped up to her. Her clothes were not the fineness of Freeman’s, and the wind had done an even more thorough job of disrupting her hair, but she looked handsomer in the light of Satucket than she had in the light of Boston. Or perhaps it was the words she said to her.

“I live no great distance from here,” she said. “I can offer you nothing but a cold supper and a tight bed, but this I do offer.”

No wonder the woman looked so fair! But Alice had to look next at the man Freeman. His mouth had canted sideways in either a half-grimace or half-smile, she couldn’t determine which, and as he appeared to live in the widow’s house, she thought it might be wise to know the difference. She should know the risk in him, not only as a man of law but as a man who found her a “lovely thing”—she’d heard those words before. She knew she must do a better job of reading this man’s face than she’d done reading Verley’s.

Alice stared fixedly at Freeman but could make out nothing. Or could she? Perhaps the very blankness of his gaze told her something, for surely if he planned to accost her he would attempt to conceal it here, as Verley had, with a better effort at smiling. But such a flimsy thing to count on, a man’s not smiling! Better perhaps to attempt to read the man’s words instead of his face and hunt out the deception in them. But where had he deceived? The man of law had made his case and stepped aside, allowing the widow to make her offer; as to the man who found her a lovely thing, Alice could only count it a good sign that he seemed unanxious to keep her near him.

The widow stepped closer, picked up Alice’s burned hand, and leaned down for a better look at it. “Come,” she said. “I know something of burns. This must be poulticed.”

Alice followed her.

THE WIDOW’S HOUSE
sat not far from the landing, the walls low and the roof steep, the central door and two windows on each side giving it a solid, stable look, the silvered shingles melding with its surroundings as if it had always been there. Just behind the house Alice spied a neatly boxed garden, a tight barn and necessary house, a healthy stand of pine and oak. As they entered the yard a young Indian girl in an English checked skirt came out of the barn and began to speak with the widow in rapid, short sentences.
Cow milked. Hens egged. Horse watered.
The widow took some coins from her pocket and counted them into the Indian girl’s hand; the girl dropped the coins into her pocket and ran into the road.

The widow led Alice inside. As Alice looked around she saw more plaster than paneling, more earthenware than silver, more iron than brass, but the plaster had been freshly whitewashed, the earthenware gleamed, the iron showed no rust. A proud house, if not a rich one. The widow picked up a pail near the door and pointed Alice to the well and the necessary house. Alice went to the necessary first and, once comfortable, crossed the yard to the well. The bucket came up sweet and cold; she put her mouth in it, thinking of Freeman’s horse, and drank herself full. She refilled the bucket and returned to the house, where the widow stood waiting to lead her up the stairs.

The chamber at the top of the stairs was nothing more than an unfinished attics divided by a thick chimney, but the gabled ends were peppered with odd-size windows that caught the breeze as well as the light. A dusty loom sat tucked under the eaves on the east end, but a neat pair of beds, a washstand, and a small case of drawers sufficiently furnished the west end. Alice’s spirits lifted.

The widow left Alice with few words, for which Alice was grateful. She stripped off her soiled skirt and shift and washed herself out of the bucket. She removed her best skirt and shift from her basket and put them on. She brushed and retied her hair in the same old soiled ribbon, returned to the stairs, and paused at the top to listen. She heard the door open below, boots cross the floor, and a brief, indistinguishable question and answer, followed by silence.

Alice descended. She found the widow moving about laying out the supper she’d promised, and Freeman standing with his back to the window, making an intense study of a newspaper. Alice went to the table to assist the widow, but instead the widow sat her down and picked up her hand with the sureness of someone acquainted with the art of medicine. The hand hadn’t improved during its sea voyage, the red star having stretched its tentacles the full width of the palm, and the widow frowned over it. The promised poultice appeared, smelling of sorrel, rum, and something woody, like bark; the widow slapped it into Alice’s palm and wrapped the hand with a long strip of clean linen. She next smoothed some kind of minty salve on Alice’s cheek, felt her shoulder, said, “Not displaced, then,” and as if it were part of the same sentence, “come, Mr. Freeman.”

Freeman folded away his newspaper and came to the table. Alice took a first happy bite of moist bread and purple-black preserve, but she hadn’t yet swallowed when Freeman addressed her.

“Tell me, Alice, just whereabouts in Boston did you live with your master?”

“Can we not leave the girl to eat in peace?” the widow said.

Freeman dipped his head in surrender, and they resumed eating in such utter silence that Alice found it as uncomfortable as the previous question had been. She drew her eyes down and struggled to swallow the pasty lump of bread in her mouth, but it wouldn’t slide as she wished it.

After a time Freeman said, “I ran into Cobb at the landing. He reports the last of the whale men have left for Labrador.”

“Indeed,” the widow answered.

“He tells me also that Josiah Snow and Sarah Clarke are published and will be married a fortnight Saturday.” He went on. Ned Winslow had had triplets, all in health; the herring men had run out of salt; Seth Cobb had bought a chaise; Bangs and Winslow were both late to planting due to a common distemper run through their households. None of it meant anything to Alice, but the gentle up-and-down of Freeman’s speech began to relax her, and the much-needed bread and beer began to move down her throat with less trouble. Once Alice had filled her stomach, however, her second great need overcame her; her limbs and eyelids felt so weighted she thought they must fall to the floor ahead of her. She attempted to rise to clear away her plate, but the widow reached across and took it from her, scarred fingers gripping the crockery at an odd, claw-like angle. Perhaps she did need a girl’s help, but just then she must have seen how little use Alice would be to her.

She said, “Go to your bed, child. We’ll talk on the morrow.”

Alice climbed the stairs with the last of her will, crossed the attics to the bed nearest the window, dropped her shoes, stockings, and skirt on the floor, drew back the coverlet and stretched out between the wash-worn linens. Daylight hadn’t quite finished with the room; Alice lay on her back, staring up at the silvered rafters, thinking sleep would find her even with her eyes open, but when it didn’t come she closed her eyes, and still it escaped her. She could feel the spot where Nabby’s poker had come down; she could feel the sting of the widow’s salve on her cheek and the continued throbbing in her hand; under it all ran the soreness in the new place Verley had entered. Oh, for a new body! A new Alice! She imagined the old bruised shell of herself lying behind in the sail locker, the man Freeman lifting a new, untarnished girl into the fresh, clean air of Satucket. She breathed in and out, tasting the unfamiliar bold salt air. She wondered how far she’d come, how far she’d left Verley behind her.

At the thought of Verley Alice began to tremble. She tried to push him away and start over, but he was like a fallen horse that had pinned her underneath him. She tried to cast herself back to the ship’s locker—the old body left behind, the new one gentled into life by Freeman—but then what? Oddly, the next image Alice drew was one of her lying in a meadow of soft young grass, next to a glistening ocean, the meadow spotted all over with shining new chaises, laughing brides, smiling babies that all looked alike, and most odd of all, herring, flipping like green and silver waves all over the grass. One of the brides drew near and Alice saw that it was Nabby. She said, “Why haven’t you spitted these fish for our dinner?” And there a horse broke loose from one of the chaises, charged over the grass, trampled the fish, and turned into Verley.