“So how does he know our ma?” she asked. “And what did he have to do with our grandma?”

“He was Uncle Rob’s tutor,” he reminded her. “But that doesn’t explain why he’s so close to the widow. Walking out with her on a Saturday afternoon? They looked like they were courting when we met them on the quay.”

“No, he just looked awkward,” Sarah said astutely. “I bet she looks like she’s courting with every man she meets, she’d look like that with a bargee. She’s just one of those women who always look as if everyone’s in love with her. I don’t think he’s running after her; I think boot’s on t’other foot: she’s got her eye on him.”

“You can’t know that! What d’you think she wants?”

“I can’t tell. She’s so pretty mannered all the time, I can’t tell where the real woman starts and stops.”

“She’s very…” Johnnie had no words for Livia’s relentless allure. “She makes me feel… There’s something about her.”

“Something expensive.”

“She makes my toes curl,” he confessed. “She looks at me and I can’t think what to say.”

“She makes my claws curl,” Sarah replied acidly. “I know exactly what I’d say.”

He laughed at her. “I’d like to hear it!”

“What d’you think she came here for, if not to marry someone rich?” Sarah demanded.

“Well, she’s got a catch if she can net Sir James. Do the milliners know anything against him?”

She shook her head. “No mistress. They’d know that in the sewing room the moment he ordered a lace collar. You know, he might be what he says he is: an old friend of Uncle Rob’s and a country gentleman.”

“Then what does he want with us?” Johnnie asked. “For we are neither.”

“Can’t we ask Ma?”

Johnnie looked awkward. “I s’pose so—but I always feel when we ask her things it’s as if we’re missing a father,” he said. “As if we’re saying she isn’t enough. Like we’re blaming her for what happened. Like we want a father instead of her.”

“We’re twenty-one!” his sister exclaimed. “Aren’t we old enough to ask yet?”

They were silent for a moment as they realized they were still not old enough to challenge their mother.

“I couldn’t hurt her, just for curiosity,” Johnnie said, and Sarah nodded in agreement.

“See you next Saturday?” he asked, and she rose to her feet to go in the kitchen door.

“I get my afternoon off tomorrow,” she said. “You?”

“Not this week,” he said. “But if you come by the warehouse at six I’ll take you out for a lamb chop when we finish.”

“Dinner on you? I’ll be there.”

He gripped her shoulders, they rubbed cheeks rather than kissed, with the easy familiarity of loving siblings, then he watched her bound up the steps to the door and heard the gale of laughter that greeted her from the millinery girls demanding why she had not brought her handsome brother to breakfast.

JUNE 1670, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND

As soon as it was light, Ned pulled his ferry, hand over hand on the rope, to the west side of the river and made an interrogative owl’s hoot into the darkness of the forest. He sat down at the foot of a tree and waited, his eyes towards the shadows of the forest, so that they would remain sharp and not be dazzled by the gray sheen of the quietly moving river. A little while later a female owl answered “whoo whoo.”

“Come,” Ned whispered, and without a sound a woman stepped from the shelter of the trees.

“Nippe Sannup?” she said. “You are early? This is our time: it’s us who are named the People of the Dawn.”

“Quiet Squirrel, I thank you for coming,” Ned said formally in English. She squatted beside him and he took in her lined face, the cracked and worn skin of her hands. He smelled the scent of her: red cedar wood, sassafras, and the soft clean smell of her buckskin cape.

“What do you want, Netop?”

“Mind ferry?” he asked, attempting her language. “Me walk with friends to sea.”

She smiled at his attempt at her speech. “They are weary of being men of the twilight?”

He frowned, trying to understand. “Want to go. Want walk.”

“They walk in the forest and by the river when at dusk, thinking they are hidden by the shadows.” She smiled. “Of course we see them.”

“They are good men. Safe? Safe with Dawnland People?”

“They’re safe with us. It is your rulers who say where people can and cannot go. We know that a man can walk anywhere. But your friends had better not go back to where they hid before. Won’t your king send his men to look there?”

He frowned at the ripple of words. “Somewhere else?”

She nodded. “Somewhere better. I will ask someone to take you. He knows the lands here and at the coast. He will know a good place.”

“He come now? Quick quick?”

She thought that the white men were like children, not just in speech but in thought, in the impatience of their demands.

“You can start the journey, he will find you on the way,” she said. “He has his own business before he travels.”

Ned shifted awkwardly, feeling his knees stiffening up. “What doing…? What he doing?”

No child of the People would be so rude as to ask a direct question. Especially when asking for a favor.

“He does his own business, Ferryman. We do not answer to you.”

“No trouble?” Ned asked, awkwardly conscious of his lack of fluency. “He friendly?”

“I don’t know his business. I don’t ask him. Do I keep the fees for the ferry?”

“Take fees, I give nails too.” Ned knew she would get little profit from the ferry, she would not charge a crossing fee to any of her people, nor any of the neighboring people. They lived in a world of gifting and favors to show power and to strengthen family bonds. They would never charge money for a favor as the settlers did; they thought it beneath them to make little profits off each other. And there was no point paying her in food—she was a better gardener, fisher, and gatherer than he would ever be. But all the native people loved anything made of metal, to hammer into their own use. He knew she would be glad of nails.

“And little iron rods,” she specified.

He knew that the Indian craftsmen could repair muskets if they had metal. But he had no choice but to pay her the fee she wanted.

“Nails and rods.”

“Very well.” She got to her feet in one sinuous motion as Ned pushed himself upwards, giving a little grunt at the effort.

“That’s your shoes,” she told him. “Those shoes make your bones ache.”

“It’s age,” Ned told her. “I am more than fifty.”

She laughed and her dark eyes gleamed at him. “I am far older than you,” she told him. “Many winters older, and I can still outrun you. It’s those shoes you wear.” She patted his shoulder. “And your ridiculous hat,” she said affectionately, knowing he could not understand her words.