Quillifer

CHAPTER TWO

he lugsail rattled overhead as the sailboat came across the wind, and then it filled and the boat surged forward, cutting the water with a fine, crisp murmur. Sunlight glittered from wavetops, shone gold on the tall reeds that surrounded the channel.

I leaned against the weather gunwale and smiled up at the sun. Loafing about in boats is perhaps my second-greatest pleasure, and my pleasure was only increased by the knowledge that I was sparing myself a day copying documents.

Kevin tucked the tiller beneath his arm. “Do you think the god truly cares whether we sing sa-sa or sa-fa?” he asked.

I squinted into the bright morning sky. “I think if the god truly cared about his worshipers and his city, he wouldn’t let the harbor silt up.”

“True.”

“My father hopes that we’ll be struck by a strong-enough storm to blast open a new deepwater channel. Perhaps he even prays for it.” I looked at my friend. “Does your father pray for such a thing?”

“My father owns ships. He does not pray for storms.”

“In any case, let us pray there are no storms today.”

Kevin surveyed the brilliant blue sky, the small clouds perched high in the inverted azure bowl overhead. “I hardly think prayers are necessary.”

“Pray, then, that when we meet Sir Stanley, he isn’t carrying his gun.”

The sailboat raced along the channel, carving a perfect silver wake behind. Tall reeds rustled on either side. Doomed, I thought.

The city of Ethlebight had at last come to the end of its centuries-long crawl down the banks of the Ostra. Below Ethlebight the river spread into dozens of small fingerlike channels separated by reefs of silt, each islet crowned by golden-brown reeds. The once-open bay had filled with alluvium, and even the strong tides couldn’t keep it clear.

The winding channels, surrounded by reeds taller than a man, were a daunting maze that required an experienced pilot, but it was the silt that would choke the life out of the city. Already there was no passage deep enough for a galleon, and with the galleons gone, Ethlebight had lost its deep-sea trade with foreign nations. Only barges, pinnaces, hoys, flyboats, crumsters, and other such small craft could now hope to gain the port, and ere long Ethlebight would become a city of ghosts. This sad truth was why my father had encouraged me to adopt the law as my profession, as a lawyer could work and lodge anywhere.

I loved my home city, but perhaps my fantasies were beginning to overleap its walls. I could feel another world beckon, a world with more scope.

The tide had started to ebb before Kevin and I had set sail, and the current helped draw the boat out through the vast, rattling sea of reeds. The channel split before us, and we bore right and were at once confronted by a pinnace aground. She was a handsome little vessel, with a vermilion hull and a broad ochre stripe, and on her canvas shimmered the waves’ reflection. She had backed her sails and put out a kedge anchor in hopes of towing herself off, but was almost certainly stranded till the next high tide.

“Eighty tons,” Kevin judged. “Too big for the port.” There was sadness in his voice.

The pinnace flew the ensign of Loretto, the kingdom with which Duisland had been at war at least as often as it had been at peace. In times of conflict, my city’s merchants abandoned their countinghouses for their quarterdecks, and sent their ships to seize the commerce of Loretto, or the Armed League of the North, or Varcellos, or any other nation declared an enemy by the King. The harbor of Ethlebight filled with their captures, the warehouses were stuffed with plunder, and the pockets of the sailors grew heavy with silver. The privateers of Ethlebight were famous for bringing the wealth of other nations to their city.

But now, in time of peace, no stirring action beckoned, and any large prize would run aground trying to make the port. I waved to the stranded sailors as we passed, and the sailors waved back. Within minutes the sea of reeds fell away, and our little boat pitched on the open sea. Sun-dappled spindrift flew over the bows and stung my face. Kevin swung onto the new tack, southwest, and the lugger raced along under a freshening wind. I stretched out along the thwart.

“The sun above, the sail full, the horizon boundless,” I said. “Is it so strange that I prefer this to the practice of law?”

Kevin looked at me from beneath the broad brim of his hat. “You don’t care to be a lawyer, then?”

I considered this, and shrugged. “It is a path superior to many,” I said. “And I must walk some path, a path to take me into the wide world.”

“Your father said, did he not, that you enjoyed argument so much, that you might as well do it for a living?”

I made a broad gesture and invited fantasy to fly into my words. “I could become a famous advocate in the courts of royal Selford, or a member of the House of Burgesses in water-girdled Howel, or a judge whose wisdom echoes down the generations. . . .”

Kevin grinned. “Why not all three?”

“Why not?” I echoed. “But yet, on such a day as this, I find myself stifled by the thought of spending my life in dusty legal chambers, or pleading the case of some poacher or profiteer before a drowsy judge—or for that matter drowsing on the bench myself, listening to advocates monotonize their cases.”

Kevin laughed. “Monotonize. You just made that word up, didn’t you?”

“Ay.” I shrugged. “It’s a little unrefined, I admit, far from my best.” I looked at Kevin. “Your father already sends you to sea, to do business abroad and meet with his affinity.”

Kevin made a face. “And to encounter young ladies, with whose fathers my own father wants a connection.”

“Your plight does not stir my sympathy.”

“You have not met the ladies in question. Either they simper and say nothing, or they demand to know how much money I can expect to inherit, and how much of it will be spent on them.” Kevin shivered, then looked out to the blue horizon. “If you cannot abide the law, you know, you could run away to sea. After twenty years, provided you survive war, pirates, and tempest, you might find yourself the proud captain of a crumster, carrying tubs of tallow from port to port.”

I made my sad-clown face. “It is a mournful picture you draw, cousin.”

A gust heeled the boat, and Kevin drew the tiller toward me to keep the boat on the wind. I leaned out over the rail to keep the boat in balance. The gust faded, and as the boat righted, Kevin’s look turned thoughtful.

“My father and I need lawyers now and again,” he said. “Contracts must be drawn up, debts collected, defaulters pursued. We might be able to employ you—not in Ethlebight, where old Clinton handles our needs, but in other ports.”

I sat up with sudden interest. “Boats and the law!” I said. “Delightful duality!”

“I’ll speak to my father. But when does your apprenticeship end?”

“Eight or twelve months, though it’s really up to Master Dacket.”

“And of course, you’ll have to avoid jail or the pillory for seducing the Mermaid.”

I preferred not to discuss Annabel. All too well could I imagine her beneath her angry father’s belt, or rod, or him hustling her off to a nunnery. There was nothing I could do to prevent it, for a father possessed absolute legal authority over his daughter. If I could somehow break into the Greyson home, free Annabel, and run with her, we might flee far enough to avoid her father’s wrath—but only to starve to death in some distant country, without friends, support, or money.

Again it occurred to me that fathers, as a breed, are unreasonable. Greyson had turned his own house upside down, pursued me over half the town in the middle of the night, and doubtless now was straining his imagination for ways to punish his daughter—and all because of a harmless dalliance. What mad fury had possessed him, and why? He was doing far greater damage to Annabel’s reputation than ever I could have.

Why, I wondered, are the young denied the opportunity to be young? Why should we not love, and be carefree, and enjoy our pleasures before age and care ruin them?

I thought of Annabel again, and considered that if I were a character in a poem by Bello or Tarantua, I would be in agonies of shame and worry, perhaps rolling like a dog on the floor while weeping and calling Annabel’s name—and yet I was not weeping.

Was I deficient in some crucial element of character, that I did not feel such extremities of anguish? Should I now be rending my garments, or hurling myself into the sea to drown?

Yet I could not see how my drowning would improve the situation in any way. Annabel would be no better off for my death, or my torn clothing would make no impression on her father, nor for that matter any loud displays of anguish. He would simply thrash me with the same fury with which he had threatened his daughter.

I had not meant to do any harm. Surely, intentions should count in these matters.

Because I did not wish my thoughts to dwell on Annabel, or on my own lack of merit, I turned the conversation to admiralty law, and so discoursed on jetsam, merit salvage, carriage hook to hook, inherent vice, and laches, estoppel, and actions in rem, or “against all the world.” Kevin listened patiently—he probably knew much of this already—but if he were to trust me with some of his family’s business, I wanted to demonstrate my own thorough knowledge of the subject.

To leeward of us were islands with prosaic names: Cow Island, Pine Island, and Mutton Island. At high tide, the islands were surrounded by a turbulent sea, but when the tide raced away, the retreating waters revealed mucky causeways that connected the islands to the mainland. The low isles were a lush green and dotted with flecks of white, the flocks of sheep that formed most of the islands’ population. Mutton Island was well named; there were many more sheep than cows on Cow Island, and more mutton than pines on Pine Island. The salt grass that grew on the flat country around Ethlebight was perfect grazing for sheep, and produced a distinct flavor and tenderness in the meat that had made Ethlebight mutton famous throughout all Duisland.

Kevin and I shared the jug of cider and bites of gingerbread as we passed the first two islands. Kevin wanted to talk about Annabel, and I kept diverting him until we took the channel into Mutton Island. We moored at the pier, and I left behind in a locker the cap that marked me as an apprentice lawyer.

I did, however, take the jug of cider, and Kevin bore the satchel of food.

We gave the mooring line enough slack so the boat could ride the tide up and down, then walked along onto the island. A shepherd, wearing a big straw hat and carrying a staff over his shoulder, gave us an incurious look from amid his flock. His dog, far more interested, stood alert on stiff legs, eyes fixed on the intruders.

We took the only path inland. White clouds of sheep drifted around us. The island was mostly salt-grass meadow broken by clusters of gray stone, and ahead I saw quickbeams and maples planted as a windbreak, the maples already scarlet in the early autumn, and the green leaves of the quickbeams right at the cusp of going gold.

We passed into the trees and saw in a glade a modest country house of red brick, probably intended as a summer retreat for Sir Stanley’s in-laws. Brown brick outbuildings and empty paddocks for sheep stood dark in the shadows of the trees. I paused in the shade of a maple and considered my approach.

“If we go to the front door,” I said, “Sir Stanley could go out the back. Or he could have the servants bar the entrance.”

“We should hide and wait,” Kevin said.

“The shepherds already know we’re here.”

I considered that it was unlikely that the lower servants would ever have been told why Sir Stanley was hiding here, or indeed that he was hiding at all. I turned off the path and moved through the grove. The first of the outbuildings was a woodshed, the second a stable with empty stalls, but with a scent of horse that had not faded. Past this was a paddock with sheep still in it, and beyond a brick creamery with a sagging thatch roof. I paused for a moment with my nose in the air, and thought I scented a whiff of warm, fresh milk. I walked to the door of the barn, looked in, and saw a young woman sitting by a milking stand, drawing milk from a sheep while other ewes, impatient for their turn, flocked around her.

“May I beg a sip of milk?” I asked.

At my unfamiliar voice, the dairy maid turned on her stool, though her hands remained at their work. She was about my age, and had a heart-shaped face under a blue cap. Her lips were full, her eyes dark, her complexion rosy. I felt my interest quicken.

I nodded at the grandly dressed Kevin standing uncertainly in the creamery door. “I’ve taken the young gentleman to the island in my boat,” I said. “And it’s thirsty work.”

She looked at the jug in my hand. “Have you emptied your own jug, then?”

“It’s variety I seek,” I said. “That and a few words with a lovely maid such as yourself.”

A few moments’ light conversation with a pleasing young maid, I thought, will do no one harm. Annabel Greyson was beyond my reach, perhaps forever. Surely, I had the right to seek a balm for my wounded heart.

The woman’s hands continued their work, twin streams of milk foaming into the pitcher. I eased myself through the sheep clustering about the milking stand, and leaned against the wooden gate to the pen.

“I’m willing to share my cider, if you like,” I said. “I imagine you see enough milk around this place.”

“I’m paid mostly in beer and cider,” said the dairy maid. “Cider is nothing to me.”

“I’d give you wine, if I had it.” There was a pause. “I could bring wine tonight, if you’d care to meet me.”

She gave me a look from under her cap. “You would come all the way from town to bring me wine?”

“I have a boat, so why not? I would bring you a moscatto from far Varcellos. A wine as sweet as the finest peach, as sweet on your lips as your smile.” At the compliment I saw the smile tugging at her lips, and I pointed. “There!” I said. “Sweetness itself.”

I am not, I think, handsome, though some I believe find my countenance amiable enough. Were I as pretty as my schoolfriend Theophrastus Hastings, say, I would scarce have to speak to women at all; they would simply tumble into my arms as they tumble into his.

But because I have no great share of beauty, I must call upon other resources, chief among them the art of conversation. I strive to amuse.

I also listen. It has been my observation that many who can declaim with the greatest actors of the age are not as facile when it comes to hearing what others are saying.

The dairy maid finished with the ewe and brushed the animal off the milking stand. The waiting ewes jostled one another in their eagerness to be milked, but one was quicker than the others and jumped onto the small table. The maid took the pitcher and prepared to empty it into a bucket standing by her feet.

“Ah,” said I, “and may I not have a drink? The milk drawn out by your own clever hands?”

“If it’s the milk you’re really after, you can have some.” She offered the pitcher. I took it and drew in several drafts of warm, foamy sweetness. I deliberately left myself a white mustache, and returned the pitcher. She laughed at the froth on my lip.

To use the tongue would be vulgar, I thought, and so removed the stain with a sleeve. She poured the remaining milk into the bucket, and then began to turn to the waiting ewe.

“May I know your name?” I asked.

“Ella,” she said.

“I am Quillifer.”

Ella looked thoughtful. “I’ve heard that name,” she said.

I leaned closer. “Will you share my moscatto with me tonight? I will bring it, but only if I don’t have to drink alone.”

Ella looked at me slantwise from beneath her dark brows. “Surely, you can find drinking companions in town.”

“But none so lovely,” I said. “None with such roses in her cheeks, hands so clever, or lips so sweet.”

The roses in her cheeks crimsoned. “If you will bring the wine,” she said, her voice a little throaty, “I will help you drink it.”

“The pleasure of the moscatto shall be thine. Where shall we meet, and when?”

She looked up at me, her hands jogging the sheep’s udders. “Here. The creamery is empty at night.”

“The hours till nightfall shall seem each a year.” I leaned over her and put on my pleading-lover face. “May I have a kiss to seal the bargain?”

“Not in front of the gentleman,” Ella said, tossing her head toward Kevin. “He’ll gossip.”

“If not your lips, like a lover,” I said, “and if not your cheek, like a brother; then may I kiss your hand like a suitor?”

Ella removed her hand from the teat, wiped it on her blue wincey dress, and held it out. I brushed the taut knuckles with my lips.

“Until tonight,” I said. I looked up at Kevin, still standing uncertain by the door. “My gentleman bears a message for Sir Stanley. Is he at the house?”

Ella resumed her milking. “Nay. He’s gone hunting, and won’t be back till the tide is out.”

“That will be soon, will it not?”

Ella’s lips twitched. “I know nothing of tides; I work in the creamery. But I know that my Master Golding will be here soon, back from scalding the curd, and that you should be gone before he arrives.”

“I will come back tonight,” said I, “with the wine, and without the young gentleman.” I darted a kiss to her cheek—she gave a cry of mingled delight and surprise—and then I rejoined Kevin. We two walked around the creamery and began the stroll to the ford.

“He will come at low tide,” I said. “And brother, I shall need to borrow your boat tonight.”

Kevin looked over my shoulder at the creamery. “You didn’t think to ask if she has a friend?”

“There comes a time,” said I, “when a man should shoot his own fowl.”

“Perhaps, then,” said Kevin, “a man should also own his own boat.”

“When I return,” said I, “I’ll bring you a cheese. Or a sheep. Whichever you like.”

Kevin sighed. “I shall have to content myself with a cheese. Yet now I am wondering why I came.”

“A pleasant sunny day on the water, and yet you complain. You should have talked to the girl yourself, an you liked her.”

We placed ourselves beneath a maple on the path leading to the ford, and applied ourselves to the satchel, and its bread, meat, and cheese.

Wind whistled in the high branches. Sheep drifted across the grass like foam on water. I began to feel sleep tugging at my eyelids, and then I was started into alertness by the sound of a hunting horn.

“A recheat!” said Kevin. He was more familiar with the vocabulary of the hunt than I.

I cupped my ears. The mellow call, rich as cream, came from the north. I rose to my feet, then jumped onto one of the lower branches of a quickbeam. Riding over the rich grass on the northern horizon I could see a party of horsemen.

“Ay, they come,” I said. “You might wish to take cover, stand at a distance; you are too brightly colored. And hand me the satchel.”

Kevin passed the satchel to me and withdrew farther into the glade. A dove flapped away as I climbed higher into the tree. I could see the hunters coming on, hear the dogs calling—not the baying of the hunt but a pleasant gossip within the pack. The hunting party was coming at a slow walk, the horses and men tired with their morning exercise.

The quickbeam’s berries were turning red with autumn. The wind chuffed overhead, rattling the dry leaves. I pulled the writ from my pocket and took a firm grip on my leather satchel with its cargo of meat and cheese.

The horn blew another recheat. I heard a door bang from the direction of the house, as the servants bustled out to assist the hunting party.

The staghounds scented their home and bounded into the lead, barking amiably as they arrowed for the kennels. Like a gray-brown river they poured along beneath my feet, followed by some of the grooms. The hounds, grooms, horses, and hunters were all spattered with mud from crossing the causeway.

Sir Stanley rode in the middle of the party, a big man with a thick neck and long gray mustaches that reached halfway down his chest. He wore heavy boots and hunting leathers and a goodly coating of mud, and he held the reins in one hand and a braided whip in the other. His horse was heavy-framed and yellow where it wasn’t spattered by ooze. Behind came the grooms, one bearing the straight sword their master used to kill the stags once the dogs had cornered them, and another with the gun used for hinds, who were less sport because they had no horns with which to defend themselves, and therefore could be shot instead of attacked on foot. Behind came sumpter horses bearing the bodies of the kill, already cut up and packaged and ready for the kitchen or the smokehouse. The trophy heads were carried in a basket: a red stag and a fallow buck, and a small but angry-looking boar.

My pulse beat high in my throat. I calculated my moment, then made my leap and landed in a crouch just ahead of the rider, and to his left, on the side away from the whip. The big horse reared and bellowed in surprise. The rider clutched at the reins.

“Sir Stanley! Sir Stanley!” I called out. I waved the satchel near the horse’s head and provoked more rearing. The hooves lashed out. Sir Stanley cursed, sawed the reins, and finally backed the yellow horse down. Rage turned his face a brilliant scarlet. He turned to me and roared.

“What do you mean, waving that damned thing, you jack-in-the-box!”

“Hold this, sir. You may have broke the martingale.”

I held out the writ as I feigned an interest in the horse’s bridle; the yellow horse backed away again, and out of exasperation, Sir Stanley snatched the writ from my hand.

“No, I see the martingale is all right,” I said. I gave the knight a brilliant smile. “And sir, that is a writ in your hand, and you are commanded by the justice of the peace to the Assizes.”

Sir Stanley stared. The hounds had seen me appear as if by sorcery and came bounding back; they surrounded me in a rough, boisterous crowd, as if in admiration of the trick I’d played on their master. I am fond of dogs, and they of me, and I laughed and scratched their ears. Sir Stanley lashed at the dogs with his whip.

“Down!” he said. “Down, you bratchets!” He snarled. “Stop that fawning! Tear him, tear him! Ahoo! Ahoo!”

I danced away from the whip, the excited hounds still bounding around me. I pointed at the grooms who were starting to gather, themselves equipped rather ominously with whips, guns, or bright boar-spears. “These gentlemen are all witnesses!” I said. “And if they are not enough, I brought a witness of my own!” I brandished the satchel in the direction of Kevin, who—with what seemed a degree of embarrassment, or perhaps well-grounded reluctance—emerged from behind his tree.

One of the grooms blew on his brass horn to call the dogs but was ignored. Sir Stanley made a few more slashes with his whip before grooms rode into the melee and deftly separated me from my pack of admirers. I ghosted away from the trail, found a groom behind me, as if to cut me off, and ducked under the horse, which snorted and lashed out with its rear hooves. The hooves were no threat to me, but they kept the other horses clear.

“I have done my duty, Sir Stanley!” I said, backing. “I will forego the customary tip an it please you, and wish you good day.” I waved. “The Compassionate Pilgrim save you, Sir Stanley!”

“Damn your Pilgrim!” The knight shook his whip in the air. The staghounds bounded and gave excited voice. The groom blew another useless recheat.

“Good day, Sir Stanley!”

The knight propped his fist on his hip and glared after me.

“Who in hell art thou, thou impertinent louse?”

I left the question unanswered as I turned and made for the landing. Kevin joined me. We walked briskly.

Kevin adjusted his broad hat. “Dare I look over my shoulder to see if he’s taking aim with his gun?”

“It is a lovely gun,” I said. “I saw it in the hands of his bearer. Wheel-lock, the lock and barrel chased with silver. Rifled, I daresay. And we know he is a good hunter.”

“You offer no comfort.”

“There is no comfort till we are out of range.”

We left the shade of the grove and returned to the green, sunny domain of the sheep. Shepherds and sheepdogs watched us with professional interest. Another recheat sounded from the grove.

“They summon the dogs,” said Kevin. “Walk faster, thou impertinent louse.”

I said nothing but increased the pace. Then from the grove, instead of the barks of excitement and interest, came the baying of a hunting pack, and it was time to run.

Alarmed sheep gave their staccato bray and scattered before us. Sheepdogs barked warning. The sound of the baying pack came closer.

Surely, I thought, he does not mean to kill us. If he wanted that, he would have used his gun. A few ounces of flesh torn by the fangs of his staghounds should satisfy him.

Not wanting to be shredded, I ran and fumbled with the straps of the satchel. I heard oaths from the shepherds, who feared the dogs would savage their charges. I considered lunging for one of the shepherds and seizing his stick to use in my own defense, but decided that this was no time for the pack to catch me wrestling a herdsman.

My throat ached as the cool air froze my gullet. I dared to cast a glance over my shoulder and saw that the lead staghound was a mere twenty yards behind.

I reached into the satchel, retrieved a piece of ham, and hurled it into the air. I didn’t look back, but the tone of the yelping behind me changed: there was a short cry of interest as the lead bratchet saw the offering and changed direction, then a peremptory bark as she challenged another dog for possession of the treat. I heard a scuffle as a number of hounds disputed possession of the ham, and excited barking as other hounds stayed to watch. I was surprised how long it took the dogs to remember their business and begin their baying again.

Another slice of ham delayed the dogs a second time, and then a third; and after that, I was out of ham, and resorted to the sausages. After the sausages were gone, I broke off pieces of cheese and tossed them, and found they interested the dogs equally. By the time the pier was in sight, I was out of cheese. I began flinging bread.

“Run for the boat!” I gasped at Kevin. “I’ll keep them busy.”

Tossing bread over my shoulder, I ran straight into the water, the cold so shocking that I would have stopped dead if momentum hadn’t carried me on. A wave heaved me up, and I plunged in, the water a salt slap to my face. When I was chest-deep, I turned to face the pack of gray-brown staghounds baying at me from the shore. I reached into the satchel and heaved a chunk of waterlogged gingerbread into the midst of the pack. They were habituated to food flying to them by now, and the bread disappeared into a seething gray-brown mob.

I heard the brass hunting horn tootling closer, and the sound of horses. I tossed bread. The first of the grooms appeared just as I heard the crack of the filling lugsail.

“Behind you!” Kevin called.

I turned, saw the boat’s bow approaching, and tossed the satchel aboard. I seized the larboard gunwale as it went past, and rolled aboard as Kevin shifted his own weight to starboard to prevent capsize. Kevin shoved the tiller and the boat swung its nose to the sea.

On the shore, Sir Stanley Mattingly was cursing and whipping his dogs. I rose to my feet, dripping. I put a foot on the gunwale and grasped a shroud for balance.

“Sir Stanley, I thank you for your kind hospitality!” I called.

Vigorous obscenity pursued me across the water.

“Sir,” I said, “you asked my name, and now I am pleased to answer. I am Quillifer, son of Quillifer, the apprentice to Lawyer Dacket, and in two days’ time, I shall have the pleasure of seeing you at the Assizes!”

I offered an elaborate bow, and straightened in time to see Sir Stanley snatch his gun from his bearer. I decided it was time to take shelter below the gunwale, and to pull Kevin down likewise.

The shot put a neat hole in the sail. By the time the knight had reloaded, the boat was well out of range.

* * *

The lugsail rattled overhead. “Friend,” said Kevin. “May I trust you no longer to mock armed, violent men? At least till I am safe at home?”

“We were in no danger,” said I.

“Safe as long as the sausages held out, and Sir Stanley’s aim remained poor.”

I waved a hand. “He was aiming at the sail, not at us. He wouldn’t want to be hauled up on a charge of manslaughter.”

“You have more confidence in his moderation than I.”

“I’m hungry,” I said. “The orgulous Sir Stanley has deprived us of our dinner.”

“Orgulous?”

“A new word I invented. From the Lorettan, orguilio, pride.” I stared unhappily at the horizon. “I should invent a new word for hunger.”

“You are welcome to catch a fish.”

“And you left the cider behind! For shame, Master Spellman.”

I removed my soaked, chill clothing, and stretched naked across a thwart, in the sun. The brisk wind dusted my skin with gooseflesh, but I was comfortable enough. I had been far colder when I was hanging upside down from Master Greyson’s roofbeam.

“Pity you won’t be visiting the fair Ella tonight,” Kevin said.

I gave him a surprised look. “Why would I not?”

“What?” Kevin laughed. “You want another race against Sir Stanley’s pack? Or his bullets?”

“Sir Stanley is unlikely to march up and down his pier with his gun on his shoulder—he will be asleep in his bed, or in the hall, draining the wine and brandy of his brother-in-law. The dogs will be in their kennels, and the sheep in their pens.”

“And Ella in the creamery, screaming for help and earning a reward for catching you.”

I shook my head. “Friend, your skepticism is alarming in its degree.”

“We’ve upset the whole household. Ella might be frantic in her desire to keep the others from knowing about your arrangement, and the best way to preserve her innocence will be to denounce you.”

“The lovely Ella? I can’t imagine such a thing.”

We argued the matter, and then found other matters to argue. By the time we arrived at the Ostra’s many mouths, the tide was rushing in, and carried us to the city with fine efficiency. The Lorettan pinnace was still aground, but the crew were heaving at the capstan, and the hawser leading to the kedge anchor was taut as a bowstring, tension shooting water from its fibers.

“Now,” I said, as I began to draw on my still-damp clothes, “I pray you go to my master Dacket’s office, and there sign a paper that you witnessed my delivery of the writ.”

“You won’t go yourself?”

“He’ll put me to copying documents, and I’ll miss the meeting with Ella. I’ve already promised tomorrow to the work, and I see no reason for an early start.”

Kevin was skeptical. “And what excuse will I give for your absence?”

I tugged my tunic over my head. “You may relate the tale of our escape from Mutton Island. Recount our heroism, the attack by dogs, the shot through your sail. And you may inform Dacket of my injuries—embroider them as you like, but tell him how manfully I am bearing up, even though the doctors have been called and my mother despairs of my life. You may then say how I expect to be early at the office tomorrow.”

“You are the expert in such embroidery, not I.”

“You underrate your ingenuity. Remember that story you told Professor Mitchell, when we were at grammar school and caught out of bounds.”

“We were caned,” Kevin said. “He didn’t believe us.”

I drew hose onto my legs. “But the story was a marvel! Were there not tritons, and some kind of monster from the Land of Chimerae that flew overhead and darkened the sun?”

“Very well,” Kevin said. “I will tell Lawyer Dacket you were taken by tritons.”

Kevin found a place near the quay, dropped the sail, and tied the boat. I jumped onto the quay and helped Kevin disembark.

“Are you truly mad enough to visit the maid tonight?”

“Oh, ay. ’Twill keep me out of trouble in town.”

“Ethlebight will take comfort from that, but I will rest uneasy.”

We marched beneath the great River Gate blazoned with the shield of Ethlebight, crenellated towers and ships supported by the hornèd rams that represented the wool that remained the foundation of the city’s wealth. Kevin departed for Lawyer Dacket’s office, while I carried my empty satchel home to Princess Street. I changed my clothes, got more bread, meat, cheese, and a few of the pearmains. Then I went to the buttery for a bottle of the moscatto, and another jug of cider for the journey.

On my return to the quay I tarried by a barber’s shop, and there sought a preventative for parturience. My last packet of sheaths I had left with Annabel Greyson, and I could but hope her father hadn’t found them, proof of her perfidy.

I returned to the boat, repaired the hole in the sail, and as soon as the tide shifted set out through the cane, past the handsome pinnace that had finally won free of its mud bank, and was now creeping up the channel under sweeps, with a leadsman in the chains calling out the soundings.

I am young, I thought, and a man; and whyfore should I not act the role of a young man? Enjoy my pleasures before age and care ruin them?

No guard marched along the Mutton Island pier. Ella I found in the shadow of the creamery door. We kissed for several long, fair moments, and then she took my hand and led me beneath rows of ghostly round forms that hung from the roof beams—pendulous muslin bags, filled with curd and dripping on the brick floor the last of the milky whey-drops. Beyond was a room with stalls intended for sick animals. No ailing sheep were in residence, but there was straw to make a bed.

Make a bed we did, and stretched out our cloaks to fashion an inviting couch. I opened the moscatto, with its flavor of sunnier, drier climes, and we drank and then licked drops of the sweet wine from each other’s lips. For some hours we dallied on the straw, sharing our pleasures, and then I kissed Ella good-bye, plucked straw from her hair, laughed, and kissed her again before wrapping myself in my cloak and setting off for the pier.

The fortified wine burned in my veins, and I felt a pleasant looseness in my loins. I found the boat, cast off, and raised the sail. The moon soon set, and I found myself alone on the dark water, where I nibbled bread and cheese, drank cider, and sang to myself as the brisk wind blew the boat along.

Youth will needs have dalliance,

Of good or ill, some pastance.

Company me thinketh the best

All thoughts and fancies to digest

For idleness

Is chief mistress

Of vices all;

Then who can say

But mirth and play

Is best of all?

I put on my apprentice cap and pulled the brim down over my ears against the cold wind. I would have an hour or two of sleep, I supposed, before reporting to Lawyer Dacket’s for my day of copying.

I judged the harbor entrance by the stars, turned the boat for Ethlebight, and only then noted the glow some distance inland. It wasn’t the moon, which had set; and the sun would rise east, not north. I had seen the aurora on cold winter nights, but the aurora was shifting color, massed spears of light that advanced and retreated, and this light was steady. I stood, but could see no detail over the sea of reeds that stretched between my boat and the city.

Fire, it was fire. Anxiety gnawed at my mind.

The tide was coming in: water gurgled beneath the counter as the boat flew toward home. The glow grew brighter as I neared the city, and I saw red reflected on the undersides of scattered clouds. In growing fear I sped from channel to channel. I thought that in the blustering wind I heard clattering, and screams, and I hoped the sounds were only my own fancies.

At last the reed curtain fell away, and I saw my city on fire, flames silhouetting the towers and battlements of Ethlebight’s wall, and the main channel of the Ostra black with an enemy fleet.