“Aye, I’m sure there are. Fortunately, crime cares not at all whether a man is Whig or Tory. There are plenty who will hire me. There are some who will be more inclined to do so if they hear you speak ill of me.”
Lillie didn’t argue. He stared at Richardson’s house, taking in the damage. “They’re threatening us all, you know. I stayed last night at the home of a friend. My wife and children are there now. To be honest, I expected to find my shop in ruin this morning. I expect that one of these morns I will.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m considering leaving Boston. My wife believes we would be safer in the country, and I’m inclined to agree with her.”
“She may well be right, sir.”
Lillie’s expression soured. “Very well, Mister Kaille. I suppose matters are settled between us. You worked for the wages you received, and I owe you nothing more.”
“That’s my reckoning as well.”
“Fine. Off with you then.”
Without another word, Lillie turned back to his door, his keys jangling once more. This time Ethan left him, relieved to be done working for the man, and, he had to admit to himself, embarrassed by his own outburst. Lillie had spoken true: He hadn’t done anything wrong, at least not in a legal sense. He bore no responsibility for Richardson’s crime. But change was coming to Boston, to all the colonies. Legalities were fast being overtaken by politics, and Lillie was on the wrong side of the looming conflict. Of that much, he was certain.
Ethan intended to make his way back to Cooper’s Alley, where he rented a room above the cooperage of Henry Dall. But his thoughts still churned with memories of the previous day, and with fears born of the previous summer. He walked northward from Middle Street, crossing through the heart of the North End, skirted the base of Copp’s Hill, and soon reached the waterfront near Drake’s Wharf, where he, Janna Windcatcher, and Mariz had their final confrontation with Nate Ramsey. He could almost smell the smoke from the blaze Ramsey started that summer day in his attempt to escape.
He scanned the wharves arrayed before him, looking for the Muirenn, Ramsey’s pink. The night before he had almost suggested to Greenleaf that he do the same, but Ethan trusted no one with this task but himself. If Ramsey’s ship was hidden with a conjuring, the sheriff would walk right past it. Ethan wanted to believe that he would sense the conjuring, or would recognize signs of a concealment spell that others might miss.
Or maybe he was misleading himself. The truth was, as soon as it occurred to him that Ramsey might be alive and back in Boston, he had known that he himself would have to search the waterfront. Because even if the entire British army were to take on this task, and even if the king’s soldiers could sense the lightest touch of a spell, Ethan would want to look anyway. He feared the captain too much to place trust in anyone else’s assurances.
Most of the harbor was frozen. Few ships could have docked in the past week or two. But still Ethan resolved to search for the captain’s ship. He followed Lynn Street from Ruck’s Wharf to Thornton’s Shipyard. At North Battery, the street name changed. It did so again at Hancock’s Wharf, and at Lee’s Shipyard. But Ethan maintained a slow, steady gait, ignoring the cold and the freshening wind, and the pain radiating up his bad leg into his groin. He stared hard at every moored vessel, his eyes watering in the frigid air, tears running down his cheeks and into the raised collar of his greatcoat, where they formed a rimed edge that rubbed against his chin. His fingers grew numb with the cold, and his cheeks, nose, and ears ached.
After crossing the creek back into Cornhill, Ethan turned onto Merchant’s Row so that he could scan the wharves of the South End. He turned at Long Wharf, and walked the length of the dock into the very teeth of that wind. At the wharf’s end, he turned back and then followed the lanes past the point where he usually would have turned to go to Cooper’s Alley and past Fort Hill, so that he could view the wharves along Belcher’s Lane and Auchmutty Street, which jutted out into the water like spines on a sea urchin. He continued onto Orange Street, so that he could see the piers located along Boston’s Neck, and didn’t conclude his search until he had walked all the way to Gibbon’s Shipyard near the town gate. He had never known Ramsey to moor his ship at any of these wharves, but he refused to take anything for granted.
He had seen a few ships that resembled in superficial ways the Muirenn-all were pinks of a size similar to that of Ramsey’s ship. But Ethan made a point of examining the escutcheon on each vessel, and he also looked closely at the crewmen. Ramsey had inherited the ship from his father, whom he revered; he took pride in being the second Nate Ramsey to captain the Muirenn. And he had gathered a crew whom he could trust to fight on his behalf, and who accepted that he was a conjurer. Unless Ramsey had replaced most of his men and rechristened the vessel-and Ethan did not believe that he would do either-none of these pinks were his.
Staring back over icy waters, he railed at himself. First Reg had assured him that the shade he saw was unfamiliar to him, and now Ethan had wasted half a day in pursuit of a vessel that wasn’t here, that might never return. Perhaps he had allowed his imagination and his fears of Ramsey to get the better of him.
As it happened, the Fat Spider, Tarijanna Windcatcher’s tavern, stood but a short distance from Gibbon’s Shipyard. Drawn by the promise of a warm hearth and a bowl of one of Janna’s savory, spiced stews, Ethan hurried on to the publick house.
The Spider had changed little in the span of Ethan’s friendship with Janna. It was small for a tavern. Its wood had been worn to a pale shade of gray by the summer sun and winter snows and more storms in spring and fall than Ethan cared to count. The roof sagged alarmingly and the walls stood crookedly, astagger under the building’s weight. The very first time Ethan saw the tavern he thought it one strong gust of wind away from collapse. In the years since, gales had come and gone, but still the Spider endured. Ethan had come to wonder if Janna used conjurings to reinforce the structure, but he had never asked, fearing that she might take offense.
He entered the tavern, and without even pausing for his eyes to adjust to the dim light, walked to the bright fire burning along the far wall of Janna’s great room.
“Is that you, Kaille?”
“Aye, it’s me.” Belatedly, Ethan removed his hat.
Janna came out from behind her bar and joined him near the fire. The Spider was crowded with people and thick with the aromas of stew and fresh bread, of clove and cinnamon, and, overlaying it all, the acrid smells of woodsmoke and spermaceti candles.
“You look half froze to death. Where have you been?”
“All over the city.”
Janna shook her head, wearing her familiar scowl. She was diminutive; she looked almost frail, wearing a simple linen dress and a woolen shawl wrapped tightly around her bony shoulders. As if being a self-proclaimed marriage smith didn’t make her enough of a curiosity, Janna was also one of the few free Africans living in Boston. Her skin was the color of dark rum and her hair, as white as snow, was shorn so short that Ethan could see her scalp through the tight curls.
She rarely talked about how she had managed to remain free, but over the years, Ethan had pieced together a story that made a certain amount of sense. Born in the Caribbean, she was orphaned at sea as a young girl and rescued by a ship out of Newport. She might have been taken in by a family, or she might have been passed from household to household; either way, she was never sold into slavery. Eventually, she met a wealthy shipbuilder who fell in love with her. Because of her race, they could not marry, but the man provided for her, and, when he died, left her with enough money to buy the Spider and to secure her freedom for the rest of her life.