This conjurer possessed skills that Ethan couldn’t fathom, much less match. Where had he-she? — come from, and what had brought such a cursed presence to Boston?
Bett had been watching him, and now she said, “There’s blood on your shirt.”
Ethan glanced down at the stain. “It’s from last night. And it’s not mine.”
“You should put on some clean clothes. You look like a ruffian.”
He laughed. “Do I?”
“I’m serious, Ethan,” she said, sounding so earnest, the way he remembered from when they were children. She had always been far more concerned than he with social niceties.
“I’ll change before I see Mister Berson. You have my word.”
Bett nodded, then turned back to the body. “What will you do?” she asked. “About the girl, I mean. Now that the spell didn’t do what you thought it would.”
Ethan shrugged. “I’ll find another way to track her killer. That’s what I was hired to do.”
Her laugh was dry and humorless, just the way he remembered. “You actually sounded like Father when you said that.”
“He wouldn’t be pleased.”
Bett dismissed the comment with a wave of her hand and turned to leave. “That’s not true and you know it. Good-bye, Ethan.”
“Thank you, Bett.”
She stopped at that and regarded him with obvious surprise. “For what?”
“For not interfering with the spell, even if it didn’t work.”
Her brow creased, as if she realized for the first time that she had done exactly that. “I did it for the girl,” she said. She glanced toward the body. “Will that glow go away, or do you need to cast again?”
He could have claimed that he needed to do one more conjuring. That way he could try the second spell again. But he couldn’t bring himself to lie to her in this place.
“It’ll fade on its own. She should look normal by nightfall.”
“Good,” Bett said, and left him there.
He put away his knife and pulled his sleeve back down. Then he picked up his waistcoat and shrugged it on. He paused at the doorway to look at Jennifer once more. “Grant her rest, Lord,” he whispered.
Ethan climbed the stairs back to the sanctuary. Troutbeck was nowhere to be seen, but Pell stood by the altar. Ethan raised a hand in farewell and continued to the door.
The young minister merely watched him leave.
Ethan thought about making his way directly to the Berson home, as Abner Berson’s man had instructed. But Bett’s remark about the blood on his shirt had reminded him that he ought first to change. He walked down School Street and then on to Water. With each step the stink of the harbor grew stronger.
Dall’s cooperage, which had been built by Henry’s grandfather, stood on the east side of a lane named, appropriately enough, Cooper’s Alley. It was a modest building, but sturdy, with a small sign out front that read simply “Dall’s Barrels and Crates” and a second sign, on the oak door, that read “Open Entr.” Blue-gray smoke rose from a small, crooked chimney on the roof.
Shelly and Pitch lay together outside the door. At Ethan’s approach they raised their heads, their tails thumping the cobblestones in unison.
Ethan stepped over them, pushed the door open, and entered the shop. It was warm within. A fire burned brightly in the stone hearth. Henry sat on a stool by his workbench, his leather apron covering a worn gray shirt, the sleeves of which he had pushed up. The cooper was a small man with a lined, grizzled face, a bald head, and thick, muscular arms. Whenever he worked he furrowed his brow in concentration and opened his mouth in a sort of grimace, revealing a large gap where his two front teeth should have been. That was how he looked now, as he struggled to set the final hoop in place on a large rum barrel. There were fewer distillers in Boston now than there had been as recently as five or ten years ago, but Henry still did a steady business supplying barrels to those that remained.
He was working the hoop into place with a large mallet that he had covered with cloth so that it wouldn’t damage the wood or scrape the hoop. Seeing Ethan enter, he raised a hand in greeting, but continued to work. Ethan remained by the door, watching, saying nothing, until Henry gave the hoop one last whack, threw his mallet onto his workbench, and pushed himself off the stool.
“Damn hoop’th th’ wrong thizthe,” he said, with his usual lisp.
“Is it from Corlin?” Ethan asked.
Henry nodded, frowning with disgust.
“Well, he’ll make you another. He’s been smithing for you for ages.”
“I know. But I wanted this one done by today. I have other things t’ do.”
“Well, this should brighten your day.” Ethan pulled from his pocket the pouch given to him by Berson’s man and handed two pounds to the cooper.
“That should pay for my room through the rest of the year.”
Henry stared at the coins as if he had never seen so much money in one spot. “I should say it does. Where’d ya get all this?”
Ethan shook his head. “Not important,” he said. It wasn’t that Henry didn’t approve of thieftaking; in fact, he enjoyed the stories Ethan told about his past jobs. But he grew alarmed whenever he knew too much about what Ethan was working on at any given time. Ethan wasn’t sure how much of his concern was for his shop and the room above it, and how much was for Ethan himself, but he couldn’t deny that the old man fretted after him, as if he were Ethan’s father. Truth be told, the diminutive cooper worried about him far more than Ethan’s father ever had.
“Well, thank you, Ethan. Ya’re welcome in that room for as long as you want it.”
Ethan patted the man’s shoulder. “You’re just saying that because you’ve been paid.”
Henry grinned at him, wide-mouthed and gap-toothed. “Aye,” he said. “In advants, no less.”
The thieftaker laughed as he walked back to the door and pulled it open. “I’ll see you later, Henry.”
The old man was still grinning. But he sounded deadly serious when he said, “Be careful, Ethan. That much money-ya’re bound to attract someone’s eye.”
Ethan glanced back at him. “Aye, thank you, Henry.”
Once outside again, Ethan saw that both dogs were still awake. Pitch was on his feet, his tail raised, his ears pricked. Ethan looked around, but saw nothing. As he started away, he heard the dog growl.
Wary now, he walked around to the back end of Henry’s building, and climbed the wooden stairs to his door. Just as he reached for the door handle, he heard footsteps on the stairs below him. Glancing down, he saw a large man making his way up the stairway. He was dark-haired, young, and when he looked up at Ethan, catching his eye, he leered menacingly. No wonder Pitch had been on edge.
Ethan quickly ducked into the room and locked the door behind him. He had just started to consider what kind of spell he might use on the man when he felt a powerful hand grab his shoulder and spin him around. Ethan found himself face-to-face-or rather, face-to-chest-with another large man, this one yellow-haired with a long, horsey face. Two other pairs of hands grabbed his arms, pulling them wide.
“Get his knife,” a woman’s voice commanded calmly from behind Yellow-hair.
The man in front of him yanked Ethan’s blade from the sheath on his belt. The other two released his arms, but before Ethan could move, Yellow-hair dug a hammerlike fist into his gut, doubling him over and stealing his breath. One of the other men knocked him to the floor with a hard chopping clout high on his cheek.
Before he could clear his vision or remember how to inhale, a pair of hands hoisted him to his feet. Someone pounded him in the gut a second time, and then they set to work on his face. A blow to the jaw, another to the eye, a third to the cheekbone. Ethan felt his knees buckle, felt blood trickling from his mouth and from a burning cut just below his right eye. He was tempted to conjure, but wasn’t sure he could incapacitate more than one man at a time. And before he could think of a spell, a fist to the stomach made him heave, though he managed somehow to keep from throwing up. They straightened him, and Ethan braced himself for another blow.