Ebenezer ignored him. He limped from the room, gesturing for his men to close behind him. He walked slowly, using a cane to assist his limp. He crossed the street and went slowly down the steps to the wharf. People parted for him, awed by his face and by the armed guards. His own boat waited, its oars held upright so that the black blades were outlined against the myriad points of light upon the river. Ebenezer settled in the stern and nodded to the oarsmen. He felt good. He guessed the signatures would do for the confessions, one for witchcraft and one for murder. His sister was doomed and not even the Jew in Amsterdam could save her. Ebenezer smiled. Even the news from Europe was showing that Hervey’s foolish ambition had caused no harm.

Julius Cottjens, the man who provided his clients with privileged news from the financial capital of the north, walked to the wharves again that evening. He had done it every evening since Sir Grenville’s faintly hysterical letter had reached him and Cottjens was content with this duty. He liked to walk, his pipe drawing sweetly and his dog running happily about him, but to be paid for his evening constitution was a piece of beneficent luck. Amsterdam looked rich and peaceful in the evening light, its people plump and prosperous. Cottjens felt a great contentment. He stopped in his usual place and sat on a bollard while his dog sniffed excitedly at bales of cloth. Cottjens’s pipesmoke drifted over the placid canal waters in the evening, summer air.

The Wanderer, the object of these evening strolls, was still tied up. It was high out of the water, its cargohold empty as it had been for weeks. The mainmast had been stepped up again, but the spars were still lashed to the ship’s deck. It was a beautiful ship, Cottjens reflected, but it was days from being ready for sea.

A sailor came over the gangplank carrying a wooden box of wedges. Cottjens waved his pipe stem at the ship and raised his voice. “Ships don’t make money tied to wharves, my friend?”

“Mijnheer?”

Cottjens repeated himself and the sailor shrugged. “She’s made plenty of money in her lifetime, Mijnheer.”

Cottjens looked impressed. He nodded at the name, elegantly carved beneath the windows of the stern gallery. “An English ship, yes?”

“Lord no, Mijnheer! Mordecai Lopez owns it. It was built here! I think he likes an English name.”

“My friend Mordecai? He’s back in Amsterdam?”

The sailor hefted his box. “He’s here, but he’s ill. May the good Lord preserve him if He watches over pagans.”

“Amen to that.” Cottjens knocked his pipe out on the bollard. “Badly ill?”

“So they say, Mijnheer, so they say. You’ll excuse me?”

Cottjens called his dog, then started back, a happy man. He could write with more news to Sir Grenville, news that would undoubtedly make that fat, subtle Englishman also a happy man.

Cottjens made a short detour to look at Lopez’s house. The windows of the two lower floors, as ever, were barred and shuttered, but higher up he could see lamplight through windows. A shadow moved across a curtain.