“The funny thing is,” he continued after a moment, “I think I would have given up the school a long time ago, but that the children are keener than I. It is all their arrangement now—I never know as I walk down the street what corner they will have found and made ready for the lesson. I have explained the dangers to them a hundred times, but they have such a passion to learn. None of them can afford the fees for the Stationers’ schools, and even if they could, what would those schools teach them? How to be obedient and useful servants and never question anything, that’s all.

“So my school goes on, and it seems that every month there is a new, bright face among the children. Even today, I am sure I noticed a young girl I had never seen before following me. I suppose she must have heard about the school from one of the others. She was too shy to approach me, or I would have talked to her. But I daresay I will be seeing more of her . . . she had that hungry look . . .”

Pertellis’s view of Mosca’s hunger for knowledge might have changed if he had been aware of the many salty terms her mind had devoured over the years. Most of them were being muttered under her breath at that very moment. A gaggle of small children had noticed her clinging to the rungs and had taken it upon themselves to run along the quayside, pointing out the stowaway at the tops of their shrill voices.

“Hoi!” A reddened face appeared above her. “No passage ’cept to customers! ’Op it!”

“Where do I ’op? I’m not a bleedin’ frog!”

“Should have thought of that before. No passage. Watermen’s rules.” The sailor straightened, and took a long look up and down the river’s broad expanse. “Take her starboard.”

In the middle of the river rose a pillar of rock upon which stood a bronze figure of Goodman Sussuratch, He Who Preserves the Unwary from the River’s Embrace. A little wooden jetty stretched beside it. With much wrestling of kite wires, the coffeehouse was turned to glide alongside the jetty.

“You get off here. Now ’op it! Hail yerself a wherry.”

Reluctantly, Mosca released her hold and dropped onto the jetty.

“I hope maggots crawl in through your ears and lick your brain clean from the inside!” she shouted after the coffeehouse as it surged away. She had no money to hire a Waterman.

But what was this, churning softly through the brown water of the Slye like an oversized tea chest? It was another coffeehouse, to judge by the sign swinging above the door, but this was a dingy edifice that seemed to have been stained coffee color from the inside out. Its kites bore a picture of a stag, and over the door were painted the words “The Hind at Bay.”