Roger, catching on, searched the faces as the light began to seep slowly through the fog, looking for anyone who seemed maliciously pleased, or too knowing. Everyone seemed honestly shocked, though, and one tall, handsome middle-aged woman who by her dress could be nothing other than the landlady of a prosperous tavern came up to Marsali and urged her to bring the babes along and come and have a bite of breakfast.

“On the house,” she added, looking at the children and quite obviously reckoning up the cost of their appetites.

“Well, I thank ye kindly, Mistress Kenney,” Marsali said. She glanced at Fergus and coughed a little. “If ye’ll give us a moment to go and put some clothes on?”

The remark caused Roger to realize that he was standing in the street barefoot, wearing nothing but a shirt. He helped collect the children, and as they started to trickle back across the street toward their threatened home, he saw that Marsali was carrying several slugs of type, evidently snatched from the type-case, under one arm. They looked heavy, and she let him take them from her, sighing with relief as he did.

“Ye do wonder what ye’d take, if the house was afire,” he said, trying to be humorous.

“Aye, well,” Marsali said, tucking in the blanket wrapped around the twin she was holding. “It smells that wee bit better than sauerkraut, aye?”

Four days later …

BRIANNA TOOK A handful of the dress she meant to wear and lifted it cautiously to her nose. She’d hung it on a peg in the airing cupboard, along with Marsali’s working dress and apron, hoping for the best. The cupboard itself was no more than a large box like a coffin stood on end, built against the bedroom wall and pierced with dozens of holes through the outside wall, to let the night air dispel as much of the scent of lampblack, varnish, ink, cooking grease, and infant spit-up as possible before the garments were resumed the next morning.

“All right?” Marsali inquired, tousled blond head emerging from her night-freshened shift.

“Well, it doesn’t smell very much like sauerkraut,” Bree said, inhaling strongly, and Marsali gave the breath of a laugh and reached into the cupboard, snagging her work gown, a butternut-gray homespun in a severe cut that made Brianna think privately of a Civil War uniform.

“Ye’ll be aired out fine by the time ye reach Savannah,” Marsali assured her. “And the soldiers willna care.” She handed Brianna a couple of petticoats and went on with her own dressing, fingers rapid with tapes, laces, and buttons. It was just before dawn and they were talking in whispers, not to wake the children before they had to. Downstairs, shuffling and muffled thumps and sniggers signaled Roger’s and Fergus’s preparations for the day.