“One thief knows another,” Samuel warmly said to the bird. He had a deep affection for the creature by now. “What happens when you let him free?” he asked Maria.

“He comes back to me.” She felt choked up for some reason, which was not at all like her. She told herself it was the closeness of the room, the flame on which she cooked a broth of fish bones to strengthen Samuel’s constitution.

“Of course,” Samuel said. “Why wouldn’t he?”

Samuel would have come back to her as well and he knew it, without a chain, without a cage, but he said nothing. There was no point in doing so, even though he had found the blue thread marking all of his clothing, stitches he examined with confusion and tenderness. There was another man, one who Samuel suspected was a liar at best, for he was convinced the sapphire was false, and only a false man gives a gift that is a lie. All the same, whoever he was, he was Faith’s father and most likely a man who didn’t spend his life at sea, and therefore a better man than himself.

Most were grateful for the sight of gulls wheeling across the sky, the sign that land was near, but Samuel refused to look outside. He let his assistant use the charts he himself had plotted. They followed the coast northward, for they would unload their cargo of rum in Boston and Newport, then replace it with goods in New York, all manner of cloth and tea and spices, along with English pottery and French wine. By now, Faith was speaking a few words. Momma, Caw Caw—for Cadin—and Gogo for Samuel Dias, her baby talk word for Goat.

“Is that my name?” He’d laugh when the baby nodded, a serious expression on her face. He turned to Maria. “I think you’ve been talking about me.”

“I have not,” Maria insisted, although, in fact, she often did and had a song that made Faith clap her hands with joy.

What should we do with the Goat?

Shall we feed him supper, shall we give him tea, shall we wake him up or let him sleep?

As it turned out, Dias had overheard. He didn’t know whether to be pleased that Maria sang about him, or hurt that she thought of him as little more than a pet.

“What should we do with the Goat?” he sang, with more darkness than Maria would have expected. “Shall we let him live or watch him die?”

“I want you to live or you wouldn’t be here. That was the bargain in exchange for my travel.”

“Is that so? If you hadn’t felt forced to help me you wouldn’t be here?”

Maria was confused. “You knew the terms. You were there on the dock.”