Reeve thought of the beggar’s badge, still lying on the floor somewhere, a painful reminder of his limited options. “They kept slaves there once,” he said. Just the thought made his skin crawl. “Had a war over it too.”

Jamie popped a bit of mutton into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t be a slave—all that’s over now. Workin’ off your passage ain’t the same at all.”

“For a time it is. A man has a master. He’s owned, like a carriage or a calf.”

“For the likes of us,” Jamie pointed out, tearing the fragrant loaf of bread into hunks, “it might be the only way out of Ireland.”

“Aye,” Reeve replied halfheartedly, thinking of the berth he’d been offered on the Sally Dee. Sooner or later he was going to have to speak of it, but the right time hadn’t come yet.

When the water came to a whistling boil on the hob, Reeve poured it into the chipped crockery pot. While the savory brew steeped, Jamie gently awakened his mother.

Callie’s hands trembled as she reached for the plate her son extended. There was a dazzled expression in her eyes and she cast a quick glance around the cottage, as if thinking that she might have passed on to some other, better life without noticing.

Callie ate little of the meal, but enjoyed two full cups of sugared tea. Later that night, while her sons slept on their pallets on the cottage floor, she died.

She was buried in a pauper’s grave, without even a coffin, but Father McDougal was there in the drizzling rain to say the holy words. Reeve listened in a numb rage, hating not only the priest, but the God he served as well. It would have been a comfort to believe that angels had met his mother’s soaring spirit and carried her to a place of peace and plenty, but he couldn’t quite manage that.

Nor could he weep as Jamie did. There was nothing to do but accept the dismal reality of Callie’s death just as it was.

At the edge of the churchyard the grocer waited, flanked by two soldiers of the English crown. “That’s him,” the fat merchant cried through the downpour. “That’s him what give me the watch!”

Reeve started to step between Jamie and the soldiers, but the priest grabbed at his arm. Before he could take the blame on himself, Jamie owned up, his face wet with tears and rain.

“It’s me you want,” he said.

“Blighter,” one soldier muttered to the other as they bound Jamie’s wrists behind him. “Sticky-fingered, these micks, every last one of ’em!”

“Wait!” Reeve choked, shaking free of the old priest’s grasp. “It’s a lie—I’m the one that took the gentleman’s watch—”

The second soldier laughed. “Too late for that, lad.”