By the light of his lamp, Calley saw the water riddling round his boots, felt, even through the leather, some small shifting of its force. “Two days’ walk?” he said.

“The family, name of Frend,” called the pedlar. “A white house near the western shore. A place on its own. You can ask for Ranald if you want to find them.”

“Ranald?”

“Has hooks for hands. Everyone knows Ranald. But if you stand there much longer you’ll have to look for him in America.” Calley shut his eyes and turned back the same careful half circle. “Advance in line,” he said softly, “by the left . . . ”

He went as quickly as he dared, stone and slither under his feet, sucking-mud, black-shine. He imagined finding Medina, his body washed around into the channel, imagined stumbling over him, his white face, his hair plaited with ribbons of weed. How wide the channel was! Wide and cold! And why could he still not see the far shore? Had he curved away? Fallen into the foolish error of following his own light as though it led him?

He lengthened his stride. The lantern swung, the candle flame flying within the glass like a terrified bird. All the voices in his head fell silent. He had neither name nor history. He was a shadow. A ghost fleeing before the dawn. He was the done-with, the uninvented. A freedom of sorts? Then his heel glided on something slick and glabrous and he went down heavily with a grunt, lay a moment in the water, stunned, feeling the water shove at him. The candle was out. He got to his feet, threw away the lantern and ran.

21

The boat that took them was called Halcyon. Two days earlier she had delivered four families bound for the emigration ship. Now, loaded with timber and a hundred blades for sickles and scythes, a bolt of pink-striped cotton for a customer in Tarbert, the boat was ready to depart. The crew untied from the quay as the church rang ten. Spinkey himself came down to wave them off.

“I appeal,” said Emily, “to his Russian sense of the tragic.”

“That may be,” said Lacroix, “but he has played a part now in the lives of both sisters.”

She nodded, blushed a little. Lacroix liked her blush but wondered if he had been indelicate. Hard to know what was permitted, what could be spoken of, what merely known. They were as new to this as the day was new. Ten o’clock marked the entire history of their . . . whatever it was. Was it an engagement? Was it? What did she think it was?

“He is still waving,” he said.

“Are you waving back?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. And waved.

*