I spotted Hackett amongst them, his walk swaggering and his chin lifted mulishly. As he looked from me to Asa, fear overshadowed my good mood. If they fought again, I was afraid it would turn deadly.

Asa’s eyes grew hooded. He picked up the old rope, settling it on his shoulder. “See you tonight.”

I held my breath till he’d safely passed by Hackett.

I returned to the crates with the pamphlet slipped inside Sir Newton’s book. Careful to keep it hidden from curious eyes, I peered at the cover more closely, running my fingers along Thomas Paine’s name. The paper looked worn, softened like old leather. I wondered how often Asa had read it. Had he shared it with other people?

Were any of them girls?

I had seen a copy of Common Sense before. Sewel had gotten one from a tobacco trader who came through West End in the spring. He’d brought it on the wherry one day and read it with a rum bottle in the crook of his arm, tearing out each page as he went and tossing it into the sea.

“Why’re you doing that?” I’d asked when I could no longer resist my curiosity.

“ ’Cause it’s poison,” he’d replied. “ ’Cause it preaches disloyalty and anarchy. Says here I’m as worthy a man as any king.” His wiry eyebrows rose up. “Do I look kingly to you, Francisca?”

I held my tongue. With Sewel, few questions had right answers. If I’d learned anything from him, it was to choose my words with care so as to avoid stepping into a trap.

“You want to read it, don’t you, Frannie? I can see it in your owl eyes. You can read it. All you gotta do’s go get those pages. Go on. Go get them.”

By then, the papers were spread far and wide on the shifting tide, and I was exhausted from diving all morning. All I wanted to do was get back to West End and find Mercy so we could spend the rest of the day together. “I don’t want to read it.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

He’d laughed. “That’s good. I wasn’t gonna let you anyway.”

Now I shivered at the memory. Sewel lived for two things: rum and tormenting me. Had he the means, I knew he’d come after me. He didn’t, thank goodness. Sewel was a lazy drunk who’d never leave West End.

I opened the pamphlet—and then tore through it in a breathless fever, reading all forty-some pages without once looking up. Thomas Paine believed all men were born of equal power and no one could be born to preference. The Bible supported this notion, he wrote, which made kings and monarchies ungodly and wrong. But the worst part—or the best?—was how he compared England to a wicked parent.

What had the American colonies done but try to please their mother country? What had they asked for but fair and just treatment? How long, Thomas Paine asked, must America accept the abuses heaped upon it?