The sky was purpling with the coming dawn, the stars just beginning to disappear. I drew a deep breath, smelling the tang of the garden herbs and the freshly cut oak stacked by the door. Soon life would settle again.

But not today.

Ducking under a few clotheslines, I crossed the courtyard and knocked on the cottage door. “Malcolm, are you up?” The door swung open as I was about to knock again.

“Good morning, Miss Em.” Malcolm pulled a hat on over his red hair and picked up a crate. “You’re up early.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” I said, heading for the courtyard gate. Today was our weekly charity outing to the city prisons, and I couldn’t wait to get going. This errand was at my own will.

Malcolm held the gate open, his gaze following me. He had the greenest eyes I’d ever seen. I imagined they were green as the grass in Cornwall, where he was born. “I am sorry to hear it.”

“It couldn’t be helped,” I said lightly, though I felt the urge to tell him more. How it’d been weeks since my last nightmare of Sewel. How, in sleep, I could never escape him. At times I felt Malcolm alone might understand me. He was my age and had also been raised without wealth or education. He and his mother, Maggie Bowie, were redemptioners. They’d served out their indenture contract years ago, but the Holdridges had kept them on as free laborers. Uncle Henry was a kind master, which wasn’t always the case, and the arrangement suited everyone. Malcolm made most of Uncle Henry’s remedies in the cottage workshop, mixing elixirs and tonics from recipes. Maggie cleaned and cooked for us, and kept the house noisy with her cheerful voice.

The streets were empty at this hour and the cobblestones wet from overnight rain. The vials of medicine clinked softly in the crate on Malcolm’s shoulder with his long strides. American prisoners of war were crammed all over the city, dying of disease and hunger. With Malcolm’s help, I delivered medicines to them every Wednesday.

I’d never forgotten my conversation with Tom Hackett on the bow of the Ambrosia about having a purpose in life, nor had the political beliefs I’d discovered on that voyage lessened in intensity. Though I wished I could do much more for the cause of liberty, this was the only way I’d found to help that didn’t call my loyalty to the Crown into question. Uncle Henry allowed me the errand because it was ungodly to let men suffer—even confounded rebels.

At the corner, I could hear stevedores down on Water Street shouting back and forth as they unloaded cargo. The morning guns from Fort George boomed, scattering pigeons into the sky. In New York, neither God nor the sun began the day—General Clinton did.