SHE PUTS A hand to the railings and shuts her eyes to the wind. Harry thinks about ships’ figureheads as he watches Rachel West’s profile against the water. He pictures her as a wooden woman on a ship’s prow, crashing through waves, cutting across wide oceans, all baroque curls and barnacled breast, the darling of the crew. Rachel, very much flesh again, blows her nose on his brother’s handkerchief and observes that the sea is so bracing. “It’s buffing my edges off,” she says as she turns back toward him.

Harry looks at the skyline. He can feel the vibration of the engine. The weight of the breaking waves. A glint of light reflects off a faraway fishing boat but there is, as yet, no sign of the French coast. He tastes salt on his lips and wonders if he will be sick again. Edie had once told him that the trick was to stay out on deck, to take deep breaths, and to stare squarely at the water, as if it were a dog that might bite him if he took his eyes away. He thinks again about the postcard he received from her last week. Has she stood where Rachel West is standing now within the past month? Could she have leaned on these same railings with her eyes fixed on the waves? Did she feel sick as she crossed to France? And just why was she—is she—in Arras?

“You look green,” says Rachel. “I take it that you’re not an accustomed mariner, Mr. Blythe?”

He shakes his head. “Not my calling.”

The boat pitches down and spumes of white water leap. He hears Rachel’s intake of breath. “Doesn’t it make you feel vigorous?” she asks. “Keenly alive? Effervescent with it?”

“Deeply so.” He feels vigorously buffeted by the sharp, salty wind, and nauseous with it. He tightens his grip on the railings. “Like I’ve got a stomach full of baking soda.”

“‘I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,’” she quotes with a grin. “‘To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife.’” All the sadness in her face goes as she enunciates at the waves. Her eyes widen, like she relishes the taste of the words. But then her gaze connects with Harry’s and the grin is gone. “I know you were there, weren’t you? I can see it on your face. I probably shouldn’t ask you—please forgive me for asking—but what was it like the first time? Would you tell me? The first time that you crossed over to France, I mean.”

She makes it sound like the River Styx, he thinks. Harry imagines himself and Francis on a small boat, the water all around writhing with the limbs of the wrathful. He imagines his fingers placing a penny in Francis’s mouth.