NOVEMBER 1670, LONDON

Johnnie tidied his high desk in the merchant’s counting house as the early dusk darkened the lofty dirty windows. The other clerks were putting on their jackets and hats, and leaving at the same time, but he did not walk with them to the bakehouse or coffeehouse. Instead he went down to the river and stood at a set of river stairs. The low tide lapped at his feet on the green weedy steps, a wash of rubbish, bits of cloth, the flat end of a bonnet, a sheet from a catalogue, some bits of wood, something stinking and dead; but he looked beyond the flotsam to the horizon. The river, even at dusk, was a forest of swaying masts, as ships—sails furled—were towed in by busy barges or moored in midchannel waiting for their turn to declare their duty and unload at the legal quays.

A child of the warehouse, Johnnie usually counted the queue of waiting ships and looked for the names of those that often came to the Reekie Wharf; but this evening he looked beyond them to the east where the thick gray clouds merged the sky into the sea on the dark horizon.

He was confident that Sarah would be safe on board Captain Shore’s ship and that she would cope with whatever faced her in Venice. She was only twenty-one years old but the two of them had been raised on the streets, alleys, and wharves of St. Olave’s, and he knew she was no fool. She had seen enough libertine men buying gewgaws for their mistresses at the milliner’s not to be tricked or seduced by a few slick words, she had seen fellow apprentices leave the workshop in a carriage and come back barefoot. A child of the coastal trade, he was not fearful for her at sea; a firm believer in his grandmother’s wisdom, he did not think she had been sent on a mission that she could not accomplish. But he believed himself to be half of a twin and, as she went farther and farther away, he felt as if half of himself was missing.

He walked along the wharf from one set of steps to another, not knowing where he was going in the gathering dusk, but understanding that he was undertaking a sort of vigil, a waiting for her, and that until she came home his family would be dispersed and he would have no comfort until he knew she was safe. Now he understood how it had been for his mother, when her brother, Rob, went away; for his grandmother when her brother, Ned, went to the New World. Now, as he tried to look through the dusk, as if he could see Sarah so far away at sea, he believed that his grandmother would know for sure if her own son was alive or dead.