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her steps along the road, making note of each landmark as she passed to ease her way on future trips to the village, then caught herself at the foolishness of assuming a future here. Even so, she continued to study each rock and tree and stone wall as she passed it. She came to the landing road and turned down, thrilling at the sense of the already familiar, and found Freeman standing in the yard, wearing the look of an idler.
    “Well now, Alice, you’ve managed that errand in short time. Did you have any trouble?”
    “None, sir.” She handed over the coins. Freeman dropped them into his pocket, where they jangled against some others. With the jangling of the coins something jangled in Alice’s head; she knew in an instant what Freeman had been after. He’d given her a pound note where almost any coin might do; he’d told her how to get to the next town. If she’d been dishonest, as he believed her to be, she would have headed straight for Yarmouth, leaving him nothing but an I-told-you-so for the widow. All this Alice understood in the time it took Freeman to pocket the coins; what she didn’t understand was whether Freeman was pleased or displeased that she’d returned them to him.

TEN

    F reeman rode off for Namskaket to oversee the loading of the clams, and Alice and the widow spent the day at the various chores that the widow bemoaned had got out of hand while she’d been at Boston.
    First they tied up their skirts and weeded the flax, barefooted so as not to damage the tender plants; as they each exposed their white flesh Alice saw that the widow’s legs had suffered from burns along with her hands and arms. Alice looked as she could at the widow’s scars and wondered about them; she wondered too about the widow’s dead husband; she wondered if her husband had died in the fire and how long ago it had happened. She imagined the widow’s husband carrying her to safety and then returning to the house for something else, perhaps his money, perhaps some papers, something important, but not as important as his wife had been to him.
    The flax took till noon, after which they ate a quick dinner of cold duck and early greens, then collected the hoe and spade from the barn and began planting the bean, turnip, cabbage, onion, cucumber, and squash sets in the dooryard garden. The soil was loose and sandy in places and hard and claylike in others; they made uneven progress as they worked their way around. By the time they reached the last raised box of earth by the door the widow said, “Best get supper on.” Alice looked at the sky and saw that her first full day in Satucket had run down.
    The widow ordered her to take down the mugs from the cupboard, but after Alice had set out three and stopped, the widow said, “We’ll need them all down. And both those platters.”
    Alice looked at her in surprise.
    “They all come,” the widow explained. “The first evening he arrives from town. Hot after the latest news, the latest talk, the latest predictions.”
    And so they did come. Freeman brought the first two with him, but the others came in fast behind; some Alice already knew, like shipmaster Shubael Hopkins and storekeeper Sears, but others she didn’t, men greeted as Cobb, Winslow, Myrick, and a late arrival named Thacher who complained as he came in about how hard it had been to break away from his custom at the tavern. As each man entered the room his eye went first to Alice, who stood at the cupboard filling platters; the shipmaster looked once and away, but the others showed no such qualm at staring.
    The widow moved around the table, pouring mugs of cider, and soon the air filled with the pungent odor of fermented fruit, yeasty bread, smoking pipes, and fresh-cut cheeses. The talk began light—crops, weather, ships in, ships out, prices—and then Freeman said, “Well, gentlemen.” The table quieted. Freeman began to speak the same words Alice had heard in the streets at Boston—sugar, taxes,