“It was by your choice that they felt an intimate thrill with each touch of your hand.”

  “Oh, have you felt those intimate thrills yourself, Mistress Larner?” And as he said it, he gave her one of those exact thrills, a strong one, trembling her right to the bone.

  Instead of sitting there in bliss, however, she leapt to her feet and with one foot pushed his chair over backward. “Some of these aren’t so sturdy after all, I see,” she said—softly and grimly, like a shy madwoman. She loomed over him, standing between his legs as he lay sprawled on the dirt floor of his miserable little house. She raised a foot as if to stomp his genitals, and he forced himself to hold still and not shy away.

  “And some parts of me aren’t sturdy either,” said Calvin. “Isn’t it wise of me to exercise those parts to make them stronger? And what if some enemy were to step on those parts and drive them permanently out of service? Wouldn’t it show forethought on my part, if there were already fourteen of my offspring to carry my blood, unknowingly, into a hundred generations to come?”

  “Fourteen,” she said. “So you know the count.”

  “On the contrary. A gentleman would never keep a count, as if one liaison were the equivalent of every other. I took the number fourteen from what you said.”

  “So the number could be higher,” said Margaret.

  “I’m quite sure that it is, or will be, before Alvin gets here.” Then Calvin grinned wickedly. “We could make it fifteen in the next ten minutes—or the next hour, if you’d like to linger with me.”

  Her foot did come crashing down than, but she apparently didn’t know enough about male anatomy. She didn’t even touch his stones, just bruise the skin over his pubic bone. It was painful, but not agonizing, and there’d be no interference with his procreative competence.

  She must have seen the smugness in his face, or seen her ineffectiveness in his heartfire, because this time she swung her foot forward, just above the floor, and the point of her boot drove hard into his scrotum. He cried out before he was able to reach inside himself with his doodlebug and heal the damage and subdue the pain.

  “Is this why you came to my cabin, Mistress Larner, to assault me in my own home?” he asked.

  “I came to find out what kind of man you are. A Don Juan? A Lothario?”

  “And which am I?”

  “Neither. They were in it for pleasure.”

  “I believe they were both fictional,” said Calvin.

  “You, however, there’s not much pleasure for you in the coition. The pleasure is in the damage you might do to Alvin’s city.”

  “I don’t think I’ve done any damage at all.”

  “In your own small, meanspirited way, you’ve done all the damage you could.”

  “Why, I think I’ll take that as a challenge, Mistress Larner, to see if I can think of something that will really consternate my big brother.”

  “The biggest pain you can cause him, Calvin, is the pain of seeing the kind of man you’ve become. He loves you, and when he learns of this it’ll break his heart.”

  “Then if you value his happiness,” said Calvin, “you’ll hold your tongue.”

  “Do you think I need to tell him what you’ve done?” She spat on the ground and turned in a swish of skirts toward the door, which in that tiny cottage was only one step away, and still standing open.

  “You need practice with your spitting,” said Calvin.

  She paused in the doorway, her back to him.

  “Some of your spittle trailed onto your own skirt,” he said. “You need to build up a good wad of phlegm before you spit, to glue it all together and give it more range.”

  “I imagine you’ve been spat on by more perilous foes than myself.”

  “I’d be sorry to consider you a foe, Mistress Larner, when I’ve tried so hard to accommodate your needs and provide you with such comforts as philosophy allows.”

  Margaret sighed. “Not all philosophy is stoicism, Master Calvin, which you would know if you opened a book as often as you open women’s bodies.”

  “They open their own bodies, and beg me to come in.”

  Margaret turned toward him and took a step, with that dangerous foot coming near again.

  “Is there no limit to the pain you choose to cause me?” asked Calvin.

  Margaret stopped, then turned around and walked, the image of stately posture, to and through Calvin’s door. She didn’t bother to close it, another sign of her disdain. Calvin struggled to his feet, subduing the pain still further, and staggered to the door and pushed it closed.

  So Margaret knows all, and tells nothing. Calvin could live with that … until Alvin came home, at least. Then it would be interesting indeed, to see how he reacted once he understood all that Calvin had done, all he was doing, all that he had yet to do.

  17

  THE BOATS AND ships were being taken out two or three or four at a time, and Alvin was pleased to see that there were no leaks. Not as pleased, however, at how clumsily the Irish crews handled the boats. There were a few more-or-less gentle collisions. But most of the crews were learning, and the ones who did it best were helping the others to learn, so Alvin believed the expedition was going to be possible. He couldn’t go so far as to say that its success would be probable. But at least they should be able to start off decently.

  A carriage with two brisk horses rattled over the rutty track leading into the camp at the Quay. A carriage was a reason to worry—that was how church officials and government officials and other English overlords traveled. Never by the new railroad that had just connected this town with Dublin. That would be faster, but the so-called Anglo-Irish did not like sharing transportation with the hoi polloi. Or, as some jokingly said, the Hoi Malloy.

  The carriage door opened and one lone man got out, nicely but not brilliantly dressed, looking like a lawyer or a professor. Except that he was remarkable young. But confident. The young man scanned the crowd of hard-working or fast-walking people and picked Alvin right out of the crowd.

  “Like he was looking for you,” said Measure, not five feet off.

  “I daresay he was,” said Alvin. “You’re so tall nobody has to look for you.”

  “But when they spot you, they stop looking.”

  Alvin and Measure grinned at each other. Measure liked to tease him about being famous, and Alvin knew perfectly well that there was not a speck of envy in it, because Measure would run and hide if any newspaper people came looking for him.

  Alvin strode to meet the young man from the carriage, extending his hand for a handshake—or a nice quick wrestle to the ground, if that seemed indicated. Fortunately, the young man extended his hand, too, and they shook.

  “Alvin Smith, at your service,” said Alvin.

  “Alvin Miller, Alvin Maker, I take it,” said the young man.

  “Now that we’re sure of my identity, perhaps a hint at yours?” Meanwhile Alvin was scanning the fellow’s body on the inside, and quickly found that his heart was sick and weak. Yet he did not look like a man nursing a bad heart.

  “Gladly. I’m Elisha Kent Kane, from Philadelphia, where my father is a judge, and most recently from Yale University, where I got a medical degree.”

  “You know those fellows there got no idea how the human body works.”

  Elisha grinned. “Let’s say that anatomy and physiology are knacks sorely lacking in the medical school. But they’re not all fools, and I learned all I could.”

  “I hoped you were American,” said Alvin. “No honest Irishman would look so well-fed, and we’re not happy when stout Englishmen show up around here.”

  “American, through and through, tried and true. Well, not really tried yet, but true.”

  “What puzzles me is why you hired a carriage from the railroad station just to come here. Most people walk.”

  “When a stranger says, ‘It’s a far piece down that road till you see the bay,’ I don’t estimate the ‘far piece’ as near enough to walk in less than half a day.”

  “It really isn’t that far, but … you paid for passage to this island—”

  “But not from America. I was testing my German in Hamburg.”

  “How did you do?”

  “My German is wretched, so embarrassing that even the Germans didn’t laugh at me, out of pity.”

  “But you made yourself understood?” asked Alvin.

  “Do you have need of someone who speaks German?” asked Elisha.

  “I have need of someone who’ll talk to me long enough for me to get his measure.”

  “I’ll talk all you want, though I talk better with my pen, I think.”

  “I listen best with my ears. Do you have an errand here?”

  “Half accomplished, because I met you.”

  “And the other half?”

  “Word is that an expedition is underway to cross the Atlantic in ridiculous small boats,” said Elisha.

  “There’s word of many things going around,” said Alvin. “But such word is sometimes true, often mistaken, and sometimes just outright lies.”

  “Not from me, sir,” said Elisha.

  “But what if you’ve been lied to, and came here in good faith, and find you were misled?”

  “You’re here, and there are boats being piloted clumsily out in the bay, and wagons bringing in loads of stores.”

  Alvin nodded. “I reckon we’re past the rumor stage. You know that the people making this voyage are mostly of a kind the Church of Ireland—and the Church of England—call witches.”

  “Folks with knacks,” said Elisha. “I’ve been intrigued by such people my whole life. My father, even before he was appointed judge, said that locking up or killing people just because they’re very good at doing something makes the law into the criminal. Which is why I don’t think he’s planning on moving to New England.”

  “How’s your father on slavery?” asked Alvin.

  “We never owned any slaves and never would. My pa says, ‘If it isn’t a free country for all, it isn’t a free country for any.’”

  “I like your father,” said Alvin.

  “So do I,” said Elisha.

  “Will I like you, too?” asked Alvin.

  “My father’s opinions on such things run pretty concurrent with my own. I like to tell him I taught him everything he knows.”

  “You have a degree in medicine.”

  “Also at Yale I studied geology and geography,” said Elisha.

  “Wouldn’t happen to know any navigation?”

  “Not from college, but yes. My family isn’t rich—my father is an honest judge, which is suitably punished by modesty of means—but I had friends whose families owned boats, and on holidays the yachts would come and pick them up. They’d show me how to navigate until I could do it myself. Never missed the port yet.”

  “What about in the open ocean? Can you find your path?”

  “I’ve been all up and down the American coast, Crown Colonies and all, but none of that was open ocean. And on the way here, my curiosity kept annoying the chief engineer—it was a steam crossing, I made sure of that—but you’ve got no steamboats here, so that was probably wasted effort. Still, I got the use of compass and sextant and clock and I pretty much have an idea of what I’m doing.”

  “Good,” said Alvin. “You’ll be sailing with me.”

  “The flagship!”

  “I got no flag,” said Alvin.

  “Sir, you are the flag. Wherever you sail, that’s the flagship.”

  “I’m a man, not a flag,” said Alvin mildly.

  “Sir,” said Elisha. “Have you a place where I can rent a room?”

  “All the rooms in the Quay were let months ago. But I’ve got a cot in my tent that isn’t being used,” said Alvin.

  “I snore, sir.”

  “So do I.”

  “I’ve been told that my snoring has caused earthquakes in Chile,” said Elisha.

  “And mine has caused the moon to change its phase,” said Alvin. “But the people who told us all that nonsense were just trying to make us feel bad.”

  Alvin helped Elisha carry his bags to the tent. The man was not a dandy, with a dozen changes of clothes. But he was a physician, with a bag of instruments as well as his bag of clothing. Elisha also slung over his shoulder a coat so thick and furry that from behind, it made him look like a bear. “That’s a mighty hefty coat, even in Ireland,” said Alvin.

  “Crossing the Atlantic in winter, everyone will wish for a coat like this,” said Elisha. “We can’t ride the Gulf Stream, it flows in the wrong direction. We’ll have to sail farther north, skirting Iceland and Greenland before we reach the Labrador coast, or Nova Scotia.”

  Alvin quickened his pace till he was walking beside the young man. “You really did study geography.”

  “That much I’d have known from looking at a good map.”

  “Good maps are things I don’t own,” said Alvin. “Nor anyone else with us.”

  “I didn’t think I could handle the weight, nor that they’d fit inside my bag, so I left my atlases at home.”

  “Do you know where we could acquire some?” asked Alvin.

  “Why would we need them?” asked Elisha. “I already told you everything they could tell us. Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, take a wide path around New England, and then make landfall on Long Island or New Jersey or up the Delaware to Philadelphia.”

  “I have heard the names of all those places, but I’m not sure I could pick them out on the map.”

  “Sir, it’s not my knack, but it has been my study, and I think that at any landfall, I can figure out where we are fairly quick, weather permitting.”

  “Then I think you must share my cabin on whatever ship I sail in.”

  “Are any of your vessels large enough to have a captain’s cabin?”

  “Not yet,” said Alvin, “but I have hopes of bigger ships to come.”

  “You’re not planning to turn pirate, are you, sir? Because near as I could tell, you don’t have a decent-size cannon aboard any of your boats.”

  “No piracy, but perhaps … well, if you don’t want to skirt the edges of the law, what in the world are you doing here, where almost every man and woman stands condemned already by canon law, and civil law as well, along with being Irish, which also seems to be a crime in Ireland.”

  “Taking a ship without a skilled crew is madness. You’ll be overtaken and boarded within the day.”

  “You do think ahead, don’t you,” said Alvin.

  “My father required that of us at all times. ‘What was your plan here, son?’ he’d say, and if I had no ready answer, then I’d be punished instead of consoled for any hurt I caused myself.”

  “I hope to meet your father,” said Alvin.

  “I hope you don’t, sir,” said Elisha. “Because the surest way to meet him would be getting haled into court in his part of Pennsylvania.”

  “But I’m innocent,” said Alvin.

  “Not if you steal a ship and sail it to America,” said Elisha, “and even if I’m a passenger on it, my father would uphold the law.”

  “My plan is not to steal anything, my young friend, but to make use of what others have discarded. Could you pilot me around this green island to the port of Belfast?”

  “Not with pinpoint accuracy, and not with any knowledge of shoals, reefs, or rocks, but if we stand far enough out to sea, and then came back to the coast from time to time, I think I could get us to Belfast. But why would you go there? It’s the least Catholic part of Ireland, where the English are most supported by the populace.”

  “We’re Americans,” said Alvin. “And not Catholic, if I guess correctly.”

  “Foreign,” said Elisha, “and not invisible.”

  “We don’t have to walk far on land. We only have to check on the location of the prison hulks.”

  Elisha thought about that in silence, and then they were at the tent. Alvin was pleased to see that, despite carrying the heavier load, Elisha was not at all winded from their walk. After his bags were placed and the cot made up into a bed—the women of the encampment made sure that Alvin’s linens were always clean and pressed, and his blankets beaten—the two of them lay back on their cots, Alvin’s being no whit better than Elisha’s, and discussed how many men they’d need to man the hulks, if they were made seaworthy and liberated.

  “If we can sail them at all, we’ll have to go north, around Ulster, because to the south lies Dublin and far too many English ships to slip past unnoticed.”

  “You are my guide in this,” said Alvin.

  “And what about the prisoners?” asked Elisha.

  “Father Lukasz has heard that the hulks are populated mostly by Irish folk imprisoned for being too Irish, by which he means too Catholic,” said Alvin. “Only one hulk carries violent prisoners convicted of actual crimes against persons or property.”

  “‘Persons or property,’” echoed Elisha. “Now you sound like my father.”

  “I’ve spent a good deal of time around lawyers. Do that, and you pick up a bit of the language. Nary a bit of the law, mind you, just some language.”

  “Same thing with sailors,” said Elisha. “I’ve used my time on several voyages to try to learn about the running of a ship, and along the way I’ve learned words I never thought would have any reason to exist.”

  “If you can think of it, there’ll be a word for it,” said Alvin.

  “Just my point,” said Elisha. “I would never, could never have thought of the things that sailors have words for.”

  “I hope our people don’t pick up any bad habits at sea.”

  “Unless you plan to bring real sailors with us—”

  “I plan to offer every prisoner in the hulks we borrow a chance to sail west with us.”

  “Being a prisoner on a prison ship doesn’t prepare you to be a sailor.”

  “But it does prepare you to live aboard a ship.”

  And then Lovey came to the door of the tent—she most always volunteered to carry messages to Alvin, partly because she kept track of where he was—and in her piping voice said, “You are called to supper, Alvin, and your guest, too.”