“Yes.” He released her, breathing hard. “Yes, we wouldn’t want that. I’ll go now, but I’ll return and we’ll continue.” There’d be no Irishman’s stories once he got her properly alone.

  He leaned forward for another kiss, but she glanced anxiously toward the door.

  She hurried the good-byes as much as she could, and when he was gone dropped into a chair. Drat it all. Damn it all. Now some of the time she wanted to spend enticing Michael would have to be given to Justin. It’d take forever to seduce the Irishman.

  Michael walked up the steps with his sodden coat over his shoulder, and left his shoes and stockings on Carver’s veranda before going inside.

  When the merchant saw him he leaped to his feet. “Good Lord, Michael. What happened?”

  “We overturned off Cummins Point.” He stood close to the fire, baking the chill from his bones. “Instead of finding survivors of the Rose, we needed rescue ourselves.”

  “You found no more, then?”

  “None alive,” Michael replied bleakly. “Two dead. A nameless seaman. And a young officer named Andrew Toomey.”

  Carver put a brandy in his hand. “Here. Drink this straight down. I’m sorry. You knew the man?”

  “He was my first friend in this country.” He gulped the brandy down. “If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to go to my room.”

  “I’m afraid I need you, Michael. I want you to take another look at that Santee property before I buy. I’m beginning to think there’s something wrong there, and I need to know before the papers are signed.”

  Michael looked at the merchant in surprise. He was plainly exhausted, and Carver had never been one to ask for more than was due. Surely Carver knew the plantation was an excellent buy; he and Michael had discussed it several times. “May I leave in the morning, sir? There’s no hope of getting there tonight, and—”

  “No, Michael.” Carver shook his head and avoided looking at the soaked and weary Irishman. Any danger to Fallon would come before Justin’s temper had a chance to cool. “I’ve already sent a message to Daniel, and had your things packed. All you need to do is change and go. I need this report, Michael. I wouldn’t ask it else.”

  “It’s all right, sir. I’m on my way.”

  The first thing Michael saw when he reached the bridge was Christopher, sitting alone on top of a piling, taking long, thoughtful pulls from a bottle.

  “A mighty lonely celebration of repeal.”

  Christopher peered at him blearily. “You think I should be celebrating, do you? Why? You tell me that.”

  “Why, you’ve won, you and your Liberty Boys.”

  “Won, have we? That’s what those fools think, dancing around like drunken idiots. We won nothing. Here, read this.” He pulled a wadded-up paper from his coat. “Something else the Rose brought us.”

  Michael smoothed out the sheet. “‘An Act for the Better Securing the Dependency of His Majesty’s Dominions in America upon the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain.’ That sounds familiar, somehow.”

  “Oh, it should, lad. It should.” Christopher took another pull at the bottle. “Change a word. America to Ireland. Do you recognize it now? The Irish Declaratory Act, near word for word.” He wiped his mouth and leaned forward to point. “Read it right there. Yes, right there.”

  “‘All resolutions, votes, orders, and proceedings in any of the said colonies or plantations, whereby the power and authority of the Parliament of Great Britain to make laws is denied or drawn in question, are hereby declared to be utterly null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever.’”

  Michael stuffed the paper back in Christopher’s pocket. “And what did you expect them to say? That we can pass our own laws now, and they’ll sit by and watch us?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t know what I expected. Not this, though.” He tilted the bottle up, and the level went down another inch.

  “Listen, I must go. Are you all right? Can you get home by yourself?”

  Christopher sat erect with the bottle on his knee. “An Irishman can’t get drunk, lad. Go on with you. I’ll be all right, me and my bottle.”

  Michael went on to the end of the wharf, where Daniel waited, his boat tied to the foot of the ladder. “He going to be all right, Mr. Fallon?” the boatman asked.

  “I should likely help him back to his rooms,” Michael said, glancing back down the dock. Christopher threw the empty bottle spinning into the river and fished another from his coat pocket. “I’d have to fight him, though. He’ll be all right.”

  Michael and the boatman climbed down and pushed the skiff out into the river.

  “You going to look for more cypress swamp, Mr. Fallon? I expect you already know most every piece in the Lowcountry ain’t already planted.”

  “Maybe tomorrow, Daniel. Tonight we go as far as we can and find a good place to camp.” He looked back at the solitary drinker on the dock. “I expect we’ll have a better night than some.”

  11

  The day of his freedom dawned briskly in January of 1768. Michael dressed with special care. Three years to the day since he’d set foot in Charlestown, and he had reason to wonder if the man in the mirror was anything like the man who’d stepped ashore that day. That man was alone, and wanted it so. This man had friends in Thomas Carver and Christopher Byrne, and others. That man was as near penniless as makes no never mind. This man had five hundred pounds sterling and would have more. That man had no future but dreams. This man had a woman he would marry and a future clear and bright. Hardly the same man at all.

  The walk to the house fit the day. Elizabeth blew him a kiss from her window before ducking back out of sight. Seth met him at the door with a deeper bow than ever before and a murmured, “Congratulations, sir.” And in the study Mr. Carver was waiting.

  On the desk were two glasses of brandy, and between them a rolled paper. Carver picked up the paper and handed it to Michael with a smile. “Perhaps you’d like to do the honors.” He gestured to the fireplace.

  Michael unrolled it a little way. I, Michael Shane Fallon, do hereby swear and pledge my service in indenture—Carefully he laid it on the burning logs. As it flared the merchant handed him a glass.

  “A toast, Michael. To freedom and trade.”

  “To freedom and trade.”

  Carver filled the glasses again. “What are your plans now? I’ve a reason for asking.”

  I’ll put most of my money in rice, and hold it. Then I’ll use that to back bills of credit to buy more, and so on until I can go no further.”

  Carver chose his words carefully. “For your first independent dealing you’ve chosen dangerously. Why?”

  “You, sir.” Michael flashed a grin. “You, and Mr. Laurens, and two or three gentlemen of your acquaintance. Early this month you all stopped shipping rice. You’re still buying, all you can get your hands on, but you’re not selling. Something’s going to happen. I don’t know what, but I’ll wager it’ll put the price up. Am I right?” He sipped his brandy casually while the merchant regarded him with amusement.

  “There are fifty men in this city who should have noticed what you did. Not one did. You’re going to make a fortune, one day. I’ll give you a hint. The exemption on rice as an enumerated good is due to expire.”

  “And you’ve discovered it won’t,” Michael said quickly. “Once it’s discovered we can still ship south of Cape Finisterre without going to England first, it’ll go through the roof.”

  “Exactly. And as that’s the case, there’s nothing more for me to say but go out and spend the rest of the day celebrating. You may find your friend Byrne out as well. I’ve given him command of the Annalee.”

  Michael couldn’t find Christopher, not at Dillon’s or Shepheard’s or Poinsett’s although he lightly sampled their wares. By the time he came on Daniel, laughing with a circle of black boatmen, he was beginning to feel it was indeed a celebration. The boatmen all left politely as soon as he appeared, hats in hand, watching him from the corners of their eyes. He apologized to Daniel for running off his company.

  “It don’t matter, sir. We just swapping stories.”

  “Stories, is it? From the way you were all laughing that last must have been a ringer.”

  Daniel laughed weakly and looked away. “It just a boatman story.” Suddenly he looked up at Michael intently. “You wouldn’t tell it, sir, you promise?”

  “Promise? I’ll swear it, by whatever honor a Black Irish can have. I’ll never tell a soul.”

  The boatman grinned. “It be about Mr. Peter Cranwell, sir.”

  “Him they call Flayflint? Lord, Jepson says the man’s cheap enough to raise mice for their hides and boil the carcasses for tallow.”

  “That be the one, sir. He buy him a boat for to bring his rice and such to Charlestown. That old boat Mr. Milton was going to break up, ’bout sixty ton burden. Sort of big for the river, but Mr. Cranwell, he buy it. When he get it to his place he load all the rice it can hold. Then he start to load the deck. Pitch and turpentine and some hogsheads tobacco he buy up the country. Lord knows what all. When they try to warp her out from the dock, she sitting in the mud on the bottom.”

  “I’ll bet Cranwell was fit to boil,” Michael roared.

  “But that ain’t the whole, yet. He won’t let them unload nothing. He make them take out a anchor in the boat and kedge her out to the channel. The folk he hire to sail her, they say she too full, but he say go, so they go. They go fine, too, till they get to Saint Helena Sound. They not out the river good ’fore they hit a floating log. Boat that size, it shouldn’t matter. But Mr. Cranwell, he don’t spend no money to make repairs when he buy her. That log crack open two, three rotten planks. That boat go down like they cut the bottom out. The crew don’t have time to do more than get in the dinghy they towing. So, they row to Charlestown, where they supposed to meet Mr. Cranwell. He down to the dock when they row up. He see them, he start to shout and jump up and down and get red in the face. He lace them up one side and down the other. He say they ain’t going to get no pay, and he see they never get no work again. Then he ask them where the boat go down.”

  Michael was laughing. “Then? Then he asked them?”

  “Indeed he did, sir,” Daniel laughed. “And they say it happen so fast they never get no fix, never see no marks. He got nothing left to threaten them with. They go off and tell everybody on the waterfront where the boat be, and Mr. Cranwell, he sit and sweat and wish he knew.”

  Michael’s laughter slowly died, and he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to clear the alcohol. It came to him. “Daniel,” he said urgently, “how much longer before the water seeps in and ruins that rice?”

  “Three, four, maybe five more days.”

  “And you know where it is? I mean, you can find the general area?”

  “Yes, sir. But—”

  He could feel the excitement building in him. “Get five or six more boatmen who can swim. You can swim, can’t you? Then get five or six more, and promise them double, no, triple the daily wage for as long as they work for me. Now, where’s Cranwell, do you know?”

  “I see him go in down to Dillon’s ’bout an hour ago. But Mr. Fallon, you promise you wouldn’t tell.”

  “Hell, I’m not going to tell him. I’m going to snaffle the teeth out of his head before he knows they’re gone.” And he was off and running down the street.

  Sixty tons burden. That meant two hundred and forty tierces of rice, normally. At the current fifty shillings a hundredweight—He laughed as he dashed into Dillon’s. Christopher snagged him by the arm as he went by.

  “Where away so fast, lad? Come, sit with a captain. I buy for all my friends.”

  “You’re a captain with a full cargo aboard, from the looks of you,” Michael laughed. “I’ve no time for the drink now, but I need you. You know the Edisto Packet, about a hundred tons burden? Go to Mr. Carver and ask him if I can hire it for a week.”

  Christopher stared, with his mouth hanging open. “Are you daft, man? Hire a ship? What do you need with a ship? And what could you do with it in one week?”

  “Make my fortune. Go broke. A hundred things. Will you do it or no?”

  Christopher downed the last of his drink and struggled to his feet. “Never let it be said one Irishman wouldn’t help another just because he was daft,” he said, and wove his way out the door.

  Michael took a deep breath and went in search of the barkeeper. If someone else had gotten the same idea—“I’m looking for Mr. Peter Cranwell. I was told he’s here.”

  “Aye, he is that,” the tapster said around a straw. “He’s upstairs with a bottle and his miseries for company, and I don’t reckon he wants more.”

  “This is business, innkeep.”

  The man fielded the crown Michael tossed him and jerked his head toward the stairs. “The Red Room. Third on the left. But I never told you.” A clamor broke out at the tables. “All right. I’m coming. I’m coming.”

  Michael went up the stairs, making an effort to go slowly. He felt as if he were moving very fast, and everyone else barely moved at all. It was the way he’d felt as a youth, before his first battles. Well, this was likely to mean more to him than all the battles put together. He knocked on the door of the third room on the left.

  “What do you want?”

  Michael opened the door and went in. “My name is Michael Fallon, sir.”

  The man behind the table had a large, red-veined nose. He glared at Michael over it with mean little eyes. “And what do you want, Michael Fallon sir?”

  “I’ve come about the boat you lost in Saint Helena Sound.”

  “You know where it is?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Cranwell dropped back in his seat and picked up his mug. “If this is some kind of joke—”

  “It’s no joke. I want to buy the salvage rights from you.”

  “Salvage rights?” Cranwell’s eyes lit up, and he became almost pleasant. “Surely. Surely. Let me see. There were five hundred tierces of rice and—”

  “On a sixty-ton ship? Faith and the sides must have stretched a mite.” It took an effort to laugh in the man’s face.

  Cranwell’s mouth twisted, and his eyes grew mean again. “Never you mind how big it was. Just you make me an offer, and I’ll see if that’s big enough.”

  Michael made as if he was considering. “A hundred pounds.”

  “A hundr—” Cranwell fell on his face on the table, his shoulders shaking with laughter. The laughter faded into a choking fit. When it ended he raised up, his face suffused. “A hundred pounds sterling wouldn’t cover the cordage and anchors.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that. But you see, in the first place, it’s not the ship I’m interested in, it’s the cargo. In the second place, the cargo isn’t on a dock. I have to go out and hunt for it. You might say I’m buying nothing at all from you. And in the last place, it isn’t a hundred pounds sterling. It’s a hundred pounds currency.”

  Cranwell swelled like a toad. “Get out. I don’t like jokes.”

  “Think on it, Mr. Cranwell. Right now you’ve nothing. A hundred pounds is better than nothing, even if it is currency.”

  The struggle between anger and avarice was clear on the planter’s face. “All right, damn you. A hundred pounds. When do I get it?”

  “Within the hour.” He had to keep calm, or the man would see something was up. “I’ll fetch pen and paper from below and draw an agreement—”

  “Don’t need any paper. My word’s my bond. No one questions my word.” He grinned piggishly, his chin wet from the liquor.

  Michael hesitated. It wouldn’t be easy to do business after questioning the man’s honesty, but—

  “His word will do.” Both Michael and Cranwell started as John Rutledge stepped through the still open door. The young lawyer was followed by his friends till the wall looked like a patchwork quilt for the colors of their coats. “Mr. Fallon, isn’t it? I hope we’re not intruding. We were walking past and thought we might be able to help. If you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all, Mr. Rutledge. You’re quite welcome. I’m sure Mr. Cranwell feels the same.” Cranwell grunted sourly into his mug.

  Rutledge smiled. “Yes. As to Mr. Cranwell’s word, my friends and I will attest that it’s good. In point of fact, we’ll even testify to it.” He smiled again as Cranwell choked.

  Michael had to stifle his own grin. “Sir, there was never a doubt in my mind as to Mr. Cranwell’s word. The paper would’ve been solely for his protection.”

  Rutledge burst out laughing, and this time Michael couldn’t stop himself from joining. In an instant the others were roaring as well, with only Cranwell sitting in the corner and glowering.

  “Come, Mr. Fallon. Will you drink with us?”

  “I will, Mr. Rutledge, and be pleasured to. But only a short one. I must go to my harvest in Saint Helena Sound.”

  The third day in Saint Helena Sound went as slowly and as futilely as the first two. Michael stood at the rail of the Edisto Packet and watched the boats returning through the failing light, their improvised grappling hooks already inboard. Daniel’s was the first to touch, and he tied off and climbed aboard tiredly. He stood indecisively before speaking.

  “This is the right place, Mr. Fallon. I know this be the right place.”

  “I don’t doubt it is, Daniel. But it’s a lot of water out there, and it’s a small ship, after all. Go on and get yourself something to eat. It’ll be a long day tomorrow.”

  “We find it.” The boatman turned slowly for the galley. “We find it.”

  Michael watched the ship’s shadow on the water fade into indistinct darkness. Yes, they’d find it, if he had to swim out there himself with a grapple in his teeth. He took one last look before going below. They’d find it.

  They damn well had to.

  The boats were out early on the fourth morning, well before there was light enough to see. When the first hint of sun appeared on the ocean horizon, they were already beginning their patterns.

  They rowed side by side with no more than ten yards between. From the rear of each boat a V of rope ran down into the water. Across the ends of that was a bar, and from each bar hung large hooks, pieces of iron, even small anchors. They were towed high enough not to snag the bottom, but low enough, Michael hoped, to catch in the rigging of a sunken boat. He hoped.