CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

EPIGRAPH

PROLOGUE

1: THE WEDDING OF THE SEASON

2: THE GOOD FACE

3: AT NIGHT WE SWIM

4: A PROMISE BROKEN

5: “THE GRAND THING”

6: MISS GOODFELLOW

7: A TELEGRAM!

8: GOD & BARK

9: A PLACE OF THE MIND

10: THE THINGS SHE’D NEVER KNOWN!

11: OUT OF THE SHADOWS

12: SECRET SELVES

13: “SO YOU FOUND US”

14: THE BEGINNING OF THE END?

15: DYING BEFORE HANGING

16: “THIS IS YOUR CENTURY!”

17: A CONFRONTATION

18: “SHE IS MY KIN”

19: “HE LOVES YOUR MONEY, MADAM”

20: “I AM READY TO DIE! READY TO SWIM!”

21: SOMETHING OUT THERE!

22: MORTAL DAMAGE

23: COMING HOME

24: BLOOD AND SALT

25: ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO AVAILABLE

COPYRIGHT

“I loved you, so I drew these tides into my hand and wrote my will across the sky.”

— T. E. Lawrence

“WILL THE DEFENDANT please rise.” Lucy stood up and lifted her chin slightly. Her own heart was pounding, but she felt as if she could almost hear Phin Heanssler’s at the back of the courtroom. She wanted to reach out and clasp his hand and let him know that she wasn’t terrified. It was very strange. She had the peculiar sensation of having slipped out from her own body. It was as though she were floating above herself and looking down as she might do when she was swimming and observed something interesting on the seafloor. But in this instance it was herself she was observing in the courtroom in Thomaston, Maine. She was less than a mile from the sea and yet she had never felt farther.

It seemed odd that the bailiff said the word please when he addressed Lucy, as if — despite his harsh voice — he was offering her a seat at the table for tea instead of what was about to come. The judge banged his gavel and a hush fell over the courtroom, so thick it could be cut with a knife. The entire courtroom appeared to be holding its collective breath. But Lucy felt herself drifting on a gentle current above everything — the people who crowded the benches; Phin, who looked both haggard and desperate; her sister May, who was heavily veiled and stood beside her father, Gar, clutching his arm for support, both of them trembling. Lucy prayed that no one would recognize her sister. She was relieved that Hannah, her other sister, was in Boston and could not see this … this … what might she call it — spectacle? There was not just the press of people inside the courtroom with a dozen reporters from all over New England and as well as New York, but outside the courthouse there were food vendors — sweets carts, apple carts, and on this particularly warm day apple cider being dispensed at three cents a cup from a tank on wheels.

The judge was a gaunt man, his face gouged with severe lines. Had the man ever smiled? His ears, large and red, flared out from behind thick gray muttonchop. There was, however, a grayness that went beyond his whiskers. He was gray as granite to his core. His voice rumbled up through a shield of bedrock.

The judge began to speak. “Under the law of the state of Maine you have been found guilty by a jury of your peers of murder in the first degree. It is considered and ordered by the court that you, Lucy Snow, be hanged by the neck until dead on the first day of December in the year of our Lord 1900. This is the sentence of law.” He paused and leaned over the tall bench from which he presided. “Step forward, my dear.”

Lucy shuddered. My dear! How can he call me that? It’s preposterous. He had just sentenced her to death and called her dear. Sheer idiocy. It was curious what her brain was focusing on in these moments — queer thoughts drifting through her head like bits of flotsam on a swelling sea.

She thought suddenly of the scallop shell comb that Hannah and May had helped her find so she would have one like theirs, the only possession she cared about. The authorities had taken it from her when she was arrested. They apparently thought it could be used in some way to break out of jail. She wondered where the constable had put it. And what would happen to it when she was gone?

She recalled vividly the night when she and her two sisters swam out to Simon’s Ledge and found a stretch of the seafloor scattered with scallop shells. So many to choose from. What would Hannah and May do after she died? Would they go swimming? Would they have some sort of ceremony for her, a kind of funeral? Would they swim to the Resolute to visit the figurehead with the carved likeness of their mother to seek some sort of solace? It was odd that they had found that sea-worn visage of her so comforting. But to them it was a validation of their true selves. They could trace their features in the contours of the face long scraped by years of watery tumult.

On occasion, they would swim out to the Nantucket Shoals to that ship, which hovered like a ghostly vision on the seafloor, and they would always head first to the bowsprit and embrace the only image they had ever known of their mother. Now Lucy wondered if they would whisper to her that one of her babies had died, hanged by the neck until death. A murderess found guilty in a court of law.

But my body? What will become of my body? My broken-necked body. Thrown into a pauper’s graveyard, she supposed.

Why am I thinking about all this? she wondered suddenly as she looked down from this undefined place above her own corporal being and watched herself stepping toward the bench. She started to speak. She barely recognized her own voice. But it was clear and firm.

“Your Honor, you said that I have been judged by my peers.”

“Yes indeed, twelve responsible citizens,” he replied.

She then turned toward the jury slowly.

“But these are not my peers.”

“You mean they are not female but all men, as juries always are.”

“I don’t mean that at all.”

“Then what do you mean?” An edge crept into his voice.

How does one explain that one is not quite human? Lucy thought. This judge and this jury of twelve human beings would not believe that she was part mer.

“You would never understand.”

A deep flush seeped up above the judge’s collar. His face was suddenly crimson.

“Don’t be impertinent, miss.” Miss — the word lashed out like a slap across her face. A sob was heard from the back of the courtroom. It was May.

Lucy flinched. She felt the acuteness of May’s pain. It was as if an artery connected the two sisters. It had taken them their entire lives to find each other, almost eighteen years, and now it was as if they were drifting apart. In her imagination she saw a horizon. May and Hannah were disappearing behind it, fading away. Her sisters’ hands were reaching toward her, but there was nothing for them to grasp. She was vaporizing into a blue mist, the blue mist of a void, of nonexistence. Death was not black. It was blue.

“Order! Order in the court!” The judge slammed down his gavel. “Bailiff.” A large man stepped forward. She was no longer floating. Her body and that other self had begun to knit together. The judge nodded. She felt the hard clasp of the bailiff’s hand around her arm. The gavel slammed down again, then again and again. “Court dismissed.”

Boston Evening Transcript: The wedding of Miss Matilda Forbes, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Pynchon Forbes of Boston and Bar Harbor, Maine, to Lord Thomas Lyford, the Earl of Lyford, the only son of the late Earl of Lyford and his wife, Clarissa, the Dowager Countess of Lyford, is to be solemnized at King’s Chapel. The bride shall be attended by four bridesmaids, Misses Marguerite Trilling, Elizabeth Cabot, Bettina Perkins, and Edith Thayer. Viscount Louis Duval, a cousin of the bridegroom, is to act as best man. The ushers will be Eldon Astor; Samuel Weld; Jonathan Perkins; and Stannish Whitman Wheeler, the society painter, who has just completed the bride’s portrait. A reception at the Somerset Club is to follow.

Hannah set the paper down on the round table next to the flowers that Stannish had just brought to her. He had rented her a small flat on Brimmer Street near his own. She glanced at the wedding announcement one more time. Why had Stannish agreed to be an usher? He hardly knew the bridegroom, but he had said it was very important for business. The only reason she’d agreed to go was that the Hawleys would not be in attendance. They would have already sailed for Europe as they always did in October. So there was no chance of her encountering Ettie — her favorite Hawley when she had worked as a maid in their houses. Her favorite Hawley, yet the one she must be the most careful to avoid. Ettie knew her secret, knew she and her sisters were mer. And as smart as Ettie was, she would never understand Hannah’s attraction to Stannish.

For a long time now Hannah had felt that Ettie actually loathed Stannish. The first year Hannah had served in the Hawley household, Stannish had painted the Hawley daughters’ portraits. That was where they had first met and fallen in love. Yet Ettie did not know that Stannish had once been mer. He had been away from the sea so long that he could not return. He would actually drown. Such were the Laws of Salt. Nevertheless, the very precocious and perceptive little girl did not trust Stannish for some reason. She had once declared that he was as “oily as his paintings.”

She had winced when Ettie had said the word oily. It seemed harsh, especially out of the mouth of an eleven-year-old. It hurt. But beyond that it was wrong, inappropriate. Stannish was an artist. A great painter.

“You mean slippery?” Hannah had asked.

“Not exactly. Just all surface and light,” Ettie had replied.

This had infuriated Hannah. “Ettie, the critic Marlowe Osgood said that Stannish Whitman Wheeler’s paintings have veracity. Veracity is not being oily. It means trustworthy. That is exactly what everyone celebrates about his paintings. How he is a master of light.”

“That is the problem. A human being in real life cannot have the same values as a painting on canvas. He is superficial — all varnish.” She sneered.

There was never any arguing with Ettie. And now that Hannah was actually engaged to Stannish, she thought it best that Ettie was far away and there was no chance of meeting up with her. But what about encountering Matilda, or Muffy as the bride was called? She would recognize her, for after all, her sister Lucy was supposed to have been her maid of honor. Stannish had an answer for that as well. And the answer itself chilled her to the bone in a way that the coldest water in the deepest part of the ocean never had. He had taken her in his arms and while undoing her hair said, “Hannah, darling, I have been thinking about your appearance.”

“What’s wrong with my appearance?” She drew back from him and frowned.

“Nothing really. You are the most beautiful girl in the world.” But, she thought to herself, the problem is that there are two others just like me and one is in prison for murder. He never said that, of course, but instead went on speaking in that soft voice that was like velvet. “And if we are going to have a normal life, we are going to have to alter a few things about you. Your hair color for one. You know when I went down to Philadelphia to paint that portrait of Ethel Bainbridge? She was really not attractive in the least. But her hair was sensational. It was a deep, rich amber — like the color of very fine cognac.”

That had been the first step in Hannah’s transformation. The second step was an entirely new hairdo.

“You’re not a scullery maid anymore.”

The color rose in her cheeks. “I haven’t been a scullery maid in over a year. I was promoted to housemaid. I worked upstairs!”

“That part of your life is behind you. You have your own maid now.”

It was true. Stannish’s maid, a stringy Irish girl, came over twice a week to clean and do some cooking. This was a temporary arrangement until they got married, though that would not happen until later in the fall when they sailed to England. Stannish wanted to get married abroad, as he believed it was good for business. She was not sure how it would be good for business, but she had not questioned him. He was so ardent, how could she ever doubt his intentions? But that dreadful word Ettie had used, oily, slithered into her mind.

But they would get married, and it would be as Stannish had promised. They would go to Italy, where Stannish already had clients lining up in both Florence and Rome to be painted. And in the spring they would go to Switzerland and go hiking through the mountains. “We’ll pass through the most inspiring landscapes,” Stannish had explained. “It’s vigorous. It gets your blood going; and imagine snow-capped mountains, the Alps! And then there are sweeping meadows of wildflowers all in the same frame!” He moved his hands just as he did when he held up a painting for a client.

But hiking wasn’t swimming. The Alps, the meadows, could not compare to the subterranean seascapes of the ocean. But she was not supposed to swim; she was supposed to be weaning herself from the sea as he had done. He had told her it would be hard at first. But he had done it and she must do it as well. They must be equals in this respect if they were to live as husband and wife. And then he had recited a sonnet from Shakespeare.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

The rhythms and the words were so beautiful that the poem seemed to enfold her the way the sea did. It was heartbreakingly beautiful, the images of love as the star to every wandering bark and of love never altering, even when the edge of doom touched the deepest part of her being. This was the kind of love she envisioned. This love was ennobling. There was a grandeur to this vision of love that was irresistible.

But now she sat in a pew in King’s Chapel in Boston she felt suddenly worried. Why must he change me? Why must I change? Are not his thoughts impediments of love? Why did he need to alter me if his love be true? He fell in love with her the way she had been. Why did he want to change that now? She did not want to change him. She loved the way he saw the world. The way he painted the world. He could see colors where she could not. He could capture any light with just his brush and paints. He was an artist. His imagination was unbound. And he had helped her see so much.

She recalled walking down Charles Street on a misty night when he had her stop just beneath a gaslight that hung like a huge luminous pearl in the mist. He said he wanted to remember that light and the soft dewiness it brought out in her cheeks. She stood very still, and she could feel his eyes traveling over the landscape of her face, his gaze like the strokes of a paintbrush.

Falling in love with Stannish opened her eyes to a richer, more vibrant world, a world of light and color. She could not just see color but the colors seemed to enter her and illuminate her from within. Reflecting upon this new world allowed her to realize how much she’d discovered in the past year and a half. She had not just found her future husband but her sisters and the sea. She could never have imagined that there were so many kinds of love one could experience.

She had found worlds she simply did not know existed. There was a distinct before and after in her life. Before she had felt alone, disconnected, adrift, and powerless. But after, those feelings of loneliness, of estrangement, had vanished. The very idea that Stannish wanted her to change now felt like a threat to all she had discovered and valued.

King’s Chapel was a splendid old stone church that stood at the top of the highest ground in the city of Boston with all the rectitude of a Pilgrim father. The gray sterness of the exterior belied the interior, which was white with soaring Corinthian columns. But what surprised Hannah the most was the arrangement of the pews. They had been built in box formation — almost like stalls for animals — so that the occupants sat face-to-face. It was very odd and slightly claustrophobic. There were three elderly couples in her pew. No one Hannah had ever seen while serving as a maid in the Hawleys’ households either in Boston or Bar Harbor. All the women, including Hannah, were wearing a hat with a veil. She had dressed quite modestly, and one of the women gave her a slight smile of approval, for in the next pew there was a young matron with an extremely flamboyant hat festooned with feathers.

The music for the wedding march began. The first bridesmaid came down the aisle, wearing a peach silk dress overlaid with swags of lace and a modified bustle. The last of the bridesmaids, the maid of honor, was a rather plump, ungainly girl, and the peach color did nothing for her complexion, which was heavily freckled despite the layers of powder. This would have been Lucy, Hannah thought. For it was Lucy whom Matilda had selected to be her maid of honor. But girls arrested for murder were not exactly bridesmaid material. Hannah shut her eyes tightly, as it was nearly unbearable to think about her sister. The vivid image of a noose swung in her mind’s eye. Lucy’s head lopped to the side on her broken neck. Hannah tried to replace it with another. What would her own wedding look like? It seemed wrong to try to even imagine it. But she was distraught. She needed something, something to connect her to what she loved and would not disappear.

Both she and Stannish were of the same mind. They wanted it simple. It would be in a little chapel that he often painted in Tuscany overlooking an olive grove. He had already made drawings of the kind of dress she would wear. It was a lovely Grecian-style gown that fell from the shoulders in soft folds. He told her she would look like a goddess, as if “you have just stepped from a frieze on the Parthenon — none of this Charles Worth folderol.”

May and Phin and Hugh, who was May’s beau, were trying everything possible to help Lucy. Hugh had found her a lawyer, who had agreed to take on the case for a greatly reduced fee that Hugh was paying.

Phineas Heanssler was so passionately in love with Lucy that he would do anything to engineer her escape. He spent sleepless nights at his drawing board at the Heanssler boatyard designing not yachts for millionaires but escapes from the Thomaston jail. There were photographs that he had taken of the forbidding granite structure. He had meticulous drawings of the building’s exterior showing every window, doorway, and chimney. From the outside it seemed impenetrable, and so far he had not been allowed inside to visit Lucy. Every time he had come he was turned away. He would then go outside, and, circling the building, he tried to imagine just where in the cavernous stone fortress she was being held. Hannah seemed to be able to do nothing. She had said she could not even raise the subject with Stannish. And May? May was trying, but what could Lucy’s two sisters really do? It was a risk for them. They were, after all, triplets. They looked like one another, and now they looked like a suspected murderess.

The music was beginning to crescendo, signaling that the bride was about to enter. All the people turned their heads. Hannah squinted. A figure swathed in lace and veils on the arm of her father stood at the head of the aisle ready to take her first steps toward matrimony. She appeared engulfed in the lace. It was as if the person had somehow dissolved into a misty nothingness. However, perched above the veils was a dazzling diamond tiara.

There was a slight gasp from the elderly lady sitting across from Hannah in the box pew. Her eyes, as everyone else’s, were riveted on the tiara. “They certainly don’t spare the horses!” she whispered to her husband, then she sniffed in obvious disapproval. Her husband gave her a sharp look. Her bloodless lips pressed into a thin line as if she was afraid more words might escape.

Hannah’s eyes continued to follow the bride down the aisle to the groom, who was awaiting her. His face glowed with expectation. His eyes were riveted on the tiara. Perhaps he was calculating that the value of the diamonds alone could keep his estate operating for the next one hundred years. But of course they would never have to sell the diamonds, for there was cash — cash in the Royal Bank of England, where the next and last installment of the dowry was being deposited at this very moment in London. Lucy had heard all the intimate details of their engagement, which as Muffy described it were actually more of a transaction than an engagement. Lucy had related such details to her sisters. She had been privy to these matters when she had first been chosen to be the maid of honor. That was before the murder, of course. When May asked Lucy if the bride was truly in love with the Earl of Lyford, she reported that Muffy had called him “The dearest man. A true gentleman … but not a passion.” Then she had added that it was not what Lucy felt for Phineas. Nor was it what May felt for Hugh or Hannah for Stannish.

Hannah’s cheeks now began to burn when she thought of her and Stannish’s close moments together. She looked at him standing in a line with the other groomsmen off to one side. He was the handsomest of them all. His thick black hair gleamed in the light that fell through the high clerestory windows of the church. He was taller than any of the other men, with broad shoulders and a deep chest. She had often wondered what he had looked like when … when … Her mind stumbled as it always did when she thought of Stannish once being mer. He had been like her and like Lucy and May. But he had given it all up for his true passion — painting.

When Hannah met Stannish she had not yet crossed over. She did not know that she, too, was part mer. But he seemed to know it the moment he set eyes on her. He had warned her that there would come a time when she must choose. His words flooded back to her.

“Listen to me, Hannah! Right now you can go back and forth between two worlds. But it will not be this way always. In a year, at the very longest, you must make a choice. You must be of one world or the other.”

Hannah was half listening as the couple began reciting their vows. The groom, speaking in his somewhat high-pitched accented voice, had started:

“I take thee, Matilda, to be my lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.”

And then Muffy began to recite her vows. Her voice trembled and was barely audible. “I, Matilda, take thee, Thomas, to be my lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my troth.”

Her veil now parted for the kiss. The diamonds of the tiara refracted the light from the clerestory windows like half a dozen prisms, so it seemed as if a net had been cast over the couple as they turned to walk down the aisle arm in arm. Just like a seining net, Hannah thought.

Seining nets for trapping mackerel were the worst danger a sea creature could encounter, worse than a shark or a killer whale. She and May and Lucy were always alert for them and had helped many seal pups escape. She had heard the searing, melancholy keening of the mother seals as they watched their babies ensnared in the webbing.

Hannah’s breath became short; her heart raced. The stall was no longer a stall but a coffin. She had to get out. But she could not leave before the bridal couple. The recessional march seemed endless. There was the bride and groom, then the bridesmaids, each with a groomsman on her arm. Stannish was now coming down the aisle. He gave her a wink as he passed by the pew where she was sitting.

“I see you have an admirer!” The elderly woman leaned across the space between them and patted her hand with her own, gloved in lavender lace. “I do so admire your hat — lovely, without a feather on it!” She slid her eyes to the hat of the woman in the next pew. It was a green hat festooned with elaborate silk flowers and a small bird with its wings spread in flight. “The flowers are fake,” her pew mate hissed. “And you can bet that blush on Denise Lattimore’s face is fake as well, but that bird is real and dead as a doornail.”

“Now, don’t get overworked, dear,” her husband said.

Hannah had seen many such hats in her mistress’s closet when she had worked at the Hawleys’. Edwina Hawley had flocks of dead birds roosting on hats in her special hat-and-shoe closet. Hannah tipped her head. “Is it a warbler of some sort?”

“Yes, unfortunately a rare sort these days. A Vermivora celata, Orange-crowned warbler. Breeds mostly in Canada. Winters in the southern states and all the way to Mexico. An early migrant to the south in the fall. Nevertheless, it got caught in Miss Lattimore’s net.” She made a scathing sound in the back of her throat. “Well, I guess it’s time to move out.” She gathered her cloak and rose from the pew. “Oh, mercy, look at that — wings of an egret and Mrs. Gardner wearing it, no less! She should know better! All that money and she still has to slaughter a bird. She should just stick to collecting art. She’s building that so-called palace over on the Fenway. I want to say just stick to that, Belle, and stop murdering birds.”

“Elizabeth, I doubt she is doing the actual shooting of the birds,” her husband said, interrupting this tirade.

“Robert, what difference does it make? She is supporting the murdering of birds by buying these cursed hats.”

“Dear, we’re in a church!”

“Yes, and God is looking down on his slain bounty, his murdered creatures.”

A minute or two later Hannah was on the church steps. The elderly couple had drifted off when they spotted some friends. Hannah was scanning the crowds for Stannish. She hoped he would not insist on her attending the reception. She had a terrible headache. This wedding was taking its toll. Her own at the little chapel in Tuscany would be so much better. No reception. Her body unencumbered by the swathes of tulle and satin. Bare shoulders he had drawn in the illustration of the gown. She would feel as if she was swimming! She felt guilty at once at the foolish thought. But this wedding seemed endless, and it was as if a tidal wave of dread had been building inside her. It’s not my wedding, she told herself over and over. Mine will be nothing like this. She had honestly thought she was going to faint at one moment when the diamonds had splintered the light pouring through the window. She knew the only way she could stop this headache was to go down to the harbor just after dusk and slip into the water.

“Hannah!” a voice shrieked. It was as if a bolt of lightning had struck her. She stiffened as she saw Ettie bounding up the steps toward her. She seemed to have grown a foot. She was twelve years old now and was wearing her dark chestnut hair in a more sophisticated style. Her normally solemn gray eyes flashed with confusion as she took in Hannah’s appearance. “What happened to you?”

Hannah tried to laugh, to make light of her question. “Well, I might ask the same of you. You’ve shot up at least a foot, and your hair.”

“Yes, and your hair!” Ettie looked at her sternly. Ettie was the only one of the Hawleys who knew the truth about Hannah, that she was part mer and had left their service because of falling in love with Stannish Whitman Wheeler. “Whose idea was that?” she said sharply, and pointed at Hannah’s head. Hannah sighed. There was never any getting around Ettie. She was the most direct person in the world. She would always be, in terms of her perception, years older than her twelve years, or the nine-year-old whom Hannah had first encountered when she had entered service in the Hawley household.

“Why aren’t you in Europe? You were supposed to have sailed weeks ago,” Hannah asked, trying to change the subject.

“We had to delay.” Ettie was eyeing her carefully. “Some business matter,” she said in a distracted voice, then took a step closer and snapped at her. “But you’re not answering my question — what has happened to you? You’re so different. It’s not just your hair, is it? No. No, not just the hair.” Ettie’s eyes crawled over her. It was almost painful to be examined in this manner. “Something has changed in you. You — you look varnished.” The word hung in the air. Tears sprang to Hannah’s eyes.

Then Ettie planted herself more squarely in front of Hannah and glared at her. “And what about Lucy? Have you given up on her?”

Hannah recoiled. How could Ettie think she had forgotten Lucy? What was the phrase? Blood is thicker than water? Blood was water in this case. Saltwater. And Stannish was no longer mer. No longer of the salt. She felt an overpowering desolation. “Oh, Ettie! That’s cruel.”

The girl was immediately contrite. “Step around the corner. There’s an alley behind the church where we can talk. I don’t want my parents to see me, and you obviously don’t want someone to see you. Good grief, your hair!” She grabbed Hannah’s hand. “This way!”

Two minutes later they were steeped in the gloom of the King’s Chapel burying ground, the oldest cemetery in Boston. The gravestones were so old that some of the inscriptions had been worn away almost completely. Many of them leaned forward at precarious angles as if the bodies beneath them were slightly restless and pushing upward in an attempt to rejoin the world of the living. The gravestones’ dark shadows lay like planks on the ground. Ettie was still clasping Hannah’s hand.

“Now, tell me all about this.” She leaned forward and pulled a curl that was brushing Hannah’s collar.

“It was Stannish’s idea.” Ettie’s eyes hardened. Her mouth clamped shut into a grimace of disapproval. “Ettie, face it. I look exactly like my sister who is convicted of murder. There is no way I can appear in public. It would raise too many questions. That is why Stannish and I plan to move abroad when we marry, to England, and spend time in Europe. He has lots of clients there.”

“But what about that other part off your life, Hannah?” A mournfulness loomed in her gray eyes.

“You often have to give up things when you find love, Ettie. You’ll learn this as you get older.” The words came out stiff and empty, as if another voice were speaking them. They came from a strange place inside of her that she did not recognize. They were patronizing, “varnished” words uttered to betray true feelings. She hated the sound of her own voice when she said them. Ettie gave her a withering look as if to say, “You sanctimonious fool.”

“No, I won’t.” She stomped her foot as sparks seemed to fly from her eyes. It was the stubborn little girl gesture that Hannah had come to know so well. Sometimes Ettie’s problem was that despite her formidable intelligence she was still just a child.

“I’ll get used to it. Stannish said it gets easier.” And then, she thought, it shall be a marriage of two minds as in the sonnet. “He’s done it. He knows.”

“But maybe he doesn’t really know you, Hannah. What is that hair color anyway?”

“It’s — it’s … well, he calls it cognac.”

“Cognac, like what Papa drinks after dinner with the gentlemen in the library while they smoke those smelly cigars! Cognac. That is absolutely stupid. It’s brown and not nearly as pretty as your red hair was. Not nearly.” Her voice cracked. Hannah thought Ettie might cry. “And look, he even dyed your eyebrows.”

The way Ettie was speaking it sounded as if Hannah had been the victim of an assault. She dared not tell Ettie that Stannish had taken to calling her Anna. Hannah, he had said, was indeed an Irish scullery maid’s name, but Anna was elegant and very European. Why, he had just received a commission to paint the Principessa Anna of Luxembourg, who was said to be the most beautiful woman in Europe. But Hannah knew why he had done it. Again it was to erase any trace of who she had been, and of course it was easy, as “Anna” was so close to “Hannah.” If he slipped, it would not really be noticed, whereas if he had named her Barbara or Emily that might prove difficult. However, Stannish never slipped. He took easily to renaming her. “The name fits!” he had declared as he stood back regarding her as he might have regarded a portrait he was painting.

Ettie stepped closer. She had grown so much that her eyes were almost level with Hannah’s. She shook her head wearily. “I just don’t understand it.” She was scrutinizing Hannah’s face as if searching for what had been.

“Ettie,” Hannah said softly, taking her hand. “It’s still me.”

“No, it’s not. It’s not you. You’re just a canvas for him to paint on.”

In the distance they heard a newsie from the Boston Evening Transcript. “New York society murderess to die! Read all about it!” Hannah and Ettie turned to each other in horror and then together bolted from the cemetery in the direction of the newsboy.

“WELL, THAT’S GOT to go!” Marjorie Snow barked as she went into the bedroom that had been her daughter’s and saw her husband staring at the large dollhouse. “I’ll send a note over to the orphan home that they should pick it up.” The Reverend Stephen Snow turned around slowly to face his wife. There was a glacial light in his eyes. He still clutched the newspaper with the horrific headline in the New York Times. DEATH PENALTY FOR MINISTER’S DAUGHTER.

“You’ll do no such thing,” he said. His tone was flat, devoid of any expression.

Marjorie felt a chill run up her spine. What was wrong with Stephen? Wasn’t she trying her best to put on a good face? They were having to leave this charming house, the rectory of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in New York, for a nothing little church in Indiana. She didn’t even know there were Episcopalians in Indiana. She thought there were only Indians out there and some rough-hewn pioneer types probably living in log cabins and sod houses. It was appalling. But one had of make the best of things. At least they were heading to a place where there were no major newspapers that might have accounts of the dreadful recent events in their life.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, dear. But sulking isn’t going to help,” Marjorie said.

“Help? Help what?” His shoulders sank, and it seemed as if he were disappearing within his own clothes, shrinking inside his skin.

“Our move to Indianapolis. I mean, I know it’s not the most desirable parish.”

“The only person I want to help is our daughter.”

“Have you gone mad?”

He tipped his head to one side and regarded his wife before he spoke. His eyes were glazed with tears that threatened to spill. But then he stood up straighter and attempted to square the sagging shoulders.

“No, Marjorie, I have not gone mad. I want to help our daughter, Lucy.”

“But she is not our daughter. We adopted her. From the same orphanage that we are sending this dollhouse to.”

“That makes no difference.” There was a glint of anger that Marjorie had never seen in his tear-glazed eyes. She stepped closer to study this unexpected reaction from her normally mild husband. There were scant inches between them. “You don’t understand, Stephen,” she hissed.

“What don’t I understand, Marjorie?”

“She’s not normal. She’s — she’s not human … she’s a changeling!”

Stephen Snow blinked. Confusion swam in his eyes. Marjorie felt herself relax. He was coming to his senses. Then he looked at her with pure hatred. “I think I do understand.” His voice was raw.

“Wh-what … do you mean …?” Terror seized her. He could not possibly know anything.

“The poison.”

“What poison?” Marjorie asked.

“The rat poison. You put that poison in that small handbag of hers when the police came to arrest her. It — it …” He struggled for breath as he spoke. “You planted the murder weapon so Lucy would take the blame. But it was you who poisoned the duke, wasn’t it? You murdered him and let your own daughter take the blame.” He recoiled from her as if he were peering into a pit of vipers.

“But — but Stephen … there was no choice.”

“No choice,” he thundered. Suddenly he clutched his chest and turned a ghastly color. He staggered toward her as if he were about to strike her. He raised one hand. At the same moment his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell to the floor.

Marjorie Snow stood over him, rooted to the spot. She held her hands over her mouth not quite believing what she was seeing. How had it come to this? What if someone had heard Stephen? Perhaps the maid, who was cleaning in the next room, heard him accuse her of the murder? She felt a cold fear engulf her. She looked down at him. His tongue protruded from his mouth as if he still wanted to speak. But he wouldn’t. No, he couldn’t, and slowly the words stirred in her brain. My husband is dying … my husband knows … but I am safe.

A new world seemed to open up for Marjorie Snow, widow of an obscure Episcopalian minister. There was a certain comfort in obscurity — particularly when one was a murderer. It wasn’t exactly murder, though, she told herself. Anyhow, she would have the annuity. She could move someplace, perhaps abroad. She could begin again. She looked down at Stephen. His face had pulled into a horrid grimace. Now, how did one go about announcing a death? No, not announce. She’d better go and summon the maid, say that the reverend suddenly just collapsed.

Heart attack, she supposed as she looked down at her husband. His hand was still on his chest just as it had been when he fell, as if trying to grip a heart in revolt. His other arm was limp on the floor. Perhaps she should move it so it would appear as if both his hands were trying to quell this pulmonary rebel. She bent down and delicately lifted the arm and then arranged the hand so it rested atop the other hand. “There!” she whispered softly. It was the same soft sigh that her mother would often emit when removing a perfect pie from the oven.

PHINEAS HEANSSLER sat scrunched over on the floor of the sail loft, simply staring. He felt paralyzed. He had never been in a situation like this, a situation that he could not fix. If a boat he had built had one of those annoying slow leaks, he could always track it down. If a sail was not cut right, he could recut it. If a rudder was ill balanced in its fittings, he could rebalance it. But this — this sentence of death by hanging — was unfixable. He felt he was drowning in grief and frustration.

Beside him was the newspaper that he had flung down with the dreadful headline and the picture of Lucy being led from the courthouse. Her chin was held high as she looked straight ahead. It was almost as if she were daring the photographers, as if she were saying, “Look at me!” Phin thought about the life-changing revelation May had made when she admitted that the sisters were “not quite human” and braced for his disgust.

But as he looked at Lucy he felt only pride. Not quite human. She was the most human creature he had ever encountered. How did one measure humanity anyway?

“Not quite human” was how May had put it when she came to the boatyard that terrible day when Lucy had been arrested. He could not remember what he had said in response. He was almost dizzy, for the experience of May Plum standing before him was so disorienting. How had he never noticed the close resemblance between Lucy and May? May, of course, lived out on Egg Rock with her father, the lighthouse keeper, Gar Plum, and his strange wife, Hepzibah. Beyond the natural isolation of living offshore they were a very reclusive family. So there were not many occasions when Phin’s and May’s paths would have crossed. They were not identical twins. The May who stood before him that day was more like a slightly blurred image of Lucy, and just as he was trying to absorb this, May had said that there was in fact a third sister named Hannah, who worked as a servant at Gladrock. This was news to him.

“And none of you are — are … quite human?” he had asked. May had nodded silently. “But what do you mean?”

“We are mer.” He remembered pressing his lips together trying to repeat the sound as if he were back in the first grade learning to read and trying to decode a word in his primer. “Mer people,” she said. “We are from the sea.”

“B-but what does that mean? You are here now. You live on Egg Rock, not in the sea.” He looked completely puzzled. Phin was not accustomed to being puzzled. He spent all day solving equations for his yacht designs — how to calculate wind shear and hull speed; displacement and waterline formulas. But there were no equations applicable to the extraordinary disclosure that May had calmly announced.

“At night we swim.”

“But lots of people swim.”

“Not like us.” She seemed to glow when she said these three simple words. And then she began to explain how their bodies changed. How their legs and feet merged into long shimmering tails. How they could swim vast distances.

“Nantucket Shoals in one night from here?” Phin muttered to himself, then looked up at her. “How fast?”

“Faster than the Prouty,” she replied. The Elizabeth M. Prouty was the coastal steamer that plied the waters from Boston to Bar Harbor and points beyond.

“That can’t be. The Prouty goes eighteen, nineteen knots.”

“We can do forty with the current against us.”

His jaw dropped. He was trying to fit the image of the girl standing before him, wearing a simple muslin dress that looked as if it had been patched a hundred times and a faded shawl, with what she had just said. Her boots were scuffed. He could see a seam had opened on her left one where the heel met the leather. He was trying to imagine her with the powerful tail she had described, slashing through a boisterous sea. And this same mysterious transformation happened to Lucy as well, and their sister, Hannah. She was talking about swimming a hundred and seventy miles to Nantucket Shoals as if it were a walk in the park. Then she was saying something else.

“Lucy won’t die from a hangman’s noose.”

“What do you mean?” Phin asked.

“She’ll die from not swimming,” May said emphatically.

“I — I — I don’t understand.” He shook his head and May had to look away. The anguish in his face was terrible.

“It’s hard to explain, but the older we get the more difficult it is on our bodies if we stay away from the sea. I am beginning to feel it now myself. There is going to be a time when Lucy and I and Hannah have to decide between land and sea.”

“Or else what?” He leaned forward, trying his best to put together what she was saying.

“We’ll drown if we try to go back when it is too late.”

“B-b-but,” he stammered, and took a deep breath, then started again. “You could live on land. I mean, couldn’t you?” He seemed to be begging her.

“Yes, but we must never again be tempted by the sea. So it would be like a living death for us.” For some, she had almost said. How could she explain Hannah’s fiancé, Stannish Whitman Wheeler, who had thrived on land, grown rich from being the most sought-after portrait painter on two continents? But Phineas knew nothing really of Wheeler beyond his being a fancy society painter who sometimes came to Bar Harbor.

It had been nearly a month ago that May had told him all this. Now he heard a creak on the stairs. Before he looked up he knew who it was. May. She stood before him again and put a light hand on his shoulder. It was all in her eyes. She did not need to speak a word. The worst had happened. He closed his own eyes tight. “No time for tears,” May said. “We’ve got to get her out!”

He swallowed and clamped his eyes shut tighter. The gears of his mind seemed to whir. The granite blocks of the jail might be three feet thick. Dynamite? Possibly. Laying a charge? Perhaps. Now was not the time to panic. Now was the time to act. To calculate. This was a problem to be solved. The fact that Lucy was mer was not a problem. It was who she was. Her nature. Her essence. Her prime. Yes, that was it! She was as immutable as a prime number. But the prison was different.

The shadows cast by the light passing through the barred window at this time of day made it seem as if the very air were imprisoned. Phineas sat on a small stool. In the corner, Otis Greenlaw, the constable, sat watching them carefully, trying to hear their whispered conversation. Touching between prisoners and visitors was forbidden. Phineas’s eyes wandered from Lucy’s hands, which grasped the bars. The masonry work was solid. Beautifully dressed stone. Each granite block was immense and must have weighed hundreds of pounds. One tiny window high near the ceiling let in a sliver of light and it, too, was barred. A cannon couldn’t blast through this, he thought. He found it easier to look at the rock than at Lucy. Looking at the rock was like trying to solve a problem, a mathamatical equation like computing what the possible hull speed might be with a given waterline on a sailing vessel. But these were rocks. And so in a sense was Lucy. Her face was unperturbed, almost placid, as if she had accepted her fate. This — her utter placidity — killed him.

“Look at me, Phineas,” Lucy whispered. Was she that ugly? Had she changed that much? She knew the texture of her skin was different. Every morning she swept up the strange little teardrop-shaped crystals that she had shed during the night. Hannah and May had told her they, too, had begun to shed these before they had crossed over and discovered their true natures. It stopped as soon as they began to swim regularly. They had not said it, but Lucy knew it was a kind of withering away of her mer soul.

Nevertheless, the fug of the land seemed concentrated in this jail cell. The air was heavy and thick. The small bowl of water they gave her to wash in was grimy, and she felt encrusted with the accretions of land, land and what was called society or civilization. She had the sudden realization that one did not have to be incarcerated to feel oppressed. She never before saw clearly how unnatural and constricted the land life was. Her physical existence might cease on the end of a rope, but she had now begun another kind of dying, a shriveling up of her spiritual essence.

This was the first time Phin and Lucy had seen each other to speak. He had come to the trial every day. But they had not been permitted to talk. And now that they could talk, even though it was through the bars, he was not looking at her. She figured that May had told him about being mer, and she wondered if that was it. Did he find her repugnant in some way? She looked down at her hands and his wrapped around the cold metal bars. She could see one small sparkly crystal stuck to the metal. She looked up. His eyes were scanning the walls, the ceiling. It suddenly struck her. It was the same way in which his eyes moved over a drawing of a yacht or a scale model, or the yacht itself when he was calculating wind loads per square foot of canvas or hull speed or any of the variables that went into designing a boat. He wants to break me out!

But this is not a yacht, she wanted to scream. It’s a jail. The walls are granite. The bars are iron. The windows are so small — hardly big enough for a baby to crawl through, let alone a full-grown girl.

“Look at me, Phin. Listen to me.” She slid her fingers through the bars and grasped his hand. He turned to her. A soft light suffused his eyes. She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it. “I know what you’re thinking. It isn’t possible.” She glanced toward the constable. The little piggy eyes peering out colorless from his bloated red face seemed to be drooping. He was almost asleep. He had not seen Lucy kiss Phin’s hand. He sat in a chair too small for his large bottom. He did not say a word. But his eyes were shut now and no longer staring at them as if to say, “Don’t even think of it!” A snore issued forth.

At first, Otis Greenlaw had found it exciting to have the murderer, “the poisoner,” as he called her, in his jail. It had been over thirty years since the last criminal, or rather the last real felon who was hanged, had occupied the cell. That had been in the time of his father. He had read up on it. It had been one Silas Bentham accused and found guilty of cutting his wife’s throat. Terrible, brutal crime. He noticed that they had referred to his father, Otis Senior, not as the guard of the tiny prison but as “constable.” Hence he had started insisting that any reporters address him as constable and refer to him as Constable Greenlaw in any newspaper reports. But the excitement soon wore off. Lucy Snow was not the monster that Silas Bentham must have been. She was just a quiet, mousey little thing. It had all become rather boring. When he told his wife this, she replied, “Don’t let her fool you, Ott. Still waters run deep. Poison, witch’s brews, and such.” She gave him a dark look that made a tingle chase down his spine. They’d hanged them down in Salem and now here. His wife was right. There was a darkness in this girl. He’d guessed that was her fellow. Poor soul. What had she done to him? He looked sick with love. Bewitched, most likely. Sooner they strung this gal up the better.

There was a rumor, however, that someone might beat Lucy Snow to the gallows. One Edna Barlow, who had murdered her own child and was a suspect in the death of another. She was now in a jail in Millinocket, but they did not have a gallows up there. So she was to be sent to Thomaston to hang. Constable Greenlaw would be ready. He’d already cleaned out the cell in the other corridor. Didn’t want to put the woman in the one next to Lucy Snow. Two murderers side by side — not a good idea!

The wife had nearly strung Otis up when she found out he had taken their grandson in to see the murderess. But it hadn’t seemed to affect the lad. As a matter of fact, he got a school report out of it and earned himself an A+. First A+ in their family and now he was talking about becoming a journalist. Imagine that — little tyke like Joey, eight years old and already talking about being a journalist.

The constable now jerked himself out of his light doze. They were speaking in low voices. He could hardly hear them. He leaned forward a bit and caught a few words.

“So it doesn’t bother you, Phin?”

Bother him that she is convicted of murder and about to die? the constable wondered.

“No, why should it?” It should, Constable Greenlaw wanted to shout. What’s she done to you? Cast some spell?

Lucy dropped her voice even lower. He could not hear them now at all. Lucy’s voice was hoarse. “I’m not sure how we could make it work. I mean, being married and all, even if I were free.”

“Your mother somehow made it work,” Phin replied. May had told him the story of the shipwreck Resolute. “She married a sailor, the captain of a ship in Her Majesty’s service. I am not a captain but a shipwright. I live on the sea. You could still swim.”

Lucy drew her hands back through the bars and pressed them against her eyes. She had imagined such a life, but now there was no possibility. What sense did it make to talk about something that could never happen?

“Time’s up!” They heard the chair creak as Constable Greenlaw rose. “Come along now, young fella.”

Phin reached in and ran his long fingers through her hair. She raised her hand and touched his cheek.

“ ’Nuff of that now! No hanky-panky. Not on my watch,” the constable barked, and grabbed him roughly by the elbow. Phin wrenched his arm free and looked back over his shoulder. Tears were streaming down his face. Lucy touched her cheek where his hand had been moments before and then her hair. Was this truly their last touch? Could two touches endure for the short time that remained of her life? Could she carry them into an eternity?

IT WAS A RELIEF to Hannah that Stannish had been called to New York on portrait business. That had been a week ago, the day after the wedding. There had been no time really to discuss Lucy’s terrible fate. The few words they had exchanged had been perfunctory.

“My darling, I know how difficult this must be for you. I am so sorry.” He had picked up her hand and pressed it to his lips. But there were words left unspoken that she could read in his eyes. Stannish clearly found it reassuring that there was one less girl who so closely resembled his betrothed. He had nearly been apoplectic that day last summer when he had inadvertently bumped into May. “Well, at least she lives offshore in a lighthouse,” he’d sniffed. Lucy bore a much stronger likeness to May than to Hannah, and now that he had insisted on her dyeing her hair there was even less of a resemblance. He had made her promise not to swim. “You’ll be cured by spring. I give you my word.”

Cured — what a strange word that was! What was she being cured of — her true nature? Stannish called it an addiction. But how could it be? This was her essence, her inherent character. She was part mer. God had made her this way. Stannish had told her she would get used to being away from the water. That the sloughing off of her crystalline scales from her tail would stop. He had even given her an ointment that eased the irritation.

She broke her promise to Stannish two nights after he left for New York. It was the first time she had swum in almost six weeks. From the moment she entered the water, she began to feel herself again, and even the dark hair dye seemed to wash away more with each swim. Something deep inside her was knitting back together again. Something was healing…. If he loved her as deeply as he said he did, was it not this that he loved? That essence that made her Hannah? She was haunted by Ettie’s words on the steps of the church. They popped around in her head now like annoying flies — oily, superficial, varnish. That last one being the worst. Had she in fact fallen in love with someone who was all surface and no essence? But he was a great artist. The most celebrated painter in Boston, New York, London, Paris. His talent sprang from something deep inside of him. Something that she was in awe of. A person could not be an artist of the magnitude of Stannish Whitman Wheeler and have no essence. His art was a mystery to her, but it made him who he was. And she honored that, loved him for it, revered it, and would change nothing about him. Why could he not feel the same way about her? She touched her head. Her hair felt more supple, softer as the dye had faded with her nightly swims.

There was an isolated spot in Boston Harbor, the Fort Point Channel, with no shipping traffic. A derelict tug bobbed off a pier, which if no one tended would most likely sink to the muddy bottom within another two years. It was a perfect place to stash her clothes and then slip into the water — she and the water rats. But the rats paid her no heed.

It was a shock that night when she first slid into the water. It took her legs forever to fuse into the long, powerful tail. She had to pull with her arms as she never had before. Her two legs seemed to flail until finally she stopped trying to use them for fear she would splash too much and attract attention from shore. So she dived, but found she could no longer hold her breath as easily under the water. She had barely made it out of the channel before she had to come up for air. There was, of course, the slime and refuse of a busy city harbor. Then she turned right, dived deep, and swam straight out into the harbor as her legs finally fused. She was careful to avoid the sweep of the Boston Harbor Light. That first night she did not have the strength to swim very far. But by the second night she felt much stronger and took a course south by southeast to the Stellwagen Banks. She had avoided a pod of dolphins. Normally, she would have swum with them for a few miles. They loved to play with her, especially when they had new pups. She often helped with pups, herding them along so as to keep them close to their mothers if a shark was in the vicinity, or often just tumbling with them through the currents. But she was not feeling particularly sociable tonight.

At least she had a chance to meet again with Ettie. Ettie was going to try to contact May and May’s beau, Hugh. Hugh was very smart, a Harvard man, and he had said as soon as the trial began that if Lucy was found guilty, they could appeal it. However, neither Hannah nor Ettie really understood that much about the law.

May had written to both Hannah and Ettie from Egg Rock, the lighthouse just off the coast of Bar Harbor where May lived with her stepfather, Gar Plum, and his invalid wife, Hepzibah. May was anxious as she had not heard from Hugh in several weeks. Hannah knew how that might feel. But she was certain that Hugh would not have forsaken May. She herself would often have qualms when Stannish went away, such as now on his trip to New York concerning a new commission. She knew that it was a glittering world that he entered, filled with glamorous women and extravagant parties. It was nothing like Boston. He would come back with reports of the grande dames of the city and the latest fashion. But he would always return and fold her in his arms and say that not one could come close to her beauty. Those moments of his return were wonderful. She tucked them away like precious jewels, stringing them together like pearls on a necklace that proved their love.

By the time she had swum back it was close to dawn and a slight drizzle had begun to fall. The Old Custom House Tower rose like a flinty schoolmaster over the old port city. The hands on the clock of its east-facing side pointed at five. She decided that she had to go see May. May’s beau, Hugh, supposedly was getting a new fancy lawyer, or she thought he was. And Ettie — she had met with her twice since the wedding. She wasn’t sure how Ettie was able to slip out from the house on Louisburg Square and escape the vigilant eye of her governess, Miss Ardmore, but she did.

Ettie had been sending not just letters but telegrams to May in Bar Harbor and had managed to on her own slip across the Charles River into the distant precincts of Harvard to find Hugh, whom she was pestering to do something. Ettie had told her that poor Hugh was trying to do everything while at the same time finish his thesis in astronomy.

When Hannah had accidentally called it astrology, Ettie had nearly exploded. “Astronomy! Hannah! Astrology is a quack science. No, that’s really a contradiction in terms, I think. Astrology is all based on superstition. It’s at best a faux discipline but most undisciplined.” She had paused briefly. “It’s for undisciplined quacks.” It was very hard arguing with someone like Ettie, who was younger by nearly seven years and yet smarter than any towering adult.

The second time Hannah had seen Ettie she was talking about going to her favorite uncles, Godfrey and Barkley Appleton, or God and Bark as she called them. They were two middle-aged bachelor gentlemen who had distinguished themselves as being the only members of the family who seemed to take Ettie seriously and encourage her education beyond what they called “the domain of the governess.” They had made noises about Ettie going to Radcliffe, the women’s college across the river next door to Harvard. Ettie was an unstoppable force of nature, and there was no telling how far she would go to help save Lucy.

When Hannah had worked in the Hawley house as a servant, she and Ettie had become unexpected friends. It was odd how it all turned out. For at that time Hannah had not crossed over and had no inkling of her true nature, nor did she suspect that out there two sisters were waiting to be found. It was ironic that Ettie herself, who had two fully human sisters, felt as if she had been born into the wrong family. So she and Hannah had gravitated toward each other like two lost stars in the infinity of space seeking to make their own small galaxy.

THE SOFT DRIZZLE in Boston was a hard pounding rain in Maine. May had just come down from trimming the lamp wick in the lens of the lighthouse. What else was there to do? She wound the clockworks and oiled the gears — twice in one week, which was unnecessary, but time lay heavily on her hands. No, that was wrong. Something lay on her heart. A weight, a fear? Fear for Lucy but another kind of unbearable pain. Hugh had not written since the guilty verdict. She knew he had a lot on his mind with his thesis, but it still hurt that he wasn’t there when she needed him more than ever.

Hugh knew she was mer and loved her all the more for it. That secret had saved his life the summer when they met. But now that he was back at Harvard, May had to wonder whether life would be easier for him with a normal girl, a fully human one. Could she blame him if he was fearful? If he had to perhaps “take a breather”?

“Taking a breather”! That was what Cora Bunker, a classmate from the high school, said when her beau, Calvin Eaton, signed on to a Newfoundland codder out of St. John’s. Some breather! Calvin was nowhere in sight. Hadn’t even come back when his mother died. What if Hugh never came back? What if his passion for astronomy took him all the way to the other Cambridge, the one in England? May peered out the windowpanes of the lighthouse watch room, which were glazed with sliding water. Everything blurred. It was as if the world were dissolving before her eyes into a liquefied landscape — rocks, sea, coastline blending into one grayish mass. With Lucy in prison and with Hugh so silent, it felt as if the world were receding from her. And it was not just Lucy who was receding. She had received a disturbing note from Ettie about Hannah. How Hannah had changed. How Stannish was, in Ettie’s words, “bossing Hannah about” and even insisted that her hair be dyed. “She just isn’t herself,” Ettie had complained bitterly in the letter.

If Lucy died and Hannah retreated into the oblivion of that high-society world of Stannish, and Hugh … and Hugh … She could not complete the thought. The loneliness was crushing. Her world had been so wonderful, so promising, and now she felt as if she were spinning in a vacuum, bereft of love, of kinship, of all the things that mattered most to her.

The thought of Lucy hanging was inconceivable. Her brain wasn’t capable of processing the horror. She knew she would feel that death inside her. That death would be real for Lucy. But it would be something else, something never ending in its terror for herself and Hannah. They would feel, experience, the horror of their sister’s death every day for the rest of their lives. They would see fragments of it in their sleep. It would be the first thing they thought of when they awoke in the morning, And when they slipped into the sea to swim, there would be a void where Lucy had swum. Lucy might be free, but they never would be.

Hugh, of course, wouldn’t feel it the way she and Hannah would. Phin would not even feel it in this way. He would grieve, of course, but eventually he would find some island girl who in a short time would produce three or four children. He would forget about Lucy because his home would be filled with laughing children tumbling about. Rumor had it that before Lucy he had been sweet on Rosie Cobb. Maybe he would go back to her.

A voice came to May. It seemed to shout in her head. Odd — it sounded the way Zeeba did when she was demanding something. But this certainly wasn’t Zeeba’s voice. It was her own, and now it didn’t sound anything like Zeeba’s. Quit moaning and groaning! Get to it and do! Who had said that to her years ago? Mrs. Bressler, of course! Her fifth grade teacher, whom she loved! How often she had said that to the fifth graders when one would complain that they had not done their homework because they had to help their fathers bait hooks, or watch their baby sister or brother. “Think about long division when you bait. Practice your times tables in your head while you’re watching the baby. Baby won’t care. Teach the baby the times tables. Make up a song for the fours tables. So much rhymes with four.”

That was exactly what May had to do. Get to it and do!

She looked out the window. The rain was ceasing, and there was just a hint of a weak sun behind the clouds. Her mind ranged back to the trial. Lucy’s defense lawyer was pushed around by the prosecution. The evidence, at least in May’s mind, seemed flimsy. There was more than reasonable doubt. Just because Lucy didn’t want to marry Percy Wilgrew didn’t mean that the alternative was murdering him. Something wasn’t right in their presentation of the whole case. She was not sure what it was, but there was something amiss.

Then some other words came back to her — those of the greatest fictional detective of all times, Sherlock Holmes. When May had been in the eighth grade she became so hooked on Sherlock Holmes that Miss Lowe, the librarian in the Bar Harbor library, actually let her take home to keep a rather ancient and battered copy of Sherlock Holmes stories that had been replaced by a new one. May went to her bookshelf. The story was “A Study In Scarlet.” She turned to a page she clearly remembered underlining. It was where Sherlock is explaining to Watson one of the basics of crime solving:

“In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practice it much. In the everyday affairs of life, it is more useful to reason forwards, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.”

“The grand thing.” That was it! She had to reason backward. Percy Wilgrew, the Duke of Crompton, had died of poisoning at the Abenaki Club. Each member of the club, or very high-ranking summer visitors, had their own little wooden jam pot with their name painted on it. Poison had been put in the one that bore the name of the Duke of Crompton. How the murderer had managed to get into the club without being seen to do this heinous crime no one seemed to know. But how had the police been tipped off and why had they come out to the modest cottage above Otter Creek and arrest Lucy? Lucy of all people! Then, of course, they found the rat poison in a small handbag of hers. All very convenient. But how did they know to go there in the first place? The question now was not who the murderer was, but who would try to place the blame on Lucy. May scrambled off the window seat where she had been sitting to read the passage from the Sherlock Holmes story.

She must take the skiff to Bar Harbor. She needed desperately to talk to Neville Haskell, the longtime manager of the Abenaki Club. The club was officially closed for the winter, but the last time she had been in town she saw they were doing extensive repairs, and Neville was outside directing some men who were shingling the south side of the building.

The winds were light and would be on the quarter both to Bar Harbor and back. Gar never minded. He knew she could handle the skiff. He also knew if it sank, she could handle that as well. Gar knew May’s secret, knew she was mer.

An hour later she was sitting in Neville Haskell’s office. Neville was a jolly sort of man, with his white whiskers and carefully waxed mustache.

“Well, Miss May, we don’t see much of you around here these days.”

“You don’t see much of me any day, sir. I’m not a member. There’s no jam pot with my name on it.” She felt that was a good way of sliding into the subject.

“What can I do you for?”

“I have a question, Mr. Haskell, and I guess you could say it is about the jam pots, or rather one jam pot.”

“Oh, no, here we go!” He sighed and laced his fingers together over the generous expanse of his belly.

“The murder of the Duke of Crompton.”

“A-yuh,” he said, then frowned. He was not going to make this easy for her.

“How did the police know to go to the Snows’ house?”

“Are you asking if I told them to?”

“I’m just curious,” May replied, using all her self-control to keep her tone neutral.

“Why is this of any interest to you?” he said gruffly. “Fancy yourself some sort of detective?”

“Well, did you?” She conceded and ducked her chin a bit, trying to affect an air of modesty. Perhaps she had been too forward with her questions.

“No, I did not tell them to go to the Snows’ house.” She knew that Neville Haskell was an excellent chess player, and this was beginning to seem more and more like a chess game. He sighed deeply, got up from his chair, and stretched his back. “I received a note a day or so after the murder.”

“The one mentioned in the trial about how Lucy had been spurned.”

“It just said ‘young lady’ in the note. Didn’t name her. But you hear a lot of gossip around here being the manager of the club. There was talk about the Snow girl and the duke. Now, I’m not one to gossip and I am strict about our waitstaff not repeating anything they hear. Grounds for dismissal. I run a tight ship. But this was a matter of the law, of a crime committed on these premises. So I called the Mount Desert constable, Constable Bundles, told him about the note and, yes, told him the gossip I had heard. And, well … the rest is history.”

“Yes,” May said. “History based on gossip.”

“Now, here! Here, May Plum! I’ve humored you long enough. This matter has nothing to do with you and is far more complex than a young girl is capable of understanding.”

May leaned forward and skewered him with a sharp gaze. “Mr. Haskell, with all due respect, you are missing an important part of the story.” Neville Haskell was taken aback by her bold move. Her gaze was steely and her jaw set in a most unbecoming manner as if she would dare to lecture him, which she was apparently determined to do. He was a damn good chess player. He would not rise to the challenge but feigned a relaxed manner with just a mere hint of contempt to lure her in, shake her up a bit.

“Now, what might that be, young lady?”

May hated it when people said the words young lady with the inflection that Neville Haskell just had. It seemed to be code for Are you smart enough to know anything? After all, you’re a girl. But May would not let it distract her. “How did the note get here? Through the post?” she asked.

“No. It was here when I arrived the next day, or rather two days later.”

“Just slipped in?”

“More or less.”

May cocked her head and looked at him questioningly as if to say, Well, what is it — more or less?

“Miss Goodfellow, my secretary, found it when she arrived in the morning. She always comes in quite early. It had been slipped under the door, and she brought it and placed it on my desk.”

“She’s not here right now, is she?”

“No, deah, it’s almost winter. Don’t need a full-time secretary except in season. But she works as a part-time bookkeeper down at the sardine factory.”

THE DOWNEAST SARDINE Factory Limited was located on the waterfront at the very end of Atlantic Street, on the wharf where the sardine purse seiners came in. One could smell it in this wind a quarter mile away. As the light leaked out of this day, the boats bobbed by the wharf with their dark nets hanging on hoists to dry. May felt a shiver go down her spine. She could not help but recall the sad cries of the mother seals whose pups had been ensnared. The nets swayed in the breeze like the rags of specters flying through the night. Although it was only half past three in the afternoon, it got dark early this far north in Maine at this time of year, and the oil lamps in the factory were lit.

She went through the main entrance and asked the desk clerk if she could speak with Miss Goodfellow. Without looking up, he pointed down the hall. His hand had only three fingers. Losing a finger was a common occupational hazard for sardine factory workers. Gutting and beheading the tiny fish took skill. One slip of the knife and a fingertip or more could be severed. May walked down the dim hallway. There was a door with pebbled glass that had the word Accounting stenciled in black on the pane. May knocked softly.

“Come in.” The voice was thin and papery.

Miss Goodfellow peeped over the top of a high desk. Everything about her seemed tiny. Although she perched on a stool, her feet dangled a foot or more above the floor. With her sharp nose and pointy chin, she reminded May of a mouse.

“What may I do for you?”

“I’m May Plum.”

“I know that,” she said, hardly moving her thin, colorless lips. Her eyes were very pale, so pale as to be almost transparent.

“I want to ask you some questions.”

“In regard to bookkeeping?”

“No, no … why would you think that?”

“Because at this time of year those are the kinds of questions I am asked. Bookkeeping questions. Winter questions. Sardine questions. Cut-off finger questions. Medical advice, although I always tell them to consult with Doctor Holmes. In the summer people ask me summer questions. Reservations questions, seating arrangement questions” — she paused — “jam pot questions.”

May quickly jumped in. “This is a jam pot question.”

“About the poisoning, I presume.”

“How did you guess?”

“It wasn’t a guess, really. I figured you weren’t here to request one with your name.”

“Oh, hardly.” She laughed. “If I had, I would be the first islander to do so. It’s not a distinction that I seek.”

Miss Goodfellow set down her pen. This was perhaps a good sign. One that showed a willingness to talk a bit. May realized that Miss Goodfellow’s mind was as neatly organized as her books. If that was the case, she might prove very helpful.

“So what is it?”

“Well, it’s not the jam pot precisely but the note.”

“Ah, the note!” Miss Goodfellow exclaimed, lifting one finger that was missing the tip and a bit more. “The one that condemned the girl.”

“It did indeed, ma’am.”

Miss Goodfellow’s eyes seemed suddenly to sparkle. “Would you like a cup of tea, Miss Plum?” No one on the entire island had ever called May Miss Plum.

“Yes, that would be lovely.”

Miss Goodfellow scuttled down off the high stool and went over to the smallest cast iron stove May had ever seen.

“You found the note, didn’t you?” May asked urgently.

“Indeed!” Miss Goodfellow’s eyes widened. “Someone had slipped it under the front door of the club.”

“Did you read it?” It seemed that Miss Goodfellow was quite eager to talk.

“Oh, ’course. It wasn’t in a sealed envelope, it was just a folded piece of paper. It seemed to be almost desperate to be read.”

“Desperate to be read? Curious …” May paused and scratched her head lightly. “And what did you think?”

“I thought the handwriting was odd.”

“Odd in what way?” May felt a tremor of excitement. If anyone knew handwriting, it would be Miss Goodfellow, who had spent a lifetime poring over ledgers and account books.

“It looked unnatural.”

“Unnatural? How? In what way?”

“You see, Miss Plum, as a bookkeeper I am paid to decipher handwriting. There are twenty captains in the sardine fleet. They write down the weight of their catch for each trip. So I know Captain Eaton’s hand from Captain Bunker’s and so on and so forth. And then there are supervisors. They supervise the floor, and under them there are ten teams of cutters and packers. Each of the supervisors and the cutter chiefs and packers has charts to fill out. Now, as you can see” — she held up her hand — “once upon a time I was a cutter and like so many lost a bit of myself in the process.” She gave a quick, tight grimace as if reliving the pain. “Most people here do. If they lose too many digits, they are put into noncutting jobs. I decided I didn’t want to have to lose all my fingers before I could get to that point of a noncutting job.”

“So what did you do?”

“I took a correspondence course in bookkeeping and accounting. I became proficient not just in numbers but telling who wrote what. I knew a thumbless person’s writing from one who had just lost the tip of his finger. No one has to write that much. It’s mostly putting in a set of numbers and signing their names. But you learn. Little oddities stand out.”

“What was the oddity about the note you found?”

“Two things, really. The first was that whoever wrote it was trying to change the way he or she naturally wrote. There was a lot of physical effort involved.”

“How could you tell this?”

“When someone loses a finger here, they think they can fill in the charts the way they always have. But they can’t. They need more pressure in the beginning until they grow accustomed to the missing digit. You can see it. Indentations are left on the paper. Gradually, as they adjust to their handicap, no pun intended, it lightens — the pressure, that is. The paper has no dents.” She paused. “And furthermore, it was good paper. Expensive rag paper, not like the sort of pulp paper we use here. This was not office paper but that of a person of means. A summer person.”

“And the second thing?”

“There was a scent. A lovely, almost woodsy scent with a trace of pipe tobacco and perhaps a wisp of cologne.”

May stared at her, puzzled. “How could you tell?”

Miss Goodfellow smiled broadly now. “Training, my dear, training. You work all day in a place like this with its stench, well, your sense of smell can go to bloody hell.” May’s eyes flew open. This little mouse of a woman was the last person she would have ever thought of swearing. “So I make it my business to train my nose. In the summer especially I walk in the woods. I find every flower that grows wild in its season. I keep a diary of scents. No one realizes it but it’s not only the rose that smells sweet. Mosses also have very distinct odors. There is one oak moss. It has what I can only describe as a sharp, woody green smell but with an undertone of cinnamon. That’s what I noticed on the note you’re interested in.”

“You mean the note writer sprinkled it with moss?”

“Not intentionally. Perhaps he or she smoked a pipe while writing the note. But it was written in a place through which these scents swirled. A woodsy place.”

“Did you tell the policemen about this?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“No one asked me. All they wanted to know was where I first found it. So I said under the door on the carpet of the entry foyer. You could smell that, too.”

“But didn’t you think maybe you should say something?”

“No.” She pressed her mouth until her lips were just a thin, pale line.

“But why not?”

Miss Goodfellow gave May a withering look. “When have men ever listened to women? Especially women like myself. Old spinsters. After a certain age you just become transparent to them.”

May stared at her. She was right. Men rarely listened to women — except for Hugh — and Miss Goodfellow was as nearly transparent as anyone she had ever met.

The moon was rising by the time May sailed back to Egg Rock. It was a nice night for sailing. She looked up at the stars and thought of Hugh. How could she not? For her, he was the stars. But was he slipping away from her just as the stars slid down into the western sky at night to be swallowed by a new day. How much longer would she have to wait for a letter? If Hugh were mer, would she feel this comeplete disconnect when he was away? Or would the salt that flowed through their veins bind them no matter how far apart they were? When she and her two siblings were separated, they could each slide into the sea miles apart and feel a deep visceral connection. Of course, before they had reunited, May, who had crossed first, had experienced a peculiar void on either side of her when she swam. She did not know that her two sisters existed, but it was as if there were pockets of air in the water waiting be filled.

She tipped her head toward the hunter constellation rising in the east and, through a scrim of her own tears, saw Orion stumbling blindly. The stars of the Big Dipper began to reveal themselves in the darkening purple of the evening sky and burned with an unmatched intensity. They were like sparks struck from the anvil of a blacksmith. There was Dubhe, the Arabic word for bear, and one of the pointer stars of the Big Dipper. Golden almost in color and, according to Hugh, estimated to be one hundred and twenty light-years away. For one hundred and twenty years, its light had been traveling to Earth, a long flash in the universal night. Hugh had brought her all this, like riches from a far-off kingdom. The dark bowl of the night spilled precious gems that she had seen but never really knew. Not in the way she knew them now.

She wondered if Miss Goodfellow had ever felt the embrace of a man. Had a man’s lips ever kissed her little face, grasped her tiny hand with its stub of a finger? Inhaled her scent, the one buried beneath the oily one of the sardines that must permeate her clothing and her skin? Did she brew the wildflowers she found — the woodsy mosses, the petals of roses — and bathe in them each night to erase the labors of the day?

And just as she was thinking of these scents, the wind shifted to the land and brought with it that of the oak moss. It beckoned and, like iron filings drawn to a magnet, the skiff seemed to drive toward the shore. May was hardly aware of pushing the tiller. But she did and trimmed the sails, so the skiff began to heel slightly and headed into the cove of Otter Creek and the cave where she and her sisters had often met to tuck away the secret treasures they brought up from the seafloor. The scent of the oak moss was strong and seemed to tumble down from the top of the cliffs. The tide was dropping. May cast over the anchor. It wouldn’t take her long, but she wanted to swim. She stripped off her clothes and slipped into the water, but instead of swimming into the cave she continued to the beach.

The Snows’ cottage was set above the steep beach cliffs. It was the rectory for the visiting summer minister of the congregation of the Little Chapel by the Sea. May had hardly reached shore when she decided to turn around and swim back out. She wanted to know if she could actually see the cottage behind the scrim of pine and spruce trees. Barely. She swam back to the beach and sat on the sand, waiting for the tail to melt away and for her legs to return. Once they did, she scrambled up to the top of the cliffs. The moon beat a silver path across the water directly to the beach.

May would never be sure how it happened, but she suddenly felt that she was standing in the same spot that Lucy’s mother had once stood, watching the daughter she had thought was human return from the sea. She was reimagining the scene as Marjorie Snow would have seen it with Lucy approaching the shore, swimming right up onto the beach. Her tail would still be glittering in the moonlight. She would roll over and sit on the beach for nearly a minute, possibly more, while her tail began to dry and the scales grew dull, turning into skin. Lucy might have taken off her chemise and wrung it out so as not to drip inside the cottage, leaving her nude. The flukes of her fantail would melt into feet, but until the tide came in, there would still be an impression left on the beach of the tail that had been. On a bright moon-washed night, Marjorie Snow would be able to see that impression clearly. This would be the incontrovertible truth: Her daughter was a monster come from the sea. And it was on that night, when Marjorie had already committed murder to protect the reputation of her daughter, that she decided to slay her daughter as well. She planted the evidence of the poison she had used to kill Percy Wilgrew, the Duke of Crompton, in Lucy’s pocket purse. Mrs. Snow would prefer to be known as the mother of a murderess than the mother of a changeling. A monster.

“She saw her!” May said out loud, and in the same moment a scented wind thick with oak moss blew across her face. “She wrote the note. She killed Percy Wilgrew, the Duke of Compton,” May whispered into the yawning darkness. “She was the one who put the blame on Lucy.”

THE NEXT MORNING the rain was beating down hard once again. May had been too agitated to sleep. She held in her hand a letter from Ettie she had received the week before, which must have been sent shortly after the verdict. She pulled it out of her satchel now and reread it, noting the tone of near hysteria.

Dear May,

What are we to do? I think I am going to go see Uncles God & Bark. Also, there is something seriously amiss with Hannah. Did you ever read that novel Trilby? It’s about this man who trains this young woman’s voice and controls her hypnotically. I think that is what this creep Stannish Whitman Wheeler is doing. He made her dye her hair, and honestly, I think she’s in some sort of trance! She is going to be completely useless in saving Lucy. As a matter of fact, it’s as if there are two to save at this point — Lucy and Hannah!

Please come to Boston. I need your help!

Love,

Ettie

What would Ettie make of what she had discovered? Not just what Miss Goodfellow had told her about the handwriting, but what she had reconstructed by imagining Marjorie Snow’s thoughts as she saw her daughter climb from the sea. Miss Goodfellow had said the note had been written by someone who obviously wanted to disguise his or her handwriting. Not only that, it had the scent of pipe smoke and the paper was expensive. The Reverend Snow smoked a pipe, and she was sure he wrote on fine paper. However, she doubted it was the reverend. She was almost certain it was Lucy’s mother. Lucy’s mother was a social climber. Her dream was for her daughter to marry a baron or a duke as so many of the young American girls were doing. Those girls came from families of great wealth. Lucy did not. But she was beautiful, so her mother still had hopes. But these hopes would be dashed if Marjorie Snow discovered Lucy’s true nature — that she was mer.

However, before Marjorie made this discovery, she had learned of Lucy’s love for Phin. Percy Wilgrew himself had seen Phin and Lucy embracing in the woods and confronted Marjorie and Lucy at the Quoddy Club, threatening to reveal their tryst. This was what had turned Marjorie Snow from a mere social climber into a murderess.

Suddenly she heard a loud pounding on the door. A visitor! Impossible. Even the mail boat wouldn’t be coming today.

“May! May! Come down heah!” her father’s voice called up. “It’s Doctor Holmes.” May couldn’t imagine what he was doing here. He certainly hadn’t come for Zeeba, her adoptive mother. The doctor had visited two days ago to check her, although nothing really could be done for the woman since her stroke.

May could not think of Hepzibah Plum as her mother. She had always been an embittered woman who’d resented May’s presence since the day Gar had brought her to the lighthouse as an infant. Zeeba had been in the midst of one of her frequent spells — bouts, afflictions, illnesses — there were not enough words for the devastating conditions she reveled in, as nothing made Zeeba happier than being ill. She loved the excitement, the attention. She had been a sly old fox, eager to get into the chicken house of diseases, and pursued them as eagerly as they longed to feed on her ripe and twisted psyche. She had no time for an infant.

However, Zeeba was a sly fox no longer. She had at last gotten the big, fat hen of catastrophic illness — a massive stroke that had left her frozen into a speechless, infantile state, her eyes staring blankly out from a nothingness into a nothingness.

May ran down the stairs to meet the doctor. “Zeeba’s fine!” she said, taking in the doctor’s drenched hair. “Just fine, but look at you, Doctor Holmes. You must take off your foul weather gear.”

“Can’t. There’s a telegram for you. Well, he sent it to me for you. It’s from Hugh Fitzsimmons.”

A telegram! A telegram had never been sent to Egg Island. Why now? Why would Hugh be sending her a telegram after the long silence? “Oh — oh, no! Something’s happened to him!”

“No, it’s nothing like that. He wanted to arrange a time to speak on the telephone.”

“He’s calling me on the telephone?”

“Yes, the one at my office, at three o’clock this afternoon.” There were only perhaps thirty telephones in all of Bar Harbor, and half of those belonged to the rich summer people and were not in service during the rest of the year.

“Hugh wants to talk to me on the telephone?” She felt her eyes filling with tears of relief.

“Yes, come along. Grab a bag, for you can spend the night with me and Mrs. Holmes.”

May ran to the room and snatched a few articles of clothing and toiletries and stuffed them into a canvas satchel. She looked around almost desperately. She had lived here ever since that day Gar found her adrift. She had imagined she would someday leave to be with Hugh. But was he going to end her dreams? She pictured that telephone wire strung from Boston to Bar Harbor. Little sparks flying off it as he spoke. She imagined the conversation. In a clear, logical voice, the one he used to explain declinations of the stars or the equatorial coordinate system. “You see, May, it is really quite easy.” He often began mathematical explanations with those words. But now it would not be about mathematics and astronomy. It would be about them. “Well, you see, May, it is really quite simple. We cannot marry. We cannot have a life together because due to your peculiar nature …” Would he call her a freak of nature? A freakish thing? No, he would never be that cruel. She felt a sob building in her as she gathered her things. And perhaps it was quite simple. Perhaps it was lose land or lose love.

She fretted the entire way across the cove and out into the bay as they headed to Bar Harbor in the small cutter. What did Hugh want to tell her? What was Hugh calling about? Had something worse happened with Lucy? Or maybe he just wanted to say it was all too much for him. He would do everything he could to help Lucy, but they must come to their senses and realize that they could never really have a life together. It would be too much of a sacrifice on both their parts and their children — how hard it would be for them. Yes, he must be calling because he wanted to “take a breather.”

She walked dripping into the Holmes’s kitchen and peeled off her sou’wester. Mrs. Holmes sat her down in front of the old wood-burning stove with a mug of tea to warm her up. May tapped the rim of the mug nervously and scanned the room. “You have a phone here in your kitchen?”

“Yes. You know if it’s at night and there is a medical emergency Doctor Holmes would never hear the phone in his office. But we sleep in the back just off the kitchen.”

May stared at the phone and then at the clock. It was five minutes before the hour. Then it was two minutes. Then one. May smoothed back her hair and sat straighter. As if he could see me, how stupid! Mrs. Holmes had discreetly left the room. The hour hand was now straight up. Thirty seconds passed, but there was no ring. May felt a panic begin to stir. A full minute passed. Then two. She was about to get up and find Mrs. Holmes to ask if the clock kept proper time when there was the high-pitched trill of the phone. She leapt from her chair and grabbed the receiver.

“May? Is this May?”

“Yes! Hugh?” She nearly swooned. He began speaking very quickly about something he found in the library. It was in a book or perhaps an article in a journal that might help Lucy, and that May needed to come down to Cambridge.

“Wait! Wait! You’re going too fast. Let me grab a piece of paper. I have to write this down.” The only paper she saw was a flattened brown bag. She began scribbling like mad. Excitement and relief coursed through her. Hugh hadn’t been calling to say good-bye — he’d been calling because he’d found something that might save her sister. She felt guilty for doubting him and wished she could reach through the telephone wire to stroke his cheek, just like she had the very first night he’d taken her to see the stars.

Hugh had found an article by a Professor Lawrence — first name unknown — who’d found scientific evidence proving the existence of “mythical sea creatures.”

“Lawrence,” May repeated hoarsely. “That was the name of my biological father, the captain of the HMS Resolute.”

“I know,” Hugh said. “I’m not exactly sure what this means for us, but it’s too much of a coincidence for it not to be connected. I think you must have a relative out there — an uncle or cousin or something. Someone influential who might be able to help. I think you should meet me in Cambridge. Can you take the Prouty tomorrow?”

“Yes, just tell me where to find you.”

“I’ll meet you at the dock.”

“Thank you,” May said with a long sigh. “I can’t believe you did all this for Lucy. For me.”

There was a pause, and for a moment, May thought they’d lost the connection. But then his voice came though, firm and clear. “I’d do anything for you, May.”

“STICK OUT YOUR little tongue and let me cut it out in payment.” That had been the sea witch’s demand to the little mermaid in exchange for brewing a potion that would make the prince fall in love with her. Ettie shivered as she read the sentence in the tale of “The Little Mermaid.” She hated reading it, but she had been inexorably drawn to it since Lucy’s arrest. The fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen had been her favorite as a young child. When she read it some years before — before she had ever met Hannah, May, or Lucy — it had seemed romantic and beautiful. But now, after having known the three mer girls, Ettie realized Andersen had it all wrong about the undersea world. She knew about what that world was like. The three girls had described it to her. Andersen’s portrayal made it seem like an overly decorated birthday cake. And she loathed the part about “souls.” In particular, she detested the stupid old grandma mermaid who blabbered on about how mer folk didn’t have an immortal soul like the humans on earth.

But now it was the horror of Andersen’s “Little Mermaid” tale that drew her. Hannah, May, and Lucy might be mer, but they were flesh-and-blood girls as well. They were Ettie’s closest friends. She felt closer to them than she would ever feel to her sisters, Clarice and Lila. Lila, whose mind was said to be “deranged.” Such euphemisms. Her mind was deranged into pure meanness. Then there was Clarice, who was sweet but rather vapid, and in her sudden burst of what promised to be great beauty had become willingly a little doll for her mother to dress up. That was the ultimate irony, of course. Her own sisters were as different from her as could possibly be, but it was Hannah, May, and Lucy who felt like true kin. She did not just envy them for their wild natures that let them roam the sea unfettered by any human strictures but was in awe of their lively minds. Each was profoundly smart in ways that resonated with Ettie. Hannah played the harp more beautifully than any symphony harpist she had ever heard. There was an ethereal quality to the music that indeed seemed informed by her ties to the sea. May had a sharp mind. She had learned quickly from Hugh to do mathematical derivatives that were a part of the study of calculus. She knew slopes and tangents while Ettie’s math education had stumbled shortly after she had figured out that Miss Ardmore, her governess, knew nothing about square roots. And Lucy herself was a wonderful artist. In Ettie’s mind she was vastly superior to Stannish Whitman Wheeler. With her watercolors, Lucy often painted nonfiguratively — abstract pictures that stirred deep feelings. Looking at one of Lucy’s paintings she could feel the turmoil of the sea or the utter tranquillity of a moonlit night.

Ettie had become consumed with the tale since Lucy’s verdict, as if she was in some way preparing herself for Lucy’s death. But it was not just Lucy she was worried about. Hannah was also going through a kind of living death. Stannish Whitman Wheeler might as well have cut out Hannah’s tongue. It suddenly struck her that girls had to give up a lot, be they mer or human. “Sickening!” Ettie muttered, and slammed the book shut. Tomorrow she would visit Uncle Barkley and Uncle Godfrey. She had to get help for Lucy. Her execution was barely a month off. But today she planned to go to Cambridge and meet with May for the first time since summer.

Ettie had become increasingly skillful at sneaking out of the house on Louisburg Square. Today she left unseen by the back way and walked to Bowdoin Square to take the electric trolley to Cambridge. She and May had arranged to meet at a park bench by the river.

Ettie ran up to May and embraced her. “Look at you, Ettie,” May exclaimed. “You are shooting up. I swear you have grown two inches since I last saw you.”

“Not fast enough,” Ettie replied, and May laughed. “Is this where you slip into the water at night when you swim?”

“No, of course not. Everyone would see me here. I go down a bit.” She pointed east. “There’s a bridge that is good. Offers cover.”

“I would have come sooner, but it’s hard getting away. I had to have fittings, you know.”

“Fittings?”

“Yes, fancy dresses for the voyage. You see, I grew two inches very suddenly. So none of the clothes Mama had planned for me fit and a seamstress was called in to do a rush on five new dresses. And that doesn’t even cover every night of the crossing.”

“You dress up fancy every night you are at sea?”

“Yes.”

“Seems odd.”

“Seems stupid to me,” Ettie growled. “But what do you have to tell me? Catch me up.”

“Well,” May began slowly. “I think the most important thing is that I have discovered a motive for the murder of Percy Wilgrew.”

“And therefore the murderer?”

“Indeed. The motive was shame. The murderer is Lucy’s own mother, Marjorie Snow.”

“I knew it!” Ettie slapped her knee. “I just knew it.”

May went on to tell her about the note and her certainty that Marjorie Snow had written it to place the blame for the duke’s murder on Lucy. It made very good sense to Ettie. Now she had to take this information to her uncles. She sat there silently on the bench beside May and watched as two girls walked by in drab dresses. They were each poring over open books as they walked and occasionally bent their heads toward each other, pausing and talking.

“Are those Radcliffe students?” Ettie asked. Excitement bubbled in her voice. It was as if she were on a safari and had just spotted a rare and fantastic animal.

“I imagine so. See their book satchels?” May replied.

“I would give up everything to be them. To walk by this river with a book in hand and think about all sorts of questions … and … and …”

“And what, Ettie?” May asked, tipping her head toward the girl.

“And I don’t know … learn to do derivatives. Leap into calculus,” she said with a sigh. May smiled softly. Hannah had always said that Ettie was special. Would that there were more like Ettie in this world.

As everyone was consumed with packing up for their usual but somewhat delayed departure for Europe, it had not been difficult at all to slip out.

Ettie did not need to take the electric trolley to visit the uncles. She could walk. She merely cut right down Beacon Hill to Beacon Street, then across the Public Gardens, and came out at the base of Commonwealth Avenue. Her destination: number 45, where her uncles God and Bark resided. Among the redbrick homes, the elegant townhouse looked more Paris than Boston, with its gray limestone facade and small wrought iron balconies. As Ettie skipped up the steps, she prayed that her uncles were home. They belonged to numerous artistic and scholarly societies and were always off to one meeting or another. She lifted the brass pineapple doorknocker and slammed it down three times. Their butler, Florin, was quite deaf. She only wished she could say the same for Mr. Marston, the Hawleys’ butler. She had been sorely tempted to sneak into his office and use his telephone, one of the three in the house, while he was in the wine cellar. But the man had preternaturally sharp hearing, and that, together with what seemed to be the proverbial eyes in the back of his head, presented many obstacles. But she had gotten out of the house even though she would have liked to call the uncles to make sure they were in.

Within another minute she heard the sound of the lock turning.

“C’est moi, Monsieur Florin.”

“Mais bien sûr, ma petite! Et à quoi devons-nous le plaisir de votre visite?”

“Moi! You owe it just to me.” A jangle of appalling French and English spilled from Ettie. “And now let’s arrêter the French … this is sort of an emergency and we must fermer our bouches. Are my uncles in? Not un mot to anyone, s’il vous plaît.”

“Certainment. I mean, certainly they are in and shall be delighted to see you.”

She followed Monsieur Florin to the library. There were her uncles, bending over one of the latest engravings they had their art agent purchase from a dealer in London. They both looked up at once and gave off mild shrieks of delight.

“Henrietta! Darling girl!” Uncle Bark exclaimed.

“My, my, what a drop of sunshine on this rather overcast day.” Godfrey sighed with delight. Barkley Appleton was tall and thin, with a grayish pallor to match the exterior of the house he lived in. His hair was sparse. His brother was actually taller but was heavy. His waistcoat seemed to strain across his vast belly. His jowls jiggled a bit when he spoke. He was of a ruddy complexion and had extravagant sideburns trimmed in the muttonchop style that curled down the sides of his face in frothy cascades. He, too, was nearly bald but went to great pains to conceal his vivid pink pate by combing what hair he had into elaborate swags across the top of his head. His hair was nearly white, and the swags reminded Ettie of cresting waves in a tumultuous sea.

“Now, what brings you here?” Uncle Bark asked.

Ettie heaved a sigh. Her shoulders sank. “I am as overcast as this day.”

“What you — gloomy?”

“Profoundly gloomy!” And then, without warning, her eyes began leaking tears.

The story spilled out in chunks. “And finally …” She paused and took a deep breath. She felt as if she had been running a marathon. She was utterly exhausted, but she had to tell them about the note. She only hoped they wouldn’t ask how she knew this because she did not want to have to tell them about May. “You see, there was this note that placed the blame on Lucy and it is” — she hesitated — “it is questionable.”

“What is questionable?” Uncle Bark asked.

“I guess you would say the handwriting, the authenticity. It is possible that the note writer was trying to put the blame on Lucy.”

“To escape the blame for himself.”

“Or herself,” Ettie offered. Both uncles’ eyebrows shot up.

“Interesting. Could be grounds for a mistrial if the evidence is faulty,” Uncle God said, and scratched his chin. “The murder — yes, we read about it after we left Bar Harbor, but what exactly is your connection with this Lucy Snow?” Uncle God asked.

“I mean, isn’t she quite a bit older than you, dear?” Uncle Bark said as he folded his thin frame into an overstuffed chair and Uncle God sat down on a rather spindly one. Ettie always found this rather disconcerting — that her two uncles chose chairs so opposite and unaccommodating to their body types. Uncle Barkley had a peculiar way of arranging his lanky form in this overlarge, overstuffed chair. He would pin his elbows to his sides, and with his long, thin hands tented so just his fingertips touched he would begin to cross his legs once or twice until he found a comfortable position. He seemed to Ettie like a grasshopper folding and refolding its appendages to find the most accommodating posture.

“Well, yes, but you know church.” As soon as the words were out, Ettie wanted to grab them back. Uncle God and Uncle Bark exchanged suspicious glances. They both knew how Ettie hated church and had caused a major fracas one Sunday when she announced that she didn’t believe in God — the one in heaven, not the uncle on Commonwealth Avenue. Her having made a friendship through church was very unlikely. But they were the least censorious of uncles, and after this fracas Godfrey had come to her and said, “Dear niece, I, too, despite sharing a major syllable of my name with” — he had rolled his eyes heavenward — “have had my doubts at times. Little crises of faith. But the important thing is to try to adhere to the rules, just as in society.”

“You mean the Ten Commandments.”

“Yes,” Bark had chimed in. “The Big Ten. Do that, and you’ll be fine in life.”

“But one doesn’t have to go to church to do that, does one?”

“No, one doesn’t. But ‘honor thy father and mother,’ I think,” Bark had said.

Uncle Godfrey now put his thumbs in his waistcoat just below his watch chain and heaved himself up from the spindly chair, which seemed to creak with relief. He walked toward Ettie and put his hand lightly on her head.

“Ettie, is there something else you’re not telling us?”

The library seemed to spin. The shelves, with their beautifully bound leather volumes, danced a slow jig. The paintings, the porcelains, started to ricochet. There is so much, she thought. But where to begin? She knew as soon as she had asked herself the question that she couldn’t begin. Not ever. They would think she was spinning fairy tales. “Read too many fairy tales?” they might ask. They would think she was crazy. It was so convenient for men to think women, young women, were insane. It ran in the family, after all. Her sister Lila was genuinely crazy. That was for sure. But her uncles weren’t like other men. They respected women. Most of all, they respected her. They believed that Ettie should be educated. She had heard them telling her father that she was beyond the intellectual limitations of her governess, Miss Ardmore. They felt that in another few years she would be what they called “Radcliffe material.” But even with all that, she could not tell them what she knew, what she was hiding.

“Yes.” It was more of an exhalation, a breath on the still air of the library, than an actual word. “Yes, there is something I cannot tell you. But it has nothing to do with this crime.”

“But Ettie dear.”

“It has to do with — with … her nature. That is all I can tell you. We all have things that are perhaps part of our essence that we want to keep private. That we might not want others to know.” The two men exchanged glances. Their faces softened. “I cannot betray this confidence,” Ettie said firmly.

Uncle Bark stepped forward now. “You are a courageous girl, Ettie. And we shall respect this confidence that you must keep.” She knew that they understood.

“Thank you, thank you both, and please believe me, Lucy did not murder the duke.” She paused and inhaled sharply. “I am sure. Believe me, Uncle Bark, Uncle God. She did not do it.” She stopped again. They were looking at her with such deep love and concern. “And no one cares about Lucy except … me.”

And that was the only lie that Henrietta Hawley told. The rest was all true.

“Well, first off, she needs a decent lawyer,” God said. “I’ll ring up Sam Ogletree in the morning.”

“His partner is better. The Jewish one,” Bark said.

Ettie felt a thrill of excitement. Her uncles were actually taking her seriously. Well, of course they always had — more than anyone else in her family — but what she was asking was huge.

“Eli Berg! Of course! We’d better catch him before he goes to the Supreme Court. The first Jew on the Supreme Court, as it’s rumored.”

“Now, what’s this theory of yours?” God said, looking at Ettie.

Ettie paused before she answered. She didn’t want to seem too impulsive. “It’s not a theory. She didn’t do it.”

“Dear girl, Mr. Berg is going to need more than your word that she didn’t do it. Is there anything else?” Godfrey asked. He looked at her almost imploringly. They both did. They wanted to help her as best they could.

“Well … I know for a fact that she thought the duke —”

“You mean the murder victim. The Duke of Crompton.”

“Yes, she thought he was a real creep.” As soon as the word creep was out she knew she shouldn’t have said it. It was not simply impulsive but sounded childish.

The uncles looked at each other, then cast their eyes on Ettie with a withering gaze.

“Dear child,” Uncle Bark began. “I’m not sure what you mean by creep. I trust you are referring to the murder victim. But the victim being a creep, no matter how creepy he was, is not grounds for acquittal.”

“Yes, welcome to the rule of law!” Uncle God said.

“All right. I understand,” Ettie replied.

“She’s a quick study!” God offered. “So do you have any idea who might be suspect?”

“Her mother.”

The two uncles looked at each other. Uncle Bark stepped forward. “Well now, that is something, my dear. Might you share your reasoning?”

“Of course.” Ettie sighed. This was what she loved about her uncles. They thought she was capable of reasoning. And so she began to tell her reasons. Her train of thought was very similar to that of May’s. And she wondered why she had not thought of this sooner. She was curious as to whether there had ever been a woman lawyer. Did Harvard Law School admit women? She supposed she would first have to go to Radcliffe. Boring! She was an impatient child and liked to get to the point quickly, and education for young women often seemed like a meaningless obstacle course.

THE LAST OF the autumn leaves were tumbling to the ground as May walked the streets of Cambridge. She could never have imagined such a perfect little city — or was it a town? — in her life. Of course, she had heard Hannah talk about Boston, on the other side of the Charles River less than a mile away, with its grand houses and avenues and then the tiny winding streets of Beacon Hill, where she had worked in the Hawleys’ home on the fashionable Louisburg Square. But there was nothing really fashionable about Cambridge. There were no broad boulevards. The streets seemed to her just the right size, a few narrower ones running off Harvard Square. There were many trees. She had not expected this in a city, and yet it seemed more like a village to her. In the center of it all was Harvard College, with big, lovely redbrick buildings that stood in Harvard Yard like proud sentries of knowledge. There were at least a dozen different libraries, and Hugh had found her lodging in the area of the Norton Woods section of Cambridge. It was a short walk from the library and the Museum of Comparative Zoology and just a bit longer to the observatory, where she was supposedly helping Hugh on his thesis. She had not spent too much time there so far. However, she had been introduced to Williamina Fleming, who ran what was known as the “female abacus.”

At the observatory, women for the last ten years had been hired to perform mathematical classifications of stars based on photographic plates. Hugh had told her about this the first summer he came to Bar Harbor to work on his astronomy project. May was agog that such a thing as a woman scientist even existed. But Hugh told her about Dr. Fleming, a Scottish astronomer who was developing a common designation system for stars and had thus far not only cataloged thousands of them but had discovered the Horsehead Nebula, a dark cloud in the constellation Orion, which Hugh had shown her with the most powerful telescope he had brought to Maine. But when she went to the observatory at Harvard a few days after arriving, the photo plates that Dr. Fleming showed her were even more impressive.

May did most of her work at the observatory at night. And as dawn approached and the stars faded, Hugh would walk her over to the banks of the Charles and she would slip into the water. No suspicions were aroused in the Gilbert family, where she was lodging, for it made perfect sense that Hugh, being an astronomer, would need help at the observatory at night, when the stars were visible. He would escort her both to and from the “obs,” as it was known. It was a very satisfactory arrangement on all counts.

Hugh had found her lodging on Divinity Avenue in a rather dreary gray three-story clapboard house occupied in contrast by a most undreary, rollicking family, the Gilberts. Jediah Gilbert was a professor of physiology at the Harvard School of Medicine. His wife, Alice, was a sturdy Midwesterner who directed her gaggle of children, three girls and two boys, with a cheerful insouciance. The children seemed to disdain the use of the stairs and instead went swooshing down the banister. On the day May arrived they were having a celebration in honor of the baby, Marietta, who had mastered the banister at the ripe old age of two and a half. May found it frightening to see the chubby little toddler screaming with glee as she whizzed down the mahogany banister and landed at the feet of her mother, whose desk was by the stairs on the first floor.

“Bravo!” the mother shouted. “A wonder any child of mine learns to walk in this family.”

Alice Gilbert was a woman of boundless energy, and in between caring for her children and running a busy household she found time to write articles on suffrage and short stories for magazines, as well as being deeply involved in the local politics of Cambridge. Her children did not have governesses, nor did they go to the fancy private school that many of the college professors’ children attended. They went to the local public school. In the two short days that May had been there, she discovered that Alice Gilbert had an opinion on just about anything. But she was as eager to listen as to give an opinion. She was, in fact, a consummate listener. May had never seen mothers in Bar Harbor listen to their own children with such attentiveness and engage with them in such deliberative conversations. Age and gender seemed not to matter to Alice Gilbert.

Housekeeping was not Mrs. Gilbert’s strong suit. A pleasant messiness prevailed throughout the house. Toys tumbled out of closets and were often strewn across the entrance hall, which seemed to be the children’s favorite place to play. There were books everywhere. It seemed that there was no more room for them on the bookshelves, so one could find almost every tabletop stacked with them, including the far end of the long dining room table.

On May’s first morning there she found Mrs. Gilbert pushing a carpet sweeper while reading a book and obviously missing great sections of the carpet. She looked up when May came down the stairs and cheerfully announced, “I am cleaning up for the cleaning girl. We’re such slobs, you know. I feel a bit sorry for her and needless to say embarrassed for us.”

Professor Gilbert was a quiet sort who always wore a slightly bemused expression on his face but seemed to marvel at his children’s accomplishments, whether it was turning a somersault or getting a hundred percent on a spelling test. He called Alice “Pumpkin” and would often say, “Pumpkin, what do you think about this?” or “Pumpkin, would it be all right with you if I had that new student — the one from Indiana — over for dinner? He seems a little bit lost. I thought he might appreciate your prairie charm.”

It was a happy household, and May tried to imagine herself living this kind of life married to a professor. If the house were right on the Charles River, it would have been perfect, as it led directly to the sea.

The third time she went swimming in Cambridge she met up with Hannah. They had each sensed the other in the water. May had the feeling that Hannah was almost trying to avoid her. She glimpsed Hannah swimming with her eyes closed as if lost in a wonderful dream, and yet it also seemed as if she might have been weeping. The flukes of her tail appeared to linger and then tilt this way and that slowly, as if savoring every curl of the current. A dreadful thought coursed through May. Is she saying good-bye to the sea? Has she decided?

She had caught up, and they both clambered onto the ledge known as Half Tide Rock on the outer edge of Boston Harbor. It had been almost two months since they had seen each other. Ettie had reported that Hannah was not quite herself. But that did not adequately describe her. Hannah ducked her chin and seemed to avert her eyes from May’s. She was incapable of giving a straight answer.

“Ettie says that you are engaged to Stannish.”

“Well … uh … yes.”

“So when are you getting married?”

“In Italy.”

“I said when, not where.”

“Uh … he has lots of commissions in London, and you know …”

“No, I don’t know, Hannah. I don’t know anything except that Stannish was opposed to you swimming and now here you are swimming.” She didn’t wait for an answer. “And does he know this? Or do you lie?”

“Not lie, exactly.”

“What exactly?”

“I guess I’m breaking the rules.”

“Hannah, there shouldn’t be any rules. He should respect what you are. And — and … what is wrong with your hair? It looks different.”

“It’s the — the dye.”

“Why are you dyeing your hair? No, don’t tell me. Stannish’s idea,” she said with a sigh. It was all too depressing.

They planned to meet again. May supposed they both thought that the worst was over with this first meeting, and that now their focus should not be on Stannish or the color of Hannah’s hair but on Lucy. She was pleased when she returned to the Gilberts’ that there was a note from Hugh saying that he had arranged for her to have a card admitting her to the library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology.

This was a different kind of library, not one from which books could be borrowed. It was purely a research library. And so she did research. But she did so with a divided mind. Because for every hour she spent in the library she felt guilty about not concentrating on Lucy. However, if this relative really did exist, the best way to track him down might be through the library, and he in turn might be able to help Lucy. She had told Hugh about the note. He had already visited at least three new lawyers, all of whom seemed doubtful that a mistrial could be declared, and they refused to take the case. They wanted to be paid, and Hugh simply did not have enough money. She was hoping, however, that perhaps Ettie would have more luck with her uncles. Ettie’s uncles were very rich, like the rest of Ettie’s family.

This new zoological library had the convenience of being much closer to the Gilberts’ house, but it was not nearly as beautiful as Gore Library. May had begun her own research on the reports of mythical sea creatures in Gore Library, which was a beautiful Gothic-style building in Harvard Yard that was said to be a replica of the fifteenth-century King’s College Chapel of Cambridge University in England. The information that Hugh had given to her concerning the man named Lawrence and his research on the fantastical sea creatures was based on an article Hugh had found there.

Gore Library was an almost magical place. There were book-laden galleries and alcoves. The air seemed suffused with the scent of old bindings. She had read the article Hugh had found so many times it seemed engraved on her brain. It was a very short piece that spoke of a “crackpot” scientific theory stating that there had been fossil evidence found of “mythological sea creatures who bore human characteristics.” Discredited for claiming to have evidence, the scientist by the name of Lawrence (no first name was given) had been thrown out of the academic community. But the name Lawrence went through her like an electrical current. The name of the captain of the Resolute was one Walter Lawrence. Were he and the “crackpot” scientist related?

The evidence was regarded as “spurious,” but the details were sparse and the nature of his evidence was not specified, nor, for that matter, was the name of the institution with which he had been associated. The first time she had read those words — crackpot and spurious — May actually slapped the reading table in disgust. Now, after countless readings, she merely muttered under her breath, “I’ll show you ‘crackpots.’ ” How she would have loved to swim right into their stupid laboratories or wherever they did their so-called research and smack them to kingdom come with her powerful tail. Yet for all her contempt she was excited. For out there, somewhere, was someone who believed in her. Believed in May and her sisters.

But May could not tear herself from the other treasures that Gore Library housed, which seemed to glow in the halos of the amber light that illuminated the rooms. The librarians were most helpful, especially a bewhiskered gentleman who suggested that she might be able to follow up on her inquiries at the zoology library.

Absent were the wood paneling and the cozy alcoves. It was in the basement of the museum, and there were glass cases of many dead stuffed animals that were either being fixed up for exhibition or possibly permanently retired from the exhibit halls upstairs. The floors were concrete and the lighting was harsh. There were no cozy nooks, or carrels, as they were referred to in the Gore Library. She felt exposed as she read the article in which an academic mercilessly attacked the “alleged scientist”:

“Dr. Lawrence contends that the intestinal mucosa of this putative mer person allows for the secretion of lumen tubules and thus the transfer of sodium to allow for a balance and reabsorbtion of glucose and potassium. It is not dissimilar, he contends, to that of dolphins or porpoises or other mammalian inhabitants of the deep such as whales and seals.”

May went to the librarian and requested a medical dictionary so that she could at least begin to translate what seemed on one level like gibberish but on another level had a haunting resonance. Professor Gilbert was a physiologist, so he might be able to help her understand some of this, but then again, how would she explain her interest?

That evening, after the children had been put to bed, she knocked timidly on the professor’s study door.

“Come in! Come in, my dear. What can I do for you?”

“I was hoping you might be able to answer some questions.” Her face flushed, and she began to stumble over the words.

“Oh, my dear. Is something troubling you? Are you homesick? I know it’s nothing like you’ve been used to. The children are fascinated by your stories of living in a lighthouse.”

“Oh, I am not homesick in the least. I love it here. Mrs. Gilbert is so lovely and the children are wonderful. And there are so many books! In your house, the libraries, everywhere!”

“Yes, I thought I saw you today leaving the MCZ library.”

“Yes, that’s what I was coming to ask you about.” It was all suddenly so easy. She should have known that in this university town of Cambridge no one would ever be suspicious of a young person who asked questions, who had an intellectual curiosity. She began to explain the article she had been reading.

“Ah, yes. So you must have been reading an article by Alton Ingraham on clinical nephrology.”

“Yes, that was the name of the author. He savagely attacked another scientist. Someone named …” she said, trailing off. In her mind, the name had become so intimiately entwined with her secret history that she was hesistant to say it aloud.

“Lawrence, was it?” Professor Gilbert asked, shooting her a kind but curious look.

“Yes, that’s right. Lawrence.”

“Ah, N.B. Lawrence — a bit of a maverick. Drummed out of academia. He had some wild ideas.”

“What were they?” May said so softly that the question seemed more like a feather drifting in the air over the piles of books on Professor Gilbert’s desk. The professor scratched his head and removed the pipe from his mouth and began poking at it with a small brass instrument he kept on his desk. “He was a bit of an odd duck, Nathaniel.”

“Nathaniel was his name?”

“Yes, Nathaniel. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, I was just wondering…. Uh, there’s a man I — I …,” she stammered. “A man I knew slightly called Walter Lawrence. Did you know Nathaniel?”

“No. He’s older and was gone from academia before I came to Harvard to teach. He wasn’t on the faculty here. I believe he taught in the other Cambridge, in England, but did a stint at Yale or possibly Columbia. They threw him out and then apparently Cambridge wouldn’t take him back. I felt they were being a bit hard on him myself.”

“You mean you believed his theories about the — the …”

“The reality of the mythic sea creatures? I am not sure if I believe it. All I know is that I am a physiologist. I study how living systems function — the chemical exchanges involved in organs, cells. Nathaniel Lawrence worked in the area of nephrology, and his research on the functioning of kidneys was always first-rate. Clear, articulate, compelling, and he indeed advanced the treatment of several diseases associated with kidney function. He did a lot of work with fish. They interest nephrologists because of the enigma of how they secrete excess salt. The problem was he did not offer up enough evidence beyond, say, the dogfish, one of the most popular lab animals. We dissect them all the time here at Harvard. They are useful for studying cartilaginous fish and are the perfect lab creature for learning comparative and vertebrate anatomy. Just can’t be beat.”

May felt a shiver creep up her own vertebrae when she heard the words perfect lab creature. Of course, thought May, he did not “offer up evidence.” Perhaps had he been there when her mother died he would have collected her body and dragged it into some laboratory like the one at Harvard where Professor Gilbert worked. The very idea made her feel queasy.

“May, are you all right? Goodness, you’ve turned the color of a sheet.”

She swallowed and clamped her eyes shut. “No! I’m fine! Just a bit tired out, that’s all.” She gave a quick smile and attempted to will the color back into her cheeks. “This is all so interesting.”

“I understand that you’re helping your friend Hugh Fitzsimmons a bit on his thesis project over at the observatory. Part of the ‘female abacus,’ as Williamina and her team of women are called.”

“Yes, it’s quite different from this article I was telling you about. But, you see, I have never been around so many books in my life and I find that I get a bit distracted. If I find something interesting, just by chance I tend to follow wherever it takes me. I should be more disciplined.”

“No! Not at all. You are getting a liberal arts education. What could be more important? I am sure the educational opportunities, or I should say academic ones, and libraries are somewhat limited on an island.”

“That they are. I feel as though I am at a feast here in Cambridge.”

“Well, perhaps you will consider applying to Radcliffe College. I would be more than happy to write you a recommendation.”

“You would?” May sat up straighter. It was almost as if an electric current had passed through her body.

“Don’t look so surprised, my dear. We need more well-educated women. Suffrage is not just a cause for my wife, Alice. It is for all people. We shall all benefit if women get the vote and begin to serve in public office.” He paused. “Oh, I just remembered something about this fellow Lawrence. He was an accomplished artist as well as a physiologist. His drawings of various organs were often used in anatomy textbooks, and I do believe that if you go back over to Gore Library you might find an engraving or perhaps it’s a pen-and-ink drawing he made of one of these mythical sea creatures. It would be in the rare book collections. You would need to consult the print curator there, one Eleazar Winship. Ask for him. He’s a bit of an odd fellow. In addition to his curatorial duties, he is a Sanskrit scholar and has translated a number of sacred texts relating to the Buddha.”

“I’ll do that. I am off to the observatory now,” May said, feeling slightly guilty about the lie.

“Happy star watching,” Professor Gilbert replied, returning to the volume he had been reading.

May was not sure what or who the Buddha was, but she decided she had better find out. But that would have to wait, as she’d planned to meet Hugh on the banks of the Charles River.

Slipping out of the Gilbert house was quite easy, and Hugh was waiting for her under the arch of the Harvard Bridge, which spanned the Charles River. She always paused for just a moment before rushing to him. She wanted to just stroke him with her eyes. His lean frame, the somewhat shaggy hair, the way he tipped his head — she had missed all of that so much. She simply had to take this in. That she and Hugh, in this infinite universe, had found each other was miraculous. There was something almost deliciously painful in this suspended state of yearning — the ache of desire not yet quenched. How long could she sustain it? She broke out from the shadows of the tree and hurled herself into his arms.

Every time they embraced, it was as if they were making up for lost time, the nearly two months they had been apart. Hugh’s lips brushed against hers, sending a jolt of electricity through May’s entire body. She trembled, and Hugh pulled her tighter.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“I’m fine.” May smiled and brought her hand to his cheek. “I love it when you don’t shave.”

“You don’t mind me being scratchy?”

“Never.” She laughed and pulled away a bit.

“Did you bring your swimming togs?”

“You mean my land togs, don’t you?” She stepped away and held up the small book satchel in which she always brought a dry petticoat. She smiled and began to unhook her cloak. She dressed very lightly even on the coldest evenings, for she simply did not feel the cold as others did. She then pulled off her dress and was standing in her petticoats and high-button shoes. Sitting down on one of the bridge’s footings, she began to take off the shoes. “I really think someone should invent better everyday shoes for women. Think how much time is wasted fiddling with these buttons. It’s the first year of the new century. Women’s feet shouldn’t be all cramped up, even if they aren’t mer.”

“Indeed. I’ll put my mind right to it. ‘New Shoes for the New Century.’ What do you think of that slogan?”

“I’ve got an even better one — ‘New Shoes for the New Century for the New Woman.’ ”

“Excellent. I can’t beat that.” Hugh chuckled.

“Don’t even try. You need to keep your mind on the stars,” she said, pulling off the second shoe.

Hugh gazed at her. He had never seen anyone more beautiful. To him, May was like a moon, and he loved her in all her phases, but there was nothing quite as magical as watching her transformation as she slipped into the water. At first, she’d been rather shy to do this in front of him. But then she became more at ease and would let him sit beside her on the concrete footings of the bridge while she dangled her legs in the water. Normally she would plunge right in, and then within a few strokes her legs would fuse and the glimmerings of her tail would sparkle just beneath the surface. This way took longer, but it gave him so much pleasure to watch as her legs fused and the scales in hues of violet and gold began to scintillate in the water. Then, within seconds, she would be gone, streaking off like a flame beneath the river’s surface.

She might swim twenty yards or more and then perhaps break through the surface. Her head, now sleek, would turn to him and she would give a cheerful wave. Usually she swam east toward the sea and the harbor, but occasionally she followed the course of the river west. Her speed was phenomenal. She always returned well before dawn, for at dawn the traffic across the bridge started. The drays and the carters, with their produce or meat fresh from the slaughterhouses in Brighton, would begin, and the world of commerce would be brought to the university town. For indeed the students and professors could not live on intellect alone.

“Turn your back now.” May giggled as her legs reappeared and she stood up.

“Where did you swim to tonight?”

“Out to the harbor. I had hoped to meet Hannah again. But no sign of her.” She sighed.

“Wheeler, I guess.” Hugh frowned.

“I guess.” May shook her head.

“Why does he have to be so selfish?” Hugh said. “If anyone should understand, it should be him. He was mer. But to deny someone her true nature is vile. To ask someone to betray herself is a betrayal of love.”

“There is no explaining it. He thinks only of his own happiness.”

“But there can be no real happiness if you deny happiness to the one you supposedly love. Happiness is shared, not hoarded.”

“You are no hoarder, Hugh Fitzsimmons,” May said as she rubbed her hair with a towel she had brought. “You can turn around now.” She was pulling on her dry clothes.

“When you love somebody, you love her for who she is. For all she is” — he paused — “in all her phases.”

He was staring at her with the same look of wonder that crossed his face whenever he caught sight of a distant star on a cloudless night. May’s bashfulness faded, and forgetting her wet hair and crumpled clothes, she stepped toward him. “I love you,” she whispered, then before he could reply, she brought her lips to his and lost herself in his kiss.

IN ALL HER PHASES. The words echoed in May’s head as she entered Gore Library the next morning. Her life was almost perfect here in Cambridge. It would be perfect if only Lucy could be spared and Hannah … Oh, Hannah! How come she, May, had been so lucky compared to her two sisters? It was an unanswerable question.

The library’s gas fixtures cast coronas of amber light on the bowed heads of students in their carrels as they labored over a difficult translation or perhaps an arcane philosophical argument. From high up in the vaulted ceiling, slivers of light fell through the stained glass clerestory windows. It struck May that each time she entered Gore it was not entirely different from the way that light fell into the sea when she swam either on clear days or moonlit nights. The light poured down in columns, creating an intaglio of gleaming brilliance and shadow until the water became a multifaceted liquid jewel. Of course here it was not water but air. The librarian on duty, with whom she was familiar from her previous visits, directed her now toward the special collections of rare books, which were on the third floor.

“There’s an elevator. However, I am afraid that is reserved exclusively for Professor Winship due to his … uh … affliction. But just go through that door,” she said, pointing toward a heavy, elaborately carved oak door. “And then head up to the third floor. He’ll be there either in a back carrel or swooping about somewhere.”

Swooping about? Just what kind of affliction does the professor have? May wondered. Well, at least she was somewhat prepared. She knew now who the Buddha was. She had found several books on Eastern religions at the Gilberts’ house and had discovered that the Buddha was an ancient sage who had founded one of the great religions of the world. And that the word Buddha actually meant awakened one, or enlightened one. And to think she had gone a lifetime without ever knowing this. She was feeling enlightened herself. Alice Gilbert was only too happy to expound on the Buddha and Eastern faiths when she found May reading the book. “A wonderful religion!” she had exclaimed. “I am at best an agnostic, but were I spiritually inclined I think I would become a Buddhist.”

Although May was not quite sure what an agonistic was, she sensed it was not Christian or any other identifiable religion that she had heard about. She gathered that agnostic meant that Alice Gilbert was disinclined toward organized faiths. She later looked up the meaning in one of the numerous dictionaries that seemed almost to outnumber the dust bunnies in the Gilbert house and found that the definition fitted Alice Gilbert to a T. “A person who believes that nothing is known of the existence or nature of God, or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief.” Perfect! May thought as she now pushed on the leather door. She heard the creak and then the whine of what sounded like a mechanical device high above her. A small aerial figure whizzed through the stained glass radiance of light and alighted on a table top. A dwarf! He bounced in a harness contraption while clutching a book.

“Need help?” He had a cruelly misshapen back, but his voice was cheerful.

“Uh, yes … if you don’t mind.”

“You’re from Radcliffe, I assume.”

“Oh, no. But I do have a temporary library card. I am just assisting someone in his research.”

“Well, I am here to give assistance to such assistants,” he said with a smile. “What specifically are you looking for?”

“An engraving by N.B. Lawrence.”

“Oh, ho-ho! N.B. Lawrence, the fallen-from-grace, scandalized physiologist thrown out of the verdant gardens of academe, and I so wanted to consult him about my renal function.” I know renal, thought May almost jubilantly, for indeed in the article the word had been mentioned and it was another that she had looked up. It had to do with kidneys. “You can imagine that with a body as twisted and misshapen as mine simple organs … well, how to put it? They have a tough row to hoe. But no, they had to throw him out of Yale before I could make it down to New Haven for a consultation.” He paused. “But now specifically you want to see some of his engravings, right? He was as talented an engraver as he was a physiologist until he apparently — pardon the pun — went off the deep end with this mer business.”

“Yes. I found reference to one of these engravings in an article I was reading.”

“I think I know which ones you mean.” He tapped his head and rolled his eyes up until his eyeballs showed almost entirely white. “Let me think. I believe that would be on level three, call number 56.11 thereabouts. Yes indeed. Meet you at the top. You can take the spiral stairs in the corner.” He then began to work some wires on his harness. Once more there was the whine of some mechanism high above, and he began to ascend slowly, twirling through the shuffling disks of colored light that poured in from a large rose window on the north wall of this aerie of rare books.

Eleazar met her at a wall lined with thin drawers that appeared to be no more than three or four inches deep. He pulled one out. “I myself believe nothing can compare to horizontal storage of engravings. It all depends, of course, on the quality of paper. I just automatically assume that quality has been on a downward spiral since the Renaissance despite technological advances. Ah, now if you could assist me by removing those top two portfolios. Yes, that’s it. And now here we are. This is the sleeve we are looking for!” He took out a folder that was tied with a black ribbon.

“Let’s open it on the table over there.” He air-danced to a round table just under the rose window. “Do you want to do the honors?” he said, nodding at the ribbon.

“Oh … oh, sure …”

He noticed how her hands were trembling. He cocked his head and studied her while she began to untie the ribbon. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll leave you here. I do have some things to attend to below.”

“Fine,” she whispered, and did not look up. She heard the whir of some gears as Eleazar slid down to the next level.

May shut her eyes for several seconds before lifting the cover of the portfolio.

She put her hand to her mouth. A face so like her own loomed out from the yellowed paper. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Mother,” she whispered. It was, she knew, an incredible likeness. Much closer than the carved face of her mother on the figurehead of the HMS Resolute, which had been worn by the sea. This engraving was a portrait and showed her shoulders, broad like May’s own. She was wearing a camisole and her hair appeared wet as if she had just climbed out of the water. But there was no trace of her tail or anything for that matter below her waist. No one would know that the beautiful woman was mer — except for May, Hannah, and Lucy. The reality of that face was undeniable. The woman was their mother. There was the dimple in the chin. The high, rounded cheeks; the generous lower lip; and the almost dainty upper one. The eyes gazed out at her. Her lips, which were slightly parted, seemed as if they might speak. May leaned in closer. It was as if she could feel the salt breezes, feel the dampness of her mother’s camisole.

At that moment she heard footsteps approaching. A hand dropped on her shoulder. May spun around to see a familiar face smiling at her.

“Hugh! What are you doing here?”

“I might ask the same of you. What are you looking at?”

“Close your eyes.”

“All right,” he replied, and clamped his eyes shut.

May got up. Taking him by the shoulders, she seated him in the chair she had just occupied.

“Don’t open you eyes until I tell you.”

“Whatever is it? A surprise?”

“Possibly. Now uncover your eyes.”

“Not a surprise,” Hugh said in barely a whisper as he bent over the engraving. “It’s you.”

“It’s my mother.”

“Your mother! Of course.” He lifted his fingertips to May’s face and traced her jawline, resting his index finger on the dimple of her chin. “But where is she sitting?”

“The aft cabin, the captain’s quarters of the HMS Resolute.” The figure was resting her elbow on a surface — the navigation table. May slid the engraving aside. Both she and Hugh inhaled sharply as they caught sight of the next one. There was her mother, perched on a rock with the sea swirling around her and steep cliffs in the background. Her tail was dipping into the water. May’s heart seized as she caught sight of another tail in the water. A head was breaking through the surf. Another mer swimming toward the rock! She slid the engraving aside. It was a double portrait — two female mers on the rock who looked nearly identical, and yet the second one did not look quite so much like May or her sisters. My mother had a sister!

“Your aunt,” Hugh said softly.

“I have an aunt. Lucy and Hannah and I have an aunt. We are not alone.”

Hugh took her hand and squeezed it. “May, you will never be alone as long as I live. Never.” He folded her into his arms. She felt her hair tangle in his fingers and her neatly pinned bun fell into a cascade around her shoulders. Hugh let out a long sigh, but then another sound braided with his breath. It was the whine of Eleazar’s contraption. A shadow spilled across the dappled light shed from the stained glass. They jumped apart, but not before Hugh shot May a sly smile, and she could almost see the words to be continued flickering in his playful expression.

In another book-lined room, in a small library, in a seaside cottage in the village of Jamestown, on the coast of Rhode Island, Nat Lawrence settled down in his wing chair to begin reading the backlog of newspapers. He had very little time for newspapers, really. He preferred reading scientific papers, monographs, and articles. He was anonymously contributing to a new medical textbook on the processes of saline and carbon dioxide exchanges in the respiratory systems of dogfish. He snapped the two-week-old edition of the New York Times. A face loomed out at him. His hands began to tremble. He knew that face — the dimple in the chin, the mouth — all the same. They had lived? But how could it be? And this girl, this … what was her name? Lucy Snow. Accused of murder. Sentenced to die!

“Oh my God!” He set the paper aside. He felt his heart race. Something had to be done. If there was one cell, one scrap of his dear brother, Walter, and his wife, Laurentia, still alive … He gasped. He must go to this child. He must for the sake of his brother. For the sake of Laurentia. He was an old man now, but he would have no peace until he saved this child. A shadow passed through him. He had been cast out of academia, but if indeed he was able to find this girl, this Lucy Snow as she was called, he must never allow his name to be connected with hers. She would become a lab animal. When he had begun his research he never dreamed that the three mer infants could have survived. He would have never started such an endeavor. He thought they were dead. All dead. Could the other two have lived as well?

ETTIE FINGERED the note in the deep pocket of her dress. She could not believe this was happening. “Back early! It can’t be!” she had said, distressed, when Mr. Marston had told her that her parents and Lila had taken an earlier train and would be arriving within the hour rather than later that afternoon.

“What do you mean it can’t be?” her older sister Clarice asked.

“It just can’t,” she said, touching the note that had come the previous evening from May with its astonishing news: Can you come to Cambridge? Meet us at the coffeehouse by the library at two o’clock. I have discovered engravings — portraits of our mother.

May.

By us, Ettie knew that May meant herself, Hannah, and Hugh. She felt her fury mounting. Everyone was free to come and go as he or she pleased except for Ettie, and all because she was a twelve-year-old girl born rich. Rich girls her age, or rather girls of her “station,” could not just “gallivant around,” as her mother had told her so often. Station. She hated that word, but how ironic it was. For indeed she felt as if she were permanently consigned to the station, and the trains that passed through would never stop for her.

Such girls had to either stay where they were or be accompanied. But had she been born poor and a nobody, in short, stationless, there would be boundless opportunities. No one cared about poor children. They could come and go when and where they wanted. She heard them all the time — playing in the Common or the Public Gardens or chasing their hoops down Charles Street. She might as well be in prison like Lucy. She was about to have a fit, or as her mother would say, “an outburst.”

“But I don’t want to be here.”

“You don’t want to see your sister Lila?” Miss Ardmore had just entered the room. “It’s been so long!”

“Not long enough!” Ettie stomped her foot.

Miss Horton, the housekeeper, took a cautious step into the parlor. Ettie whirled about. She spotted Daze, Florrie, and Susie peeking around the corner. The staff was assembling. Well, she would have her outburst.

“Face it — none of you want Lila back. We hate it when she is around. We all tiptoe about in mortal fear of her rages, her tantrums,” Ettie said. Of course she realized she was now having one of her own, but she was an amateur, a piker in the tantrum department compared to Lila, who was just plain barking mad and a liar, a cheat, a she-demon if there ever was one.

“Ettie’s right,” said the newest arrival, Roseanne, who now sailed into the room like a full-rigged ship. She was a large woman with a ruddy, nearly hectic complexion. She was Mrs. Hawley’s lady’s maid. She tended to her wardrobe and all matters personal to a lady. Roseanne wore no apron, which signaled a female servant of the highest rank. There were only three such servants apronless in the Hawley household — Mrs. Horton, Miss Ardmore, and Roseanne Elwood. “What Miss Ettie said hit the mark. You know we all dread her return. Lila left a lunatic and she’ll soon get back to her old ways. Yes, they can drug her to a point. But it never lasts.”

“Mrs. Elwood, I must ask you to mind your tongue,” Mr. Marston said, striding into the parlor.

“I speak the truth. I am devoted to Mrs. Hawley as you well know.” She took a step toward the butler, whose face had turned white. “But Mr. Marston” — she spoke gently now — “you know with her coming back our life is going to be hell! She’s mad!”

Just at that moment the doorbell rang.

“Good grief, it’s them!” Mr. Marston said. “All of you, in your places,” he snapped. The servants rushed to the entrance foyer and lined up in two rows, the prescribed order for receiving the master of the house.

“C’mon, Ettie. Stiff upper lip,” Clarice said. Taking her sister’s hand, she dragged Ettie toward the front door so that when it opened they would be the first to greet their parents and Lila, who had been tucked away in an asylum for more than a year.

Her face was pinched and she was quite pale. She stood very still and said not a single word as she slid her eyes about the faces gathered to meet her. A vein crawled up her temple like a fat worm and throbbed. Mr. Marston took a step toward her. “Welcome home, Miss Lila. We are so happy to see you again.”

She did not look at him but turned her head and settled her gaze on Ettie. “Are you, now?” she said in a barely audible voice.

The nurse who stood beside Lila gave a smile and, then turning to her charge, said, “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your sisters, dear?”

A brittle smile cracked Lila’s face. “This is Miss Doyle. She is my nurse.” The smile never seemed to reach her eyes, which had a flattened look bereft of any light. “She has been ordered by Mummy and Daddy not to wear a uniform. She’s just my ‘friend,’ right, Miss Doyle?” There was something chilling about the way Lila said the word friend. “She still looks rather starched, though, doesn’t she? The uniform seems implied.”

“I am your friend, dear,” Miss Doyle responded.

“You are paid to be my friend….” Lila paused. “Quite handsomely, I think. Perhaps even more than Mr. Marston.”

“Lila!” her father gasped.

“Oh, I forgot. Speaking of money is vulgar. I shan’t say another word.”

Ettie clutched Clarice’s hand harder and felt a darkness rising in her like a flood tide. She shifted her eyes away. She couldn’t stand to look at her sister. The madness had begun already. She felt it seeping into the house. She wanted to run, flee. Lila’s eyes flinched. She began to walk toward the two huge vases that stood nearly six feet tall in the entryway.

These were the Kirayhasi vases that always accompanied the Hawleys to their various homes — Gladrock, their estate in Bar Harbor; the apartment in Paris; and number 18 Louisburg Square, Boston. Seventeen times the vases had crossed the Atlantic. And it was in front of one of the vases that Stannish Whitman Wheeler had posed the Hawley daughters for their portrait. It was during the time of the painting of the portrait that Lila had had her first bout of serious illness. She had been sent away to what they referred to as a sanitarium and then returned after two months. The painting had not been finished when she left, and in an effort to complete it Wheeler had posed Hannah in the thick shadows leaning against one of the vases. It was the exact spot in which Wheeler had put Lila. He had explained that the foreground had been completed where Ettie and Clarice posed, and the background was mostly complete, but he needed a stand-in figure for Lila just so he could get the shadows right.

When Lila had returned and the painting was unveiled at Gladrock, she seemed to sense that she had been replaced. Despite the thick shadows, she detected a ghost of Hannah, of whom she was insanely jealous. That night after the party to unveil the portrait, Lila sneaked downstairs, and with a kitchen knife destroyed the painting, ripping it down the center. She had then tried to attack Hannah, who had fled — fled and jumped into the sea. It was on that night that Hannah had crossed over. The Hawleys, like many other families who had mentally disturbed relatives, kept it a secret. A variety of euphemisms were often used, such as nervous fatigue or emotional fragility. However, none could come near to disclosing the violence and peculiar brutality of Lila. She was anything but fragile.

Except for Ettie, who found out much later, no one knew of Hannah’s transformation. But there was one other thing that had happened on the night of Lila’s attack. Ettie had thrown a rock at Jade, Lila’s demonic cat. It was almost as if that cat were Lila’s familiar. Their eyes were exactly the same color — jade — for which the cat had been named. The cat had jumped on Hannah and clawed deep gouges in her face, and then both Lila and the cat, like two demon spirits, chased her into the night. Ettie had followed, and picking up a rock had heaved it at the cat’s head and succeeded in killing her just at the moment when Hannah had dived into the sea and crossed over to discover her new life. So it was one life lost and one gained. Or at least that was how Ettie thought of it. Would her sister remember that Jade had died? Was the image of that cat limp on the beach at Gladrock burned into her feverish mind? Her parents had assured Ettie that the doctor had told them that Lila remembered nothing of that terrible night.

Hannah had returned and worked for the Hawleys for almost another year and then gave her notice. It was, however, on that night when Lila had attacked the painting and then Hannah that the vase had inexplicably shattered. It actually shattered the moment that Hannah dived from the lavender rock into the sea.

Lila began to walk toward the two vases; the one that had been repaired stood to the right. Her eyes settled on it. She stood in front of it for more than a minute. The tension in the air was thick. One could have heard a pin drop. Lila turned around sharply. “It’s cracked,” she announced. Ettie caught the look on her mother’s face. Edwina Hawley appeared as if she might shatter. Ettie felt a surge of love for her mother. How can Lila do this? She let go of Clarice’s hand and walked up to her sister, standing in front of her for several seconds before speaking. “Lila, on the night you fell ill the vase shattered.” She heard her mother inhale sharply. Ettie had wanted to say attack, but when she heard that little gasp from her mother she was glad she hadn’t. “We’re not sure what happened. There was a lot of confusion that night.”

“Oh, yes, so much confusion …” Lila paused, looked about the drawing room, then fixed her gaze on the servants. “And what was her name — the scullery girl — Hannah? Yes, that was it. She is no longer here?”

“No.” Mrs. Hawley stepped forward. “No, she left.” Her voice was shaky.

Lila lifted her chin slightly and sniffed. “Dismissed, I suppose.”

“No!” Ettie said loudly. “She left. She was not dismissed. And when she left she was no longer a scullery girl but an upstairs maid.”

“Well, aren’t we all happy she’s not upstairs anymore?” Lila said this so softly and directly to Ettie that the others could not hear her at all.

“We?” Ettie said in a whisper, and just shook her head. It was never a good sign when Lila said we. We made the air shiver. A shudder passed through Ettie as if someone were walking on her grave. Violence had entered the quiet and orderly domain of the Hawley household, and there was no turning back.

Stannish had returned from New York a few hours before and had come to Hannah’s apartment bearing a lovely gift.

“Something for your trousseau!” he announced. He watched her carefully as she lifted the lid from the box and removed the layers of tissue paper. It was a lovely silk paisley shawl.

“Oh, it’s beautiful, Stannish.”

“I bought it to match the color of your hair now that it’s …,” he trailed off as his lips twisted into a scowl. “By Jove, you’ve been swimming, my dear, haven’t you?” He had leapt up and taken a tendril of her hair. “The dye hasn’t held, and the color is now … now like … like rust,” he said with distaste.

“Just once or twice,” Hannah answered, her voice trembling.

“We cannot have lies between us,” Stannish said in the tone one might use to admonish a small child.

Hannah shut her eyes for a moment. She felt herself grow still.

“You are right. We cannot have lies between us.” Her voice was surprisingly calm, and she looked Stannish straight in the eye.

“There! You understand!” he said, almost triumphantly, as he grabbed her hands. “So you won’t lie anymore.”

“No, I’ll tell the truth. Whenever I go swimming I shall tell you.”

He flung down her hands so violently that she almost staggered from the force. He was strong. Strong in the way mer were strong powering through a wave, but he had not been in the sea for years. Yet he still seemed to have a great deal of that residual strength.

“That hurt, Stannish!” For the first time ever, she felt frightened by Stannish. It wasn’t just his physical strength, but the way he made it feel as if the walls were closing in around her.

“You are hurting me. I have the power to provide you with a magnificent life —”

She interrupted him. “But why is it always me who has to give things up?”

“I am an artist. I had to give it up to become an artist, Hannah, so I could follow my passion.”

“But aren’t I your passion?”

“Of course you are. But you cannot have it both ways, Hannah.”

“Listen to me, Stannish. I think we could. You said you wanted to paint more landscapes, not just portraits —”

He cut her off. “Are you really that stupid?” he spat.

“How dare you call me stupid!” Her voice dropped, a deadly coldness tinged every word. “I am not stupid. I am what I am — mer. And I think I could live on both land and sea. My mother did.”

“But then she died. In a shipwreck. She drowned.”

“I don’t think she drowned. I’ve thought about this, Stannish. I think —”

“Don’t think, Hannah!” he thundered. “Girls get in trouble when they think.”

This last statement took her breath away. What have I become? Then something hardened in her. She would show him. She would show him that she could live in both worlds. Before she gave him up and before she gave up the sea, she would show him if it was the last thing she ever did. But he would be watching her like a hawk between now and the time they sailed. She would have to resist the sea for now. She could do it. She might even have to wait until they got to the Continent. But she had a plan once they got to England, to Somerset, on the southwest coast, where he was supposed to paint a portrait of the new Baroness Pynte. The fantasy life she’d envisioned for them was fading, replaced by a far grimmer reality. But she had no choice.

WHEN ETTIE THOUGHT of Cambridge she thought of clanging bells. The bells in the tower of Memorial Hall, the Gothic edifice honoring the victims of the Civil War, were tolling the half hour when she arrived, and soon the chimes marking the hour would ring out from St. Paul’s, just outside the Harvard Yard, on Bow Street. There would be throughout the day slightly more distant anonymous bells that would peal at odd times. None of these seemed particularly synchronized. Ettie mused that there was a position crying, or pealing, for employment — a keeper of the chimes. Someone who would organize time and tollings that summoned folks to vespers or prayer and some to signal that a class period was over and a new one would soon begin. Add to this cacophony the jingle of harness bells as carters drove drays loaded with coops of clucking chickens toward East Cambridge or perhaps a book wagon loaded with volumes being transported to one of the half dozen or more Harvard libraries. There was, in short, a veritable symphony of tingles and tollings on this foggy morning. It seemed to Ettie as though she were walking through a forest of chimes. It had not been hard for her at all to get away in the less than two days since Lila had arrived. For the blessing of her fragile sister’s return was that everyone appeared to be walking on eggshells and were completely consumed with not upsetting her. Therefore Ettie was the last thing on anyone’s minds.

For Ettie, Cambridge was a fascinating wilderness so different from her orderly world across the river. It was in one sense trackless — a person could wind up on the steps of a spooky Harvard museum filled with exotic dead stuffed animals and the fossil bones from unimaginably ancient times or find herself in the thick, smoky air of a Cambridge coffeehouse where unchaperoned Radcliffe girls holding cigarettes at sophisticated angles drank coffee and mingled with Harvard boys. Ettie felt like a foreigner. She was too young, too short, and too well dressed — though she tried to look slightly shabby, or so she thought. She had found an old shawl that needed patching that Florrie had not yet got to, and as soon as she left the house she had removed her bonnet — Radcliffe girls did not wear bonnets! But Hannah does, she thought as she spied her huddled in a corner of the coffeehouse with May.

Hannah looked up as Ettie approached their table. “Ettie, is everything all right?”

Ettie sighed, sank into a chair, and gave a short account of what the Hawley househould had been like since Lila’s return.

“How did you ever get away?” Hannah asked.

“It’s not hard. Everyone is so concerned with Lila that they have little time to wonder about me. I called my uncles and asked them to say that I was going with them to the art museum.”

“And they agreed?” Hannah asked.

“Of course they did. I told you. They are working very hard to help Lucy …” She paused, then continued. “But don’t worry, they don’t know about either of you. The good news is that they have engaged an excellent lawyer. Now, what did you find at Gore Library, May?” Ettie asked.

She slid her eyes toward the table next to theirs. A young woman sat with a book. She wore a colorful silk bandeau on her head. It was so sophisticated looking, and with her tiny violet-tinted spectacles she reminded Ettie of some sort of exotic creature, a bizarre insect of some sort. Perhaps an Amazonian beetle like the one Uncle Bark had in his collection. Not that these beetles wore spectacles. But they were very shiny and colorful. Ettie had been trying to make out the title of the book for the last five minutes. The young woman finally closed it to take a sip of her coffee and stub out her cigarette. Calculus of a Single Variable: Early Transcendental Functions. Goodness, she thought. Is it math or philosophy? She knew about the Transcendentalists and all those people like Emerson who had lived out in Concord. How exciting that this girl was studying both! And then a young man came up and kissed her full on the lips in front of everyone. I have to go to Radcliffe! Ettie thought.

“Ettie,” May said sharply. “Are you paying attention?”

“Wh-what?”

“I was just saying that what I found at Gore Library has to be believed.”

“Yes.” Hannah nodded, and her eyes seemed to suddenly tear up.

“Pictures of your mother? I want to see them,” Ettie said emphatically.

“And our aunt, I think,” May said.

“All right, let’s go,” Ettie replied eagerly.

May and Hannah began to get up.

“Just one second,” Ettie said, and then grasped Hannah’s hand.

“What is it?”

“Hannah, are you still planning to marry Stannish Wheeler?”

Hannah went rigid, and she tore her eyes from Ettie. “Not right away, Ettie. What’s important now is to help Lucy.” May nodded in agreement.

“But are you?” Ettie demanded.

Hannah and May exchanged glances. Ettie could be like a dog with a bone in its teeth. They knew they could not budge her until Hannah had answered her question.

“I am not making any decision until we get to England.”

“When do you sail?”

“Two weeks.”

“On the Leonidas?”

“Yes, why?”

“That’s when we sail. Same ship. It stops in England first and then goes across the channel to France.”

Hannah leaned forward. “Don’t worry. Our paths will never cross.”

“Why not? We’re on the same ship, Hannah. It’s not like being in the same city.”

“Stannish will be in first class.”

“And you?” May and Ettie both said.

“Well, we’re not married, so we can’t share a cabin. Really!” She blushed.

“But where is your cabin?” Ettie asked.

“Steerage,” Hannah said softly, and ducked her head.

“So he goes first class and you go bottom class — steerage. How gallant!” Ettie sniffed.

“Look, it doesn’t matter to me. Money is tight. There are a few commissions where the people have been late in paying.” Ettie felt May kick her under the table. The message was clear. Drop it!

“Let’s go now,” Ettie said, getting up. But just before she walked out the door she raced back to the young woman at the table. “I love your bandeau. The fabric is so beautiful. Where did you get it?” The young woman looked up at her through the violet-tinted spectacles.

“Smyrna.”

Smyrna, Ettie thought. She said it just as one would say Manchester or Cape Cod or Brookline, for Lordy’s sake. Just like that she had tossed out the name as if it were a nearby suburb.

Twenty minutes later in Gore Library on the third floor Ettie lifted her eyes from the engravings and looked at Hannah’s and May’s faces. “The resemblance! It’s — it’s astonishing. You have a mother and an aunt!” Both girls nodded. “Where do you think this place is?” She pointed to the rock where the two mer sisters were posed. There were cliffs in the background.

“It doesn’t look like any place I know on the coast,” May said.

“Nor I,” Hannah offered.

“You think it could be across?”

“Yes, the other side of the Atlantic. It makes sense,” May said. “The HMS Resolute was a British-registered ship. Now the challenge is to find out where this N.B. Lawrence lives.”

“But if he lives in England …,” Ettie said with a sigh.

“We don’t think so. He had worked both here and abroad for many years. But the last place he worked was in New Haven, at Yale. That much we know,” May said. “Hugh has hired a Pinkerton detective to find him.”

“A Pinkerton man!” Ettie said with delight. “Oh, my! I have always in my secret self wanted to be a Pinkerton man — or woman!” Ettie had long been fascinated by Allan Pinkerton, who had founded the detective agency decades before. She could hardly believe it when she found out that her uncles had known him. Known the man who, as Bark and God said, had developed “modern detective techniques” and had served during the Civil War as a spy for the Union. He had worked for the abolitionist movement long before the war. He was part spy, part scientist, and a true patriot, although he had been born in Scotland. What a life!

“Your secret self?” Hannah asked, and smiled. “I thought May and I were the only ones with secret selves.”

A grave expression slid across Ettie’s face. It was as if she had suddenly aged. The soft contours of her face seemed to become instantly chiseled. Her gray eyes that moments before glinted were suddenly solemn. “You have just one secret self. You have no idea how many I have.”

At that moment the bell on the clock tower of the library began to toll. The spots of colored light shimmered with the vibrations of the glass in the rose window as the chimes rang out.

IT HAD BEEN over fifteen years since the last time Nat Lawrence climbed the granite steps to the Revenue Cutter Service on Cutter Station Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. He doubted if Lieutenant Ramsey was still the officer in charge of records. But someone would be there, and he needed to review all the papers and documentation of the shipwreck of the HMS Resolute. There were absolutely no survivors. It would take a miracle if three babies, Walter and Laurentia’s triplets, could have survived. Laurentia was mer, but she could drown. Particularly if she had not been swimming for a long period of time, and perhaps she hadn’t, since she had just given birth. She would have had to keep her true nature a secret on the ship. Wouldn’t do for the sailors to know that their captain had married a mer creature. At a certain age the transitions between land and water became more difficult. Laurentia and her sister, Avalonia, had told them this. For Avalonia, in her cave on Barra Head in the Outer Hebrides, it was easy for her to keep swimming. In that sparsely populated area the people were accustomed to mer folk and paid them little heed, no more than they would a seal that swam ashore to sun on the rocks. The mer kept to themselves for the most part, but they sometimes came to town to buy cloth or soda bread or cakes. Funny how the mer folk loved their cakes.

On occasion an island boy or girl would fall in love with a mer. It was not totally uncommon and had happened more than once through the years. If mer and island folk intermarried, they at least usually stayed about the Hebrides. So for these mer folk, there were no problems, and they never suffered the ills that might plague those who had moved so far away as to be deprived of swimming entirely.

On Barra Head and the other islands no one had to make that terrible decision when they came to that age where if they could not swim they would drown. Laurentia was so sure it would be fine for her. So she became a sea captain’s wife, and it was fine until that terrible storm.

“Can I help you, sir?” a clerk asked as Nathaniel Lawrence approached the high desk.

“Yes, I would like to speak to the registrar of records if possible. It’s been a long time since I’ve been here. I trust Lieutenant Ramsey is no longer in charge.”

“Oh, no, sir. He died going on five years ago. Lieutenant Philipps is our registrar now. Right through that door at the end of the hall.”

“Thank you.” Nathaniel Lawrence nodded and began walking toward the pebbled glass at the end of the long hall. So many times he had done this in the years immediately following the shipwreck, combing the records for any clue as to the possible survival of his brother and his brother’s wife. He was certain it would be fruitless.

“Lieutenant Philipps, I believe.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I have come to inquire about a shipwreck of some years ago.”

“And what might be the name of the vessel?”

“The HMS Resolute, sunk off —”

“Of course, off Nantucket Shoals in 1883. Now, here’s the odd thing. Would you believe, according to our log book here, the first inquiry came about seventeen years ago, shortly after the ship went down? A lighthouse keeper up the coast of Maine by the name of Edgar Plum sent a letter, followed by a few more from interested relatives, and then nothing until this month when three requests came in. One from a May Plum, presumed to be a relative of Edgar Plum, and the other by a Pinkerton man. Indeed, are you from the Pinkerton Agency?”

“Oh, no. But my brother was the captain of the Resolute. But you say just this month you’ve gotten these inquiries?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you say this Edgar Plum keeps the light?”

“The light on Egg Rock off Bar Harbor in Frenchman’s Bay.”

“And he has a relative named May?”

“Yes. I can’t remember why, but something made me think she was a daughter.”

“A daughter,” Nat Lawrence whispered. Why would a “presumed relative,” the daughter of a lighthouse keeper, be making inquiries into the wreck of the Resolute after all these years? What possible connection could there be? Unless this May Plum was indeed one of the triplet daughters. It might really be possible that two were still alive! Nat Lawrence could hardly contain himself.

“Thank you! Thank you so much!” He turned to leave.

“You don’t want me to pull the records for you? I mean, that’s what I’m here for, to help folks.”

“Oh, you have! You have indeed. Helped me greatly, but I want to catch the coastal steamer before it’s too late.”

“Well, if you skip lively you can catch the Laconia. She’s a bit of a pokey thing, but she’ll get you up to Boston in time to get the Prouty up to Maine.

LUCY COULD HEAR the crowds outside the prison. “Baby killer! Baby killer!” The cold November air was shredded with the jeers of the crowds that had come from as far as Kennebunk to see the hanging of Edna Barlow. An executioner had been sent up from Portland. Lucy had never seen Edna Barlow since they had brought her to the Thomaston jail ten days earlier. She had been kept in an isolated cell far down another corridor. But she could hear her ranting and raving throughout the nights. It was a wonder the woman had a throat left. There was a part of Lucy that almost envied her. It would be over for Edna Barlow. She would be done with this world. They had not yet removed her from her cell, but they would soon. The execution was scheduled for eight o’clock this morning. The people had begun to gather hours before.

She could hear Otis Greenlaw’s voice in her corridor. “Lucy Snow! Lucy Snow!” he called out harshly. No! No! Not now, I’m not ready. I take it all back. Had they decided to execute her right now as well? Save the hangman a trip from Portland. She curled up on the cot and grasped her knees.

“Up you go, girl! Up you go.” She did not move. “What’s wrong with you? I need to introduce you to your new guard. Just temporary while I go about this here hanging. You know, as constable I have to be there and sign with the coroner when they cut her down. Now, don’t give me no trouble here. Not like that lunatic. Make nice. Come on over and meet Silas Gibbons. Come on, deah.”

“Dear,” he calls me “dear.” The judge called me “dear” minutes after he sentenced me to death. What is wrong with this world?

Lucy rose and walked shakily over to the bars. “Silas, this here is Miss Lucy Snow.”

“A-yuh.” Silas was a toothless old man with rheumy eyes.

“Silas used to work here. Long time ago with my own father. “

“A-yuh.”

“Silas, I want you to know that Miss Lucy has been a model prisoner. Not like that other one.”

“She done be a harlot, that other one, a baby-killing harlot.” He had a Bible braced under his arm. Opening it, he began to read. Although his eyes never seemed to fall on the page, the words just spewed forth.

“ ‘Then the LORD said to me in the days of Josiah the king, “Have you seen what faithless Israel did? She went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and she was a harlot there.” ’ ” He raised the Bible and shook it. “Jeremiah!” he announced.

“Silas here does love his Bible.”

And Silas loved his harlots as well, or at least the passages about them. He followed the Jeremiah reading with one from Leviticus: “ ‘Do not profane your daughter by making her a harlot, so that the land will not fall to harlotry and the land become full of lewdness.’ ” His eyes began to sparkle dangerously. Lucy backed away and turned to her cot, where she crawled under the thin cover and pulled it over her head.

Between the din of the crowds jeering and the rage of this old man spewing his vitriol, she felt as if she had descended into a dark and wolfish woods ready to be torn apart by rabid beasts. The bedlam soon reached a crescendo and then there was a sudden silence. She did not have to see what was happening. She could imagine it — the hangman, with his hood, placing the rope around Edna Barlow’s neck and then seconds later, out of the vault of silence, a clank as the square of floor dropped away. A deafening roar erupted. But by this time Lucy had lost consciousness.

It had taken Nathaniel Lawrence nearly two days to make the journey to Egg Rock, off Bar Harbor. On this blustery morning he leaned into the biting northeast wind as he made his way up the path to the lighthouse. He rapped hard on the door, for the wind was howling. It took almost five minutes before he heard the turn of the lock. A grizzled man opened the door.

“What brings you to the rock out in dirty weather like this?”

Nathaniel Lawrence stood in the frame of the lighthouse door. Water spilled off the brim of his sou’wester hat and foul weather cape. “May? May Plum? I’m looking for her.”

“She be in Cambridge.”

“Cambridge!” Nathaniel gasped in disbelief.

“A-yuh. She went down ’bout three weeks ago.”

“B-b-but I came all …” His voice dwindled.

“Come in heah, no use standing out in the rain.” The lighthouse keeper’s accent was thick as the fog that had rolled in with the stormy weather. “I got some chowder. You come up on the Prouty this morning?”

“Yes.”

Gar Plum had started to lead his guest toward the kitchen. “You can put your gear on the hook next to mine. These November nor’easters come with more rain than wind. Still must have been a rough trip up on the Prouty.

“That it was. Then I got a ride out with the mail boat. That was wet. Here’s your mail, by the way. I take it you’re Edgar Plum. I’m Nathaniel Lawrence.”

“Lawrence?” Gar stopped in his tracks and slowly turned around and fixed his eyes on the man who was now peeling off his foul weather rubber cape.

“Yes, sir, Lawrence — Nathaniel Lawrence.”

Gar’s shoulders sunk. “So you found us.”

“I — I — I’m not sure what you mean.”

“You come lookin’ for your niece.” Nathaniel Lawrence seemed to sway a bit. “Steady there.” Gar reached forward and, taking his arm in a firm grip, led Nathaniel Lawrence to a chair at the kitchen table.

“So May Plum is not your daughter?”

“I believe you know that,” Gar said as he placed a mug of steaming fish chowder in front of his guest. There was a groan from a room just off the kitchen. “Oh, that be my wife, Zeeba. She ain’t in a good way. Be back in a second. Time to give her the medicine.”

While Gar was gone, Nathaniel looked about the modest dwelling. It was neat as a pin. The kerosene lamps glowed — their glass chimneys wiped clean, the brass fuel tank at the bases polished to a dazzling brightness. The cast iron Atlantic Princess wood-burning stove, oiled and gleaming, threw off a powerful heat. Outside the wind had picked up, and through two small windows he could catch the sweep of the light from the top of the tower. He judged it to be an interval of five seconds between each of the two flashes followed by a ten-second gap. Each lighthouse along the New England coast had its own characteristic sequence, or “signature.” The Nantucket Shoals light station’s signature was two flashes at an interval of two seconds, followed by an eight-second gap. He rested his chin in his hand as he reimagined for the thousandth time his brother watching for that flash. But who knew what had happened. The mast could have broken, or the rudder, and all control of the ship lost, and then those shoals were just a graveyard waiting for them.

Gar returned. He had a newspaper tucked under his arm, which he set gently on the table. “No, May ain’t my daughter, nor this one — Lucy Snow.” It was the same photograph that Nathaniel had seen in the New York Times. “And there be a third one, you know.”

“A third!”

“A-yuh. That be Hannah.”

Nathaniel Lawrence was completely perplexed. “But how? How did they survive? How did you come to find them?”

Gar chuckled softly, as if reliving a wonderful moment, and then turned serious. “I only found one, now. Don’t be mistaken. I just found May. Out on Simon’s Ledge, drifting in a sea chest while I be gill-netting out there.”

And so Edgar Plum began to tell the story of when he had encountered May on that fateful day nearly eighteen years ago. When he concluded, there was another groan from the back room. Gar cocked his head. “Don’t worry none about her. She be all right. Just can’t give her any more the laudanum, not till this evening.”

Nathaniel Lawrence looked toward the back room. It all seemed so bizarre. He was trying to fit the pieces together — the grizzled man, the sick and moaning woman in the back room, and somewhere this mer child called May, who was no longer really a child but a young woman. “So you and your wife raised May.”

“I raised May,” Gar said with an edge in his voice that did not escape Nathaniel. He arched an eyebrow but did not ask the question, though Gar seemed to know what he wanted to ask. “Zeeba didn’t take to her.” He was startled by Edgar Plum’s tone.

“How do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said.” Gar shrugged his shoulders. “I come in here with this beautiful baby girl with curls the color of a summer sunset — bright golden red — and she calls her an ‘interruption.’ ”

“An ‘interruption’? I don’t understand.”

“An interruption to her illnesses. Zeeba’s occupation was being sick.” He laughed harshly. “Now she really is sick. Had a stroke a few months back. But she never did cotton to May.” Gar paused and rubbed his hands over his eyes. “May’s the dearest thing in the world. She is all the world to me, but I sense that you know that she is … is different. She and her sisters are different.”

“She is mer, as was her mother,” Nathaniel said softly. “How long have you known? Since she was a baby?”

“Not really for sure. I tried to keep her from the water. I sensed it. I didn’t want her to swim away. But I found out for sure about a year or so ago. She still tried to hide it from me. But when this happened with Lucy, well, it all came out.”

“But my question is, how did these three girls finally find one another? You only found May.”

“They found each other here in Bar Harbor. It was fate that brought them together. That is all I can think of.”

Or, thought Nathaniel, the Laws of Salt.

“How can we help them, Doctor Lawrence? They are bound and determined to save Lucy. She no more murdered that duke than the man in the moon. These girls, all they got is each other, really. Well, May has a beau, and so does Lucy.

“And the other one, Hannah, does, too. But those fellows ain’t mer, least not Hugh or Phin. Who knows if love can stand such a challenge. They need each other. If Lucy’s hangs, I — I …” — his voice faltered — “I don’t know what will happen.”

LUCY HAD NOT moved since the hanging of Edna Barlow. She lay very still on the cot. Her skin felt cracked. She was too weak to lift her head from the pillow to sip the mug of water that Otis Greenlaw had set on the small table. She was weak, but she wasn’t in any pain. She just felt as if her body was shutting down, slowly, inexorably. And though her internal organs might be failing, she had a strangely heightened sense of consciousness. She knew that she was dying, and it did not seem to bother her. She felt peaceful, almost as if she was slipping into the sea. It was the same sensation she had the first time she had felt the water swirl up over her knees as she sat on the sloping ledge of Otter Cove the night she had crossed over. This is just another crossing, she thought. She played over and over again the memory of that evening when she first swam. How her petticoat had swirled around her like the petals of a flower as she dared herself to let go … just let go … just let go … and then feeling the curl and the pull of the tide, the soft rushing noise of the water.

“Whatcha goin’ to do, Grampa, if she dies before you can hang her?” Otis Greenlaw’s grandson Joey was standing beside him, peering through the bars. He had a pencil and paper in his hand. He was going to write another school report on the prisoner. His teacher had said he might grow up and become a journalist. He needed to write the end of this story, and if she just plain died, well, that would be really boring.

“Maybe I should call a doctor,” Otis said. “But you know that costs the county, and spending that kind of money on a murderer … I mean, to save someone who’s going to die anyway seems wasteful.” He paused and peered through the bars at Lucy. “Tell you one thing. I would have been out of here lickety-split to get a doctor for that baby killer Edna Barlow. If anyone deserved to feel every strand of the hangman’s noose cutting into her throat it’s Edna Barlow.”

“A-yuh,” Joey said, and nodded his head like a wise old man.

In East Boston, at pier 5, far from the prison in Thomaston, where Lucy Snow lay unconscious, the Hawley family prepared to board the Leonidas with their twenty-two steamer trunks and retinue of five servants. Horace and Edwina Hawley had made the journey from Boston to the Continent more than a dozen times during the course of their marriage. It was always an orderly transition over which Mr. Marston presided as crisply as a general at a field exercise. The skies were clear, the water in the harbor hardly ruffled in the lightest of breezes. But, thought Ettie, is this in fact the calm before the storm? She carefully observed Lila as the family prepared to walk up the gangplank to the first class deck of the Leonidas. It was a gleaming ocean liner, and on this dim November morning it appeared as if flocks of colorful birds had suddenly landed on the gangplank. More feathers on this gangplank, Ettie thought as she scanned the multitude of fashionable hats, than on all the birds in Boston. “Revolting!” Ettie murmured to herself.

“What?” her sister Clarice asked.

“Nothing,” Ettie replied glumly. She looked across at Lila, who was standing by her nurse, Miss Doyle, and clutching her hand. Lila had been a model patient since her release from the asylum, which the Hawleys insisted on calling a sanitarium. They had, however, engaged Miss Doyle to travel with them. There had been a debate as to how to refer to Miss Doyle. Nurse was out of the question, so they’d settled on companion, claiming that Lila had reconnected with her former governess at the sanitarium, which Miss Doyle had also been visiting for her health.

Ettie had quickly retreated from this discussion. She had other more important things on her mind. Lucy! Progress had been made. Her uncles had believed her about the questionable nature of the note, its authenticity, and on this very day were making their way toward Thomaston, Maine, with their lawyer, Eli Berg, considered one of the best criminal lawyers in Boston. Berg had said he thought there was possibly a thin hope for declaring a mistrial or at least convincing the governor of Maine to grant a stay of execution. Most miraculous of all was that N.B. Lawrence had been found. Well, not found, exactly. Hugh had lost money on his Pinkerton endeavor because before the detective could get started Lawrence himself had shown up on Egg Rock. Ettie was of course furious that she had to leave in the middle of all the action. But then again, so does Hannah. But Hannah doesn’t have to! The thought boiled in Ettie’s brain.

They had all begged Hannah to stay behind. But she had refused. She promised them that she would do nothing precipitous; that she would not marry Stannish. Hannah had a plan in mind for when they arrived on the southwest coast of England, where Stannish had been engaged to paint the portrait of the new young Baroness of Pynte. They would be put up in a cottage a mile or so from the main house, close to the sea. She would be able to sneak away for a swim. They might be there as long as two months. This would be Hannah’s opportunity to prove to Stannish that she could indeed still keep a small part of her sea life. She would be discreet and always cautious, and by the time she had proved her point they would be married. “It’s all really very simple,” she declared brightly. There was an unnerving, almost enameled cheeriness to her manner, as if she were not just trying to convince May and Ettie but herself as well.

Ettie scanned the throngs of people on the other gangplank, the one for those people not traveling first class, but she saw no sign of Hannah. But directly ahead on the first class gangplank she spied Stannish Whitman Wheeler. He was just turning around. She couldn’t stand him! It was not simply that he had betrayed his own kind — mer — but he was so arrogant and controlling. What would he do when he found out that he was on the same ship with the Hawleys? He’d hated them ever since Lila destroyed the painting. She just prayed that Lila would not catch any glimpses of Hannah. Of course Hannah looked very different now with her newly dyed — and, in Ettie’s mind, hideous — hair. But if Lila saw Hannah or Wheeler, for that matter, the calm would be over and there was no telling what storms might follow. The slashes in the portrait by Stannish Whitman Wheeler were still as vivid in Ettie’s mind as the night it had happened. That had been canvas, just canvas. Though the paint was hardly dry, nothing bled.

May had been ecstatic when she received the telegram from Gar telling her that N.B. Lawrence had appeared at the lighthouse on Egg Rock. He existed! The man who believed in their existence was still alive. As soon she could, May sent a message to Ettie, who in turn contacted her uncles. And thus the three gentlemen with the lawyer Eli Berg were now meeting in the small parlor of the Hotel Montrose in Thomaston, Maine.

Eli Berg rubbed his chin and began to explain the intricacies of filing an emergency appeal. “Godfrey, Barkley, you have to understand that it will be difficult. The judge denied our motion for a mistrial. We can now go to the court of appeals and file an emergency appeal.” He peered at his well-manicured fingers for several seconds. “The Maine court of appeals has not — how should I put it? — been disposed toward declaring mistrials after motions have been denied by the trial judges. In the last ten years they have not declared a single mistrial. Our only hope is the exclusionary rule.”

“Yes, “ Barkley said. “That’s got to be it. The way in which they collected that evidence was ridiculous. It has to violate every single rule of collecting evidence. That evidence must be inadmissible, particularly the note. There was no search warrant when they collected it.”

“The problem is, there was no intention to collect the poison,” Eli Berg said. “It was purely accidental that it was found. And it was not found by the arresting officer but indeed by her father, who stepped over to help her on with her shawl, and as it has been reported he first took a small lady’s handbag that was hanging on the same hook as the shawl. From it a dusting of powder that was later identified as rat poisoning was scattered.”

“But it was a plant. Henrietta said she is sure of that!” Godfrey pounded his fist on the table. “And the note! The note!”

“Henrietta is a twelve-year-old girl, and she was not even present at the time,” Eli Berg replied calmly.

“But Lucy Snow said she knew nothing about it. That she didn’t know how it got there,” Barkley said persistently.

“That might be true, but the point is that the collection of this evidence was not done purposefully in violation of the law. So it does not mean that the exclusionary rule is a sure bet by any means, but I’ll try it.”

“We can only hope, I suppose.” Godfrey laced his hands over his ample girth.

Hope, hope isn’t enough, Nathaniel Lawrence thought. He had to do something, anything, to save this girl even if it meant risking … risking what? He had lost everything — his brother, his brother’s dear wife, his reputation, his career. He was not going to see this girl lost. Hanged.

“You haven’t said anything, Doctor Lawrence. Do you have an opinion?”

He hesitated to say too much. The explanation for his presence was that he was a very distant relative of the girl, and seeing as her parents seemed to have abandoned her — well, the father had died suddenly in New York and the mother, the reverend’s wife, seemed to have simply vanished — he was all that Lucy had left. But an idea had started to take shape in his head.

“I wonder if it is possible that I might visit her. I understand that she is quite ill, and being a doctor and next of kin I would think they might allow me.”

“Certainly,” Eli Berg replied. “This would qualify as a visit of compassion. I don’t think they would turn you down.”

“Good. Might you arrange for that as soon as possible?”

“Indeed.”

Nathaniel Burton Lawrence had never broken a law in his life. But he was about to. He could almost feel the tumblers in his brain clicking over as he worked out his plan for rescuing Lucy Snow. She could not weigh too much. Laurentia probably had weighed no more than a hundred and ten pounds. Of course in her mer form it would have been more. The tails of merfolk were heavy, heavy and powerful. But that would not be the case with Lucy Snow. She would be light, suffering from a terrible dehydration, and weak. Would she even be able to swim if he got her out?

THE LEONIDAS WAS the largest and most luxurious ocean liner built to date. There was a grand mahogany staircase that led to the first class lounge, a state-of-the-art hospital, an indoor swimming pool. There were five different decks, and the first class cabins had access to a promenade deck.

The Hawleys’ lives aboard the Leonidas had fallen into a comfortable order. They were veterans of trans-Atlantic crossings, and this was their fifth trip aboard the Leonidas. They were treated royally and often invited to dine at the captain’s table. Ettie Hawley had taken her first trans-Atlantic voyage when she was a scant six months old. She had played her first game of quoits, a popular shipboard sport, on the promenade deck when she was two, using the child-size lightweight rings to toss on the pegs. She won her first championship when she was five in the eight-year-old-and-under division. By the time she was ten she was participating with the grown-ups and won the all-ship competition. But now, at twelve, she had set aside these “childish games,” as she thought of them, and turned her attention to more pressing matters.

Ettie, unlike other rich and very privileged children, had not absorbed the standard behavior toward servants that had been inculcated into the ruling classes since they were quite young. The prescribed conduct toward those who served was a polite disregard. Expressions of gratitude were sparse and limited to small monetary compensations at the end of a voyage for nonhousehold servants — such as porters, waiters, and cabin attendants. The eyes of the wealthy travelers of first class as well as their children’s eyes would glaze over if they chanced to pass a ship’s laundress in a corridor delivering laundry or a cabin attendant bringing tea on his way to the promenade deck. Not so with Ettie. She would smile, say hello. If the ship was rocking a bit she might compliment them on how steady they were with a tray. Her parents had warned her repeatedly that this sort of conduct bordered on unbecoming and even outrageous. But their remonstrances had no effect, and by this time — Ettie’s twenty-first crossing — they had simply given up. Again they were wholly consumed with Lila, where there was always the potential for her to go off the rails or whatever one would say for oceanic travel. The “companion,” Miss Doyle, seemed vigilant, and they were keeping Lila “gently sedated.”

Ettie had never enjoyed so much freedom as she had on this passage. And thus she made it her business to learn the names of as many crew members with whom she came in contact as possible. She smiled, she nodded, she asked them where they came from, what ships they had served on, what were their scariest moments at sea. She devoted many hours to making elaborate charts listing these crew members and their various duties. Probably more times than any other passenger, she had been invited to take a tour of the bridge from which the captain and his officers directed the operations of a vessel. She was especially taken with the Marconi room, where two wireless operators sent and received telegrams to and from other ships. The previous summer she had mastered in a matter of weeks Morse code. It fit in perfectly with her dreams of being a Pinkerton detective.

She was determined to make best friends of the Marconi operators. The first night at the captain’s table she had managed to find out the names of these men from the captain himself, a Mr. Lionel McCurdy and a Mr. Solomon Mintz.

While Ettie studied her lists of crew and officers, her parents, when not monitoring Lila, devoted their time to perusing the first class passenger list. There were two Astors, a Rockefeller, and a Vanderbilt. Marston, their butler, always traveled with them, functioning on board as Mr. Hawley’s valet. On this trip he had communicated to the steward of the dining room that it would be an awkward situation if the Hawley family were seated at the same table with Stannish Whitman Wheeler. So that “disaster at sea” was averted, and Wheeler was always seated on the far side of the dining room.

On this particular morning they were awaiting luncheon in their stateroom. They often took their midday meal en suite.

“No Bellamys, darling,” Edwina Hawley announced. Horace Hawley looked over the top of his newspaper at his wife as she bent over the cream-colored booklet. “No Bellamys, no Forbeses. Very much a Newport crowd,” she continued. She scratched her head. “Horace,” she said slowly, which always signaled that she was pondering a subject deeply.

“Yes?” He folded his paper.

“Horace, do you think that Clarice is too young to wear her hair up in the new French style?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I don’t know, Edwina. I am hardly an expert on such things. That’s what you’re supposed to be.”

“She’s not too young,” Ettie said quietly, looking up from one of her innumerable charts. “You let me wear mine half up to the Forbes wedding. Clarice is fourteen.”

“Now, don’t be pert, Ettie,” her father said, rising from his chair.

“You’re far too young to have any opinions,” her mother said.

Ettie gave a dark, smoldering look. “But when I get to be forty like you, Mummy, I can have an opinion on hair, right?”

“Ettie! My age is not a part of this discussion.”

“I’m not talking about age; I’m talking about brains.”

“Now, now, ladies!”

Ettie could see that her father, although seemingly calm, was disturbed. Whenever he said “Now, now, ladies,” that was a symptom as well as a signal to settle down. Horace Hawley just hated these outbursts. Lila, of course, got away with such eruptions because she was sick. This did not seem fair at all to Ettie. However, Ettie was steady. Her father often called her Steady Ettie. A terrible burden from her point of view. But she had to admit that maybe her steadiness helped to make her father listen to her uncles, who were urging him to consider sending Ettie to Radcliffe. Her mother, however, was firmly against it. “They are grinds! That’s what they call those Radcliffe girls. And they never marry.”

“Henrietta, dear,” her mother continued, with a tight smile. “It is just not attractive to have too many brains.”

“Well, unfortunately, Mummy, I can’t give them back.” She got up and trounced out of the sitting room.

“There’s shuffleboard on the promenade deck, Ettie,” her father called after her. But Ettie was hurrying down the corridor. She wanted to visit Hannah. She had with her, in a deep pocket, her trusty toothbrush. It proved invaluable for opening the grills between first class and the lower-deck classes. Of course going from first to second or steerage was not a problem. It was coming back and ascending the scale of classes. She had discovered the toothbrush trick on her last voyage on the Leonidas. The tumblers in the grill locks were very forgiving. Antonio, a cabin attendant, had shown her this. She missed Antonio as he was not on this voyage.

Aboard ship, the stratification of society was lateral as well as vertical. There were smoking rooms from which women were excluded just as they were in taverns on land, where they dared not enter. Then there were the ladies’ lounges and a music room, where women dominated, and the rare male visitor prompted the exchange of bemused glances. There were, of course, several other rooms where the genders mixed, such as the ballroom and the French café designed to look like a Parisian street bistro.

A bell sounded, announcing that the cart with their luncheon trays had arrived. Mr. Marston appeared. “Madam, would you like to be served in the stateroom parlor? Or perhaps on the promenade deck? The weather is fine.”

“Oh, that would be lovely,” Edwina said. “It’s nice and sunny. I’ll get my fur wrap. That should suffice.”

“Excellent,” Mr. Marston said. “I’ll get Gaston to help us wheel the tray out.” Gaston was the steward of the starboard side, A Deck staterooms.

“Lovely! Lovely!” Edwina said rapturously. “The food on this ship is just delicious. And Marston, do find Ettie. We ordered her favorite — toasted cheese. Imagine ordering toasted cheese when you could have pressed pheasant. But that’s Ettie. Where is that child?”

Ettie arrived a few minutes later. In an effort to make amends to her youngest daughter, Edwina leaned over and patted her head. “Look, Ettie, your favorite — toasted cheese.”

“But I like it cut in triangles,” she said grumpily, not caring that she sounded like a petulant child. If her parents were going to insist on treating her like a brainless nitwit, then she wouldn’t worry about acting like one.

“Well, we can send it back to the kitchen, Miss Ettie,” Marston offered.

“No, then it will get cold. I can do it myself but not with a butter knife.”

“Well, here, my Ettie, use mine,” her father said as he looked down at the place setting. “My word, I fear my cutlery is incomplete. No meat knife for the pheasant. Marston, would you alert Gaston that we need two more knives? We are short.”

Mr. Marston’s brow crinkled. “Odd, isn’t it. Must have slipped off the cart. Well, I’ll go now, sir.” He bowed and left the family to search for Gaston.

The Hawleys, like many wealthy people, traveled with a small retinue of servants. In addition to Mr. Marston, there was Roseanne and Mrs. Bletchely, their cook. These servants also had comfortable quarters in first class but were consigned to eating in the maids and valets’ dining mess. Ettie, once the knife was delivered, had eaten quickly and excused herself. She pleaded that she was a bit queasy.

“Well, no wonder. You bolt your food, Ettie,” her mother said, frowning. “And I might add you chew too loudly.”

Ettie looked away so her mother wouldn’t see her rolling her eyes. Queasy! Why did I say queasy? More like “mal de mer”! And she nearly laughed out loud at her clever pun on the French phrase for seasickness. Oh, Uncle Bark and Uncle God would have gotten a tremendous kick out of that one. Why couldn’t they be aboard? Everything was always so much more fun with them along.

She had excused herself and was now scurrying by the servants’ dining mess on her way to a stairwell that led directly down to E Deck, to Hannah’s cabin. Ettie had visited Hannah every day since they’d set off, but unfortunately, the same could not be said for Stannish. Yesterday, Hannah had admitted that although they were into the third day of the voyage, Stannish had not been down to visit her once. Hannah had tried to excuse her fiancé’s behavior, claiming that it was difficult for a first class passenger to justify a visit to steerage unless he was traveling with servants, and that Stannish wouldn’t want to rouse suspicion, but she hadn’t been able to hide the hurt in her eyes. Ettie could only hope that he’d made an appearance that morning.

Two maids were just exiting the servants’ mess. Their heads were bent toward each other and they were giggling. Ettie caught a few of their words.

“The painter is wooing her…. ’Course she is never one to discourage.” Ettie stopped, startled. Could they possibly be talking about Stannish? He was the only painter on board, but surely even he wouldn’t do anything so ridiculous.

“She’s got to be ten years older, Marcy!”

“That don’t stop Mrs. Dyer.”

Mrs. Dyer! The four syllables exploded in Ettie’s head. Mrs. Dyer was a scandalous New York lady, a divorcée who was extremely rich. Hannah had mentioned that Stannish had painted her portrait when he went to Newport the past summer. But how could he be wooing her? Was this why he hadn’t gone down to see Hannah? She would have to find out. She would say nothing to Hannah yet. She just wanted to check in on her. Three minutes later she rapped on the cabin door.

“Yes?”

“Hannah, it’s me.”

Hannah swung the door open. She was glowing. “Oh, Ettie, he came and visited last night and look what he gave me!”

She touched the drop pearl at her throat. “I know it’s not an engagement ring,” (Thank God, Ettie thought) “but when we get to Paris we are going to a jeweler that he knows and he says he’ll buy me an emerald to go with my eyes.”

Those very eyes were sparkling with happiness, but no matter how keen, they’d never allow Hannah to see Stannish for what he really was — a manipulative, social-climbing rat. Why? Ettie wondered. But she refrained from saying any of the thoughts that buzzed in her mind like offending insects. She was just happy that Hannah was happy — at least for now. But what kind of game was Stannish playing? It troubled her, but she would not betray her concerns no matter what. Not now, at least. She needed more confirmation than the gossip of two silly maids.

“That’s very pretty Hannah,” Ettie said, doing her best to feign interest in the necklace. “I’m glad he finally came down to see you.”

“He’s been very busy, you know, talking to people about work. He’s lined up two more portraits just in these first three days. If he can find a new client every day I think his money problems will be over. I told him he needed to insist on two-thirds of the payment in advance instead of just half, and the other third on completion. I think he really listened to me.”

Ettie dropped her voice. “Have you been …” She tipped her head toward the sound of the water against the hull.

“No … it’s too risky. There are always sailors on watch, on the bridge and walking the decks. But I can go for another four days. Stannish said we should be there by then, with these favorable winds. I have a lotion that seems to help.” But Ettie noticed a few crystal flakes on the bunk coverlet. There were three other bunks in the cabin, but she had only one roommate, a Dutch girl who didn’t speak much English.

“Well, you take care, Hannah,” Ettie said. But something in her voice must have betrayed her anxiety. Hannah grasped her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Don’t worry, Ettie. I really think things are going to turn out fine. Just fine. I can tell. He loves me more than ever. And he was even talking about us getting a little seaside cottage in Cornwall. I mean, there is a flat in London that one of his clients said he could have. Mrs. Dyer — she’s very wealthy. However, she has a grand house in the country and she never uses the flat, but he said that would be perfect for him when he had to do business in the city but he needed a place to relax with me.”

Why, Ettie wondered, does her face always have that enameled brightness when she talks this way? It’s almost as if her face might crack.

“You mean you think he would be all right if you wanted to swim? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not exactly, but I think in time he might understand. He loves me!” There was such strain in her voice, and her eyes seemed to be searching the mid distance as if seeking some confirmation for this statement. But it was quite clear to Ettie that Hannah was deluding herself. Is this what love does to one? Ettie wondered. If so, she would steer clear of romance at all costs. Did one have to sacrifice her brains for love? Given the choice she would happily remain a spinster.

Ettie said nothing but why, she thought, would he tempt her with a seaside cottage if he insisted that she not swim? It seemed cruel. Then it dawned on her. Maybe he wanted two lives for himself — one with Mrs. Dyer, who was rich and could introduce him to clients, and the other with his true love, Hannah. He would separate them just as they were separated now on this ship and never meet. He would essentially be having two “wives.”

“Just be careful, Hannah. Be very careful.”

“Oh, Ettie, you make it all sound so dire,” Hannah teased.

“Look, I have to go now. I have things to do.”

Hannah smiled. “Now, what things do you have to do, Ettie? Play shuffleboard or quoits? I hear there are all sorts of activities in first class and of course dancing. The music sometimes drifts down from the ballroom. Tell me, do they have a harp?”

“Yes, but no harpist. The harpist became ill before the voyage and they were unable to replace her.” Ettie saw Hannah’s fingers stir in her lap as if plucking the strings. One of the deepest mysteries of all about Hannah was that she had an uncanny ability to play the harp. She had never even heard harp music until she had become a servant for the Hawleys, but once she heard it she simply was drawn to it. Finally one evening in Bar Harbor at Gladrock, when all the servants were out and the family was out as well, she had played for Ettie. Mr. Marston had actually been there and was very enchanted. Hannah claimed she had been taught at the orphanage where she had spent the first years of her life. Marston had tried to convince her to play for the Hawleys, who often hired musicians for their parties, but Hannah begged him not to.

“So no harpist. Too bad.” Hannah sighed.

Ten minutes later Ettie knocked on the door of the Marconi room. “Come in!” Mr. Mintz said.

“Ah! Our friend Henrietta!” Solomon Mintz said. Mr. McCurdy had not heard her as he was receiving a message from a passing westbound ship. “Want to listen in?” Mr. Mintz offered his headphones to Ettie. She put on the headphones and began noting the dots and dashes.

“So what have you got?” Mr. McCurdy asked after he had watched her listening intently and marking the dots and dashes on the card.

“Seas off the coast of Ireland three to four feet but warnings of gales in the Solent, Fastnet, Bay of Biscay.”

“My, my, you certainly have mastered the code.”

“I wish I could become an operator.” Ettie watched as Mr. McCurdy tapped the keys to signal that he had received the message. With each tap little sparks flew off the brass heads as the electrical contact was made.

“You know, back in the Crimean War —” Mr. McCurdy began.

“Oh, I know all about the Crimean War,” Ettie said eagerly, cutting him off. “Florence Nightingale, the Lady with the Lamp.”

“Yes, that’s quite right. But did you know that she was not just a nurse but a statistician?”

“A statistician?” Ettie repeated.

“Most certainly. She practically invented evidence-based medicine. She kept data and all sorts of information that helped in the treatment of disease.”

“That is absolutely amazing.” Ettie sighed with wonder. “Did you know that at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, there is a Scottish woman astronomer?”

“You don’t say!”

“Yes, a friend of mine works at the Harvard Observatory and told me all about her. Her name is Williamina Fleming, and she invented the designation system for stars and discovered the Horsehead Nebula.”

“And what is that, Miss Henrietta?” Mr. McCurdy asked.

“You don’t know? Oh, it’s simply beautiful. It’s a little semicircular cloud of dust and gas within the Orion constellation. It sort of looks like a horse’s head if you crook your neck around a bit. I mean, it’s not really visible with the naked eye, but I’ve seen photo plates of it, and my friend Hugh has promised to bring a very powerful telescope to our summer home in Maine next year and show it to me.”

“And you say this Scottish woman discovered it?”

“She did indeed!”

“Well, you see, Miss Henrietta, women can be a lot of things, and just you watch — we are now almost one year into the twentieth century. So I see no problem with you becoming a wireless operator. This is your century!”

MY CENTURY, Ettie thought miserably. She sat in a row of chairs that had been set up around the perimeter of the ballroom following dinner. Both of her sisters were dancing. Their hair was artfully arranged in upsweep hairstyles with a few discreet ringlets bouncing softly by their ears as they waltzed, led by their partners, about the room.

Edwina Hawley clutched her husband’s hand. “Look at Lila. Doesn’t she look lovely? I am so proud of her. She’s done well on this trip, hasn’t she, Horace?”

Edwina and Horace Hawley had been especially pleased with their eldest daughter’s behavior on the trip. She had not been simply docile but cordial. There had been a tea dance in the French café that afternoon, and she had been asked by several gentlemen to dance. She had made polite conversation and spoken almost animatedly about the performance she hoped to attend at the Paris Opera House. She had even spoken knowledgably about the theater’s architect, Garnier, and the magnificent ceiling paintings by Paul Baudry depicting the history of music.

Ettie yawned. Her mother turned to her. “Ettie, please. That is so coarse.”

She crossed her arms and slouched down in her chair. “I’m bored.”

“Why ever are you bored?”

“Well, for one thing, I am not dancing. My hair is not in an upsweep and I’m dressed like a five-year-old.”

“Ettie, you’re just twelve.”

“I’ll dance with you, darling.” her father said, leaning across.

“Daddy! That is so embarrassing.” She got up and wandered over to the punch table.

As Ettie approached the table she heard two women talking.

“Dora, have you seen Mrs. Dyer anywhere?”

“She’s certainly not here. Nor is the painter as far as I can tell,” the other woman replied with a knowing smile that made Ettie’s stomach churn.

Hmmm, Ettie thought. So it wasn’t just Mrs. Dyer’s maid who knew about this. She forgot about the punch and decided to wander about the room to see if anyone else was wondering about Mrs. Dyer and her painter. This is what a good Pinkerton detective agent would do, she thought. But after a ten-minute circumnavigation of the ballroom she had come up with nothing. She returned to her parents.

“Can I please go back to my room? I’m in the middle of a good novel.”

“Oh, Ettie, you read far too many novels. Don’t tell me you’re reading one of those depressing Dickens novels all about poverty.”

“No, Mother, Jane Austen. All about manners, you know. And most of the people are rich, and if they aren’t rich, they are never desperately poor or have diseases like in Dickens. The poorest people are usually vicars and have jobs like that. No street urchins.”

“Oh, well, I think that’s fine, dear.” Edwina fluttered her fingers as if to dispel the unpleasant images her daughter had just suggested.

Actually, Ettie had lied. If her mother knew what she was really reading, she would have a fit, or an outburst. She had read through her Austen book twice already on this voyage, and her uncles God and Bark had given her Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which she was loving. How she wished she were on a raft on the Mississippi and not on this stupid ship. She had just read another lovely passage about how wonderful life was on that raft. She reread it.

We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

Yes, that was exactly how she felt on board the Leonidas — cramped up and smothery. She wondered if she would ever really feel free and easy. She was still reading an hour later when there was a soft knock on her door.

“Come in.” It was Lila. A trembling smile played across her face. It made Ettie nervous when her sister smiled. She couldn’t be sure what it indicated. The frightening thing about Lila was that she had a deeply treacherous nature. Her smile was never truly a smile but rather a thin veneer for duplicity.

“What do you want?” Ettie said, immediately on guard.

“What are you reading?” Lila asked.

Ettie clutched the book tighter. “Nothing much.”

“Oh, really. The way you’re holding that book so close, I thought maybe you were looking at dirty French pictures — naked ladies.”

“What, are you crazy?”

“So they say.” She gave a high, electric giggle. Ettie expected sparks to fly off her lips the way they did in the Marconi room when the operators tapped out messages.

“If you must know, I’m reading Mark Twain.”

“Never heard of him.” She yawned elaborately. Ettie was frightened. Lila was capable of anything. And of course it was Ettie who had thrown the rock that killed Jade. But there had been no mention of the cat since Lila’s return. However, a wildness was now creeping into her eyes. Was she remembering it? They were alone. Clarice was still dancing. Her parents were as well, and where was Lila’s nurse — companion — Miss Doyle? Wasn’t she supposed to be tending to her?

Ettie got out of bed. “Where’s Miss Doyle?”

“I don’t need Miss Doyle for this.”

“For what?”

Lila was standing in front of the door. Her eyes filled up. A luminous kindling sparkled in the jade pools, and Ettie could swear that there was a vertical slash like the pupil of a cat. “I just want to ask you a tiny little question.” Lila’s voice oozed with a sickening sweetness. Marzipan. Ettie thought, and how she hated marzipan.

“Ask,” Ettie snapped.

“Is Mr. Wheeler, perchance, on this ship?”

Perchance? Ettie’s ears almost flinched. Where did her sister get all these curlicues when she spoke? Her language was as deceitful as her sick brain. “Yes. So?”

“How to put it delicately?” Lila slid her eyes toward the ceiling as if in thought about this monumental question.

“Just put it, Lila,” Ettie muttered indelicately.

“Well, is it true about him and Mrs. Dyer?”

“How should I know? Who’s Mrs. Dyer?”

“Ettie dear, you answered wrong if you expected me to believe you. When you lie you really must be more organized.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, I think you do. But a quick lesson in lying. I, after all, am a consummate liar.”

“I want to go to sleep, Lila.”

“Not until I give you a lesson in lying. Now, do you want to know how you should have answered me?”

“All right. How should I have answered?”

“You should have said it in this order: ‘Who is Mrs. Dyer?’ and then ‘How should I know?’ You see, it’s more convincing that way. If you had first asked who Mrs. Dyer was, then it would have been more plausible if you would have followed with ‘How should I know?’ ”

“All right. Who is Mrs. Dyer, and how should I know?”

“There, you did it.”

“Good. Can I go to sleep now?”

“Noooo …” She shook her head as if admonishing a small child. “You see you still haven’t answered my question. Is Mr. Wheeler making love to Mrs. Dyer?”

“I don’t know!”

“I don’t know,” Lila repeated, mimicking Ettie. “Well, I think you do know. And if you do know, what do you think …?” She pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle. Her nose wrinkled up as if she were a naughty child breaking a rule. “What do you think Hannah will say?”

“Hannah? What does Hannah have to do with any of this?”

“Oh, I thought they’re sweethearts.” Lila then paused. Her eyes turned cold. “I know they’re sweethearts.”

How has she found out all of this? Ettie wondered, and felt a flash of anger. Was her mad sister a better detective than she was? “But of course they are of such a different class — socially — and so is this Mrs. Dyer. A divorcée and a servant. You know he is wellborn.”

Careful … careful, Ettie, Ettie counseled herself. She does not know as much as she thinks, and most important, she does not know that Hannah is aboard this ship!

“But,” Lila continued, “Mrs. Dyer does have money and I think he needs money. I could have offered him that.”

Ettie nodded. There was another knock on the door.

“Come in!” She almost yelped in relief.

Mrs. Doyle stood there looking as Lila had said — “starched,” even in her dinner gown, which was a rose color and quite becoming.

“Lila dear. Your parents are worried. You disappeared and didn’t say anything to anybody.”

“No need to worry. Here I am, talking to my favorite sister.” She smiled sweetly at Ettie. “She’s been so helpful.” She came over to where Ettie stood. “Good night, sis,” she said, and bent to kiss her, then whispered in her ear, “By the way, dear sister, I know you murdered Jade. I never forget. Never!”

NATHANIEL LAWRENCE held Lucy’s wrist while he studied the second hand of his pocket watch. Her pulse was erratic. He tucked his watch away and put her hand on the blanket, giving it a little pat. Her skin was dry, and there were the telltale crystal flakes on the pillow. He then leaned over her and gently turned back Lucy’s eyelid to observe the dilation of the pupil. It was so odd to be seeing his niece for the first time, a niece he thought had most certainly died in the wreck of the Resolute. She was so desperately ill that she appeared like a dim reflection of her beautiful, vibrant mother, Laurentia.

“Whatcha think, Doc?” Otis Greenlaw asked nervously from outside the cell.

“I think she is quite ill but treatable.” Treatable for what? he thought. I am to save her so she can be hanged? The lawyer had felt there was very little hope that the appellate court would declare a mistrial. He had suspected when he came to the jail that she was suffering from the same syndrome he had once treated Lucy’s mother, Laurentia, for — a kind of saline anemia from being deprived of swimming.

This, of course, had led him to his physiological studies concerning saline and nonsaline chemical exchanges. He had suspected this before even examining Lucy and had brought with him a saline injection. As he was administering the injection into the vein in her arm an idea started to form. A healthier color began to flush her cheeks. It was working, but what if he got her just well enough and then she had a sudden relapse? Could he fool the constable? He seemed not particularly intelligent. He exhibited the deference that uneducated and slightly stupid people often did in the face of doctors or lawyers. Trust and a certain gullibility. Could he convince Lucy Snow’s jailer that she had died? The crux of the problem was he had to get her healthy enough to “die,” and then with May’s help she could swim away … far, far away to the other side, where their aunt Avalonia would welcome them.

When Nathaniel Lawrence had left the hotel after speaking with Eli Berg, he had a vague notion of getting Lucy released to a hospital and then helping her escape somehow. But here were too many people around a hospital for this to be feasible. There was only one person here, the constable, and if she “died” he would have to fetch the coroner.

Hugh, May, and Phin were waiting for Nathaniel at a shipyard on the banks of the Georges River that led into the harbor. They dared not meet in a public area. As he approached, he saw close to a dozen ships in various stages of construction and small mountains of stacked timber. There was a full-rigged cargo ship on the ways. The ribs from its unfinished hull poked up, scratching the sky like the bones of some immense creature from primeval times. It started to snow, big flakes. For a moment it seemed as if the skeletons of the half-built ships began to move. Like ghosts looking for a body, they were ships without seas, mastless with no sails to capture the wind, and yet ever so slightly they stirred behind the gauzy scrim of the falling snow. He saw the three young people standing under the shadow of a coastal schooner hauled up on the ways for caulking.

“How is she?” Phin asked. He was trembling, his hands shaking so badly it was almost impossible to imagine him doing the skilled work required to build boats like the beautiful vessels surrounding them.

“Not well. But …”

“But what?” Phin’s face was a mask of anguish.

“I can help her” — the doctor paused — “better than a lawyer can, I think.”

“What do you mean?” Hugh asked.

“I met with the lawyer and Ettie’s two uncles last evening at the hotel. Eli Berg says there is very little chance the appellate court will declare a mistrial.”

“Then she’ll hang.” Phin gasped. “It can’t happen.” He staggered back, and Hugh placed a reassuring hand on Phin’s shoulder.

“It won’t happen,” Nathaniel Lawrence replied calmly.

“How?” May said. Her voice was barely audible.

“Your mother once suffered from a similar ailment. It ensues when mer try to stop swimming, but it affects each person differently. If some mer have definitely decided to give up the sea for land, the adjustment is easier. Their physiology makes certain chemical accommodations over time. But for others such an accommodation is harder.”

“That explains Stannish Wheeler,” May said with an edge in her voice. “For him it was easy. He had great incentive to give up the sea — his painting.”

“This is the fellow whom your sister Hannah is in love with.”

“Yes, that’s why he does not want to give up land.”

“I am sure that before you crossed over, you three experienced some of these symptoms, but they would not be so acute, at least not until a certain age. I must speak frankly….” He paused, and his eyes settled on Phin and Hugh as he resumed. “These girls must be completely resolved in their hearts and their minds to live on land exclusively, or you must be completely resolved to allow them to live in a manner that allows them uncomplicated access to the sea.”

“What do you mean by ‘uncomplicated’?” Hugh asked.

“There is a place called Barra Head on the most western edge of the Outer Hebrides, off Scotland. The people there know about the mer folk. They accept them, though the mer tend to live separately. Nevertheless, through the centuries there have been marriages between mer and human. Not many but a few. These marriages are tolerated.”

“They are?” May asked in a dim voice as if she were lost in thought. “I wonder,” she whispered softly as she studied Hugh’s face and then Phin’s. I wonder, she thought, are there not the same stars in the sky for his telescope to find? And across the ocean, over there by the sea, Phin could build his boats. But this was not for her to say. She dared not breathe a word. And then she thought of Gar — Might there be a lighthouse for him to keep? In that moment Hugh reached out for her hand and squeezed it. It was as if he were reading her thoughts, saying, “Yes, we could have a life there under the same stars.”

But tears began to slide down Phin’s cheeks and mix with the tiny flakes of snow that brushed his skin. “But none of this can be if Lucy is hanged.”

Nathaniel extended his arm and gripped Phin’s shoulder. “I said she won’t die. Now, listen to my plan. I can give her some saline injections so that she will regain some strength. She is nearly comatose now. I can bring her back. Then I am going to explain to her that she must feign death.”

“But if you bring her back, won’t the jailer know?”

“He’s not the brightest. I am going to ask to stay with her through the rest of today and into the night. I am going to say that although she seems to be breathing better her pulse is erratic, and it concerns me as it can lead to heart failure. Then she is going to have ‘heart failure’ and ‘die.’ ”

May gasped. “You mean — you mean it is just pretend?” In her fear and desperation, she sounded almost like a child.

“Yes, my dear, just pretend.”

“But how will you get her out of the jail?”

“The jailer will have to fetch the coroner. Trust me. I’ll have her out by then. And you must be right here waiting for her.” He turned to May. “May, you will have to help her swim. It will take her a while to get her strength back.”

“In short, you are breaking her out of jail,” Phin said.

“Yes, no one will suspect that a half-dead girl who has escaped jail would jump into the Georges River and swim straight out to sea.”

“It’s — it’s …” May started to speak.

“It’s brilliant,” Hugh said with a large smile.

“She’ll live!” Phin half cried, half gasped as he doubled over, clutching his knees for balance.

“She is my kin,” Nathaniel whispered. “She is my kin.”

“WELL, YOU SEE, Miss Henrietta, women can be a lot of things…. This is your century!” Mr. McCurdy’s words echoed in Ettie’s head as she walked down the corridor toward the first class elevator. She got off on A Deck, port side. She was looking for Mrs. Dyer’s stateroom, number 138 on the passenger list. She glanced up at the numbers. There was a linen closet between 136 and 138 just as there was on the starboard side, where the Hawleys’ stateroom was. A door ahead opened. She quickly jumped into the linen closet. She knew the voice. Stannish Whitman Wheeler. She opened the door a crack and peeked out. She could see the white arm of a woman, a diamond bracelet on her wrist. She watched as Wheeler pressed the woman’s hand to his cheek, then to his lips.

“Delicious!” he said.

Ettie felt her stomach wrench, and she fought the urge to throw up as she sank down to the floor. She had to think. She must not panic. Think … think, Ettie, she commanded herself.

Somehow she made her way back to her family’s stateroom and went immediately into the cabin she shared with Clarice, who, thankfully, was not there. Calmly she went to the desk, sat down, and drew out a piece of paper. She dipped the pen in the inkwell and wrote in her neat script across the top of the page — Options. She then began a short list:

1. Tell H

2. Confront SWW

3.

She began to chew on the end of the pen. She could not think of option 3. She tried to imagine herself going to Hannah and telling her the terrible truth about her fiancé. Would Hannah even believe her? Or would her blind love for Wheeler convince her to look at Ettie as an overly imaginative child?

Then she tried to imagine herself approaching Wheeler. Would he even deign to have a conversation with her after all the ugliness with the Hawleys? Perhaps a better option was to speak to Mrs. Dyer and tell her that Stannish was pledged to another? That could be option number 3.

But should she do it? What was to be gained? Did she really want Hannah to marry Stannish? No, but she couldn’t stand to see her hurt by him anymore. And if she did marry him and discovered that he was unfaithful, then what would she do? Once again Ettie felt torn in so many different directions. Maybe if she told Mrs. Dyer, it would somehow force Stannish’s hand and maybe he would actually stop seeing Hannah. It would certainly force something. She would have to screw up her courage, but she would do it. She picked up the pen, wiped cleaned the nib, and set the pen back in its holder. She would talk to Mrs. Dyer. The woman was often in the café at teatime. She would send her a note via Gaston, the steward who served their stateroom. She picked up the pen again and wrote a note.

Dear Mrs. Dyer,

I have an urgent matter that I must discuss with you. I pray that you will agree to meet with me. I feel it would be most discreet if I might visit you in your stateroom. This is a matter of some delicacy. I would prefer to remain anonymous until we meet.

She stopped writing. Would Mrs. Dyer find it threatening if she refused to reveal her identity? Perhaps she should be a bit clearer about who she was yet remain nameless. She put pen to paper again. I assure you that you have nothing to fear from me. I am not a lawyer, not a detective, not a man for that matter…. She paused again. Dare she say it? The pen seemed to scratch louder as she wrote. I am a child. But, she thought, I shall soon be a woman of the twentieth century. So there!

Fifteen minutes later Gaston returned with a reply. He handed her the note written on scented paper. She sniffed it. A bit over the top. Boston ladies did not use scented stationery. She opened the paper. There were only three words. I am intrigued. She looked up at Gaston. “Am I to come now?” He nodded.

“Yes, miss, now.”

“Please, Gaston, say nothing to anyone in my family.”

“Miss Henrietta, have I said anything about how you slip around with your toothbrush into steerage?”

“No, of course you haven’t,” Ettie replied, and gave him the sweetest smile. He almost blushed. No one ever smiled at him. The rich children, except for this girl, were all alike. They were just dwarf versions of their parents. Their sense of entitlement dripped off them like fat from a roasting duck — or duckling. But not Henrietta. Antonio had told him about Henrietta Hawley.

“But my dear,” Mrs. Dyer said, leaning forward from the sumptuous red velvet chair. “I am afraid that I have disappointed you. If you expected me to cry and tear my hair out, I am sorry.” She shook her head almost sadly and made a tsking sound. “But I am not that kind of woman….” She began to fondle an immense diamond that hung around her neck, which seemed to direct the eyes to her full bosom. But Ettie’s eyes were fixed on her face. She was older than she had imagined. Beautiful, but there were lines, and her large blue eyes had at the moment a rather soft mistiness to them. The mist, however, barely disguised a hard glint that lurked beneath the surface. Ettie was not disappointed, but she was shocked. “This girl, what’s her name again? Helen something?”

“It’s Hannah,” Ettie said grimly.

“Right. Well, I certainly know all about this Hannah. Stannish knows better than to try to keep secrets from me.”

“And it doesn’t disturb you? That he has two lovers?”

“Why should it?”

“But they’re engaged.”

“That’s never disturbed me in the past. It shan’t now.”

Ettie stared at her in mute horror. She fancied herself to be much less naïve than other well-bred girls her own age, but even she couldn’t hide her shock at Mrs. Dyer’s words.

“Look, dear,” she said with a smile, clearly amused by Ettie’s reaction. “Stannish and I have a nice arrangement. I have an apartment in London and a manor house just outside. I help him find clients. I am one of his clients. His portrait of me has been accepted into the Paris Salon. That is the most distinguished art exhibit on the Continent. I helped arrange that. It will translate into numerous commissions, and he will be able to demand a higher fee. He will be on the same level as John Singer Sargent, yet he is nearly half his age. That is truly worth something. And after the salon he can go down to Cornwall when he likes and play house with his little wife. Or go to my country house with little wifey when he finishes the portrait of the baroness” — Ettie winced as she said the word wifey — “and visit me in London when he pleases. I am very accommodating. I share.”

Ettie stood up. She was horrified. The teacup she was holding trembled on its saucer. “But Hannah does not know about this arrangement. Does that seem fair to you?”

“Oh, you know what they say: ‘All is fair in love and war.’ ”

Ettie shut her eyes tight for several seconds. “But Mrs. Dyer, you don’t even love him.” This seemed to take Mrs. Dyer back a bit. The hard glitter broke through the mist.

“But that is not the point. He loves me.”

“He loves your money, madam.”

Ettie set down the teacup and left the stateroom. Just as she was turning the knob on the door Mrs. Dyer came up to her and touched her hand gently.

“What is it?” Ettie said.

“You’ll learn, Henrietta. You’ll learn.”

“What shall I learn, Mrs. Dyer?”

“What it means to be a woman in this new century, this twentieth century.”

“A money-grubbing hussy? Is that what it means?” Ettie walked out.

Ettie was reeling with anger as she walked down the passageway from Mrs. Dyer’s stateroom. She could not believe she had said that word — hussy. It seemed to scald her mouth, but she had said it and she was glad. She would say it a thousand times over. She felt her cheeks flaming, not in embarassment but rage. This was not what the new century meant. Not at all!

“Miss Henrietta, is something wrong?” Gaston was just rounding the corner at the end of the corridor.

“No … no …” — Ettie paused — “Well, yes, actually, Gaston. Something is terribly wrong.”

“Oh, Miss Henrietta.” He seemed flustered to see her this way. He looked about. “Come with me.”

She followed him into a small room where tablecloths hung on racks. She began to spill out the story to him.

“So you see Hannah is really my best friend, and she is expecting to marry Stannish Whitman Wheeler, and — and —”

“He is cheating on her with this rich lady.”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t feel you could tell her?”

“No. I don’t think she would believe me. I almost don’t believe it myself. Well, no, that is not quite right I don’t believe this — this attitude Mrs. Dyer has. She just doesn’t care. But Hannah would care.” It was hard for Ettie to imagine being as — as — she fumbled looking for a word — soulless! Yes, as soulless as Mrs. Dyer or Stannish. And to think in that stupid fairy tale of “The Little Mermaid” it was the humans who had souls and not the merfolk. The mer were excluded from heaven, destined to have their bones rot in the sea. But the humans just floated right up, straight to heaven. What had that stupid mermaid granny said in the story?

“We lack an immortal soul, and shall never have another life … human beings have a soul that lives on forever, even after their bodies have turned to dust. It rises up through the pure air until it reaches the shining stars.”

Hogwash! Ettie thought. If anyone does not deserve another life, it is Mrs. Dyer!

“Perhaps Hannah has to find out for herself.”

“But how can she? Hannah is in steerage for one thing, and even if she could, how could we prove anything to her?”

“Miss Henrietta, as you of all people should know, passing from first class to steerage and back again is no problem if you have a toothbrush.”

“Yes.” She ducked her head slightly. “But how do I prove it to Hannah?”

“Look, everyone — or at least all the maids and the cabin stewards on this side of the ship — knows about the love affair between the famous painter and the rich American divorcée.”

“But Hannah doesn’t know about it.”

“Because she doesn’t see him coming and going from her stateroom. Nor does she see them wrapped in each other’s arms sometimes, even dancing on Mrs. Dyer’s private balcony.”

“And you’ve seen them doing this, Gaston?”

“Not I, but the maids have.”

“How did they see them dancing?”

“Stella is Mrs. Dyer’s personal maid, her lady’s maid. She is asked each night to make up her mistress’s stateroom. Mr. Wheeler and Mrs. Dyer often have a brandy and a smoke on the private promenade deck before Mrs. Dyer retires. The portholes afford a view for Stella when they are on the private deck and —”

“And if I could arrange to have Hannah come up at the right time she would see what you are describing?”

“Exactly!” Gaston nodded.

But would it be too cruel? Ettie thought. Time was running out. There were three, possibly four, more days before they landed in Southampton. She could not abide the thought of Hannah arriving on the other side of the Atlantic in complete ignorance of her fiancé’s betrayal. She could not abide the thought of her entering a false marriage and in so doing giving up a part of her own identity that was so essential to whom she truly was.

“LISTEN TO ME, Lucy.” Who is this whispering to me? A face loomed over her head.

“Listen carefully.” Nathaniel Lawrence had pulled up the gauze mask he had worn for the last two days as part of the ruse. He had told the constable that Lucy was suffering from an infectious disease and even suggested that the constable keep his distance and wear a mask if coming within ten feet of the cell.

“Who are you?” She blinked. It felt as if she was coming out of a long, deep sleep, yet at the same time, she had been aware of this man’s presence the entire time.

“I am your uncle, and I am also a doctor. But they don’t know that.” He tipped his head toward the hall. He had to speak quickly as the constable could return at any moment.

“My uncle?” Lucy repeated, stunned. I have an uncle? She tried to sit up to get a better look at the man’s face but found she didn’t have the strength. Was he mer? Was he her mother’s brother or … He certainly did not look mer in the least, but neither did Stannish Whitman Wheeler. How long had he been gone from the sea?

He took her hand and squeezed it. “I am your father’s brother. Your sister May is waiting for you outside, and I’m going to bring you to her. But you must be brave. We are going to pretend that you have died.”

“Died?” Lucy repeated, her mind still a swirl of confused thoughts. Perhaps she had died. Perhaps this was what happened when one died. They were rejoined with their family, but then there would be no May. No Hannah, for they would still be living. She would have left them behind.

“We are just pretending, but we don’t have much time. The constable will have to go and fetch the coroner. And that is when I’ll sneak you out of here. May and Phin are waiting by the river.”

“Phin!” She was suddenly alert.

“Yes. I don’t believe that young man has slept since you were arrested. He’s going to be overwhelmed with relief.”

“Is he coming with me and May?”

“No, not now, for you’ll have to swim. It’ll be hard at first because you have been away from the sea for a long time. But May will help you.”

“Am I really going to swim?” There was a thrill in her voice that touched the deepest part of Nathaniel’s being.

“Yes, you are going to swim across the sea to your true homeland, where you came from. Your mother’s sister, Avalonia, is there.”

Lucy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”

“All right. I am going to now put a mask over your mouth as well and will soon put you in the shroud.”

The play begins, he thought, and the stakes are mortal.

“Constable! Constable!” he called out, and quickly pulled up his mask.

“Yes, sir? What is it?”

“I am afraid she has died.” He took out his pocket watch and looked at it. “Exactly one minute ago. Now you must fetch the coroner, but all precautions must be taken in removing the body. The coroner himself must be gowned as I have been. Anyone who is handling the body must be as well, with, of course, masks. Any gurneys must be dipped after removal of the body.”

“Dipped?”

“Yes, in disinfectants. It’s standard procedure for dealing with infectious disease. He’ll know what I am talking about.”

“This might take a bit of time.”

“That’s fine.”

“Will you be all right, Doctor Lawrence? I mean, you’ve been treating her for two days now.”

“I have been taking some quinine tablets. Same as the ones I suggested to you as soon as I first suspected. I think you will be fine as well. Of course this cell will have to be completely disinfected as well after the removal of the body.”

The body, Lucy thought. How strange that sounded, how bizarre. It was as if she had been separated into two different entities. But at the same time she felt a true wholeness as a wild happiness began to flood through her.

It took Nathaniel Lawrence less than a minute to put her in the shroud. The constable had left the cell door unlocked, for there was no necessity to lock up a dead inmate. Lawrence had carefully observed the layout of this section of the prison, the women’s section, when he had first come to examine Lucy. She was the only inmate. There was a back door through which deliveries came. It would provide the quickest and the least conspicuous route to the shipyard on the Georges River. It was Sunday, so there would be no workers.

Lucy felt her uncle pick her up. He moved fast for an old man, and he did seem old — at least sixty. What if they were caught? Would he be able to fight off the constable? All kinds of thoughts whirled in her head. He said that May was waiting for her and so was Phin! Dear Phin, but what about Hannah? She heard the creak of the door and then the cold air hit. Lawrence knew that the air would be colder than the water for her, such was the odd physiology of mer beings. May was waiting exactly where she was supposed to be. They peeled off the shroud. The sun was just rising, painting the water a soft pink in the east. It was toward the rim of that sunrise that they would swim.

“Oh, Lucy!” May embraced her but was startled by her emaciated appearance. Phineas had waded into the water, helping to support her, and Hugh was on the other side of May.

“She’ll be all right, May,” the doctor said. “Just support her to start with. She’ll gain strength as her blood saline levels equalize. The farther downriver you go the stronger she’ll get. The sea is less than half a mile.” He sighed deeply. “Now, off you go.”

Lucy turned to Phin, who’d wrapped his arm around her waist and was staring at her with a combination of wonder and disbelief. “You’re alive,” he said, smiling through his tears. “You will live, and no ocean will ever separate us, I promise. I will find you.”

Hugh lowered his mouth to May’s ear. “The stars will guide me, May. They will be my windows on your new day, and I shall come.”

Lucy, with May steadying her, slipped into the brackish waters of the river. May could tell that her sister was terribly weak. She slid her arm around her chest and began to pull her as she swam. Within seconds, May’s legs fused and her tail unfurled. But she could still feel the drag of Lucy’s two legs through the water. The river was deepening and becoming slightly saltier. She could sense Lucy’s legs trying to merge. But it was taking a long time. Then suddenly they felt the flush of the tide sucking them into the bay. The brine of the sea enveloped them and May felt a new curl in the wake — their wake! That curl could only be made by one thing — Lucy’s legs had finally merged and the flukes of her tail were working, synchronized with her own. She lightened her grip on Lucy, who propelled herself through the water with a joyful cry. “I can do it, May. I can do it. I am back!”

Mer creatures do not need charts nor compasses. They need no sextants nor chronometers. They have a “northing” in their own heads, not unlike many birds. They feel the pull of currents and deep underwater streams that course through the seas, and they can read them as the navigators read the stars. For their entire lives, Lucy and May were indeed homeward bound, though it was a home they had never seen. Soon they would feel the first outlier wisps of the Avalaur current, which would eventually bleed into the Gyre of Corry, off Hag’s Head, and is said to be the very source, the cradle, of the mer folk. With each minute, Lucy felt herself growing stronger. And one thought began to burgeon in both Lucy’s and her sister’s minds. Where was Hannah? They could both feel that strange space between them, a pocket of air, a void in the water — a missingness. They — Lucy, May, and Hannah — had all felt these voids when they had first crossed over, and now Lucy and May felt it again. Did it mean that Hannah had crossed back for good? Had she left the sea entirely and forever?

THE STEWARD GASTON had found Hannah the uniform of what was called a femme de chambre, or chambermaid. These women assisted the passengers’ personal staff and were trained to help seasick passengers. A large part of their work consisted of preparing the stateroom for sleep, turning down beds, wiping up the lavatory, bringing vases of fresh flowers from the chill rooms of the florist. Stella, Mrs. Dyer’s lady’s maid, had been complicit in these arrangements as she had no great love for her mistress and was moved by Gaston’s account of poor Hannah. Hannah herself had listened to Ettie with a mixture of confusion and disbelief. But she had remained calm and only replied, “I shall see for myself.”

Once the uniform had been procured it was easy for Hannah to pass from steerage into the hedonistic realms of first class. The weather had been especially warm all day and the seas calm. Many people were walking on the general promenade decks, and those who had private ones were out on them. Some, like Mrs. Dyer, had hired musicians from the ship’s orchestra to entertain them, and when Hannah first entered the stateroom she could hear the strains of a waltz being played by a violinist. Swirling through the air inside the stateroom was the scent of Mrs. Dyer’s favorite perfume, L’Étoile D’Amour. Stella was instructed to spray it on the freshly made bed each evening. Hannah had helped her.

Stella beckoned for Hannah to come to the porthole. She pulled aside the silk curtain slightly. Hannah opened her eyes wide. She could not quite believe the scene she was seeing through the porthole in stateroom 138 onto the private promenade deck, but she was no longer confused. The two dancing figures glided by within a yard of the porthole. They stopped dancing. Stannish cupped his large hands, those long beautiful fingers, around the back of Mrs. Dyer’s head. The two silhouettes drew closer and closer, and Hannah watched in numb shock as they kissed passionately. Ettie was right. She braced for a tide of anguish, of hearbreak. But to her surprise, it never came. She was unsure of whom she was more furious with — Stannish or herself? He had treated her dreadfully, but she’d allowed herself to be duped.

Finally Hannah tore her eyes away and walked in a daze back to her cabin in steerage. She took off the uniform and hung it up. She needed to keep it. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if she needed any more proof. Did she really want to torture herself more, to go back again? She could not sleep, and lay awake for several hours. It was well after midnight when she heard the familiar tapping on the door. She froze as a chill ran through her. It was Stannish! Could he possibly have the audacity to visit her and his mistress on the same evening? But she was sure it was he. He always did three soft, quick taps in a row and then two.

She got out of bed and opened the door, standing perfectly still in her high-necked muslin nightgown. He filled the frame blocking the light from the corridor. “Darling girl, you look like an angel.” She could smell the scent on him, the perfume that saturated Mrs. Dyer’s stateroom, L’Étoile D’Amour. Hannah closed her eyes while he kissed her. The scent was so overwhelming she felt like she might gag. “Put on your shawl, darling. It’s quite warm out. We can go to the aft deck as we did before. I have another present for you.”

When she had returned from Mrs. Dyer’s stateroom after the first onslaught of grief, her tears had hardened into little pebbles of fury. But now she felt an inexplicable calm rising in her like a tide. Was this tranquillity the other side of fury? She was not sure. She allowed him to take her hand and lead her up the stairs to a passageway that led to an aft second class deck on Level C. He kissed her again.

“Hannah, are you all right?” he asked.

“What is that scent I smell?”

“What scent?”

“A strange perfume”

“Oh, I was sitting at a table tonight with some women. You know how these ladies overdo it with their perfume.”

She looked at him steadily. “So that explains it,” she said softly. The succinct reply seemed to unnerve him slightly.

“Explains what?”

“Explains why you smell the way you do.”

“Hannah, you’re not yourself tonight.”

She looked out at the sea. Suddenly she realized that what he said was so true, but in a way he would never suspect. There was something out there. She took a step away from him and pressed her hands to each side of her rib cage. She felt something. Something where those voids used to be, the emptiness beside her before she had met her sisters. They were out there … out there somewhere, someplace. She turned and ran up another set of stairs.

“Hannah, where are you going?”

“I need to be alone now for a while, Stannish. Let me think.”

His brow creased. “Hannah, don’t do anything — anything —” He began to stammer. “Anything foolish.”

“Believe me, I shall do nothing foolish,” Hannah said. A coldness had crept into her voice that he had never heard before. But he turned and left.

The dawn was just breaking. She felt a churning within her. She scrambled to a higher deck. The sea was so calm. The moon cast its light like a bright silver ribbon across the still water, and she could feel the pull of an invisible force beneath the surface. Her sisters were out there, she was sure of it.

Hannah curled up near a bollard wound with docking lines. She would not wake until long after the dawn.

Ettie had risen early. For the last two days she had made a habit of going to the Marconi room because she found that it was in the early part of the morning that the most interesting messages came in. She liked in particular to study the wireless operators’ fingers as they tapped out the messages. Tiny sparks darted into the air from the keys as the men transmitted weather information from the current position of the ship. Occasionally they would let her tap out simple messages, and she was becoming more adept. She had been there less than five minutes when she saw Mr. McCurdy’s eyebrows shoot up. “My, my,” he murmured. It must have been something exciting. She looked at the series of dots and dashes that he was jotting down. The marks began to assemble themselves into meaningful chunks, and the news was staggering. “Convicted murderess escapes jail. Lucy …” That was as far as she got. She gave a shriek. Both operators looked around in alarm.

“No, don’t stop. I’m sorry. Go on. Go on.”

Mr. McCurdy and Mr. Mintz turned back to their sets. The little sparks began to jump as the two men clicked the keys. Their eyes and their ears with the headphones were focused on the receiving circuits — the Maggie, a magnetic detector, that worked in conjunction with the Marconi tuner and converted the received radio frequency to electrical currents. The sparks were truly flying now. Mr. Mintz handed Ettie an extra set of headphones to wear. She grabbed a clipboard and pencil and began to record the Morse code.

“Lucy Snow, the convicted murderess sentenced to hang in less than a month, managed to escape from her prison cell in Thomaston, Maine. Miss Snow had fallen critically ill during her incarceration and was being treated by a doctor whose name was not available at the time of publication. She had been said to have died of what was thought to be an infectious disease, according to the constable of the prison. The constable left the prison to seek out the coroner. When he returned to the jail, the body was gone, as was the doctor. A search was launched immediately for the doctor and the girl.”

“Henrietta! Henrietta!” Mr. Mintz was shaking her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Tears were streaming down her face. “I am fine. Fine.” She began to remove the earphones. She had never been happier, but she knew she couldn’t appear ecstatic. She had to get to Hannah. Hannah must be told. Her sister was safe. Lucy was safe!

EYEDROPPERS ARE SO handy, Lila thought. Handy and efficient, for one could always get just the right amount and no mess. And she needed just the right amount. Not too much and not too little, or else someone might become suspicious. It had worked out so well that Miss Doyle was not a good sea traveler. She had been afflicted with nausea ever since setting foot on the Leonidas. The ship’s physician had prescribed tincture of ginger mixed with mint oil. It was easy enough for Lila to add two drops of her own laudanum. The strong mint and ginger flavors of the physician’s medicine neatly camouflaged the bitterness of the laudanum and, most important, put Miss Doyle into a deep slumber. When she was not sleeping, she became quite dull and compliant with whatever Lila wanted or threatened. Best of all, no one seemed to notice any real changes in Miss Doyle’s behavior. If they did notice, they ascribed it to her nausea.

Lila prepared the nighttime dose while Miss Doyle bathed in the rather sumptuous bathtub. Miss Doyle had never enjoyed such lavish plumbing facilities and spent quite a bit of time in the sybaritic tub, which actually had a little pillow so that one could read while reclining. Of course there was always the possibility that Miss Doyle might drown in that tub. She had fallen asleep one night, and Lila had performed what she considered a noble rescue. The book, however, a penny dreadful — String of Rubies or some such thing — succumbed to the depths of the tub and was more or less wrecked. Lila had, however, endeared herself to Miss Doyle by going to the ship’s library to hunt for another book of equal literary luster. When she couldn’t find one, she asked their chambermaid if she might have any access to such books, and the chambermaid returned with two. Miss Doyle was suitably impressed and profoundly grateful. She even reported on this kind deed of Lila’s to her parents — neglecting, of course, to mention the nature of the book. This thrilled Edwina and Horace Hawley greatly, for their daughter had never been known for her compassion.

And now their “compassionate” daughter’s eyes sparkled with that glitter so often associated with madness as she worked with the eyedropper, preparing Miss Doyle’s evening potion. “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,” she whispered to herself. “Who shall be the first to go? Is it Ettie or Mrs. Dyer? Who shall be the first to retire …?” Then she paused and with a giggle blurted out, “Permanently!”

Ettie thought she was so smart sneaking around the ship spying on people. But Lila had her own ways. Her father had given each of his daughters a generous allowance so that they might buy from the ocean liner’s boutiques. Shopping had become a new divertissement on luxury liners, and just as the famous restaurateurs and hoteliers had advised on accommodations and food, some of London’s and Paris’s fine stores had opened concessions on board the Leonidas. Passengers could either pay cash or charge it to their staterooms. There was a lovely millinery shop as well as another next door that specialized in Turkish shawls, quite the rage, and Italian silk scarves from the region of Como. Lila had bought several and found that they became a very liquid currency with stateroom maids. She was careful never to bribe personal staff with her gifts. She knew from experience that Roseanne or Mr. Marston had such fierce loyalty that they would never be bribable, and she assumed that other families’ staff would be the same. But stateroom maids were different. They had no particular loyalty, and besides, she was not asking them to do anything illegal like stealing. What did she need with Mrs. Dyer’s jewels? She just wanted information, and, on this particularly evening, access to the stateroom. She had told the stewardess that she was a relative of Mrs. Dyer and needed to bring her a present.

“It’s her birthday, you know?” Mrs. Limsole, the stewardess of the A Deck, port side, inhaled sharply. It was unusual that someone, especially not on her corridor, would know her name. “Oh, and Mrs. Limsole, I was so sorry to hear about your husband’s death last year.”

“Well, now, how did you hear about that?”

“Oh, he had attended, I believe, my godmother, Mrs. Dyer, on many crossings, and she spoke so highly of him. I think it is lovely that the Leonidas has continued the tradition of Limsole’s service with you, his widow.”

“Oh, thank you, dear. And I had no idea you were Mrs. Dyer’s goddaughter or that it was her birthday.”

“Well, like many women, she doesn’t like to speak of her birthday. No celebration, but I bought her this small gift at the jewelry shop. I mean, it is not nearly as fabulous as the jewels she has, but it’s a locket and I had it engraved, and I have also wrapped up a special book of poetry. She loves poetry. So I would like to give it to her personally.”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

“What might be the best time?”

“Well, following dinner she usually comes back for a short rest and to freshen up. She often has a caller.”

“Oh, Mr. Wheeler, yes. She told me he is painting her picture.”

A slight blush rose in Mrs. Limsole’s sallow cheeks. “So I think if you could come immediately following dinner that might work.”

“Or if I came a little before might you let me in? I want it to be a surprise and would like to set it up on the tea table.”

“Yes, I could arrange that. Would you like me to bring some petit fours? I mean, not a birthday cake or anything, though that could be arranged.”

“Oh, how lovely! Petit fours would be splendid.”

“And some champagne?”

“Why not? Yes, why not do it up grand … well, not too grand. As I said, she is sensitive about her birthday …” And, Lila thought, she won’t need to be sensitive a day longer, for she will not be getting a day older.

Lila looked at the clock built into the bedstand. Dinner would not be until eight. Almost five more hours. Miss Doyle always excused herself before dessert. On the advice of the ship physician he had recommended no rich food. She always took her medicine precisely ten minutes before dinner. By the time she left the table her eyelids were drooping, and Lila herself often accompanied her back. Lila now twisted the cap back on the seasickness medicine and placed it with Miss Doyle’s small leather case, where she kept her other toiletries. She peered out the porthole. There was still some light in the sky, but the days were growing quite short. By five it would be nearly pitch-black and then still another three hours until dinner.

Lila was so excited she thought somewhat ironically that it almost felt as if it was her own birthday. Well, in a sense it was. She’d watched those two ever since the gossip first broke. She’d seen them dancing together at the captain’s ball. She’d followed them onto the first class promenade deck and then to a lonely little aft deck, where illicit lovers often met. She’d seen them embrace. She saw the painter kiss Mrs. Dyer’s neck. But she felt an odd tremor pass through her body. She would make him do that to her. Yes, she would! And he would paint her again. She could clarify why she had to destroy the painting he had made of her and her sisters…. She had an explanation all worked out in her mind.

That’s what she would do now. She would rehearse it. She began to walk back and forth across the stateroom, whispering to herself.

“You see, dear Stannish, it’s really quite simple. I mean, how would you feel if the same had been done to you? If a great portrait painter like yourself decided to replace you in a portrait, summarily stick in another person, in this case a servant. Oh, you say you had nearly finished the painting, that it was really my figure and I was in the background while my sisters were in the foreground and there were all the shadows. Well, now, honestly, you had to add those shadows to disguise that the girl was not me. And maybe you’re right. Maybe no one would have noticed. But I noticed….” She paused here. She knew just how she was going to say this. She would keep her voice low, low and a bit tremulous. She didn’t want to sound angry or outraged. She wanted to sound hurt, wounded — debilitated. And that was exactly how she had felt at the time. “For in truth, Stannish … when you do something like that to a person you are stealing her soul. My soul — yes, you stole it and swapped it for another. There is a kind of mortal damage that occurs. A violation. So of course I had to rip the canvas.”

And now deep in her pocket was another knife that she had discreetly lifted from a tray that had been delivered to her parents’ stateroom near the beginning of the crossing. At the time she was not sure exactly what her plans were for this knife. But it had gleamed so sharply on the cart waiting to be wheeled into her parents’ stateroom that she simply could not resist slipping it into her pocket. Now she had a plan for that knife, and it was not for cutting canvas.

Ettie spent all day looking for Hannah. She was not in her cabin or in the third class dining room, which was cavernous and had the unpleasant odors of greasy stews and cooked cabbage. Hannah’s roommate was of little help, for she hardly spoke English and merely shrugged her shoulders and turned her palms up toward the ceiling as if to say “Heaven only knows.” By dinnertime Ettie was almost frantic. When her mother rushed into her cabin, she found Ettie biting her nails, something she hadn’t done since she was six years old.

“Where have you been, Ettie? We are due at dinner in a quarter of an hour!” Her mother paused. “And Ettie, why are you biting your nails?”

“Uh … I don’t know, Mother,” she replied weakly. “You look beautiful,” she then said, trying to change the subject.

Edwina Hawley was steeped in the froth of the shirred midnight-blue chiffon of her gown. The satin bodice had a starburst pattern, and around her neck hung a dazzling star sapphire pendant.

“Oh, I have a headache, Mother. Can’t I skip dinner?” Edwina’s amber eyes narrowed.

“You had a headache last night, Ettie. No, you cannot miss this dinner. We are at the captain’s table again. Not many people are invited twice to dine with the captain. It is a great honor.”

“Well, I’ll give up my place and someone else can. Seems more democratic.”

Edwina’s jaw dropped open.

“Democratic! Where do you learn such words?” Her mother was shaking her head in disbelief.

Clarice had drifted into the stateroom and was now watching her younger sister and mother as if she were at a tennis game. Her head swung back and forth during this verbal volley.

“We live in a democracy. Well, actually, we live in a republic,” Ettie was saying. “Technically, the United States is a republic because it is a state in which the superior power is held by the people and their elected representatives.”

“Henrietta Grace Hawley, where on earth do you get these ideas?”

“Mother, they are not ideas. They are facts. It is our form of government.”

Edwina’s shoulders sagged. A pained expression did a slow crawl across her face. “Ettie … what am I going to do with you?” Ettie was not sure how to answer this question. “Just promise me one thing.”

“What, Mother?”

“You — you … are you going to be one of those — those … suff-suff —”

“Suffrage women!” Lila had just come into the room.

“Oh, don’t you look lovely,” Edwina exclaimed as her eldest daughter entered. Lila wore a garnet-colored silk dress with a silver metallic passementerie of cording and braid that had been embellished with jet beads.

Lovely? Ettie thought. There was something completely unnerving in her sister’s appearance. Was Ettie the only one who noticed? Lila’s eyes had a feverish glow. A hectic flush crept up her neck. She seemed almost electrified.

“Suffrage, yes that’s the word.”

“I — I —” Ettie couldn’t take her eyes off Lila. “I would like to vote someday, Mummy. But don’t worry. I don’t think it will happen. Not in my lifetime.”

Lila tipped her head to the side. “Definitely not in your lifetime, Ettie.”

Ettie felt something cold and dark flood through her. “I’ll get ready for dinner, Mother, right away.”

“Oh, that’s a dear. And why not wear the gray velvet? It looks so pretty with your eyes.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“And I’ll send Roseanne in to do your hair. I think the blue bows would be perfect.”

“Yes, the blue bows would be perfect,” Ettie answered, never taking her eyes off Lila, who was now fiddling with the ruching on the neckline of her dress.

The seating had been carefully arranged. Ettie would not have been surprised that her mother had perhaps talked to the steward of the captain’s table, for Clarice was seated next to young Samuel Ames from the Ames Shovel Company. He was explaining to her the “architecture” of their latest shovel. Ettie had never thought of shovels as architecture but rather that they helped builders execute architecture. In truth, the Ames shovel’s greatest claim to fame was digging gold. The company, with their shovels, became much richer than any actual miner, or so Horace Hawley said. Ames shovels dug the railroad beds for the trains that began to cross the continent almost a half century before.

Lila was seated between the captain and the first officer. She appeared slightly distracted, but every once in a while would turn to either Captain Beasley or Officer Collins and ask a question. However, her eyes kept darting toward a table in the far corner where Mrs. Dyer sat with several of her friends. Stannish Whitman Wheeler was not at the table. He always seemed to be seated several tables away.

The bouillon cup had been taken away and the second course was brought. It looked to Ettie like the teeniest lamb chop ever. The bone was encased in a little paper frill.

“Ettie, don’t fiddle with your food, darling,” her mother leaned over and whispered.

“When a lamb chop wears pants it’s asking to be fiddled with,” Ettie muttered.

“And tell me, Miss Henrietta, do you go to Miss Goodall’s School for Young Ladies like your sister Clarice?” Samuel Ames asked.

Ettie looked up and smiled. It was sweet of him to include her in the conversation. “Not yet. I have a governess. But next year. Right, Daddy?”

“Well, I think so. Henrietta is very bright. I think she’ll thrive there.”

“And then I hope to thrive at Radcliffe,” Ettie added.

“Oh, dear!” Samuel Ames said.

“My sentiments exactly, Mr. Ames,” her mother added with an artful sigh.

From the corner of her eye Ettie saw Lila getting up from her seat and making excuses to the captain and the first officer. She then came around the table to Edwina Hawley.

“Mother, I’d like to retire now. I feel a fearsome headache coming on.”

“Of course, dear. Would you like Ettie or Clarice to accompany you?”

“No, I’ll be fine. And Miss Doyle is here if I need anything.”

Ettie set her mouth in a grim line. Ettie stared hard at the trousered lamb chop. How come she gets to have a headache and I don’t? She’d never get away now. And she had thought of a few more places that she could look for Hannah. But two headaches at the same table wouldn’t be tolerated.

The conversation turned to the escaped murderess. “Oh, you hadn’t heard yet?” Captain Beasley asked. “The news came over the Marconi this morning. Yes, the girl who poisoned the Duke of Crampton escaped from jail two days ago.”

“What?” Horace Hawley gasped. “That’s the girl, the reverend’s daughter from Bar Harbor. Stephen Snow, the summer minister. He’d been slated to be bishop of the New York Episcopal diocese. What’s her name?”

“Lucy Snow,” Ettie said.

“Terrible … terrible,” the gentleman on the other side of her father said. “She was supposed to hang.” Ettie looked around the table. Did they look disappointed? Not precisely disappointed. But they looked rather pleased to have such a salacious topic of conversation.

“They say the duke had learned some scandal about her and was on the brink of revealing it. That was the motive for her murdering him,” Samuel Ames offered.

“I don’t know,” the gentleman said. “But surely this is not a dinner topic.” And now everyone really did look disappointed. For they would have to wait until after dinner when the men would go into the smoking salon and drink their brandy and the women would repair to the ladies’ lounge, and each in his and her own domain would begin to discuss the scandalous rumors that provoked the murder.

By the time the waiter set down dessert — meringues sculpted into the shape of swans, each bearing a scoop of ice cream — Ettie was ready to explode. She had to find Hannah. If anyone should know about Lucy’s break from jail, it was Hannah.

“What is it now, Ettie?” Edwina asked. “You look like you’re ready to murder that swan rather than eat it.”

“I don’t like fancy food. I don’t like lambs in pants and meringue swans and things that don’t look like what they are.” Of course she wasn’t sure what exactly a meringue was. “When I have a cook and run a household, food is going to look like what it is.”

“If you go to Radcliffe and turn into one of those intellectual girls, those grinds, you’re never going to be married and have a household to run.” Her mother’s whisper was almost a hiss at this point.

“Good. I’ll eat in plain restaurants. I’ll eat baked beans and cod. And clams. I love clams.”

“Oh, Ettie!” Her mother squeezed her shoulder affectionately. Ettie looked into her mother’s lovely eyes. A part of her wished she could be the way her mother wanted her to be.

“Sorry, Mummy,” she said softly.

“Do you want to go to bed now?”

“Yes, Mummy,” she replied, and crossed her fingers in her lap.

ACROSS THE SEA on Barra Head, Avalonia wrapped her hand around the fragment of the rock she had kept all these years. The feathery design engraved by eons of time was that of a sea lily. The words of her mother came back to her. Avalonia opened her palm and peered down at them. The lines, the mica chips as bright as the day she found them, sparkled like a mysterious calligraphy from the far edges of time.

“Some called them feather stars. They are very ancient, from a time before time,” she remembered her mother explaining that day when Avalonia and her sister, Laurentia, had, against all odds, discovered two fragments of the rock on the same beach. Even stranger, when the two girls fit the pieces of the rock together, the sweep of the design was identical to the course of the Avalaur current for which the sisters had been named. Except for mer people, the Avalaur current was a deadly hazard of the sea. But for mer it possessed an arterial force. It meant life and linked them to the mysterious filaments of their origins as well as to their destinies. It was their life’s blood through which the mysterious Laws of Salt streamed through their own veins.

Avalonia and Laurentia had been linked by this mystical fossil throughout their lives. That link had been broken when Laurentia died. The other piece belonging to her sister had been lost at the time of her death. Now, however, as she held her own fragment in her hand she sensed that a momentous event was transpiring, a great mending had begun. Months before she had felt that Laurentia’s daughters had been found. She had picked up her clàrsach and began plucking the string and singing the song.

Come home, come home to Barra Head

I’ll show you the Gyre of Corry

Come home, come home, sisters three

I long to stroke your heads.

She had done this for months, but until now nothing had happened and she had even doubted her own senses, her own beliefs, that the three girls — her nieces — still lived. But suddenly she knew they did and that they were coming home, swimming toward Barra Head.

Lucy did not simply gain strength as she swam, but she felt an almost magical tingling that began in the scales of her tail and seeped upward toward her skin. It was as if she were sloughing off the dead layers of life on land, those encrustations of the false social order that had ruled her life, so ruled the life of her land family that her mother had planted the poison in a small handbag that was Lucy’s.

Lucy slashed her powerful tail through the water and shot ahead of her sister. She didn’t know where Marjorie Snow was. She didn’t care. She was free in a way her mother never would be. Yes, Marjorie Snow had gotten away with murder, but Lucy had gotten away with life. And someday Phin would join her on Barra Head, the island where her uncle Nathaniel said they came from, and where an aunt was waiting for them. For now Lucy reveled in the watery realms of the deep. It was like being reborn, as if she were some sort of water butterfly about to unfold. The cocoon itself was made from the silkiest and most ephemeral elements — the whoosh and whispers of water. The crushes of sea foam, the cadences of pressure waves. It was a scintillating, kinetic stirring of speed, sound, and pressure.

When Lucy shot out ahead of May, she detected the wake of a humpback whale. There was nothing more fun than riding in the wake of such a behemoth. The wake had the curious effect of increasing a swimmer’s speed, for one could ride the pressure waves that radiated off the flukes of the whale’s enormous tail. May soon joined her. They careened along and sometimes broke through the surface to skim across the crests of the pressure waves upright, supported by the flukes of their own strong tails. As they perched on their tails, a mist of sea smoke started to rise from the ocean toward the stars. Lucy felt as if she were existing on the margins of overlapping worlds — worlds of water and air, of light and growing darkness, of the silence of the sky above and the surges of the constantly rustling sea. She balanced on her tail and felt the rush of the stream of bubbles of the whale’s pressure wave as it swam through the night.

May’s head was flung back, her mouth half-open and her eyes wide with wonder as she surveyed the stars that had come to mean so much to her. Lucy realized that her posture was the very opposite of one of traditional prayer, where congregants bowed their heads and beseeched their God. Instead of praying in church, May was studying the very soul of the night, worshipful of each new star that appeared in the newborn constellations as the dark thickened. A smile skimmed across May’s face.

“Do you see it, Lucy?”

“What?”

“Look to port. Over there!” She pointed. “See, Orion is rising. You can find him. The three bright stars that make up his belt.”

“Yes … yes, I see that.”

“Now look just to the south of the belt. Well behind it, really … that is the Horsehead Nebula.”

“It’s all blurry but glowing.”

“Yes, that’s it — Hugh says it’s the debris from a cluster of stars or maybe the fragments of a galaxy burning up on the edges of time.”

“Burning up … you mean it’s being destroyed….”

“Or maybe something is aborning, giving birth to new stars. Nebulae can be like cradles of new stars, new galaxies.”

“Stars blow up and burn?”

“All the time … all the time,” May said with a wistfulness in her voice.

The night grew luminous with stars. The sea smoke evaporated and the ocean became a mirror for the heavens. They alternated between swimming in the whale’s wake and perching on its pressure waves to ride the curls. Between the sky above and the water world below they felt as if they were moving through a dazzling jewel box of the universe. Wreaths of stars hung like crowns on the night. Wind and water had torn most of their clothes away, and they were left nearly naked with only the shreds of their petticoats clinging wetly to their bodies, and yet they had never felt so adorned.

They had been riding the wake of the whale for some time when they picked up the initial wisps of the Gyre of Corry on the dawn of the day after they had left. Instinct told them to continue to swim on a northerly bearing, but another urge began to rise that seemed to conflict. They both fought it silently for a while, but the compulsion grew. Lucy finally felt compelled to say something.

“We have to take a southern heading now, May. We both know it. She’s out there. I can feel her.”

“I can as well,” May said, her voice full of reverence and wonder. They’d never given themselves over so completely to the Laws of Salt, but although May knew she should be afraid of swimming straight into the open ocean, there wasn’t a drop of fear anywhere in her blood.

And so the two sisters turned and broke from the whale’s wake. He flashed one of his enormous eyes as if to say, “Enjoyed your company.”

“IT’S LOVELY, Mrs. Limsole,” Lila said, turning to the stewardess. “And those sweet little petit fours. They look like jewels.” She slipped her hand into her pocket. “I’d like to give you a little something for your efforts.” She took out a bill of a rather large denomination.

“Oh, really, ma’am, I couldn’t accept this.”

“You must. I know how it is on these ships. The women do not receive pay equal to the men. I feel that is very wrong.”

“Well, if you insist, dear. It’s so sweet of you to do this for Mrs. Dyer. She should be back shortly.”

“I’ll be ready.”

As soon as Mrs. Limsole left, Lila scanned the room. She was if anything a quick study. The table was in the center of the room. The lights were turned low, which was good. There was a dressing screen in one corner. Perfect! Just a few arrangements needed to be made. She moved a chair up to the table so Mrs. Dyer would be drawn to sit down immediately. She placed the elaborately wrapped small box on the table next to the plate with the petit fours. The champagne bottle had already been opened and a glass poured as if waiting for the guest of honor, the only guest. It would take one stride, two at the very most, for Lila to get to the back of the chair from where she was hiding. She hoped that Mrs. Dyer would sit down quickly. It would make everything much easier. Her head would be at just the right level. Being seated would limit her ability to escape. When all was ready, Lila took her place behind the dressing screen and drew the knife from her pocket.

Lila was not sure how long she had been waiting, but one thing she did know was that these minutes were the calmest, most joyful moments of her life. She had never felt so at peace, so serene. So … so … complete, she thought, just as she heard the doorknob turning.

“My, my, what is this lovely surprise?” Mrs. Dyer exclaimed as she took off her satin capelet and walked toward the dressing screen. Lila froze. She had not expected the other woman to be wearing a cloak. She flung the garment over the top and then she turned away. It seemed like a small miracle. Now Lila was hearing her pull out the chair. There was the rustle of her gown as she settled onto the seat. Don’t bend your head yet! Lila willed as Mrs. Dyer reached for the envelope beside the box. Lila moved swiftly. One stride. She was behind her, wrenching her head with what seemed like an almost supernatural strength. There was the glint of the knife in the dark glass of the champagne bottle. One cut. No time for even a shriek. Blood spurted. She had hit the right vein. She had heard about that vein. There was an old woman in the asylum whose son had been murdered that way. She talked ceaselessly about the vein. The jugular she called it. It sounded like something merry and fun. Oh, yes, a clown, of course! Juggling.

The blood didn’t even show on her garnet dress. But her hands were a mess. Just for the fun of it she poured the glass of champagne over her hands and rinsed off the blood. She sighed deeply. It was all very satisfying. A wonderful serenity settled upon her. “Oh, move over!” She scowled at the body and shoving it onto the floor, she sat down, poured herself another glass of champagne, and took a sip.

Ettie finally found Hannah on C Deck, on a small afterdeck that hung out over the water. She was looking straight out at the curling wake of the ship. Ettie could tell immediately that there was something different about Hannah, even though her back was to her.

“Hannah, I’ve been searching for you all day!”

Hannah turned around slowly. Her face was radiant. It was as if a new person was standing before Ettie.

“They are out there. I feel them.”

“Yes! They must be. Lucy escaped,” Ettie said, and ran to her, flinging her arms around her waist. They both began to cry.

“I knew it. I felt it. I just sensed it.”

“I didn’t sense it. But I read it. It came over the wireless. She escaped. Some doctor helped her.” Ettie paused. “They’re coming for you, Hannah. What will you do?”

“Yes, what will you do, Anna?” Stannish Whitman Wheeler suddenly stepped onto the afterdeck. “What will you do?” His face bore a mildly curious expression, but there was a menacing glint in his eyes. The name — Anna — grated in her ears.

It’s all so wrong. So very wrong. As false as his kisses! “My name is Hannah!” She thought she was shouting, but a louder noise obliterated her words.

A deafening whistle began to blow. It was an alarm of some sort, but not the man overboard alarm. Perhaps there was a fire. Hannah stepped closer to Stannish. She felt very calm yet curiously depleted. She was tired of him. And so she said it simply.

“Stannish, I am tired of you. I am tired of your lies. You deserve your wretched Mrs. Dyer.” Her green eyes blazed fiercely.

“Anna!” he said with a sigh as if he was terrifically bored. “Is that what this is all about? Oh my, what a funny little thing you are. It was nothing! Nothing, Anna. I don’t love her. She is just a means,” Stannish protested.

“Means to an end? Is that what you are trying to say?”

“Well, more or less.”

“And am I the End?

He smiled almost sheepishly. “Well, darling Anna, if not the end, a very important one.”

“Then I am right. You deserve Mrs. Dyer. But I do not deserve you.” She shook her head slowly and seemed to smile ruefully to herself. “Not good enough.”

“What do you mean ‘not good enough’? I’ve given you every —”

But Hannah cut him off. “You have not given me everything. You have taken, taken even my own name from me.” Stannish did not see it, but Ettie spied a luminous glow in the water. Suddenly Hannah leapt to the rail. She stood there for just a split second. She turned and smiled at Ettie.

“Good-bye, Ettie,” she said, and dived into the sea.

“Hannah, no!” Stannish cried. He grasped the rail from which she had just jumped. “No!”

The water enveloped Hannah, as welcoming as an embrace, as revitilizing as rain after a long drought. She let out a joyful cry, then sprang high above a cresting wave and dived again.

Ettie pressed herself against the rail “One … two … three,” she counted softly as she saw the three tails lifting from the water. She watched them through a scrim of tears. The wind caught its breath and the stars stopped moving in the sky, or so it seemed as the sea grew calm, opening its heart to welcome its own. The sisters’ tails were radiant in the shredding darkness of the night as they swam toward the horizon and the glimmer of a new dawn.

Ettie was oblivious to Stannish, but the whistle of the alarm had become deafening.

“What in God’s name is that?” he muttered.

“Me!” A voice scratched the air.

“Lila!” Ettie wheeled around. A ghoulish figure stood a few feet from her. She was still in her evening gown. Blood streaked her face and in one hand she held a knife.

“Surprise!” she said. A smile sprawled across her face.

“Lila!” Stannish said in disbelief. “Wh-what are you doing here?”

“I might ask the same of you — what are you doing here? Not with your lady love? She is … uh … now, Ettie, how does Marston say it — ‘unavailable right now.’ ” She paused. “Yes, unavailable right now, and forever I might add.”

“Lila, put the knife down,” Stannish said in a quavering voice.

“Oh, I will, all right. I’ll put this knife down….” She slid her eyes toward Ettie. They narrowed into a predatory gaze.

She wants blood, more blood! Ettie thought. There was so little room to escape. Lila blocked the narrow passage to the stairwell. Ettie wondered if she should jump into the sea and hope that Hannah was still near enough to save her.

“Now, the last time I put the knife down … Oh, no, sorry … the second to the last time. It was to canvas. Yes … I know … I ripped that portrait. But I have my reasons, and now you need to listen. It’s time for my speech.”

“What speech?” Ettie said. She backed herself against the railing from which Hannah had jumped minutes before.

“You shut up. You disgust me, Ettie, when I think of what you did to Jade.”

“Lila, listen to me,” Stannish pleaded.

“No, you listen to me, you — you cannibal. Yes. That’s what you are … oh, dear, I’m getting mixed up, I wasn’t supposed to say that until the end. But, well, you know what I mean….”

“I have no idea what you mean, Lila.”

“You put her in.”

“Her?”

“That Hannah girl, the scullery maid. When you do something like that you are stealing a person’s soul. My soul. You cannibalized it.”

“But Lila …,” Ettie said.

“One more interruption from you and you’ll get it just like Mrs. Dyer.”

“What?” Ettie and Stannish both gasped. Ettie saw a shadow stealing across the floor of the deck. She jerked her head. In that instant Stannish lunged for Lila. He wrenched her arm. There was a sharp cry of pain and then the clink of metal as the knife hit the deck. Another man jumped from behind a bollard and flung Lila down.

The whole world seemed to spin. Lila was laughing! Laughing hysterically. Stannish was bleeding from a gash above his eye. Several more sailors had suddenly materialized.

“I’m fine. I’m fine,” Stannish was saying. “Just a nasty cut, that’s all. How’s the child?”

“I’m — I’m all right….” She looked at Lila. “Lila, why would you ever do —”

Lila began laughing again. “If only I could have gotten you!” She was breathing heavily now, gasping, but between the gasps she was trying to say something. “If — if only I could have gotten you, Ettie … Oh, what peace I would have. Jade promised me.”

“Jade is dead, Lila. Remember? I killed her.” Ettie’s voice hardened.

“Oh, no. She’s not dead. She’s right here in my head.” She tried to tap her head, but her hands were bound. “Right here. She’s never left me. But when I get you, you will be dead … dead … dead …”

The shrill words unspooled into the night.

BARKLEY AND GODFREY Appleton were in their library. Barkley was about to begin dictating to their secretary a letter to the finance committee of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts concerning the “limited gift bequest” of a small Giotto they acquired in Florence the previous summer.

“Be sure to tell them, Bark, that it shall be lent to them for the first two years, then after that shall reside here until our deaths,” Godfrey said while snapping open the Boston Evening Transcript. He blinked, drew the paper closer, then gasped, removed his monocle, and gasped again. His brother and the brothers’ secretary, Mr. Weeden, looked at him.

“Something wrong, old fellow?” his brother asked.

Godfrey looked up. “We’re in the papers, Bark!”

A puzzled looked appeared on Barkley’s face. “The papers? How do you mean? What for?”

“For murder.”

“What?”

“Listen to this, Barkley.”

Barkley Appleton stepped over to his favorite chair and folded his lanky frame into it. He tented his fingertips and recrossed his legs at least three times as he listened while his brother, Godfrey, read.

“ ‘Miss Lila Louise Hawley, daughter of Horace Hawley and Edwina Appleton Hawley of Boston, was arrested on her arrival in Southampton aboard the SS Leonidas and charged with the murder of Mrs. Julia Dyer, the divorced wife of Fenton Dyer. The murder took place aboard the ship the night before the ship landed. Miss Hawley is a member of one of Boston’s most prominent families. Horace Hawley is a direct descendent of Ephraim Hawley, who founded the Merchants Bank of Boston in the year 1805. Mr. Hawley’s marriage to Edwina Appleton in 1880 solidified two of the major fortunes of the Commonwealth. The Appleton mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, for more than a century have been the largest textile manufacturing company in New England.’ ” Godfrey set down the paper.

“Beast! She’s a beast!” Barkley spat out the words and folded his arms tightly across his narrow chest as if he were trying to contain a venomous rage that might spew into the library.

Phin heard the creak on the stairs leading up to the sail loft. He knew it had to be Hugh. Not only had they agreed to meet at that hour, he’d come to recognize the young man’s purposeful tread.

Hugh strode in without bothering to knock. He was dressed in a suit like all of those Cambridge men, but his face bore none of the snootiness Phin had grown to expect. Hugh might come from fancy people, but he was a good sort of fellow, a worthy partner for Lucy’s sister.

“Do you think they are there yet?” Hugh asked anxiously. “It’s been three days, hasn’t it?” He rubbed his temples. “I’ve lost track of time. I think I’m going mad thinking about them out there in that vast ocean.”

“I’m sure they’re there. They can swim more than forty knots when they want, assuming Lucy has gotten her strength back.” He smiled, imagining his lovely Lucy moving with grace and speed through the sea.”

“Oh, I’m sure she did, Phin. We saw her picking up speed before the river met the sea.”

“A-yuh — you’re right about that.” He leaned against the wall, smiling and shaking his head as he thought about the events of the past week. “I still can’t believe what Doctor Lawrence managed to pull off.”

“We owe him everything,” Hugh replied

Phin nodded, and a distant look came into his eyes.

Hugh scratched his head. It was hard sometimes with Phin. He was a typical down-easter and chary with words. As if reading Hugh’s mind, Phin now began to speak. “I think he felt it was best he get out. Wouldn’t be surprised if he headed for Canada.”

Hugh, still scratching the back of his head, walked across the loft floor. “What’s this?” he said, looking down at what appeared to be the lines for the hull of a new boat. “Another big, fancy yacht, eh?”

“Big enough,” Phin replied.

Hugh cocked his head. He realized that indeed this was rather small compared to the rich people’s yachts that the Heanssler yard usually built.

“Big enough for what, Phin?”

“Big enough to get across.”

“Across? Across the Atlantic?”

“To Barra Head.” Phin gave a small wry smile. “No first class or anything like that. No classes at all. Just steerage.”

“Phin, are you suggesting that the two of us sail?”

“A-yuh. You know the stars. I know boats.”

“But Hugh, this boat is not more than forty feet long.”

“Thirty-nine feet. Joshua Slocum went round the world in a thirty-six-foot sloop.” Phin looked up. A big smile cracked his weather-beaten face. “Want to come? It’ll be a wicked good sail.”

As the sun climbed over the horizon, tinting the world a pale lavender, the cliffs of Barra Bay sprang up from the sea. The dark granite softened in the melting morning light, but the rock was crowned with green, the greenest green the girls had ever seen. The water was calm, but ahead they saw a stirring that was not a school of fish or seals or dolphins. The pattern was familiar and could only have been caused by one creature. Then a silvery head broke through and a glittering tail threw off spangles of light as if to show them the way … the way home.

Ettie sat in the library of the lavish Hawley apartment on the Rue Montard near the Paris Opera House. She was pondering the differences between a house in mourning and one in shame. It had presented a sartorial problem to begin with. Of course no one had questioned it verbally, but should they dress in black? They had in essence lost a daughter, but should a murderess be accorded the same sartorial honors of a person who had actually died? It was clear no one from the family could be seen in public. They were effectively sealed off from any kind of social intercourse. Her father spent hours closeted with lawyers and doctors. The most they could hope for was a plea of insanity and a judge who would rule that Lila was not competent to stand trial. Her mother not only hoped for this outcome but prayed for it assiduously and sometimes made twice-daily visits to a chapel on the Left Bank where she was assured of encountering none of her friends.

If Lila was considered unable to stand trial, she would be tucked away, this time forever, in an insane asylum. The euphemism sanitarium was no longer operational. But an asylum was not a prison. Not that this would lessen the taint of the crime. The family would be stained for years.

There was, however, one great irony — for Ettie, this stain might prove to be a badge of freedom. How could they care what she did as long as it wasn’t criminal? No one decent would marry her after such a scandal. She might actually be permitted to go to Radcliffe. She could not wait for Uncle Bark and Uncle God to arrive. They were due momentarily.

She heard footsteps outside the library, and suddenly her beloved uncles were there, scooping her up in their arms.

“Daddy’s out at a lawyer’s office at the embassy and Mother is out praying.” She rolled her eyes. “Such is our life.” She sighed. “But I’m here.”

“You are here!” Uncle Godfrey exclaimed, and stepped toward her to embrace her one more time.

“Sirs.” Mr. Marston stepped forward. “I shall take your luggage to your rooms. Should I run baths for both of you?”

“Oh, indeed!” Barkely said, then turned to Ettie. “We’ll be back in a shake.”

When they left, Ettie spotted a newspaper they had set down. Her mother had forbidden newspapers in the house since the tragedy — especially English ones.

Ettie picked up this one, the London Times, and began to page through it. There was nothing about the murder of Mrs. Dyer, but at the bottom of page eight there was a small article that caught her eye.

AMERICAN PORTRAIT PAINTER FOUND DEAD

The body of Stannish Whitman Wheeler, one of America’s most distinguished portrait painters, was found washed up on the southwest coast of England near the village of Pyntmor. Mr. Wheeler, who had painted luminaries on both sides of the Atlantic, was currently residing at Pyntsdale, the Somerset estate of the Baronet of Pynte, where he was painting the baronet’s wife, Lenora Drexel, of the American banking family.

Ettie set down the paper. She was stunned. Had he tried to swim back to Hannah and drowned? Or had it been suicide? She tried to recall the expression on his face when Hannah had dived from the Leonidas. Was there a trace of envy? Loss? Love? Would Hannah find out about his death? She hoped not. Where were the three girls now? Had they found their aunt, their mother’s sister? She folded the paper neatly. She owed Stannish Wheeler a lot. She owed him her life. If he had not grabbed that knife, Lila would have plunged it into her chest. She had her life. It was her life. Not anyone else’s. And now she had to decide what to do with it. It was, after all, the first year of a new century, the twentieth century! And for the first time in what seemed a long time she felt a little shiver of joy.

KATHRYN LASKY is no stranger to the sea, having crossed the Atlantic in a thirty-foot sailboat twice. Kathryn is the author of over fifty books, including the Guardians of Ga’Hoole series, which has sold more than four million copies and is now a major motion picture, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. Her books have received a Newbery Honor, a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and a Washington Post–Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award. She lives with her husband in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Copyright © 2015 by Kathryn Lasky

All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

First edition, May 2015

Cover design by Ellen Duda

e-ISBN 978-0-545-63404-5

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.