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Alice heard the widow return, but she didn’t open her eyes. After a time she heard a heavier boot on the stairs. She leaped up. The widow sat perched on the edge of her bed; Freeman came into the room and folded himself into the chair in silence.

“Speak, sir!” the widow cried. “Well or ill?”

Freeman lifted his eyes to Alice. What was it there, the old sadness, or a new? He said, “We must leave it to Alice to decide well or ill. It would appear Mr. Verley grows a conscience; either that or he grows nervous as he nears the hand of justice. He’s offered to release you from his service, Alice, his pair of conditions being that you be returned to Mr. Morton to serve out the remainder of your time there and that we file no countersuit against him. Apparently your first master has long repented letting you go, and Mr. Verley now wishes to repay his original kindness by returning you to him. While admitting no ill treatment of you he nonetheless forfeits any time penalties on account of your running away, and this is perhaps the greatest advantage to the offer. In addition to serving out the two years remaining on your contract you must make up the one year that transpired during your absence, but this is to be expected as a matter of course; in the ordinary way of things the court could, in law, order seven times that in penalty for running away. And I’m sure you see the further advantages to the offer. You need not go before the court; you need not run the slightest risk of a return to Mr. Verley; in fact, you need not distress yourself by seeing Mr. Verley at all.”

“But what of Verley?” the widow cried. “What punishment for Verley in this scheme?”

“Mr. Verley loses Alice’s time.”

“He loses her time! He loses her
time
?”

“We must think of it in practical terms. Had Alice sought recourse within the terms of the law, notifying the constable of the alleged abuse—”

“A constable who is no doubt Verley’s brother or uncle or cousin. And what is this talk of ‘alleged abuse’? Do you forget what you saw?”

“I speak only to a point of law. The abuse has not been proven and, indeed, it would be near impossible to do so to such degree as might justify a countersuit. We give nothing away there. In addition, although I’ve every confidence of successfully making Alice’s present defense, there is nevertheless the risk of events unforeseen. Here is an alternative to risk, and as such it must be presented to Alice; it must be left to her to choose.”

Alice said, “Mr. Otis made mention—”

“Yes, he did. And perhaps an Otis might turn a hangnail into a disfigurement, but I’ve no such confidence in my skill. ’Tis the rare case indeed where a master is ever charged with the crime of physical abuse against a servant without a witness present. The abuse may be evident, but how to prove it occurred at the master’s hand?”

“And you call this justice,” the widow said. “You sit before this child and call it by that name.”

“My dear widow, you mustn’t obscure the advantages for Alice in this offer of Mr. Verley’s. She serves out her time in a place where she was well treated, by her own admission, and for three years only. At the end of that time Mr. Morton will free her and she may go out and earn a wage. With this plan Alice may avoid returning to court—”

“An advantage which grows on me each minute. Very well, Alice, you’ve heard Mr. Freeman describe Verley’s magnificent offer of nothing, and as I imagine you’ve more sense than I, you’ll see how it serves you. Now, then, what say you?”

Alice did see how it served her, and yet she sat blinking at the widow and Freeman, full of barely captive tears. She could wonder at her misery, at her foolishness. Little more than a year ago she’d wanted nothing better than to return to Mr. Morton. He hadn’t helped her when she’d run to him, it was true, but neither had he harmed her, and if she thought back over the years she’d spent with him she could summon nothing but kind looks, honest care, attention beyond her deserts. In fact, her dream of a comfortable life for herself had never gone past finishing out her time and staying on with Mr. Morton at a wage. Where had that old idea of comfort gone? Had life with the widow taught her a better one? Had she been so great a fool as to take Freeman’s words
The widow and I will take you home
as meaning they would keep her there? As she was naught but servant to Mr. Morton, so she was naught but servant to the widow and Freeman, with the added difference that her time wasn’t theirs and never had been. Nor was it hers for three more years. And if she’d been so foolish as to spend a short minute taking Otis’s fantasies as fact, Freeman had now made it clear she should no longer do so. So what were her choices? To work for a Morton or to face a Verley, to face a chance of being returned to Verley. What choice, then?

Alice turned to Freeman. “I’ll go to Mr. Morton.”

The widow stood up and walked out.

T
he Negro girl served the widow and Freeman a good supper in the parlor below: pudding with berry sauce, toasted cheese and bread, pickles, and nuts. Alice saw the food as it left the kitchen where she sat at table, eating her bread and cheese alone; Mrs. Hatch and the boy had disappeared. As Alice ate and watched the Negro go back and forth she wondered about her; she wondered too about the Negro who had answered Otis’s door. What might it feel like to be enslaved, not for a set number of years, but for life? If Otis’s Negro had heard Otis use the word
free,
what could he possibly hope the word meant for him?

So intently was Alice’s mind occupied that when Mrs. Hatch’s Negro returned from one of her trips to the parlor and shouted, “You, there, what you do?” Alice started in her chair. But the Negro’s eye was fixed on the back door. Alice whirled around. A mulatto boy stood hanging on to the back door latch and scowling, first at the Negro girl, then at Alice.

“You Alice Cole?”

Alice nodded, too surprised to give proper thought to whether she should admit to the name or no. The boy wouldn’t come into the room but stood as he was and held out a paper toward her. Alice got up, took the paper, and unfolded it. She had expected it to be from Nate, but it wasn’t his hand. That was Alice’s first thought—that it wasn’t Nate’s hand—but her second thought took all else away as she realized whose hand it was. How odd, she thought, that she should know the hand she looked at better, despite the changes to it since she’d seen it scratched across a tablet at Mr. Morton’s table.

Alice,

I must speak to you go with the boy I beg you don’t doubt my intention it is for your good only.

A. Verley

Alice lifted her head to look at the boy, but he only waited to catch her eye before slipping back through the door. Alice read the note through once more.
A. Verley.
No longer the Nabby Morton of the brook, but the Abigail Verley of the poker, and yet there sat the hand of Nabby.

Go with the boy.
Why should Alice go with him? What might Nabby want with her? Alice could think of nothing to her benefit. She could think only of the poker. But why such a note? Why now? For a minute Alice wondered if Nabby had made her own escape from Verley, and if she had, what she could want with Alice, how it could be for Alice’s good only. Alice could think of no reason to go with the boy. And yet, however many times she might picture Nabby turning away from her, striking her, raising the poker to her, she couldn’t lose the other pictures: the shared tears, the shared brook, the shared horse-chase, the shared pie.

And the poker.

Alice got up, dropped the note into the fire, and followed the boy’s route out the door. The Negro girl watched her with little curiosity. What could it matter to her? Outside the door Alice saw no sign of the boy and felt something she might have counted as relief until she spied him stepping out of the shadow of the next building. Again without waiting for Alice he slipped into the alley beyond. Alice followed him. It seemed an ordinary alley, with the usual puddle of stinking water and heap of refuse; nothing could have belonged to it less than Nabby Verley, standing alone in a fine, plum-colored gown that had come from no one’s house loom. She stepped forward.

Alice stepped back.

“You’ve no call to fear me, Alice,” Nabby said. “I come only to give you warning.”

“You come late, then.”

Nabby took another step forward.

Alice took another back.

“You stupid girl,” Nabby said. “You stupid, stupid girl! Do you think I snuck away from my husband’s rooms just to give you a slap? Stand where you are, then, and make me scream across at you, but listen to what I say or suffer for it as your own chosen consequence.”

Alice stayed as she was.

“All right, then. Hear what I tell you, Alice. My father isn’t well. ’Tis a mortal ill laid on him. He’ll not live the month.”

“I’ll pray for him, then.”

Nabby stared at her. “My father deserves your prayers. Yours above all. But if you choose to take that tone you may keep them. I don’t come for your prayers. I understand my husband has made an offer to keep your case out of the courtroom. This is why I come, to warn you not to accept this offer. Are you such a fool indeed that you don’t understand what my father’s illness means to your life circumstance?”

Alice considered. She said, “When your father dies my time will pass to your brother Elisha, at the westward.”

Nabby blinked at her. “But, of course, you don’t know about that, either. My brother and his wife and children were murdered in their beds by a pack of Indians unwilling to call the war over. ’Twas this news sent my father to his own bed, where the lung fever overtook him. Now do you see what my father’s death means for you?”

Alice didn’t. And then she did. “It means I shall be returned to your husband.”

“So you’re not stupid after all. In fact, I never thought you were, and certainly my father didn’t. ‘What a clever child! See how quick she smiles! See how bright her eye!’ Yes, my husband is my father’s heir, and if your lawyer agrees to my husband’s proposal, you’ll end up returned to him. You see how well he plans? This way he need not risk exposing himself to any embarrassing counterclaims you wish to lay on him in the courtroom. But don’t think my husband forms this plan because you continue to bewitch him; he wants you back only to make you pay for running off from him. You may trust me in this, Alice; you see, I’ve come to know him better than I used to do. He will make you pay for running off from him.”

Yes, Alice could believe that Nabby knew her husband something better now. She looked her over for signs of the kind of wear the man had given Alice but found nothing beyond a certain pinched look around the mouth, a hunch in her shoulders that hadn’t been there before.

Nabby reached into her pocket and withdrew a small, rectangular pouch, lumpily rounded at the bottom. She extended her hand to Alice. “Take this. ’Tis a letter to my father’s cousin, Mrs. Story, in New York, a mantua maker; she’ll take you into her house and put you to work in her shop. The ship
Boston
is tied up at the long wharf; you’ll find more than enough money in there for your passage and a bribe to the captain to ignore your lack of paper, but you must go now; they sail this tide.” When Alice didn’t reach for the pouch, Nabby shook it at her. “Take it! Now! Be gone! I must get back before I’m missed.”

Be gone.
Those same words, thrust at Alice a second time. What could it be but a sign? Alice stepped forward and opened her hand under the pouch; Nabby let go, and a pleasant weight dropped into Alice’s palm. But despite Nabby’s desire to be gone, she stood as she was, and Alice stood as she was, the silence expanding between them, as if in an effort to push them apart where their feet wouldn’t. Alice didn’t know what held Nabby there, but for her it seemed more words were owed. What words, though? Did a bag of money cancel a blow? Did an absent thanks cancel an absent apology? Did they indeed stand now with nothing owed?

Nabby stirred herself first. “You’ve aged in your year gone, I see it in you, Alice, and yet it only lights you more. I wonder if you even now understand the power of that light. I, who cannot love you; I who must go at once or risk all peace; here I stand, gazing at you as if at the last ember in the fire.”

Alice said again, “I shall pray for your father,” but not as she’d said it before, and Nabby dipped her head in quiet acknowledgment. She stepped around Alice and set off up the alley with the same quickness of step that Alice remembered, if not the same life; as Alice watched she tried to imagine what might come next for her. Surely the money in Alice’s palm had been stolen somehow from Verley; just as surely he would miss it, but would he believe his wife possessed of enough courage to have stolen it herself? If he remembered the old Nabby, the one who had lain with him in her father’s front room before their marriage contract had been signed and laughed about it later, perhaps he would believe it. Then what would he do?

Nabby disappeared around the corner. Alice loosed the strings that tied the pouch and upended it over her palm. Four pounds spilled into it. She closed her hands around the coins, unfolded the letter. It began
Honored Madam
and went on to describe Alice as honest and hardworking; it asked the woman to take Alice in as “a favor to the writer and a favor to yourself, for the girl will serve you well.”

Mrs. Story. High Street. Alice took the happy-sounding names as a sign. She tried to picture New York, but she could see only the Pownalborough Nate had described: a new courthouse, a fort, mills. She thought of Nate and what it might mean that she’d not heard from him, whether he had changed his mind about urging Alice to come along. It didn’t matter, of course; Alice couldn’t risk a Pownalborough with a runaway sixteen-year-old boy; but what of a New York, another mistress, another job, another home far, far away from Verley?

Alice tried again to picture the streets of New York, but this time the streets of Boston thwarted her, or rather one particular street, the one she’d been knocked into on her arrival a year earlier. She saw the street as if she stood in it, and the man with the white handkerchief who had picked her up out of the mud, the woman with the scarred hands who had returned her basket to her. She thought back to what she had wondered about them when she’d first seen them and what she knew about them now; she pictured them discovering her absence and what they would say, how they would look. The widow angry. This face she knew. But what of Freeman? She saw Freeman’s face filled with something worse than anger, something akin to the old hurt he’d shown over Otis’s defection, or Parliament’s ignoring all their carefully reasoned petitions.

Alice blinked hard to erase the image of Freeman’s face, but the only thing that seemed to blot it was Verley—Verley beside her as they stood before the justices—which was what lay ahead of Alice, now that the Morton plan had gone awry. Alice clutched the hard, comforting edges of the coins, gripped the paper till it crumpled. Mrs. Story. High Street. In New York she need not worry over Verley; in New York she need never see Verley again.

Alice walked to the end of the alley and stood, looking down King Street toward the wharf. She closed her eyes and gave her head a little shake to loose the image of Verley, but the image had stuck hard. As it would stick in New York. As it would stick in Satucket. But who had offered her Satucket? No one. New York was the offer now. She would be safe in New York. And yet thinking the word
safe,
Alice found herself looking the other way on King Street, toward the inn, toward the people waiting there. Toward one person waiting there.
You may trust me with Suffolk as you trusted me with Barnstable.

Alice pushed Nabby’s coins and letters back inside the pouch and pushed the pouch deep into her pocket. She turned right, toward the inn.

SHE FOUND THEM
in the parlor, Freeman frowning over the newspaper, the widow turning the pages of an almanac, too fast, surely, to have caught more than the advertisements. Freeman’s legs were so long that they canted up toward his knees before sloping down to the ground; a child could slide from his knee in either direction: to lap or floor. He looked up and saw Alice, but his frown barely eased; Alice was part of his troubles just now.

She stepped into the room. “I must speak with you, sir.”

The widow looked up and set down her almanac; something about the gesture disturbed Alice. Did the widow think herself included in that ‘sir’? Did she think herself entitled to share all with the man, including Alice’s private conversation? A violent rush of emotion came at Alice unaware, streaking through her heart and out the other side, imbedding itself in her spleen. She wanted to be left alone with Freeman as she’d been left alone with him at Barnstable. She wanted the widow gone from there.

Alice turned her back to the widow and faced Freeman. She told Freeman most of it just as it had been: the Negro boy’s message, the meeting with Nabby, Mr. Morton’s illness, Verley’s plan to get her back again. She didn’t mention the money, or the letter, or the
Boston
, perhaps tied up at the long wharf yet, perhaps already sailed on the tide.

When she’d finished, Freeman peered at her in some puzzlement. “I looked into Morton’s situation back in May. It appears I must do so again. We might consider Mrs. Verley to hold her own reasons for wishing you gone. We mustn’t take her word as sworn.”

There Alice experienced a second, surprising, violent surge in her emotions. She didn’t care whether Nabby told the truth. She didn’t care whether Mr. Morton was well or ill. She was tired of carrying Verley around inside her head through all her life. She looked at Freeman, making note of another small shift in his features that had turned puzzlement back to frown. Oh, how she knew that face now!
You may trust me with Suffolk as you trusted me with Barnstable.
She may. She could. She would. She said, “I’d prefer to go to court as we’d planned, sir. To settle it. For good and all.”

Alice stood and waited for the shakes to come, but nothing happened. Something in the gaze Freeman fixed on her, as if he’d begun to form a new idea of her, made her feel wildly brave. Strong. Why, she had just made Verley do something against his will, and not the other way around! Verley hadn’t wanted to go to court and now he must, because of something she had just said! She, Alice Cole!

Freeman continued to study Alice. After a time he gave her a brief nod. Alice didn’t know that she could call it a nod of admiration, or even approval, but it was a regard of a new kind, and it was all.
All.
She turned away to keep it frozen in her mind just as it was and climbed the stairs, leaving the pair to talk of her as they would below.