But now, in time of peace, no stirring action beckoned, and any large prize would run aground trying to make the port. I waved to the stranded sailors as we passed, and the sailors waved back. Within minutes the sea of reeds fell away, and our little boat pitched on the open sea. Sun-dappled spindrift flew over the bows and stung my face. Kevin swung onto the new tack, southwest, and the lugger raced along under a freshening wind. I stretched out along the thwart.
“The sun above, the sail full, the horizon boundless,” I said. “Is it so strange that I prefer this to the practice of law?”
Kevin looked at me from beneath the broad brim of his hat. “You don’t care to be a lawyer, then?”
I considered this, and shrugged. “It is a path superior to many,” I said. “And I must walk some path, a path to take me into the wide world.”
“Your father said, did he not, that you enjoyed argument so much, that you might as well do it for a living?”
I made a broad gesture and invited fantasy to fly into my words. “I could become a famous advocate in the courts of royal Selford, or a member of the House of Burgesses in water-girdled Howel, or a judge whose wisdom echoes down the generations. . . .”
Kevin grinned. “Why not all three?”
“Why not?” I echoed. “But yet, on such a day as this, I find myself stifled by the thought of spending my life in dusty legal chambers, or pleading the case of some poacher or profiteer before a drowsy judge—or for that matter drowsing on the bench myself, listening to advocates monotonize their cases.”
Kevin laughed. “Monotonize. You just made that word up, didn’t you?”
“Ay.” I shrugged. “It’s a little unrefined, I admit, far from my best.” I looked at Kevin. “Your father already sends you to sea, to do business abroad and meet with his affinity.”
Kevin made a face. “And to encounter young ladies, with whose fathers my own father wants a connection.”
“Your plight does not stir my sympathy.”
“You have not met the ladies in question. Either they simper and say nothing, or they demand to know how much money I can expect to inherit, and how much of it will be spent on them.” Kevin shivered, then looked out to the blue horizon. “If you cannot abide the law, you know, you could run away to sea. After twenty years, provided you survive war, pirates, and tempest, you might find yourself the proud captain of a crumster, carrying tubs of tallow from port to port.”
I made my sad-clown face. “It is a mournful picture you draw, cousin.”
A gust heeled the boat, and Kevin drew the tiller toward me to keep the boat on the wind. I leaned out over the rail to keep the boat in balance. The gust faded, and as the boat righted, Kevin’s look turned thoughtful.
“My father and I need lawyers now and again,” he said. “Contracts must be drawn up, debts collected, defaulters pursued. We might be able to employ you—not in Ethlebight, where old Clinton handles our needs, but in other ports.”
I sat up with sudden interest. “Boats and the law!” I said. “Delightful duality!”
“I’ll speak to my father. But when does your apprenticeship end?”
“Eight or twelve months, though it’s really up to Master Dacket.”
“And of course, you’ll have to avoid jail or the pillory for seducing the Mermaid.”
I preferred not to discuss Annabel. All too well could I imagine her beneath her angry father’s belt, or rod, or him hustling her off to a nunnery. There was nothing I could do to prevent it, for a father possessed absolute legal authority over his daughter. If I could somehow break into the Greyson home, free Annabel, and run with her, we might flee far enough to avoid her father’s wrath—but only to starve to death in some distant country, without friends, support, or money.
Again it occurred to me that fathers, as a breed, are unreasonable. Greyson had turned his own house upside down, pursued me over half the town in the middle of the night, and doubtless now was straining his imagination for ways to punish his daughter—and all because of a harmless dalliance. What mad fury had possessed him, and why? He was doing far greater damage to Annabel’s reputation than ever I could have.
Why, I wondered, are the young denied the opportunity to be young? Why should we not love, and be carefree, and enjoy our pleasures before age and care ruin them?
I thought of Annabel again, and considered that if I were a character in a poem by Bello or Tarantua, I would be in agonies of shame and worry, perhaps rolling like a dog on the floor while weeping and calling Annabel’s name—and yet I was not weeping.
Was I deficient in some crucial element of character, that I did not feel such extremities of anguish? Should I now be rending my garments, or hurling myself into the sea to drown?
Yet I could not see how my drowning would improve the situation in any way. Annabel would be no better off for my death, or my torn clothing would make no impression on her father, nor for that matter any loud displays of anguish. He would simply thrash me with the same fury with which he had threatened his daughter.
I had not meant to do any harm. Surely, intentions should count in these matters.
Because I did not wish my thoughts to dwell on Annabel, or on my own lack of merit, I turned the conversation to admiralty law, and so discoursed on jetsam, merit salvage, carriage hook to hook, inherent vice, and laches, estoppel, and actions in rem, or “against all the world.” Kevin listened patiently—he probably knew much of this already—but if he were to trust me with some of his family’s business, I wanted to demonstrate my own thorough knowledge of the subject.
To leeward of us were islands with prosaic names: Cow Island, Pine Island, and Mutton Island. At high tide, the islands were surrounded by a turbulent sea, but when the tide raced away, the retreating waters revealed mucky causeways that connected the islands to the mainland. The low isles were a lush green and dotted with flecks of white, the flocks of sheep that formed most of the islands’ population. Mutton Island was well named; there were many more sheep than cows on Cow Island, and more mutton than pines on Pine Island. The salt grass that grew on the flat country around Ethlebight was perfect grazing for sheep, and produced a distinct flavor and tenderness in the meat that had made Ethlebight mutton famous throughout all Duisland.
Kevin and I shared the jug of cider and bites of gingerbread as we passed the first two islands. Kevin wanted to talk about Annabel, and I kept diverting him until we took the channel into Mutton Island. We moored at the pier, and I left behind in a locker the cap that marked me as an apprentice lawyer.
I did, however, take the jug of cider, and Kevin bore the satchel of food.
We gave the mooring line enough slack so the boat could ride the tide up and down, then walked along onto the island. A shepherd, wearing a big straw hat and carrying a staff over his shoulder, gave us an incurious look from amid his flock. His dog, far more interested, stood alert on stiff legs, eyes fixed on the intruders.
We took the only path inland. White clouds of sheep drifted around us. The island was mostly salt-grass meadow broken by clusters of gray stone, and ahead I saw quickbeams and maples planted as a windbreak, the maples already scarlet in the early autumn, and the green leaves of the quickbeams right at the cusp of going gold.
We passed into the trees and saw in a glade a modest country house of red brick, probably intended as a summer retreat for Sir Stanley’s in-laws. Brown brick outbuildings and empty paddocks for sheep stood dark in the shadows of the trees. I paused in the shade of a maple and considered my approach.