Kannice would have told Ethan that this was all the more reason to send the silver-haired stranger away, to follow through on his plan to avoid the streets for a time. But that had never been his way.
“Have you approached Sephira Pryce about this?” he asked.
For the first time, Berson’s man seemed unnerved. His face paled, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “No,” he said. “Mister Berson sent me here.”
“Has he had dealings with Miss Pryce in the past?”
“It’s no’ my place t’ say,” the man said. He seemed unsettled by the question. “Mister Berson sent me here.”
“You already said that.”
“An’ will ya accept his offer?” He shifted in his chair, then straightened, regaining some measure of his composure. “Most men o’ yar… station would leap at th’ chance t’ work for Mister Berson.”
“Most men of my station wouldn’t be offered the opportunity.”
“Ya make my point for me, Mister Kaille.”
“Right, but what I’m wondering…” He stopped in midsentence, staring at the man.
“Yes?”
Of course. It came to him in a rush, along with his memory of the conjuring he had felt the night before. He should have understood immediately. If he was going to risk angering Pryce, he couldn’t afford to be this slow-witted.
“All right,” Ethan said. “I’ll do it.”
The stranger looked genuinely surprised. “Ya will?”
“Aye. I’ll need a description of the brooch and some information about Mister Berson’s daughter-where she was killed, and exactly when; where she had been, and where she was going. If possible I’d like to see her corpse.”
He had expected that this would trouble the man, but the stranger merely nodded, as if he had expected Ethan to request as much. What did it say about the streets of Boston that a merchant’s man should be more disturbed by the mention of Sephira Pryce than by the dead body of his employer’s daughter?
“She’s a’ King’s Chapel,” the man said, “downstairs in th’ crypt.”
“The crypt? She’s already been buried?”
“No. Tha’s where her body was taken. She’s t’ be buried on th’ grounds there.”
Naturally. The King’s Chapel Burying Ground was the oldest cemetery in Boston, and the only one a man like Abner Berson would have deemed appropriate for the interment of his child.
“Mister Caner, the rector there, knows yah’re comin’,” the man went on. “Once yah’ve seen her, yah’re t’ come t’ th’ Bersons’ home.”
“All right,” Ethan said, although he was already having second thoughts. He had his reasons for taking the job, but he had also had his reasons for refusing at first. Perhaps the stranger read the doubt in Ethan’s eyes, because he stood, put on his hat, and strode to the tavern entrance, as if determined to leave the Dowser before Ethan could change his mind. He paused by the door and looked back at Ethan.
“Until later, Mister Kaille,” he said, and left.
For several moments Ethan sat staring at the door, wrestling with the urge to run after the stranger and give him back Berson’s money. At last, knowing that by now he had waited too long, he reached for the pouch, which still sat on the table. He held it in his palm, enjoying the weight of it, the soft jangling of the coins. Then he stood and slipped it into his pocket.
Turning toward the bar, he froze. Kannice was watching him, her brow furrowed, her lips pressed in a thin line.
He walked over to her. “You have something to say to me?”
“I thought you weren’t taking any jobs for a while.”
“This one’s different,” he said. “I couldn’t say no.”
She didn’t respond.
“That man works for Abner Berson. His daughter’s been killed.”
“I heard,” she said, her voice flat. Ethan had been sure she would have much to say about him working on a killing, but if she did, she kept it to herself.
“They want me because there were spells involved. He didn’t say it, but I’m sure. I think I might even have felt the conjuring that killed her. That’s why Berson didn’t go to Sephira Pryce.”
“And do you have to work every job that calls for a conjurer?”
“Would you rather I left it to Sephira or the sheriff? They know nothing about spells. Or rather, they know just enough to cast suspicion on every speller in Boston, myself included. It has to be me, Kannice. I’m the only one who knows enough about conjuring to find the truth.”
Kannice went back to wiping the bar, rubbing at the wood with such fury that Ethan half expected her to take off the finish.
“She died last night,” Ethan said. “Berson’s man made it sound like she was killed by the same mob that destroyed Hutchinson’s house.”
She frowned, but she didn’t look at him. “You don’t believe that any more than I do,” she said quietly. “The men who wrecked those houses might be fools, but they’re not murderers.”
“Not all of them. But one of them might be.”
Kannice cast a hard look his way, but continued to clean the bar.
“I have to go,” he told her at last.
She nodded, a strand of hair falling over her forehead. He started to reach out to brush it away, then stopped himself.
“Will you be back here tonight?” she asked, pushing the strand away herself.
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
Her frown deepened.
“Anyway,” he went on. “It’ll probably be a late night.”
She straightened, her eyes meeting his. She draped the polishing cloth over her shoulder and tipped her head to the side. “If you change your mind…”
“Aye,” he said. Both of them knew he wouldn’t. He stood there another moment, neither of them speaking. Finally, Kannice went behind the bar, and retreated into the kitchen.
Ethan left the tavern.
The warmth of the previous night had given way to a cooler morning. The sky was a clear, bright blue, and a freshening wind blew in off the harbor, carrying the smell of fish and brine, and sweeping away the heavy pall of smoke that had been inescapable the night before. The streets were crowded with carriages and men and women on foot making their way with grim purpose to shops or to the markets at Faneuil Hall.
When Ethan first came to Boston, twenty-one years before, he thought he had never seen a finer place. The city was small by English standards, but it was clean and alive. Its streets bustled with activity. It was everything Bristol, his home in England, was not.
Two decades later, hard times and war had taken their toll. Every day, Boston felt more like the sad, gray cities of England. It had grown torpid, weak. Where once it had been the leading city of British North America, it was now the indolent older sister to New York and Philadelphia, surpassed by its younger, more vibrant siblings.
King’s Chapel sat at the corner of Treamount and School Streets, only a few blocks from the Dowsing Rod. It was one of the older churches in Boston, though it had been rebuilt only ten years before, its wooden exterior enclosed within a new granite facade. The wisdom of that choice had been borne out in the years since, as Boston was ravaged by fires, including one that began on Cornhill and swept down to the wharves, damaging literally hundreds of shops and homes. Some had suggested that the rebuilt church should now be called Stone Chapel, but it remained King’s Chapel to most in the city.
The still incomplete structure had a ponderous look, much at odds with the more graceful lines of the older churches in the North and South Ends. But the chapel was the first in the colonies to affiliate itself with the Church of England. Its congregation included some of the wealthiest and most influential families living in the central part of the city, particularly those with close ties to the Crown.