The boy indicated he did by rolling his eyes heavenwards and murmuring, “. . . where they keep all them doxies . . .” He grabbed the penny Sebastian offered and disappeared.

“He’s supposed to get a farthing piece,” Jess said.

“I’ve set him up for life then, haven’t I? Do you enjoy this sort of thing?”

“Buying fish? I do, actually. Most places I live they don’t even let me in the kitchen. It must be three years since I bought fish. I mean, one fish, not a boatload, dried.” She began threading her way briskly through the stalls, around piled vegetables and crates of live chickens and the baskets of fish that spilled out into the narrow walkways between the vendors. “You’ve ruined my reputation in there,” she said. “I’ll never be able to go back. You have them all convinced I’m your dolly mop.”

“That’ll teach you to chatter broad Cockney to them.” Jess had dark circles under her eyes again. They’d both been up all the night. Flora’s baby, a boy, had been born with the sun. Healthy chap. Loud pair of lungs on him.

A little girl sat with her tattered skirts spread out, selling violets at the edge of the market. He flipped her a sixpence and picked a bunch and presented them to Jess. She slowed down after that. They walked along and she turned them in her hands and didn’t seem certain what to do with them.

“You didn’t need to give her sixpence,” she said at last. “Pointless, too. The old lady who runs her will just take it away from her.”

“You’re supposed to say, ‘Thank you very much’ and hold them to your nose and smile. Hasn’t anyone ever given you violets before?”

They were out of the market, heading down one of the side streets that led to the river. She smelled the flowers. But it wasn’t a smile, more a considering and puzzled frown. “I don’t think anyone ever did give me violets.”

He thought about that bunch of dried flowers he’d found when he searched through her clothing. Daisies. Her angel-faced lover had given her summer flowers, all those years ago. They’d been nuzzling each other like puppies all through haymaking, he supposed.

She said, “I never sold flowers. Picking pockets was so much more profitable.”

“I have the most enlightening conversations with you. Where are we going?”

“I don’t know where you’re off to. I’m going to the office. I have a hundred and thirty cubic yards of empty cargo space for Boston next Wednesday and nothing bought for it.”

“What will you buy?” They were down to the quay. The street was broad and quiet here, with only a few passersby. Wind blew off the river and the poplars planted in a row beside the Thames turned silver green leaves back and forth. A barge glided steadily downriver. A waterman in a long, shallow black boat sculled across higher up, near Westminster Bridge. A calm, sunny day.

“That is the question, isn’t it? Tea, I think. I can trust myself to negotiate a deal in oolong. You cannot imagine how difficult it is to have my father locked up like this. I’m not a tenth the dealer he is. If he’d been buying those fish, we’d have got them for sixpence.”

She said this with perfect seriousness. The wall along the river was a broad, smooth stone ledge here. She ran the bunch of violets lightly along it, thinking about getting the fish a little cheaper or breaking into his office or buying a hundred thirty cubic yards of tea.

A pair of stone lions guarded the flight of steps down to the river. His Jess was absorbed, gazing up into the sky, a far-away expression on her face. Dozens of swallows wheeled and swooped above the river, riding the warm winds. He slowly edged her to the wall until she sat, practically in the lap of the nearest stone lion.

“Those aren’t sparrows, are they?” she said.

“Those are swallows, Jess.”

She was still being a servant girl or a pickpocket or some other Cockney thing inside. She sat on the ledge and drew her knees up close, letting her chin rest on the back of her forearm. This time, when she lifted the violets up and smelled them, her lips curved. “Swallows,” she said, memorizing. “What do you do with violets after someone gives them to you?”

He took the violets from her hands and slipped the string off the stems and let the flowers loose in her lap. “You enjoy them.”

She grinned at that, happy and relaxed for a change. That wouldn’t last long. Not with what they had to say to each other.

He pulled the oranges out of his pockets and tossed one to her. She caught it neatly and broke into it with her thumbnail and began to peel it, looking at him with her usual level regard.

“Do you know, you can do the same thing my father can. Bargain with people. Make them do what you want. I mean, look at me . . .” She held up her hands, with the orange and orange peel, and wordlessly indicated her lap, filled with violets. “I have three thousand and six things to do today and I’m already late. Why am I sitting here eating oranges with you?”

“No breakfast?”

She shook her head. “Sheer persuasiveness on your part.”

She was so beautiful sitting there. He’d have to be made out of stone like that lion behind her not to be aroused by her. She was taking such delight eating that orange. She’d picked up one of the violets and was staring into it. He could see her discovering all the separate streaks of color in the heart and the oblong dots there. If they’d been in the middle of a field somewhere, with all the time in the world, she’d have told him about it, as if it were the first time in history anyone had noticed what a violet looked like. He’d have showed her there were just as many things to discover in her own body as in the heart of any flower.

“Tell me why you went to see Lazarus.”

The brightness of her closed up, like a flower closing. Her mouth got obstinate. She was beautiful when she was soft, looking at flowers and smiling. He liked her like this, too. Mulish.

“What did you ask Lazarus for? You came all that way and you risked your neck. What was it?”

She didn’t want to say. At last, she shrugged. “Sailing dates. Lazarus keeps records of all that. Everybody who pays the pence gets writ down. It’s all there—names, ships, dates.”

Every ship, large and small, paid the pence to Lazarus, from the schooners anchored in the Pool of London to the coal barges in Stepney. “He keeps records?”

“Of course. He’d get stole blind otherwise. There’s just nobody honest.” She brooded on that. “I’m not saying he keeps banker’s records. Every couple of months they toss them in a back room. Some get lost. But he has accounts going back years.”

And that was the last, missing piece. Lazarus kept the records nobody else did, the listing of all the ships in London. Amazing. That was why she’d walked back into the padding ken and bargained with that monster. “Get word to Lazarus. Tell him to send them to the Admiralty tomorrow. You’ll find out for sure whether I’m Cinq, then.”

“Guess so.” Her eyes were gold, like old coins, when she looked at him.

“I wish you believed me today.”

“That’s the trouble. I do believe you.” An organ grinder a few streets away was endlessly repeating a short, discordant tune. Jess looked away and plucked at the fabric of her dress. “Feels like betraying Papa, when I trust you this much.” She still had a lapful of flowers, but it seemed she didn’t want them there any longer. She began picking them up and letting them fall, one by one, into the river. “I’ll know tomorrow, won’t I?”

They sat and watched the river about three barges’ worth, saying nothing. There was a coy, unreliable southwest wind winding past them and a high tide, just turning after the slack. Far downriver, near the Tower, amid a forest of tall masts, a square stern brig upped anchor and let the tide pick her up. They’d dropped the foresail to catch wind enough to maneuver. Without a glass it was too far away for him to read her name.

Jess broke the silence. “Lazarus would have found some way to keep me if you hadn’t come. I like to think he wouldn’t have, but . . .” She shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “He’s strong. And the old life tempts me. It wouldn’t have been easy to get away from him a second time. I owe you myself.”

“You wouldn’t have worked for him again, but you might have suffered for it. And I would have come to get you out. Jess, why did you sell yourself to Lazarus?”

“I wish I could figure out how your mind works. How did we start this?” She scrubbed a hand across her face, looking perplexed. “That was a long time ago. Let’s talk about something else.”

“You’re supposed to be grateful to me. Prove it. Tell me.”

She gave that little quirk upward at the side of her mouth. There wasn’t a more expressive face in London. “You’re doing it again, Sebastian . . . getting me to do things. Sometimes you sneak them out of me artful, and sometimes you just ask. I never know which it’s going to be.”

“This time it’s just asking. I’ll be artful later.”

“It’s all very sordid. You don’t want to hear about it.”

“If I didn’t want to hear, I wouldn’t ask.”

“Oh Lord, if you want to know . . .” Twenty feet away, a seagull swooped down and scooped up one of those violets floating out to sea. A second later it dropped the flower and flew off, looking disgruntled. Jess watched, while she mulled everything over and decided to tell him. “I was real young. Eight, I guess. My father went off to France and got himself arrested. We didn’t know that. We just knew he didn’t come back. I did my best, but the money ran out. My mother and I ended up . . . there.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, downriver, toward the worst of London’s slums. “There was a pimp who came to get my mother. I ended up killing him.”