“Do you?” asked Ned. “What sort of goods?”
“Mostly silk and dry goods,” Johnnie said, helping himself to a slice of pie. “I get opium for Uncle Rob, spices for Ma to sell to grocers. And I send silk from India: overland—to my sister, Sarah, in Venice—and by sea—to here.” He looked up, as Rowan awkwardly held a dish. “Hello, who’s this?”
She did not bow and lower her eyes as a trained servant would have done. She did not wait for her owner to answer for her like a slave. She met his gaze like an equal. “I am Rowan. I came with your uncle Ned.”
“A slave?” He turned to Ned.
“Certainly not.”
“I choose to serve him,” Rowan told Johnnie.
“You make it sound like he’s honored!” He smiled at her.
“He is not honored,” Rowan corrected gravely. “And I am no slave. We have an agreement.”
“A native Leveller,” Rob observed quietly to his mother, Alinor. “I think Uncle Ned has met his match.”
“And are we equals?” Johnnie asked Rowan, smiling. “All equals? My great-uncle Ned, whom you agree to serve; my uncle Rob, a physician; and my ma and grandmother, who own this wharf; and Captain Shore, who owns the ship at the quay outside? Do you have no betters?”
Rowan glanced at Alinor to see if she might answer, and at her nod, she quietly replied: “Sir, I am very sure you are a great family. But I was born one of the People. And we are the first to see the sun in the morning.”
“How very Copernican!” Rob was amused by this exchange.
“D’you even know where the sun rises?” Rowan challenged Johnnie.
He hesitated. “There, isn’t it?” Johnnie pointed to his right.
“Isn’t that north?” Rob asked.
“It’s downriver,” Alys told her son. “Fancy you not knowing!”
Captain Shore laughed. “Just as well for you all that I know!”
Alinor pointed due east.
“It is that way,” Rowan agreed.
“But it doesn’t matter to us,” Johnnie pointed out. “We go by addresses in London, the names of streets, we don’t navigate by the sky.”
“I don’t know your streets,” she admitted. “But I know where I am under the sky. And if your streets tumble down…”
“Some of them were burned to nothing,” Alinor pointed out.
“Then there is only the sky. And you will not know where you are. But I always will.” She took the empty dish from Johnnie and went back to the kitchen as Ned gave a little crow of laughter.
“You think you’re having an ordinary talk, and suddenly you’re on to the stars, or the words of the wind.”
“What’re you going to do with him, though?” Rob asked, as Susie followed Rowan out of the room. “Clearly, he can’t serve.”
Alinor and Ned, brother and sister, exchanged a hidden smile at her son. “Ah, Rob, how can you be such a great physician and yet blind?” Alinor asked him. “D’you not see that’s a girl?”
“A girl? A native girl?” Alys exclaimed. “I didn’t know!”
“Bless me!” Captain Shore said.
“But why’s she dressed like that?” Johnnie demanded.
“It was easier that she pass as a boy while we were traveling,” Nedsaid. “And now I have to find somewhere that she can be safe as a girl, and work that she can do as a maid. I can’t take a girl where I am going.”