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dead Indian and worked it back and forth like a child trying to twist a green apple from a tree. The bird came up with the eye in its beak and cocked its head at Prudence, as if concerned that she would try to take its prize. The eye had stared mutely, accusingly, in her direction before going down the crow’s gullet.
    My daughter   . . .
    “Prudie?” Anne said, worry touching her voice.
    Prudence gave a shudder, fighting to recover her wits. “For what other purpose would Master Bailey bring an Indian if not to meet the Nipmuk and Abenaki? Peter Church knows the tongue.”
    “He didn’t bring an Indian, he brought a Quaker. To be a thorn in our side. Master Bailey is here to disrupt and agitate. He’s not here out of concern for your husband, believe me.”
    Prudence had no doubt some of that was true. The Crown had ever chafed at New England’s liberties. There were some in London, she knew, who blamed the colonies for the war with the natives, and suggested that King Charles should appoint a royal governor to prevent future conflagrations.
    But James had known her husband. The two of them were apparently confidants. Benjamin had mentioned the man on several occasions—the two of them had served the king together while in France—and she’d once caught a glimpse of a letter back to London addressed from her husband to Master Bailey.
    “I have to take a chance.”
    “I wish you wouldn’t agitate yourself.”
    “They never should have made me take that chapter out. It was the truth.”
    “It was speculation,” Anne said. “Later proven false. Men saw your daughter dead—they reported the sad truth.”
    “Those men were Nipmuk. They were in turn killed, and we have their testimony from white men.”
    “How does that make a difference?”
    “If Mary is dead, then what happened to her body?”
    “I don’t know. You know how the savages behaved—your own words are testimony enough. They tortured and maimed. Even ate them, the brutes.”
    “They tortured men,” Prudence said firmly, “never children.”
    “You’re telling me they didn’t kill children?”
    “Well, yes,” Prudence admitted. “But not like that, not once they’d taken the children prisoner. That isn’t their way.”
    Anne fixed her with a look, and Prudence closed her mouth. Her memories of captivity were brutal, horrific, but occasionally mixed with moments of surprising kindness, even civility. She’d tried to call forth that contradiction with her weak, imperfect writing, a narrative that had gripped the colonies. But what the people read eagerly by candlelight, shared from home to home, was not her full story. Men—the reverend, the printer in Boston—had taken out parts. They didn’t fit, didn’t make sense. Those things, the men presumed, were the product of a fevered mind, confused into error by the horror of her experience.
    “Is it your only copy of the missing pages?” Anne asked at last.
    “Yes. I have never copied them.”
    “Then that will be the end of it.”
    “You think so?”
    “Master Bailey is a servant of the Crown. Even if he believes you, he has no time or interest in chasing down the fancies of a grieving widow and mother.”
    “I hope you’re wrong. I hope he’s not so mercenary and unfeeling as that. But if you’re right, if he tosses them in the fire with a laugh, it’s still all here.” Prudence tapped her head. “I’ll write it down fresh.”
    Anne sighed. “Prudie, it has been almost a year.”
    “Make it ten,” Prudence said stubbornly. “I don’t care.”
    “A year is enough. You’re still young and pretty. There are men in Boston in want of a wife. Good men, strong men. Some even strong enough to rule you with a light touch.”
    Anne said it with a smile in her voice. Surely, she meant no malice, only to gently point out what they both knew already, that Prudence was headstrong and stubborn to a fault. But the younger sister bristled nonetheless.
    Anne put an arm around