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parishioners.”
    “A military man’s young wife,” said Ladies’ Man Lars, but Jack must have misheard him; the boy was still staring, open-mouthed, at the woman’s nipple in the martini glass, as dumbstruck as if he were watching television. He didn’t see his mother give Lars a not-around-Jack look.
    “So he’s left town?” Alice asked.
    “You should inquire at the church,” Ole told her.
    “I don’t suppose you heard where he went,” Alice said.
    “I heard Stockholm, but I don’t know,” Ole answered.
    Lars, who had finished with the Swede’s sea serpent, said: “He won’t get a decent tattoo in Stockholm. The Swedes come here to get tattooed.” Lars looked quickly at the Swede. “Isn’t that right?”
    The Swede proceeded to pull up the left leg of his pants. “I got this in Stockholm,” he said.
    There on his calf was quite a good tattoo—good enough to have been one of Tattoo Ole’s or Daughter Alice’s. A dagger with an ornate green-and-gold handle had been thrust through a rose; both the petals of the rose and the hilt of the dagger were edged with orange, and twisted around the rose and the dagger was a green-and-red snake. (Evidently the Swede was fond of serpents.)
    Jack could tell by his mom’s expression that she admired the needlework; even Tattoo Ole agreed it was good. Ladies’ Man Madsen was speechless with envy, or perhaps he was imagining his near-certain future in the family fish business.
    “Doc Forest did it,” the Swede said.
    “What shop is he in?” Ole asked.
    “I didn’t know Stockholm had a shop!” said Lars.
    “He works out of his home,” the Swede reported.
    Jack knew that Stockholm was not on their itinerary; it wasn’t on his mom’s list.
    Alice was gingerly bandaging the boy with the sore ribs. He had wanted the Rose of Jericho on his rib cage so that the petals of the flower would move when he breathed.
    “Promise me you won’t show this to your mother,” Alice said to the boy. “Or if you do, don’t tell her what it is. Make sure she doesn’t take a long look.”
    “I promise,” the boy told her.
    The old sailor was flexing his forearm, admiring how the contractions of his muscles moved the mermaid’s tail, which still needed to be colored in.
    It was almost Christmas; the tattoo business was good. But the apparent news that William had escaped—to Stockholm, of all places—did little to lift Alice’s holiday spirits, or Jack’s.
    And it was always dark when they left the shop on Nyhavn, even at four or five in the afternoon. Whatever time it was, the restaurants on Nyhavn were already cooking. By now Jack and Alice could distinguish the smells: the rabbit, the leg of deer, the wild duck, the roasted turbot, the grilled salmon, even the delicate veal. They could smell the stewed fruit in the sauces for the game, and many of those Danish cheeses were strong enough to smell from a winter street.
    For good luck, they always counted the ships moored along the canal. Perhaps because it was almost Christmastime, the lighted arch that stood over the statue in the square by the D’Angleterre seemed to them an abiding kind of protection; the hotel itself was decorated with lighted Christmas wreaths.
    On the way to their chambermaids’ rooms, Jack and his mom often stopped for a Christmas beer. The beer was dark and sweet, but strong enough that Alice diluted Jack’s with water.
    One of Alice’s clients at Tattoo Ole’s—a banker who had different denominations of foreign currency tattooed on his back and chest—told her that Christmas beer was good for children because it prevented nightmares. The boy had to admit that, since he’d been drinking it, the banker’s remedy for bad dreams seemed plausible: either he’d not had a nightmare in a while or he’d not had one he could remember.
    In Jack’s dreams, he missed Lottie—how she had hugged him, without reservation, how they’d held their breath and felt their hearts beating