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in your hair when I first met you,” the boy recalled. “Did you cut your hair for Mama?”
    “No, lad. So I would fit in with the brethren, much as a seafaring dog ever could.” Falconer reached across the distance. “There’s a mirror on the side table. Reach over and hand it to me, please.”
    Matt did as he was told. “The scar on your face has gone bright red.”
    “It’s the heat.” Falconer doused the mirror to clear away the steam, then found himself tensing as he wiped the surface and took aim.
    A stranger stared back at him. A wild dark beard laced with silver. Thirty-two years of age and already time’s wintry hand was etched into his beard, though not his hair, which hung lank and unkempt about his face. His scar, the one that narrowly missed his left eye, could be seen above the beard and was indeed a fiery red. Like most seamen, Falconer had always been fanatical about keeping his hair well tended and his face clean-shaven. But it was not his hair which made him look unfamiliar.
    His features had always been sharply defined. More than one person had called them carved from flesh-colored stone. Now they looked cavernous. His skin, leathery from decades of salt and wind and sun, was dark brown after the summer spent farming. He touched his cheekbone, as though testing his own identity. He looked like some fierce hunter of old, a craven beast scarcely removed from the forest and the glen.
    When Falconer set the mirror aside, Matt said, “You can shave off your beard if you wish, Father John.”

Chapter 4
    Langston’s Ship Chandlery was precisely as Reginald had described, fronting the harbormaster’s office and built with the same stout colonial brick. The shop was jammed, but the moment Falconer entered, a stocky man with a heavy limp stumped toward them. “Master Falconer?”
    “Aye. The same.”
    “Master Langston’s compliments, sir. The owner’s tied up with other business what should have been finished two days back, but wasn’t. On ’count of certain other gentlemen what were late in arriving. He’s sent me in his stead. Soap is the name, sir, which is good for a chuckle given the wares you’ll find here. Richard Soap.” He knuckled his forelock at Matt. “A grand good day to you, young sir.”
    Falconer asked, “You’re British?”
    “American, sir. American as they come, and proud of the fact.” When the merchant moved toward them, Soap waved him away toward the other customers. “But I was born in Blighty, I was. Righted that mistake soon as I was able. I’ve served fifteen years on a Langston vessel. The skipper made me his steward when my knee gave out. Master Langston offered me a landside berth in this very shop, that he did. But I’ve salt in my bones now.”
    “I worked as a chandler myself. Four years. In the Carib.”
    “Did you now. Did you. And today we serve the same master, as it were.”
    Falconer caught the tone. “Do we speak of Reginald Langston?”
    The steward grinned, revealing a gap where his two front teeth should have been. “Master Reginald, he said you was a member of the holy flock. But when I saw this ruddy great giant with a fighter’s scar come through the door, I thought, here now, the skipper could well have taken a false measure of this one.”
    “He was not wrong.”
    Matt piped up, “Folks of Salem town say when Father John prays, the strongest tree bends its knee.”
    “Do they now.” Richard Soap tousled the boy’s blond locks. “Why is it you call your father by such a name?”
    “Because he is my second father. My first died when I was five. My ma said I could honor my papa and Father John both with the different name.”
    “What a wise woman she must be.” Soap struggled to keep hold of his good humor. “So now you’re off on your adventures while your poor old mam sits alone by the hearth?”
    “No, sir. We lost my mother too in the winter just gone.”
    Faces turned their way all through the store. Falconer looked at