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Elias wasn’t sure how to talk with a man who couldn’t talk back.
    â€œI don’t mean to trouble you, sir,” Elias went on. “But if you could spare some feed for that pigeon you give me, or at least tell me what he eats, I’d—”
    The curtain whipped open.
    Pennyrile stood there, not quite smiling, but not looking entirely displeased to find Elias at his door. In his hands he held a slate and a nub of chalk. He was bundled up in a long wool coat, the collar revealing a new wrap at his neck, this one finished off with the same elaborate knot as before. But as he moved, the fabric shifted, revealing a lumpy edge of bluish purple, like an old bruise, glinting beneath a layer of ointment. Bear fat and whale oil, Elias recalled the doctor saying, the odor suddenly recognizable to him. Whale oil they burned at home, and on board his father’s ships. Elias forced himself to look the man in the eye. Despite his size, Elias could see that Pennyrile was indeed losing weight like the doctor said. His face, deeply lined and spotted all over by the sun, had begun to hollow out, the cheeks caving in.
    â€œI . . . good morning, um . . .” Elias had almost forgotten the reason for his errand.
    And then he heard a sound that made him remember a different life. One where he’d have been right then if he weren’t so sick. Pennyrile began writing across the slate. It was just like the one Elias had used in school back in Norfolk, the same kind Horace Peters had cracked over Merriman Oakes’s head when Merriman had called Horace a Yankee. Pennyrile wrote quickly, the chalk scratching and shrieking. After a second he turned the slate around and tapped the words he’d written there.
    Victor Pennyrile. The printing was spindly, all lowercase letters.
    He tapped his chest.
    â€œI know,” Elias said. “I’m Elias. Elias Harrigan. Pleased to meet you.”
    Pennyrile pointed at his neck, at the kerchief he had knotted there.
    â€œDoc Croghan told me. I’m sorry for you.”
    Pennyrile shrugged, like it couldn’t be helped. Then he pointed at Elias’s chest, almost touching it. Elias flinched, but he understood the question in the gesture.
    â€œYes, sir,” he said. “My lungs’re bad.”
    Pennyrile kept his black eyes fixed on Elias as he scratched something more onto the slate, the rasp of the chalk more whisper than screech this time.
    So young, the slate said when he held it out, and he looked at Elias like he was a horse that needed putting down.
    Elias bristled, suddenly recalling how quickly Pennyrile’d been ready to snap Bedivere’s neck. “I don’t want to keep you, but could you maybe spare some feed?”
    Pennyrile motioned Elias to follow him inside.
    It was much the same as Elias’s hut, with its narrow bed and table and stove and shelves. But pushed up against one wall was a great tin washtub. Elias shuddered, glad no one had brought up the notion of a proper bath yet. He searched for some other place to put his eyes. Right inside the door, half filling the window, was a set of wooden cages.
    The pigeon loft.
    Elias didn’t know much about keeping birds, but a quick glance told him that the enclosure had been built for more birds than the two it held now. They seemed almost lonesome in there.
    â€œWhy’s it so empty?”
    Pennyrile wrote again. Had lots more. Sent them out already.
    â€œYou gonna have whoever’s been getting the messages send ’em back?”
    Pennyrile swiped the slate clean with a scrap of red cloth and wrote again. Too much bother. He paused, then wrote more. Didn’t figure on being here this long.
    â€œYou can always send out messages with the regular post, can’t you?”
    Pennyrile shook his head, acted as if he would not elaborate, but then wrote: This way better.
    Elias wasn’t sure how he figured that, what with the birds getting