AUTUMN, 1605

The crossing was to take six.

Not a gull in nine days. Not a fish taken. Not another sail on the whole horizon.

Goodwin keeps the log. He showed me a page from three weeks back, before I stopped trusting my own memory of the days. His hand is neat, careful, the same as always, except the entries get shorter the further you read, until they are only the date and nothing beneath it. I asked him why. He said there was nothing to write that the last entry hadn't already said better.

Mary asked me last night if I remembered the sound of Plymouth.

I COULD NOT

Only that there were voices, and that we left them behind. We left England as six ships.

ARE WE ALONE?