Chapter Sixteen
The rhythmic creak and chirp of insects held their symphony as an easterly breeze played the cordgrass and sang the bay to sleep. Overhead a full moon was rising as twilight twinkled above the water, the last colors of the day bleeding into night. The evening was cool on the water, and Alfred had found their row out onto the bay pleasant, with only the swoosh of the oars on the water’s surface and the occasional seagull call at his ears. He hadn’t been aware of what a din the city composed each day—the clapping of hooves, the rolling of wooden wheels, the roar of steamships putting into port as dockworkers called out to their seaward mates. It was the ever-present murmur of voices as life came and went along the streets below the bureau’s windows. In the stern of the row b
