Chapter One

"I heard him, Lizzy," Clara said. "He screamed all the way down." She cracked an egg into a big bowl of flour and butter. 'Aieeeeeeeeee!' Like that. Only louder. It curdled your blood." She cracked another egg. "The alarm bell woke me. It must have woke you. Even as far as Stink Alley."

Lizzy had only heard the news that morning. On the way to work, she'd passed clusters of people telling the story. "Aieeeeeeeeeee!" an old man had cried. "Like that! Broke every bone in his body." "Aieeeeeeeeeee!" a young woman had told her friends. "And that, I warned my boys, is why you stay well away from windmills." In the night, they all said, lightning had struck one of Leiden's windmills. A big one. Men had come running with their leather buckets and ladders. It was a watchman, they said, who'd screamed. He'd got too close. One of the windmill's long arms had snagged him, whirled him all the way around, and then dashed him to the ground. The wrath of God, some people said, "Aieeeeeeeeeee!"

A predawn rain had washed most of the smoke from the air, and the early September morning was clear and warm. It was already eight o'clock, but Lizzy Tinker had been at work since daylight, helping out in the Van Heusdens' kitchen.

Lizzy pulled a squirming gray eel out of a tub of warm water. The eel was as long as her arm. "God rest the good man's soul," she told Clara, the Van Heusdens' cook. With the back of her hand, Lizzy wiped a stray black curl out of her eye. Then she pressed the eel firmly on a slippery board and, with a hammer blow smartly to its head, knocked it dead.

A child's yellow wooden shoe was floating in the tub. The tail of a second eel slapped it.

"Stop that, you wretched sea monster!" ordered a boy who was the shoe's captain. He twirled the shoe around the tub one more time, then scooped up a red-and-white pinwheel from the wet kitchen floor. "I'm going outside," he announced, gathering up his long green skirt and petticoat. "Don't let them sink my ship, sailor!"

Lizzy was twice as old as the boy, but small. His skirt and apron would almost fit her. "Aye, aye, sir," she said.

He dashed out to the cobblestone street, waving the pinwheel. It was an early present for his breeching, to keep him busy till the afternoon celebration began. He was six years old. Today he would give up his babies' skirts to wear the breeches of a big boy. There would be a party with mounds of food.

Lizzy was chopping eel for the party stew. The thought of it made her mouth water. She slit the eel's skin, peeled it off, scooped out the guts, and tossed them into a bucket. Then with her slim, sharp knife, she began to slice the eel's white belly.

"Girl!" Clara put one hand on her broad hip, raised her wooden spoon from the dough she was mixing, and rapped Lizzy's knuckles with a sticky smack. "Are you totally empty of wit? Look at the size of those eel chunks. I told you, chop it fine so it'll go far. And toss more onions in the pot. We've got twenty hungry mouths to feed tonight. Young Jacob loves eel. He'll be dripping it all over his fine new taffeta coat." She shook her head fondly.

Lizzy smiled. "I like big fat bites of eel in my stew," she said. "Then you can feel them squoosh in your mouth."

"Well, it's not your stew, is it?" Clara told her sharply, and went back to mashing water and eggs into flour and butter.

"Sorry. I misspoke," Lizzy murmured, cutting the eel into smaller pieces.

"Nay, then, Lizzy, don't fret," Clara went on, smiling. "Most days, I like fat bites, too."

Lizzy glanced at the cook, who was blond and plump -- young, too, eighteen, maybe. She was singing now as she pounded away at the pastry dough. "Dum, de dum doooo."

"I hope you don't mind my saying this," Lizzy told her. Clara stopped singing and looked up with narrowed eyes. "That crust you're making," Lizzy went on, "for the cherry tart. You need a lighter touch. It's going to turn out tough if you work it so eager like."

"Well, I do mind, don't I. I don't ask advice of an English runt," Clara told her, kneading the dough harder. "I've got advice for you. Good kitchen help knows when to keep its mouth shut."

Lizzy bit her lip. She did talk too much. Master Brewster said so. Often. He was a wise man, so what he said must be true.

Lizzy lived with the Brewster family, had for almost a month now, ever since her dear papa died. Papa had called her his joy. How she missed him.

It was all of six years ago, in 1608, that she and Papa and Sally, her stepmother, had left Scrooby, England, with William Brewster. More than fifty villagers had fled with him to Holland, breaking the law to do it. The law said they had to go to the king's church, and they'd refused to. So they'd broken one law by separating themselves from the Church of England and another by leaving the country without the king's permission. They were Separatists. They could have been killed for it.

Once they got to Holland, they were safe, but life was hard. Then this year, it had gotten awful. First Sally died, then Papa. Leiden could have put her in its orphanage, but the Brewsters had taken her in. They gave her space to sleep and food to eat. And Lizzy was grateful. Orphans lived behind barred windows. A girl without parents, she'd learned, had to be careful...