After Midnight Mass, there was the usual confusion of departure as carriages edged past each other, drivers holding up their whips in salute. Their carriage, unlike the others, turned down dark, silent Drum Street, and Amadeo rested his head against the backrest, looking towards the bay and at the stars.

They were passing the closed stalls of the market when Corl said, “Look sir,” and pointed towards the blackness of Sanctuary Bay. “The Little King is coming.”

Teach had mentioned this to him. Every Christmas, in the dark hours of the morning, the Out Easters brought the Holy Infant into Saint Nicholas.

Amadeo had thought Pinny still asleep, but she sat up in his lap. “Oh! Papa, can we see?”

“Cher, it is late, and your mother is tired. If we wait too long, Papa Noel will find your little sister sleeping alone and leave only one stocking behind.”

A distant “pop,” and what looked like a sputtering star rose and fell over the rooftops of the market. Someone was firing Roman Candles on the beach.

“But I am not tired, Husband” Hortense said. “And I am sure Papa Noel will understand.”

“Turn around,” Amadeo told Corl. “Let us off at the Long Steps.”

“Aye, sir. You won’t regret it.”

Usually, when Amadeo thought of the Long Steps that led down to Sanctuary Strand, he pictured the summer day they had landed. He saw Dr. Teach with his ledger in yellow sunlight and heat. The steps had led down to the blazing expanse of sand where people moved about and shouted at each other. Wheels had creaked and weary horses huffed as they climbed the hill road, their flanks smelling of wet horsehair and dust.

This was not the same world.

They paused, Amadeo, Hortense, and Pinny in between them, at the top of the stairway. Someone had set out torches every few yards alongside the stairs. The stone steps, harsh and gritty in daytime, looked golden, and led down to a pool of darkness as profound as the waters of the bay. Across that black a small cluster of lights flickered on the beach near the shore. The moon was in its last quarter, and the waves glowed in white curves as they crested.

Hortense bent. “Look,” she said to Pinny. “It is like the Arabian Nights.”

They descended, hand in hand.