As the sun rose over Benedict Town, on her first morning in the Maryland Colony, Estella slipped quietly past the Old Lads, snoring in the loft of Lyttlejohn’s farmhouse.
She marched briskly up the oyster shell path along the Patuxent River shoreline towards Sheffield’s Tavern on Post Road across from the ferry crossing.
Five grunting and cursing fishermen waist-deep in the water struggled to heave a heavy seine net full of spawning shad onto the shore. The viscous orange sunlight flickered overhead as a tremendous flock of ducks flew north up the river.
As Estella approached Sheffield’s Tavern, the red brick public house belching smoke from its massive chimneys at each end, she noticed the horse stable behind it and, next to that, a wattle fence corral.
From within the corral came the neighing of a horse and the commanding voice of a man with a distinctly Portuguese accent. Estella was intrigued.
So, instead of proceeding directly to Sheffield’s, she cut across a newly planted flax field, treading carefully to avoid damaging the new starts.
A servant boy teetering under an armload of kindling from a giant woodpile paused momentarily to watch her progress. The strange, beautiful woman dressed in men’s sailor clothes had appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
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