Cardinal Points

Jason loves the sea and the freeedom it brings. As a merchant seaman he understands that it is skill and knowledge, not birth, that make a man’s worth. He arrives in Boston town on a gray December day, just as the mob is preparing to throw crates of tea worth a king’s fortune, into the Harbor. Swept up in the exciting rhetoric he decides to follow the crowd and help. But first he must don the disguise of the fiercest warrior.

Oona has her own ideas and questions on the nature of freedom. For over nine years, she has been a servant in a grand merchant house. Now, her long indenture nears its end. At a tavern near the tea meetings, she helps men with feathers, soot and bootblack – the disguise of the night. They tease and laugh, as men do before battle, knowing they are about to commit treason. There is a newcomer in the group – a man Oona recognizes when she sticks a feather into the wool of his black cap and draws black lines on his face. He looks up and smiles at the lovely bar maid, lifting her in his arms for a good-luck kiss. The men howl. Oona barely hears them. Jason. Those eyes are as she remembered them. Glowing wolf’s eyes that cheered her, warmed her and made her brave during lonely times in a strange land. Grown strong and independent, he has returned, as she hoped he would.

But the events of that cold, damp night begin the unraveling of a mighty empire and set the world in motion in ways no one could foresee. What will they mean for Oona and Jason?