“Oh thank you,” Miriam gushed, but the cop had already turned away—probably looking for a vagrant to harass.

She hurried along for a block then, remembering the cop’s directions, followed them. More traffic passed on the road and overhead. Tractors pulling four or even six short trailers blocked the street intermittently, and an incongruous yellow pony trap clattered past. Evidently yellow was the interuniverse color of cabs, although Miriam couldn’t guess what Boston’s environmentalists would have made of the coal burners. There were shops here, shops by the dozen, but no department stores, nor supermarkets, or gas-burning cars, or color photographs. The advertisements on the sides of the buildings were painted on, simple slogans like BUY EDISON’S ROSE PETAL SOAP FOR SKIN LIKE FLOWER BLOSSOM. And there were, now she knew what to look for, no beggars.

A bell rang as Miriam pushed through the door of Erasmus Burgeson’s shop, beneath the three gold spheres that denoted his trade. It was dark and dusty, shelves racked high with table settings, silverware, a cabinet full of pistols, other less identifiable stuff—in the other side of the shop, rack after rack of dusty clothing. The cash register, replete with cherubim and gold leaf, told its own story: And as she’d hoped, the counter beside it displayed a glass lid above a velvet cloth layered in jewelry. There didn’t seem to be anybody in the shop. Miriam looked about uneasily, trying to take it all in. This is what people here consider valuable, she thought. Better get a handle on it.

A curtain at the back stirred as a gaunt figure pushed into the room. He shambled behind the counter and turned to stare at her. “Haven’t seen you in here before, have I?” he asked, quizzically.

“Uh, no.” Miriam shuffled. “Are you Mr. Burgeson?” she asked.

“The same.” He didn’t smile. Dressed entirely in black, his sleeves and trousers thin as pipe cleaners, all he’d need would be a black stovepipe hat to look like a revenant from the Civil War. “And who would you be?”

“My name is Miriam, uh, Fletcher.” She pursed her lips. “I was told you are a pawnbroker.”

“And what else would I be in a shop like this?” He cocked his head to one side, like a parrot, his huge dark eyes probing at her in the gloom.

“Well. I’m lately come to these shores.” She coughed. “And I am short of money, if not in posessions that might be worth selling. I was hoping you might be able to set me up.”

“Posessions.” Burgeson sat down—perched—on a high, backless wooden stool that raised his knees almost to the level of the counter-top. “It depends what type of posession you have in mind. I can’t buy just any old tat now, can I?”

“Well. To start with, I have a couple of pieces of jewelry.” He nodded encouragingly, so Miriam continued. “But then, I have in mind something more substantial. You see, where I come from I am of not inconsiderable means, and I have not entirely cut myself off from the old country.”

“And what country would that be?” asked Burgeson. “I only ask because of the requirements of the Aliens and Sedition Act,” he added hastily.

“That would be—” Miriam licked her lips. “Scotland.”

“Scotland.” He stared at her. “With an accent like that,” he said with heavy irony. “Well, well, well. Scotland it is. Show me the jewelry.”

“One moment.” Miriam walked forward, peered down at the countertop. “Hmm. These are a bit disappointing. Is this all you deal in?”

“Ma’am.” He hopped down from the stool. “What do you take me for? This is the common stock on public display, where any mountebank might smash and grab. The better class I keep elsewhere.”

“Oh.” She reached into her pouch and fumbled for a moment, then pulled out what she’d been looking for. It was a small wooden box—purchased from a head shop in Cambridge, there being a pronounced shortage of cheap wooden jewelry boxes on the market—containing two pearl earrings. Real pearls. Big ones. “For starters, I’d like you to put a value on these.”

“Hmm.” Burgeson picked the box up, chewing his lower lip. “Excuse me.” He whipped out a magnifying lens and examined them minutely. “I’ll need to test them,” he murmured, “but if these are real pearls, they’re worth a pretty penny. Where did you get them?”

“That is for me to know and you to guess.” She tensed.

“Hah.” He grinned at her cadaverously. “You’d better have a good story next time you try to sell them. I’m not sticking my neck in a noose for your mistress if she decides to send the thief-takers after you.”

“Hmm. What makes you think I’m a light-fingered servant?” she asked.

“Well.” He looked down his nose at her. “Your clothes are not what a woman of fashion, or even of her own means, would wear—”

“Fresh off the boat,” Miriam observed.

“And earrings are among the most magnetic of baubles to those of a jackdaw disposition,” he added.

“And wanting a suit of clothes that does not mark me out as a stranger,” Miriam commented.

“Besides which,” he added with some severity, “Scotland has not existed for a hundred and seventy years. It’s all part of Grande Bretaigne.”

“Oh.” Miriam covered her mouth. Shit! “Well then.” She mustered up a sickly smile. “How about this?”

The quarter-kilogram bar of solid gold was about an inch wide, two inches long, and half an inch thick. It sat on the display case like an intrusion from another world, shimmering with the promise of wealth and power and riches.

“Well now,” breathed Burgeson, “if this is what ladies of means pay their bills with in Scotland, maybe it’s not such an unbelievable fiction after all.”

Miriam nodded. It had better cover the bills, she thought, the damn thing set me back nearly three thousand dollars. “It all depends how honest you aren’t,” she said briskly. “There are more where this one comes from. I’m looking to buy several things, including but not limited to money. I need to fit in. I don’t care if you’re fiddling your taxes or lying to the government, all I care about is whether you’re honest with your customers. You don’t know me, and if you don’t want to, you’ll never see me again. On the other hand, if you say ‘yes’—” she met his eyes—”this need not be our last transaction. Not by a very long way.”

“Hmm.” Burgeson stared right back at her. “Are you in French employ?” he asked.

“Huh?”

Miriam’s fleeting look of puzzlement seemed to reassure him. “Well that’s good,” he said genially. “Excuse me while I fetch the aqua regia: If this is pure I can advance you, oh, ten pounds immediately and another, ahum—” He picked up the gold bar and placed it on the balance behind him. “—sixty two and eight shillings by noon tomorrow.”

“I don’t think so.” Miriam shook her head. “I’ll take ten today, and sixty tomorrow—plus five full pounds’ credit in your shop, here and now, for goods you hold.” She’d been eyeing the price tags. The shilling, a twentieth of a pound, seemed to occupy the same role as the dollar back home, except that they went further. Pounds were big currency.

“Ridiculous.” He stared at her. “Three pounds.”

“Four.”

“Done,” he said, unnervingly rapidly. Miriam had a feeling that she’d been had, somehow, but nodded. He strode over to the door and flipped the sign in the window pane to CLOSED. “Now by all means, let me test out this bar. I’ll just take a sample with this scalpel, mind. ..” He hurried into the back room. A minute later he re-emerged, bearing a glass measuring cylinder full of water into which he dropped the gold bar. Scribbled measurements followed. Finally he nodded. “Oh, most satisfying,” he muttered to himself before looking at her. “Your sample is indeed of acceptable purity,” he said, looking almost surprised. Reaching into an inner pocket he produced a battered wallet, from which he plucked improbably large banknotes. “Nine one-pound notes, milady, the balance in silver and a few coppers. I hope these are to your satisfaction; the bank across the street will happily exchange them, I assure you.” Next he produced a fountain pen and a ledger, and a wax brick and a candle and a metal die. “I shall just make out this promissory note for sixty pounds to you. If you would like to select from my wares, I can work while you equip yourself.”