New York City — April 1764
April arrived with movement.
Not celebration—no one trusted the season enough for that—but movement all the same. Rain softened the roads. The river ran full and brown, carrying the last filth of winter southward. Ships came and went without waiting for permission, and carts rolled through streets that had been impassable a month before.
With movement came talk.
Not the loud kind. Not the kind that drew attention. The careful kind—questions asked twice, answers given once, glances exchanged between men who had learned not to speak plainly when plain speech could be recorded.
Thomas Hawthorne heard the change first through orders.
They were not larger, not yet. They were different.
Requests arrived with qualifiers. If possible. Quietly. Without marks. Merchants who had once asked only for price now asked for timing, for routes, for whether deliveries could be staggered rather than sent all at once.
Thomas answered what he could and refused what he must.
He had learned, by now, that refusal shaped a reputation as clearly as generosity did.
The first man to speak openly—almost openly—was Matthew Crowell.
They stood by the river, watching wagons unload grain that had arrived earlier than expected.
"Men are nervous," Crowell said, not looking at Thomas. "About papers. About questions."
"They should be," Thomas replied.
Crowell grunted. "You always talk like trouble is a certainty."
"Trouble is predictable," Thomas said. "Panic is optional."
Crowell spat into the water. "Some men are meeting. Not merchants, exactly. Not officials either."
Thomas waited.
"They want to know who moves goods without delay," Crowell continued. "Who can route around inspections without breaking the law."
"And you told them?"
Crowell glanced at him sideways. "I told them you don't break laws. You make them inconvenient."
Thomas allowed himself a fraction of a smile. "That's accurate."
Crowell scratched his beard. "They may want to speak with you."
"Then they will," Thomas said.
They did not come all at once.
They never did.
First came Isaac Low, a merchant who spoke carefully and listened more than he spoke. Then Alexander McDougall, whose impatience leaked through every sentence no matter how much he tried to restrain it. They did not arrive together. They did not acknowledge one another in the street.
They came separately. They left separately.
What they asked was the same.
"How much moves through you?"
"How quickly?"
"How quietly?"
"And how often do you say no?"
Thomas answered plainly where plain answers cost nothing.
"I sell raw materials," he said. "I coordinate transport. I pay on delivery. I don't sign papers that bind me beyond what I can control."
"And if Parliament tightens further?" McDougall pressed.
"Then I will adjust," Thomas replied. "The same way I adjusted for winter."
Low studied him. "You don't sound angry."
Thomas met his gaze. "Anger makes men predictable."
That answer stayed with them longer than anything else he said.
Inside the shop, April changed the rhythm again.
Patrick Doyle now worked mornings before school, copying simple invoices and learning the difference between what was written and what was meant. Margaret trusted him with numbers that mattered. She corrected him sharply when he assumed honesty where none was guaranteed.
"People lie," she told him, tapping the ledger. "But figures lie in patterns. Learn the pattern."
Patrick listened.
Pieter had begun learning English more aggressively—not through books, but through repetition, forcing himself to speak even when words came wrong. Thomas did not correct him unless meaning was lost. Meaning mattered more than elegance.
The forge worked steadily, no longer experimental. Iron fittings left the shop in quantity now, enough that other smiths had begun to notice.
One came to complain.
"You're flooding the street," the man said, red-faced. "You'll ruin prices."
Thomas listened patiently. "Then improve your work," he said. "Or find customers who value yours more than mine."
The smith left angry. He would either adapt or fail. Both outcomes were acceptable.
At the parish, the walls reached their planned height.
Still no tower. No ornament. Just structure.
Father Keane met Thomas inside one evening, candlelight flickering against fresh stone.
"They're asking whether we intend to expand," the priest said quietly.
"We intend to endure," Thomas replied. "Expansion comes later."
Keane nodded. "You speak like a builder, not a benefactor."
"I am a builder," Thomas said.
"And Catholics are not meant to build visibly," Keane said, not accusing—stating.
Thomas looked at the walls. "Then we build so well they forget to ask why."
Keane smiled faintly. "That may be the most Catholic thing I've heard all week."
Late in the month, Edmund Shaw returned, more confident now, papers tucked neatly under his arm.
"Mr. Alderton would like assurances," Shaw said. "That supplies intended for His Majesty's stores will not be… redirected."
"They won't be," Thomas replied. "They will arrive as contracted."
"And other supplies?" Shaw pressed.
Thomas met his eyes. "If they are not contracted, they are not yours."
Shaw hesitated, then nodded. "That is… acceptable."
Thomas watched him leave and made a note beside Shaw's name. Useful. Careful. Not brave.
April ended with a dinner Thomas did not host.
Six men gathered in a back room of a tavern near Broad Street, arriving at different times, leaving with no record except memory. Thomas attended because refusing would have been noted.
They did not speak of independence.
They spoke of burden. Of process. Of how decisions made an ocean away now pressed down on daily life without explanation or consent.
Thomas spoke once.
"Whatever comes," he said, "will be decided by who feeds people and who moves goods when rules tighten. Rhetoric will not keep streets calm. Bread will."
No one argued.
They left quietly, each carrying the same thought but none daring to voice it yet.
On the last night of April, Thomas returned to the shop late and stood alone, listening to the city settle.
Networks had begun to overlap.
Merchants. Carters. Clerks. Priests. Militia men who wanted stability more than orders.
This was not rebellion.
Not yet.
It was preparation.
And preparation, Thomas knew, was always mistaken for patience by those who did not understand it.
He closed the door and went to rest.
May would demand more than quiet agreements.