by Mackenzi Lee
“Not the worst hit I’ve ever taken.” I smile at him, but he doesn’t return it.
His thumb brushes the bruise. “I wish I could do something.”
“Well, stop rubbing it, for a start.”
“I mean about your father.”
“Oh.” I drop my eyes, heart suddenly feeling heavy and swollen inside me. “Me too.”
“What are you going to do about him?”
What was I going to do? I had been doing my best to avoid looking head-on at my future, with my father breathing down my neck for the next few years. Even when I took over the estate in earnest, he’d still find ways to creep into my life like spiders rising up through the floorboards—I’d be living in his house, sleeping in his bed and sitting at his desk, and married off to a woman he’d chosen for me. That last one cankered inside me. I’d spend the rest of my life lonely, cruising Mulberry Garden for purchasable companionship and pining for the boy with dark freckles beneath his eyes. I can see them now, in that sliver of moonlight, as he tips his head.
“I suppose I’ll learn all about estate management and try to guard my face.” I scrub my hands through my hair, then add with more levity, “And then perhaps I’ll pay a sly call to Sinjon Westfall from my Eton days and see if he remembers me.” I look over for Percy’s smile, but instead his nose wrinkles. “What’s that for?”
“What’s what for?”
“That face.”
“I didn’t make a face.”
“You did, just now when I mentioned Sinjon. There, you did it again.”
He claps his hands over his eyes. “Stop mentioning him, then.”
“Why are you sour on poor Sinjon? You didn’t know him.”
“Felt like I did—you wrote me all those letters with him prominently featured.”
“Not that many.”
“Every week—”
“For a fortnight, maybe—”
“No, it was longer. Far longer.”
“Was not.”
“‘Dear Percy, I saw this boy across the dining hall with a dimple in his chin.’ ‘Dear Percy, his name is Sinjon and he has eyes so big and blue you could drown in them.’ ‘Dear Percy, blue-eyed Sinjon put his hand on my knee in the library and I thought I might lose consciousness.’”
“Well, that’s not at all what happened. I was the one who made the first approach, and it was certainly not his knee I put my hand on. Why waste time on the knees when he had far, far better—”
“Please stop.”
I glance over at him. He’s looking rather sincerely distressed, his face pulled up and his gaze pained. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. Tell me.”
“There’s nothing to tell!”
“I’m going to pester you until you tell me.”
“How much longer do you think we’ve got before we reach France?”
“That was the worst attempt at a subject change I’ve ever heard.”
“Worth a try.”
“A poor one.”
“Your hair looks nice.”
“Better, but a lie.”
“No, I like it long and scraggly like this.”
“Long and scraggly. What a charmer you are.”
“I just meant the rugged look suits you.”
“You’re avoiding the question.” He groans, and I nudge his shoulder with my nose. “Go on, tell me.”
“Fine.” He rubs his temples, a bit of a sheepish smile starting about his mouth. “Those letters . . . wrecked me.”
That was not what I had been expecting. Too long or too mushy or Dear God, Monty, use less descriptors, how many shades of blue can be contained in a lad’s dreamy eyes? perhaps. But not that. “What?”
“Completely lost my mind. Half the time I couldn’t read them, just tossed them in the fire.”
“They weren’t that gooey.”
“Oh, they were plenty. You were moony.”
“So maybe I was. Why did that bother you?”
“Why do you think?” Percy looks at me quick, like he didn’t mean to say it and is checking for my reaction, then away just as fast. A slow flush crawls up his neck, and he scrubs a hand over the back, like it might be wiped away. When he speaks again, his tone is nearer to reverence, a voice for saints and sacred places. “Go on, you must know by now.”
My heart makes a reckless vault, flinging itself against the base of my throat so that it’s suddenly hard to breathe around it. I’m desperate not to let all my stupid hope fill the silence between us but it’s filtering in anyway, like water running through the canyons that longing has spent years carving. “I don’t . . . I don’t think I dare.”
“I kissed you in the music hall.”
“I kissed you.”
“You were drunk.”
“So were you. And you stopped it.”
“You told me it didn’t mean anything to you. That’s why I stopped it.”
When our eyes meet, his mouth rises into a smile, almost as though he can’t help himself, and then I’m smiling too, and then his goes wider, and it seems we might be caught in an infinite loop of beaming at each other like fools. And I wouldn’t mind it a bit.
“What are we arguing about?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
My heart is sending tremors through me, a frantic flail like a bird landing on water. I can feel the ripples all the way to my fingertips. Maybe . . . maybe . . . maybe. It makes me brave, the sudden chance of it tying stones to the fear and loneliness of one-sided wanting until they sink out of sight. So I take a breath and say, “It meant something to me—that kiss. That’s what I should have said. I didn’t, because I was stupid and afraid. But it did. It does.”
He stares forward into the darkness for a long while, or perhaps it’s not long at all, but I swear those few silent seconds seem to last half my lifetime. In the end, he doesn’t say a thing. Just reaches over and puts his hand upon my knee. A burst goes through me, like teeth breaking through the skin of a summer fruit in its prime.
Knees, as it turns out, can be rather grand.
I put my hand overtop, fingers fitted between his. His heart is beating so hard I can feel it in every point where our skin meets. Or perhaps that’s mine. We’re slamming, both of us. Percy stares down at our stacked hands, a deep breath trembling in his shoulders. “I’m not going to be the most convenient mouth around when you’re drunk and lonely and missing blue-eyed Sinjon,” he says. “That’s not what I want.”
“I don’t want Sinjon. I don’t want anyone else.”
“You mean that?”
“I do,” I say. “I swear to it.” I touch my nose to his, a fawn-soft brush, and his breath presses against my mouth as he exhales. “What do you want?”
Percy hooks his bottom lip with his teeth, eyes flitting down to my mouth. The space between us—what little is left—grows charged and restless, like a lightning strike gathering. I’m not certain which of us is going to do it—close those last, longest inches between us. I touch my nose to his again, and his lips part. Breath catches. I close my eyes.
And then, on the deck above us, a cannon goes off.
22
The recoil trembles through the whole boat. I lurch into Percy, my chin catching hard on his shoulder, and he grabs me, one hand fisted around my shirt and his other around my wrist. The bell is really going—somehow I’d failed to hear it—and the sailors are shouting, orders and “all hands” alike. There’s a holler of “Fire!” and another cannon blasts. We hear the bang at the discharge, then again as the frame slams into the planks, straight over our heads. The smell of gunpowder kicks through the rot. My heart begins to pound for a different reason.
On the other side of the hold, Felicity’s dark silhouette tears itself away from the shadows. “What’s going on?” she calls, and Percy’s hands slide away from my waist.
“They’re firing—” I start, but then a cannonball tears through the wall above our heads.
I throw my hands up over my face as the air rips apart around us. Percy yanks me to him, his head over mine as we both hit the deck. A shower of dust and splinters speckles the back of my neck. There’s a second splintering from above, another cannonball breaching our hull. My ears are ringing, and when I take a breath, I gag on the dust and gunpowder—the air is hazy and sparkling with it. On the other side of the hold, Felicity starts to cough.
“Are you all right?” Percy takes my face between his hands and raises it to his. He’s kneeling before me, his dark skin powdered and his hair sprinkled with flakes of wood. Above us, a stream of water sluices in through the hole left by the cannonball and dribbles down in a thin waterfall. The knees of my breeches go damp.
“Fine,” I say, though the word comes out as more of a gasp. “Fine, I’m fine. Felicity?”
“I’m fine,” she replies, though her voice sounds too tight. She’s hunched over between the crates, one hand clamped against her arm. A thin line of crimson leaks between her fingers and spills down her knuckles.
“You’re bleeding!” I scramble to my feet, Percy crawling after me. “Fire!” is called again, and the guns buck, pitching us sideways into the cargo.
“I’m fine,” she says, and I almost believe her—beyond a clenched jaw, she hardly looks like she’s pained. “Just a graze from the splinters.”
“Can you—do you need to bandage it? Or can I—what do we—should we do something? What do we do?”
“Calm yourself, Monty, it’s not your arm.” She crooks her finger at me. “Give me your cravat.”
It’s Percy who hands his over first, and Felicity peels her fingers from the slash above her elbow and wraps it so fast I hardly get a look at it. She pulls the cloth tight with her teeth before either of us can offer assistance, then wipes a bloody palm print upon her skirt. The sight of it makes me a bit woozier than is admirable.
There’s another blast and the ship gives a spectacular cant, so violent that one of the rope nets around a stack of crates breaks and they go flying free. From high above us—higher than the top deck, even—there’s a creak like a tree falling, then the long, low wail of wood splitting. We all three duck, pressing closer to each other, though we can’t see what it is that’s coming down. The ship gives its greatest heave yet. A barrel tips and breaks, flooding the hold with violet wine. Another swell of seawater pours in through the hole.
Then, silence, a long, eerie stretch of it. None of us say a thing to each other. Up on the top deck, a few sailors yell. There’s a single gunshot, like the bark of a seagull.
After a long while, there’s a hard slam on the deck above our heads and we all jump. A chorus of shouted surprise follows, then a man calls in French, “Everyone above!” A whole chorus of gunshots. Loud voices in a language I don’t recognize.
“What’s going on?” I ask quietly.
“We need to get out of sight,” Felicity replies. She’s watching the stairs, her face drawn in a way that is nothing like pain.
“Why?”
“Because I think we’re being boarded by pirates.”
For a moment, there seems to be no conceivable way that our ship is truly under siege by actual, godforsaken Mediterranean pirates. Not a chance. We already did our time with the highwaymen, and I am certain that no tourists—not even those in possession of an alchemical key—should have to endure both.
There’s a commotion above, heavy footfalls and then another shot and a scream of pain. Felicity scrambles into the trench between the rows of VOC barrels, with Percy and me close behind her. We collapse in a heap between the barrels, our heads ducked low and backs pressed into their divots, all of us breathing like we’ve been sprinting. Between the near-kiss with Percy and now goddamned pirates, my heart is certainly being put through its paces today.
For a time, all we can hear are indistinguishable noises from above. Shouting and cursing and the chink of hobnailed boots and axe heads ripping into wood. The bell tolling like mad. Then, the first certain sound in a long while, thundering footsteps on the stairs leading down to the hold, accompanied by men’s voices in that foreign tongue. Between us, Percy’s hand fumbles for mine.
Then three men who are most certainly not members of the xebec crew come bounding into view, a lantern thrust aloft by the one in the lead. He’s dark-skinned, with a thick black beard and a tar’s garb. His fellows are all similarly skinned and outfitted, and they’ve all got pistols and wicked axes strapped to their hips, belts weighted with pouches of grapeshot and musket balls. I can hear the lead chatter with itself as they move.
They spread themselves across the hold, prying the tops off crates to get a look at what’s inside and riffling through. One of the men cracks a barrel open like an egg—graceless, with the head of his axe—and his mate gives him a reprimand.
The first man comes near to our hiding spot and all three of us shrink backward. A cloud of splintery dust from the cannon blast blooms from the material of my shirt.
And Percy sneezes.
The pirates freeze. We freeze too, except for Percy, who claps a hand over his mouth. Behind his fingers, he’s wearing the same look of horror Felicity and I are both giving him.
And then he goddamn sneezes again. His hand isn’t near enough to stifle it.
The pirate nearest us disappears from our view, calling out to his mates in his dialect. I think for a moment we might miraculously be unnoticed, but then the barrel shielding us is kicked out of the way and there they are, looking as shocked to see us as we are to see them. For a minute, we all regard each other in stunned silence. Then one grabs me by the front of my shirt, dragging me to my feet. “We said everyone on deck,” he says in French, his face very close to mine. His breath could strip paint.
Before I can protest, I’m shoved into the arms of the biggest of the three men, which seems unfair because I’m nearly as small as Felicity. Before the men can grab Percy, he snatches up his fiddle case and swings it at one of them like there’s some hope of escape if we resist, but they are impervious to the stunt that felled the Duke of Bourbon in the forest. The pirate, a man with a bacon face and a glass eye, catches the fiddle case and wrenches it out of Percy’s hand, then hauls him to his feet and pins his arms to his sides.
The man with the lantern holds out a hand to Felicity to help her to her feet, but, proud thing that she is, she doesn’t take it. The makeshift bandage done up around her arm is beginning to blush as the blood seeps through it.
The man laughs. “Let’s report,” he calls, then bows Felicity up the stairs. “After you, miss.”
They march us out of the hold—not a one of us is fully dressed or wearing shoes, and we leave purple footprints from the spilled wine on the stairs—and up to the top deck, where chaos reigns. One of the yards has come down—that must have been the final tremendous ruckus—and is caught on sails around it, dragging them all out of alignment. The mast itself looks unsteady, wobbling in the wind as though it might tip at any moment. The sailors and the handful of passengers—most of them still in their nightclothes—have been herded like sheep onto the quarterdeck, more of the Moorish pirates roaming between them with swords and axes drawn. Everyone’s been made to kneel and put their hands upon their heads. Spread at their feet are what must be their luggage, trunks and cases looted and their contents scattered. No one seems injured, but those hangers and axes and steel-toothed marlinspikes in the pirates’ hands look ready to reverse that with little effort. It’s the early hours of the morning—the horizon is the color of a tarnished ha’penny with a few stars left fading into its blush. Against the rust-colored burn of the sunrise, I can make out the pirates’ ship, a gaunt, three-masted silhouette. From the top yard, they fly a black pennant.
The xebec’s captain is nowhere to be seen, but there is a pirate standing guard before a cabin door and the latch is rattling like someone’s shaking it from the other side. The first mate and the boatswain are being held at gunpoint by a fellow who seems to be in
charge of the corsairs, since he’s the one with the biggest hat, and the only cove watching everyone do something rather than doing something himself. He’s got a lanky build, with a black beard and a long coat fastened by a sash with frayed edges. “Who did you find?” he calls to his men as they approach with me and Percy pinned and Felicity trailing them like a martyr.
“They were belowdecks,” the big one holding me calls.
The boatswain must be truly furious we snuck past him, because as soon as he spots us he goes from looking as though he’s fearing for his own life to looking as though we should be fearing for ours. “You,” he hisses at Felicity.
The captain of the pirates tips his pistol toward us. “Friends of yours?” he asks the boatswain.
“Stowaways,” the boatswain replies, like it’s an oath.
“What’s below?” the captain calls to the big man with his arm around me.
“Dutch East India goods,” he replies. “Spices, fabrics, and sugarcane. It’s all dead cargo.”
“Rudder chain’s disabled, Scipio,” comes a call from the quarterdeck.
The captain’s—Scipio’s—jaw tightens. “Bring up the Dutch goods and consolidate the passengers’ trunks.” He stows his pistol but keeps his hand on it as he says to the officers, “And then we’ll be away. I was in earnest when I said we meant you no harm.”
“Is this some kind of trick?” the boatswain demands.
“Not at all.”
“You aren’t going to kill us?”
“Would you like me to?”
“Then you’re selling us into slavery. I know how you Barbarians operate. You’ll torch our ship or claim it for your fleet, then trade us innocents to be Muslim slaves in Africa! We’ll be forced to convert to your godless ways or else be slaughtered. You’ll make our women your whores.”
Scipio lets out a tight sigh through his teeth. He still has a hand on his pistol and looks tempted to use it.
“We won’t be enslaved to heathens,” the boatswain says, clearly believing himself to be making some sort of impassioned speech that will save his crew from a fate worse than death. “We would rather be slaughtered by your blade than made your prisoners.”
