The Beholder

by Anna Bright

  I thought of Daddy, crouching at my side at the ball to comfort me after Peter’s rejection. He would never be so insensitive. He would never speak to me this way.

  I steeled myself, even as I flushed with embarrassment.

  “I’m still hungry.” I fixed Perrault with a stare and walked around him and into the galley, where Will was elbow-deep in bread dough. The protocol officer had prepared my plate tonight, and he’d served me a meager helping of food.

  I put a small pile of carrots on my plate, my eyes drifting over Will working busily, over the unwashed dishes and carrot tops in the copper sink. Flour smudged the counters, and cold ashes spilled from the oven door onto the protective bricks below.

  I took a bite of my carrots, dampened a rag, and began to wipe up the flour.

  “Seneschal-elect!” Will blurted out. “What are you doing?”

  Perrault’s face was dark over the galley counter. “Yes, what are you doing?”

  “Relax,” I said to Will. “There. The counter’s clean.” I turned to Perrault. “I don’t know how you do things in New York. I don’t know what makes a lady, in your eyes. Where I come from, a lady knows how to help people.” I took another bite of my carrots, never taking my eyes off him. “Don’t presume to comment on my food intake again.”

  Vishnu began to clap, slow and grand and exaggerated, his handsome face solemn. Deadpan, Jeanne grasped his clasped hands and pressed them to the table.

  I took the top plate from the stack in the sink and began to wash it.

  The galley door slammed behind Perrault.

  Will shook his head at me and sighed. “At least put on an apron.”

  The sailors murmured to one another, staring at the door, eyeing me. Lang came to the galley counter. “You can come out. You’ve made your point. We pay people to work on this ship.”

  “You’re going to start paying me?” I threw Lang a grin.

  A surprised smile broke across his face, and he cocked his head, skeptical.

  Lang had seemed old for his age the night I first met him, but his eyes were bright and curious now, the arch of his brows teasing.

  He pushed a black-smudged hand through his hair and glanced at the steward, abruptly serious. “She doesn’t use the oven or the stove, Will.”

  Will didn’t even pause in his kneading. “No fire. Got it.”

  “And don’t tell your stepmother.” Lang tipped his chin down to me, leaning on his elbows on the counter. The end of his upturned nose and the curving bow of his upper lip were right at my eye level. “Our secret.”

  “Right,” I said slowly. “Our secret.”

  Skop broke the silence, nodding at me conspiratorially as he served himself a third portion of carrots. “Homer, it’s your turn,” he called, brushing glossy black hair out of his eyes.

  Homer cleared his throat, darting a look at me. “You don’t want to hear my stories.”

  “Yes, we do,” Skop insisted. “You haven’t told one in a long while.”

  Homer was still eyeing me. I nodded silently, once, twice, from my place over the sink. Lang hopped up on the counter, perching just a little away. He produced a pad and a charcoal pencil from his jacket pocket and began to sketch the lanterns swaying overhead.

  “I’m too tired for this,” Homer growled, scratching at his gray beard. But he told us a story all the same.

  The others had heard bits of Homer’s account before—a tale of years spent at war on the southern edge of the Imperiya, near Hellás, and years afterward lost at sea with a captain named Odysseus, fighting to get home to his faithful wife.

  “Penelope’s suitors seemed to descend as soon as her husband left,” Homer said. “They were wolves at her door, snapping for scraps, begging where she had little to spare. Though she had always been a judicious steward, they seemed determined to eat her out of house and home.

  “She had to figure out how to put them off.” Homer eyed me, gray gaze intent. “First, she told them she had to weave a shroud for her aging father-in-law. Every day, she sat in front of her loom, hands busy at work. And every night, she crept back and undid the day’s labor. She fooled them this way for three years.”

  “Her suitors must have been morons,” I mumbled, scrubbing at a plate.

  “Most of us are,” Skop said agreeably, coming to the counter to pass me his dishes. He grinned at me, and I grinned after his back as he walked away.

  “But even when her unwanted guests found her out, Penelope simply devised a test for them,” Homer said. “She found another way to put them off, by insisting she would only marry her husband’s equal—someone who could use the bow he hunted and fought with.”

  “Sharp girl.” Lang smiled and crossed his arms.

  “Most of us are,” I said lightly under my breath. I kept my eyes on my work, but I could feel his low laugh stir the air just above my right shoulder.

  From behind the galley counter, I envied the sailors sitting comfortably at table together, lounging side by side, trusting one another implicitly as they alternately listened or drifted off to sleep. I imagined taking a seat on the bench beside them.

  I imagined having a job onboard the Beholder, instead of being a job myself. Imagined being one of their friends, instead of cargo.

  If I weren’t who I was, maybe Lang would’ve sat beside me.

  Still, I found my own kind of comfort as Homer spoke, the galley growing soft and quiet as he told his tale, the only sounds the kneading of dough and the wash of water over dishes and the folding of paper in Andersen’s hands.

  ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν: πολλῶν δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω, πολλὰ δ᾽ ὅ γ᾽ ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν, ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων.

  —Ὀδύσσεια

  Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices,

  who wandered full many ways

  after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy.

  Many were the men whose cities he saw

  and whose mind he learned, aye,

  and many the woes he suffered in his heart upon the sea,

  seeking to win his own life and

  the return of his comrades.

  —The Odyssey

  14

  Wonders and horrors filled my dreams that night. I didn’t know if the blood came first, or the water.

  Blood oozed around my bare toes, sticky and hot and smelling like metal, twisting my stomach until I gagged. Salt water rushed from beneath a dozen doors around me.

  The doors shook with knocking. But behind each of them was one intruder. One uninvited guest.

  Alessandra.

  I could hear her whispering my name just over the pounding of her fists.

  I staggered, and suddenly a rough oak altar appeared. Daddy and I lay side by side on top, dressed as we had been for Arbor Day, our bodies slit open from throat to pelvis.

  I screamed and ran, tearing down ghastly white hallways. Branches tore at my clothes, and hanging shrouds grasped after me until I burst onto the deck of the Beholder, sobbing and gulping down ocean air. That’s where she was waiting for me. Penelope, wife to Odysseus, hero of the story Homer had told us while we were gathered in the galley.

  “I abandoned him.” I sobbed. Midnight-blue hair hung around her face, and gold bracelets rattled on her wrists as she pulled me to my knees beside her. Overhead, the Beholder’s three masts were olive trees, twisting and spreading beneath a foggy sky, gray as our navigator’s eyes.

  Penelope gripped my shoulders. “Do you have a plan?”

  “I don’t have a choice,” I choked out. “They made me go look for a husband.”

  She shook her head, shining curls like dark water over her shoulders. “Not what I asked. I had to receive my suito
rs. You had to go where Alessandra sent you. But now. You form. A plan.” Each word was a blow, but Penelope was fighting on my behalf.

  I shook her off. “Your plan fell apart,” I pointed out.

  “And when the shroud came together and everything went to pieces, I wove another plan,” she said sharply, slicing her hand through the air. “I made it through, one day at a time.”

  I stilled. “What do I do?”

  “Not everyone is fast. Not everyone is clever. I could only stay one step ahead of my enemy before my reinforcements arrived.” She tapped her index finger on the deck. “But if you’re one step ahead of them, they still haven’t caught you.”

  I woke with a painful jerk, heart hammering so hard against my ribs that it felt like the bed shuddered beneath me. Sweat coated my lower back and underarms. Wood scraped wood as I clutched my rosary from my nightstand, crossed myself, and began to pray.

  But my mind wandered.

  So many of my dreams were vague and jumbled, but this one had been vivid—hideous.

  And yet.

  Something stirred in me, the same raw wonder I’d felt when Perrault had told me we were going to England.

  I made a plan. I made another plan. One step ahead.

  Penelope had chosen to resist. To outwit and outlast where she could not overpower. I could do the same.

  I pressed my fist and the beads over my thundering heart, thinking of the folder stuffed in my trunk beneath Godmother Althea’s book, beneath the words and the tick marks counting every day I’d been away from my father.

  I’d buried it like a dead snake. But perhaps it was time to begin facing my monsters.

  Those are your suitors, Alessandra had said. Prepare to meet them as you see fit.

  I lurched out of bed. The moonlight through the porthole was bright enough to see by as I changed my sweaty shirt for a fresh one, retrieved the folder, and curled with it against my headboard.

  The first page bore my father’s signature, wobbling and childish—nothing like the busy slash his strong hand had once produced.

  I sighed and put aside his letter and my own information; I already knew how Alessandra and the Council saw me. Not fat but not thin, brown hair, green eyes. Reads too much. Good with a tiller, useless at parties.

  All my information and nothing about me.

  Sighing, I flipped through the rest of the profiles.

  Bertilak, prince of England, Duke of Exeter. Firstborn son of the king of England. Brown hair, blue eyes, seventy-three inches tall. Thoughtful, wise. No portrait accompanied the long list of academic achievements.

  Prins Torden Asgard. Fifth son of Konge Alfödr of Norge. Age: nineteen. Hair: Red. Eyes: Brown. Seventy-six inches tall, muscular. A portrait of him in color featured a square jaw and a serious gaze.

  Reichsfürst Fritz of the Neukatzenelnbogen. Brown hair, brown eyes, medium height. Age: twenty-seven. Oldest son of Hertsoh Maximilian of the Imperiya Yotne, Reichsfürst of Terytoriya Shvartsval’d. Fritz was described only as Perrault had noted—“clever.”

  My hands shook as I put aside his sketchy charcoal portrait, his smirking grin.

  Prínkipas Theodore, only child of Déspoina Áphros and Despótis Hephaistios of Páfos. Age: twenty-four. Hair: black. Eyes: brown. Charming, musical, intelligent. Theodore was painted in vivid color, cheeks flushed against olive skin, smile gleaming as though he were laughing.

  A half-dozen other profiles followed theirs. Princes in Corse, dukes in Makedonías, nobles in Anadolu and Alsace and Aragón. I huffed a sigh, shuffling the various papers in my hands. The gesture reminded me of Perrault, and I almost laughed.

  But suddenly, instead, I froze.

  I pawed through the pages again. “No, no, no.” The folder slipped off my lap, and I tipped my head back against the headboard, heart sinking.

  I knew what Alessandra had done.

  Torden was—I checked again, fingers fumbling—fifth in line for his father’s throne. But Bertilak and Fritz and Theodore were firstborn sons, almost certain to inherit whatever territory their parents ruled. The others were the same.

  Alessandra and the Council had been clear: I had to marry. They didn’t trust me to lead without a husband. But if I were to marry any of these men, with their own countries to govern someday, I’d never go home.

  She’d planned it all perfectly.

  Penelope had been smart, and tough. And she’d had perfect faith in her husband. Whatever happened, she turned her circumstances into currency and bought herself time until Odysseus came home.

  But Daddy isn’t Odysseus. Loneliness for him crashed over me like a wave, heavy as water, burning as salt.

  No one was coming to my rescue.

  My next steps should have been clear. With none of my suitors free to marry and become my consort, I should have been able to simply go home, explain their unavailability, and find someone appropriate in my own time.

  But my stepmother had known what she was doing. This wasn’t a mistake.

  Do they expect me to convince one of these boys to come home anyway? Could I ask that of someone I hardly knew? Would I respect someone who’d agree?

  Could I afford not to try?

  Torden is fifth in line. You could bet on him.

  But who was Torden? Who were any of these men? I had their information, I had their portraits—well, most of them—but what was that worth? What if I hated the one prince who was free to return to Potomac? Worse, what if I liked one who wasn’t?

  Maybe there is no long game to play. If I could stay ahead by even a single step, I might make it home unscathed. If I did my best and still failed, maybe the Council would leave me be.

  I flung the folder into my trunk. It landed with a light thud on top of Godmother Althea’s book. I pulled the covers over my head and turned over, determined to sleep.

  But then I stilled.

  Strange sounds were coming from my trunk. Like a fire crackling or sled runners scraping cobblestones or—whispers. Then, they stopped.

  I shook myself. It was only the ship—the sailors making late-night rounds or having late-night conversation. I needed to rest.

  I will figure this out, I told myself. I will get up every day and weave a shroud and then pull it apart at night.

  Whatever happens, I’ll stay one step ahead, and I will get home to Daddy and Potomac.

  I put another tick mark in Momma’s book and finished the Rosary. But I still couldn’t sleep.

  I scrambled out of bed and made for deck.

  15

  Huffing a little, I pounded up the stairs and burst out onto deck beneath the stars. Fresh air rushed across my skin as my feet carried me up to the forecastle, where Homer stood at the helm.

  “Did you have nightmares?” Homer’s voice was gruff as always, but I suddenly noticed a warmth beneath his words. Something loosened in my chest.

  I lay down on the deck and let the damp wind stir my hair. “Sometimes I’m not sure which are worse,” I said. “Nightmares, or the thoughts that come to visit when I wake up alone in the dark.”

  Homer frowned. “What’s got you bothered, girl? I can toss Perrault overboard, if need be.”

  But I was too anxious to laugh. “I just—tonight, I—” I broke off. Homer’s unvarnished manner of speaking, the very thing that made me trust him, was precisely the reason I couldn’t haul my folder up to the forecastle and talk with him about boys. Kind he might be, but it just wouldn’t do.

  He squinted at me. “Let me guess: you’re finding complications at every turn. You’re—” He halted, scratching at his beard. “The more you learn, the less you’re sure.”

  I swallowed. “You could say that.”

  “Hmm.” Homer edged the wheel to the right, shaggy gray eyebrows furrowed. He said nothing.

  In the dark, beneath the sky, I thought I could almost feel the moon as it pulled at the ocean, pulling my thoughts across the waves to all the people I missed. My eyes sank closed.

  “We’re lu
cky to have had so many clear nights,” Homer said thoughtfully.

  “Not much rain,” I agreed. “Not a good thing in Potomac, but nothing needs it out here.” I nodded my head backward at my little cluster of planters on the main deck. “Not much, anyway. The moon looks beautiful.”

  “To be sure,” Homer agreed, agreeable. He edged the wheel a little to the right. “But, Seneschal-elect, clear skies and light—and you can see more by some lights than others—are no substitute for a plotted course.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “A clear night is useless without direction. All the visibility in the world won’t tell me where to turn the helm. Information is no substitute for decision.”

  I lay still, feeling my heart thump through my back against the wood of the deck. “You mean I have to know what I want.”

  I thought of my godmother’s words, of yeses and nos that change the world.

  “I mean you have the power to choose.” Homer’s gray eyes drifted up to the heavens, over the stars hung brighter than jewels between gauzy clouds. “Set your course and trim your sails, Seneschal-elect. And whatever your heading, keep your eyes ahead.”

  When I returned belowdecks, an origami dragon was waiting outside my door, guarding my room. I set it on my bedside table and fell fast asleep beneath his watch.

  16

  For twenty-six days—twenty-six tick marks—I watched the sun and the moon rise and set over the Atlantic, the days passing with a rhythm steady as a beating heart.

  Once, we passed a ship headed from West Africa to Quebec, and a few of its sailors came aboard to swap letters. I sent notes to Daddy and to Godmother full of cheerful descriptions of the ocean and my garden and all the love I could put on paper, hoping the letters would reach them.

  Better yet, their captain, Anansi, was an old friend of Homer’s and a brilliant storyteller. I washed dishes as quietly as I could, determined not to miss a single word as he sat beneath the swinging lamps in the galley, telling us tale after tale of all the times he, Homer, and their friends had tricked their way out of trouble. Captain Anansi’s smile was white and wide against his luminous black skin, his voice melodic; I could barely look away as he talked.