The dance of nerves slows; the sea calms her as it always does. She’s far from shore now, the water under her black as night. On board the ship, voices ring out, and when she looks up, she sees a small crowd assembling along the gunwale. Shouts and pointed fingers: it’s as if they’re pointing right through her disguise. She closes her eyes briefly, steadying her resolve as she continues to swim toward the ship. She’s a boy, fifteen years of age, hungry like a starved dog, she reminds herself. She isn’t Isabel Henley anymore.
Maybe she never was, she thinks. The way she feels she could keep swimming forever without tiring; the way she revels in the cool embrace of the sea, coming home in its vast arms—maybe she’s someone she never believed she was. A child of the sea.
As she approaches the ship, the words come to her again:Come home. Swim.Spoken in the voice of the river, of the current, of the wind and the gulls.
She cannot listen to it now. She must concentrate on the frigate. Looking up again, she can see the faces of the men assembled on deck. They’re faces smooth with youth and faces heavily lined with age, light and dark faces and one with an eye patch, and they’re all turned to her as she closes the last twenty feet between herself and the ship. Up close, the frigate is far bigger than she thought. The hull towers over her, twice the height of the old pilchard shed, all gleaming wood broken up by gunports. Along the waterline, a feast of seaweed and barnacles sticks to the ship. She’s close to the open sea now and what she assumed was a gentle bobbing up and down turns out to be a serious roll.
She aims for the wooden steps set into the hull near the bow, but her first attempt to grab the lowest rung sees her dip under the surface. She swallows her breath just in time, and when she comes back up, one of the men on deck throws a rope over the side. “Take it!” he shouts.
The rope twists like an angry snake. She stretches out her hand, treading water, but it slips away. Just as she thinks she’ll go under again her fingers close around the rough hemp. She hoists herself up, feet slipping on the rungs of the ladder.
A cheer goes up along the gunwale and she feels it in her chest, an expanding warmth, as if it’s the crew of theRapidecheering her on. Again the ship rolls, but this time she’s expecting it and she holds still, waiting for theHornetto right herself again. The rope burns her hands as she pulls herself up, feeling the strain in every one of her muscles.
When she reaches the deck, large, calloused hands grab hold of her arms. One set belongs to the eye-patch-wearer who’s saying, “There you are, boy, there you are,” with a mouth full of gums. They pull her up over the gunwale and set her on her feet. The ship rolls and she moves with it, shifting her weight as she finds her balance. The men are craning their necks to take a look at her as she stands, dripping, on the deck. The wind whips at her shirt and she grasps the hem with both hands to keep it in place. When she lifts her head, she’s looking at the point of a knife.
Chapter Eighteen
The knife is slotted in the hand of a young officer. Judging by his uniform of a blue wool jacket with gilt brass buttons, cream shirt, and breeches, he’s a midshipman like George was. The knife is like one George used to own, too: a dirk with a curved blade and, she expects, a mother-of-pearl inlaid hilt, though she cannot see it as the midshipman’s surprisingly beefy hand is wrapped tightly around it. The young man’s hair is darker than George’s, but his eyes are similar, gray-green in color and wide set. His age, she thinks, is the age George was when he died.
If things had been different, George could have been standing here pointing his dirk at an intruder.The thought cuts. It’s the first such cut in some time—she has been too busy worrying about Jack. And the thought is wrong, too, for George would’ve advanced through the ranks, especially after Trafalgar; he wouldn’t have been a midshipman any longer.
“State your purpose, coming aboard a vessel of His Majesty’s Navy in this manner,” the midshipman barks.
Water trickles onto the deck as she stares at her bare feet. She wants to push the hair from her face but worries the motion may betray her. She should have practiced in front of the looking glass. Which of her gestures mark her as a woman; what habit might give her away?Everything depends on her acting skills. She cannot contemplate what will happen to Jack if she fails.
As the ship rolls, she again moves to keep her balance. Nine days on theRapidehave taught her well; she doesn’t stumble. The ship smells like theRapide,too: wood scrubbed with sand and seawater, the smell of wet hemp and clothes in need of a wash.
“Well?” The midshipman snaps when she merely stands there, staring at her feet. She must remember to lower her voice. “State your purpose, lad!”
She says, “I wish to volunteer, sir.” Not too high, but too uncertain. She lifts her hand to her mouth, chews on the nail of her pinkie finger, then remembers Richard’s cap and pulls it off, holding it against her chest.
“You wish to—what? Speak up!”
“To volunteer, sir. To join the crew.”
Most of the crew has gathered around to watch. Some of them laugh and one calls out, “More fool you, boy!”
“Quiet!” the midshipman says, and a little more kindly, he says, “Look up when you speak to your superiors. You wish to volunteer to join His Majesty’s Navy?”
“Yes, sir.” She looks up at last and holds his gaze, everything inside her turned to liquid.Please believeme.
The midshipman is very young, just like George was. He’s a boy compared to Jack. The thought comes to her, unbidden. It’s unfair to George, who never got to grow fully into manhood. And now she stands here deceiving George’s fellow officer in order to save a man who doesn’t look so very harshly upon the French and their Revolution, who smuggles contraband against the king’s laws. Everything is turned upside down, yet her feeling forbids her to do anything but charge ahead with the deception, to try to find Jack, to get him out. She says to the midshipman, “I should like to join His Majesty’s Navy sir, very much.”
“And you couldn’t wait for the press gang, could you? You had to come aboard byswimmingacross?” As he speaks, the midshipman slides the dirk back into the leather sheath on his belt.
Letting her shoulders slump like Harriet told her, she says quietly, “I was hungry, sir. And I feared the officer in charge of the press gang might not want me.”
“What in God’s name made you think that? The press gang will take anyone!” shouts one of the men.
Another calls, “They’d take your nan if they could get her!”
The midshipman turns and barks, “Quiet there or I shall take your name!” To Isabel, he says, “What’s your name, lad?”
She had come up with something, hadn’t she? She stumbles around the corners of her mind, groping—“Jack,” she says, too softly.
“Jack what?”
“Jack…Dowling, sir. Of Helford, sir.”
