“No,” she says, but there’s no sound, there’s only the silence in her ears, loud as thunder. “No. No, I didn’t mean to,” she says. “I didn’t…I didn’t…I…”
“Isabel.” Jack’s voice snaps through the noise. “We’ve got to go.”
“I…I didn’t mean to.” She’s staring at the knife. Her hands remember the feeling of it, of the resistance of shirt, flesh, and sinew as she pressed it into the man’s skin. There was something hard—a rib, maybe. The blade didn’t go in as far as she thought it would. She didn’t mean for it to go in at all.
Jack’s hands fold around hers. “I know you didn’t. He’ll be all right. It’s his side, just like when I got shot, remember? It’s the same spot. It hurts like a—” He swallows the word and says, “Like hell, but the surgeon will be able to help him. We’ve got to go. Come.”
“He’s right, Mrs. Henley. We must go.” Dick Pascoe, the inked Sea Bucca on his arm shifting as he tries to steer her away, but she’s stuck. Her feet have grown roots reaching deep into the ship. The knife trembles in her hands, both hands clasped together, black with blood,Jack’s hands folded around them. The guard is on the floor. He’s making puffing noises, as if he’s stepped into winter and the cold is taking his breath away.
“Here, give me the knife.” Jack uncurls her hands and takes it from her. Horribly, he wipes it on his breeches before turning to the others. “I say we go aft. If we’re quick, we may be able to slip into the water before anyone realizes what’s happened.”
One of the men says, “I can’t swim.”
“Then you’re out of luck, I’m afraid,” Jack says. “Follow me or make your own way. It’s the same to me.” He turns back to her, and still holding the knife, says with sudden, vehement feeling, “I shall spend the rest of my life trying to prove deserving of your love.”
The way he’s looking at her drives the darkness back, but then she glances at the guard again. He’s still puffing, his face gray and sweaty as he lies, doubled over, on the wooden planks.
“Will, you take this,” Jack says, handing Will the knife. Jack kneels by the side of the guard and draws up the man’s shirt. The guard looks as if he is going to lose consciousness any moment. Jack unties his neckerchief and, balling it up tight, presses it against the guard’s stomach. He takes the pistol from the man’s right hand and puts the hand over the wad of cloth. “Hold this, Morley. Press on it as hard as you can. The surgeon will be down soon.”
“Carlyon, you bastard,” the guard splutters, closing his eyes. “I hope you rot in hell.”
“Just keep the pressure on it.” Jack pushes the pistol into the top of his breeches. Getting back to his feet, he says, “Come, Isabel.”
Will puts his hand on her shoulder, looking five years older than he did when they sailed to France together, saying, “Mrs. Henley. Forgive me for saying so—you may not wish to hear it presently, but you did the right thing.”
How can it be right?she thinks, but when Jack says again, “Come,” and tugs on her hand, her feet loosen at last, as if Will has cut the chains holding them to the deck. She trips after Jack, Will, and two of the other men, Dick Pascoe and the rest following behind.
Her hands are slippery with the guard’s blood. She has to wipe them on her breeches or she’ll lose her grip on the ladder as they climb to the lower deck. Nausea rises inside her as she wipes first one hand and then the other, but then she looks at Jack, at his back as he climbs the ladder in front of her, and she thinks,he’s here.
She didn’t mean to do it, that with the guard. She never meant to hurt the man, but he threatened to shoot Jack. And if he hadn’t, they would have hanged him. She thought she had lost him, but he’s here, he’s alive, and the nausea drops away and she regrets what she did—she will always regret it—but she would not undo it even if she could.
They have a long way to go yet. In her mind, she goes through the steps: the lower deck, then the upper deck, the long plunge down into the water, the swim back to shore, and the horse, Rosie-May, waiting in Tom Holder’s stable. The ride to Nelly’s Cove, the setting sail on theRapide.Any of these steps, they may be discovered. Any step may be their last.
Jack has reached the lower deck and crouches by the edge of the hatch, eyes blinking against the light and holding out his hand to her. She takes it, and as he helps her through, she says, “I love you. I need you to know it, too.”
He smiles at her the way he did when they first met, nearly three months and several lifetimes ago, and says, “I do know it. But tell it to me again when I can respond as I should like.”
“How is that?” she says, and he grins unexpectedly and wonderfully.
Pulling her close, he says, “I think you know.”
He kisses her hard and far too briefly. He smells the same as when she last saw him, of the sea and faintly of sweat, but there’s something else this time—the smell of the hold of a ship. His stubble scrapes her chin. Then he releases her and, looking at Dick, says, “Everyone here? Let’s go.”
She follows Jack along the deck, as do Will, Dick, and the six other impressed men. They take to Jack’s leadership naturally, she thinks; they don’t question it, they simply follow him. He would’ve made a good officer like her father and George if things had been different.
The air has grown close; the frigate feels smaller, as if the wooden hull is trying to squeeze them through. The lower deck is crowded with men. The ten of them pass by, keeping their heads down as Isabel did before. Ghosts among ghosts. No one pays them any mind. Up on deck, the ship’s bell rings four times, a resonantting-tingshe remembers from visiting her father’s ship. The sound causes a commotion, with men running up the ladders while thunderous feet sound above.
“That’s four bells in the first dog watch,” Jack says quietly. “Change of watch and suppertime for the men coming below. We’re in luck; we couldn’t have timed it better.” He takes the guard’s pistol from his breeches and holds it close to his chest as they trail the crew to the nearest ladder. Will does the same with the meat knife from the cottage. With one hand Jack motions for the group to follow him to the top deck. When they reach it, a bosun’s mate in a blue frock coat screams in their faces: “To your stations! Make haste there, you bunch of filthy landlubbers, or the bosun will have your hide!” A drop of the man’s spittle lands on Isabel’s left cheek. She fights the urge to wipe it away.
“Aye, sir,” Dick Pascoe says as they move past the man, going along the gangway at a trot as if hurrying to their stations. The sun still rides high in a sky flocked with clouds. The sea is a brilliant blue canvas, almost turquoise, stretching from the bow of the ship to the shore, which is all towering cliffs apart from a cove just visible around the bend in the river. It’s not the shallow cove from which she watched the ship before, but a deeper one. They’re perhaps a third of a mile away from it. Bosahan cove, she thinks, or some other place along the coastal path she’d recognize if she were looking down at it rather than from across the river.
They’re nearly in the stern of the ship when a voice calls, “There you are, Mouse! We’ve been looking for you!”
Red Will is beckoning from the mizzen mast. “Over here!”
She slows a fraction, but Jack grabs her hand again and pulls her along.
“Ho there, Mouse!” Another of the mizzen topmen shouts, andthen a third voice calls: “Halt! You there, halt!” A bosun’s mate blocks their path, looking gritty and ready to strike.
