The officer glances at the lot of us. “No.”
“But it’s only half-full!” Jamie protests.
“Prepare to release the falls,” the officer yells at the crewman tending the pulley.
I gather Wink and Olly, one in each arm, and push them forward. “Excuse me, sir?” I project my voice, trying to make myself heard over the din of people and the ocean. “These children are my charges. Please let us board. There’s ample space, and—”
The officer looks at me square on, and all my thoughts halt at the sight of Officer Merry’s dour face. He doesn’t speak. He must not recognize me from that first day on the well deck.
“And we won’t take up much room,” I finish.
The crewman attending the ropes twists around. When our eyes meet, my breath hitches. It’s the QM, giving me a peculiar look. I glance away, feeling a net drop over me.
The QM takes in Wink and Olly, looking as earnest as two well-spent pennies beside me, and then his eyes snap back to mine. “I know you.” He turns to Officer Merry and jerks his head in my direction. “That’s no woman, sir. It’s one of the acrobats who turned my bridge into a circus. A wolf in sheep’s clothing is what he is.”
Grimacing, Jamie puts his face up to the QM. “It’s your own fault you’re so easily fooled, so how ’bout you do your job or get stuffed?” With his breath fogging out of his mouth, Jamie looks like an angry phoenix rising in the mist.
Officer Merry peers at me, his squint deepening in his face.“You’re the one who came up from the hatch. Knew you’d be a problem. Trickster, huh?”
“Officer Merry, Iama girl.”
The QM plucks off my knitted hat, and a chorus of women gasp. “Why is his hair like that, then?”
Jamie’s hands ball up. Usually he keeps his cool, but now his feathers have been ruffled. I hiss at him to back down. Aggression will only ensure we won’t get on this boat.
I pull the hat out of the QM’s hands and look straight into Officer Merry’s narrowed eyes. “As an acrobat, long hair gets in the way. Dressing as a boy allows me to perform tricks that some might consider unseemly if done by a girl.” I turn to the occupants of the lifeboat. “Many of you enjoyed our show. I beg you to speak for us.”
A chorus of yays and nays erupt, somehow canceling each other out.
Then a familiar figure gets to her feet, one hand on her mother’s shoulder for balance. “Officer Merry, I can personally vouch that she is most definitely a girl, as sure as your man is an incompetent baboon.” April’s red swing of a mouth stays in the shape of an O as if to draw out the last word.
“I can vouch for her, too, Officer Merry,” adds another voice, this one lighter in texture but just as clear. Behind April, a young woman rises. My eyes bug out at the sight of Charlotte, still in her green velvet gown and hugging Strudel tightly. Mrs. Fine is sitting on the bench next to her. “Valora, come sit by us.”
“Oughtn’t we be on our way?” says a woman with the pushed-in face of a bulldog, sitting at the front of the lifeboat with her hands in a muff.
“Get a move on!” cries another.
The QM switches his hard stare between me and the lifeboat.
Officer Merry sighs. “Fine, you get on. But not those two. They’re old enough to stay.”
“They’re only eight and ten!” I undershoot by a couple years and hope it’s enough.
“I was ten when my daddy gave me a mule and told me to git,” says a man from somewhere nearby.
A chorus of agreement comes from the men still waiting on the deck. “Ain’t fair to give those beggars a place when good women are still waiting on a spot.”
“Which women?” I look around and see none.
“They’re loading more from the gangway doors,” says another man.
Wink and Olly stand straight as pins. Officer Merry squats so that his eyes are even with theirs, and the hard lines of his face soften. “Look, lads. It’s time for you to be men. There’ll be another boat along soon that’ll take care of you, but for now, we have to get the women and tykes away, okay?”
“Yes, sir.” Olly’s voice cracks. Wink nods, his cheek as twitchy as a firefly’s bulb.
“No!” I insist. “They are in my care.”
“Then you stay with them,” says the woman with the muff.
