“Cat, I’m in bed.”
“Fine. Merry, have you got a squid in there?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“It’s just a little one.”
“Merry… You don’t want to go to sleep with that in with you. You’d better let me dump it out.”
“No!”
“It’ll die and stink.”
“No, it won’t. I’ve put it in my washbowl. It has plenty of water.”
A pause. And then with resignation, “Oh, all right. Can I get you anything?”
“No. Thank you. I’m almost asleep.”
“All right. Does Cook have the key?”
“Yes. Good night, Cat.”
“Good night.”
She wasn’t sure later what had made her lie to him about the key. She didn’t intend certainly to make another doomed bid for escape with its attendant horrors and promised punishment; so she might as well have told Cat. Perhaps it was her revulsion for being locked in that kept her from it. Or perhaps she was too tired for a lengthy explanation. And anyway, it was a clear example of her overly conscientious attitude that she should worry about whether or not her captors had arranged to have her securely enough imprisoned.
She awoke much later to blackness and the sharp sounds of activity on deck. TheJokewas making sail. Merry tried to relax again into slumber. Instead, she found herself awake, listening alertly in the shapeless night and interpreting the vigorous noises above her.
Jim Selkirk on the foretop had sighted a sail to thewindward, south by west, and distant by more than five leagues. The bucking motion of theBlack Joke,as it began to breast the waves, told her that they were giving chase to the sighted sail, running close to the wind. They tacked ship to the westward, and later to the southeast. Merry heard the order to load the cannons. She wasn’t particularly alarmed; she had heard the order given before and knew it often led to nothing more than a warning shot. What concerned her was what the squid would eat. She thought about it as she sat cross-legged on her bunk and closed her mouth so she wouldn’t bite her tongue and held her hands over her ears to prepare for the percussive explosion.
The explosion came, howling like a banshee, and in a second’s horror she realized that it had been no single warning shot but a broadside. The cabin tilted violently, hung suspended, and righted itself. Her dinner plate and cup went flying; her shoes skidded across the floor, and she had to grapple for the edge of the bunk to keep from following them.
Running to and fro, clutching up and stowing fallen objects, wedging her washbowl of squid into a cupboard for safety, she heard the air crackle as the other ship returned the fire. Spray rose, hissing against theJokeas a ball rent the water nearby.
TheJokewas going into battle.
With wild heartbeats she listened to the repeated scream of cannon fire, the high whiz of musketeers firing from the rigging. Racing footsteps pounded the deck above her head until every timber around her began to vibrate. Shouts tore from hoarse throats. A piercing shriek from the deck above her mingled with the thudding crash of the ordnance, and she stifled a cry as she realized that one of the sailors she had befriended was dying in agony above her.
She flung open the cabin door, and the acrid reek of powder smoke burned her face and lungs. The black grid of thehatchway framed the horror above. Through smoke-hazed lantern light she saw pirates moving quickly, their faces powder-blackened and altered over the glint of cutlass and grappling hook. Far above, boarding nets strung in the rigging made a weird webbed pattern against the stars.
A thunderous, shuddering crash threw Merry painfully against the frame of Morgan’s door as the great hull of theJokecollided with the enemy vessel. Hell shone in vignette through the hatchway—the swarm of cursing, panting men resisting the fury of a boarding party, clanging steel blades becoming red, spitting scarlet in a spray as they flashed.
Cowering below the insanity, she could feel the cold tremors in her limbs, the sweat of fear damping her shirt, growing sticky on her face, trickling into her mouth.
Suddenly a body fell heavily from the sky, blocking the hatch in a grotesque sprawl. It was Jim Selkirk, shot from the crow’s nest, and she stared upward, horrified, into his blank eyes. The dead fingers went lax, and his pistol broke free to drop to the deck before her and skitter toward her feet. She grabbed it up in a haze of instinctive reaction.
Again theJokerolled. The floor tipped sickeningly away, and the backwash tossed her like a toy against Morgan’s red oak door. She grabbed at the bronze latch for support as her feet slid across the dropping floor. The latch gave, and the heavy door swung open, throwing her into the room.
Inside, holding a swaying lantern candle by its black tin loop, was Cook’s assistant, the man she knew only as Hey, You! He was hunched over Morgan’s wide Belgian desk, the yellow candlelight falling in a long oval on the somberly gleaming surface and bouncing back to illuminate the man’s face in carmine shadows. Wispy hair jutted stiffly out from the base of his russet stocking cap. His greasy leather gaiters were askew, and his brown plaid shirt twisted at his stout waist, as though it had been donned in haste. He turned, sawMerry, and began to come angrily toward her. She raised a hand instinctively to protect herself. Her hand still held the half-cocked pistol, and seeing it, he magically fell back, adopting a sly, wary grin.
“What are you doing?” she asked him.
“And who might you be to be askin’ me that, eh? I may well be askin’ you the same! Last I heard, the likes of you was supposed to be under lock and key. What would Devon say if he saw you with that barker in your hand? I’ve half a mind to call him. What would you say to that?”
The threat didn’t exactly make her break out in a cold sweat. Devon had more pressing matters on his hands. And whatwasthis man doing here? In theory theJokewas a democracy. The captain’s quarters belonged to the crew as much as they did the captain. But Rand Morgan was still Rand Morgan, and in practice before anyone entered Morgan’s cabin, they knocked, and all except Cat and Devon waited for an invitation to do that. Why would a kitchen assistant come here surreptitiously in the midst of the fray and why was he gripping a bulging canvas purse?
