His grip loosened, and she dragged him to the door of the tavern like a child. With every step, she expected to be snapped back. Her heart raced.
When they reached the tavern door, Isobel fell against the wall, making a show of breathing in and out. The pirates gathered around, watching her with uncertainty.
Just you wait, she thought, putting on a show. Silently, she counted the men, sizing up who would be a challenge and who could be ignored.
“Only one drink,” Doucette hissed to her in French. “While you drink, you tell me what you know about Peter Boyd.”
“And about Filip Skallagrímur,” Isobel added. She’d come prepared with local gossip about the Icelandic family allied to the pirates. She would need every lie and ruse and all the flattery she could muster. It wouldn’t be enough forherto eat and drink. Doucette must drink. They all must drink as much and as long as possible.
“What about Skallagrímur?” sputtered Doucette, bending his pepper-red face to hers.
“Idle prattle, perhaps,” she said. “But I’ll tell you what I’ve heard.But sustenance first? Please!”
Doucette relented and dragged her inside, his pirate crew crowding in behind him. The tavern was dark and rustic: a dirt floor, stone walls, a few tables, and a counter. There was only one way in and out. The bar was tended by an old man in a woolly hat. There was not, in fact, bread and butter, only the local ale. Without asking for permission, Isobel switched to Icelandic and ordered a round for every pirate.
As one woman working alone, Isobel knew that motion and sound would provide distraction, her most reliable tool. Step one, never stop talking. From the moment the pirates stepped inside the dark, smoky confines of the tavern, Isobel chattered. Switching easily between French and Icelandic and other languages in between, she complained in colorful detail about being captured by the duke. She invented a reason for being in Greece and extolled the virtues of the Greek islands as potential territory for enterprising pirates. She asked how much money Peter Boyd had won in their card games and revealed that he was a prodigious cheat.
Meanwhile she scooted chairs across the dirt floor, stirring up dust. She kicked the bar with her boot. She swished her skirt and flipped her hair and petted the dogs sleeping by the fire.
The pirates watched her as if they’d not seen a woman in a year, a circumstance that could have well been accurate.
“Sit!” Doucette finally bellowed, ordering her away from the hearth. Isobel complied, but not before she kicked a log from the tinderbox to the base of the hearth. If it caught flame, she would have another distraction. Every move was calculated to benefit the next five minutes of survival. By her count, she’d been within pirate company for fifteen minutes. She had forty-five minutes to go at least.
When she sat, she asked to have her wrists unbound so that she could drink. Doucette reached for his knife, but she turned away and offered her wrists to a nearby pirate. While the man worked at the binding, she spoke to him in various languages. He answered her finally—he was German—and she chatted with him to distract from the fact that she’d been bound with copious rope butno actual knot. The German pirate was sobeguiled by the end, she held out her hand for the loose rope as if it had been hers all along. He returned it to her and she tucked it smoothly in her belt.
“Tell me about AnaClara,” Isobel said, whirling back to Doucette.
“What? Who is AnaClara?” sneered Doucette.
Isobel spun a half-true tale about the beautiful girl with whom she “shared” Peter Boyd, the one who lured him away from Iceland and, in fact, from Isobel. With exaggerated jealousy, she painted a convincing picture of how she came to be separated from Peter and the Lost Boys.
While she talked, she fidgeted with her hair and vest. She claimed the fire was too warm, the afternoon too cold, the tavern too dark. The last thing she did before she ceased fluttering braids and feathers and skirts was tug the black pouch from inside the shirt to hang by her hip.
Doucette was frowning into his tankard. “Boyd was surrounded by all the beautiful ones,” he grumbled, “just like always.”
“But not me,” Isobel exclaimed with bitterness, throwing up her hands. As she did it, she purposefully knocked over her own tankard, sending the metal cup clattering to the ground and soaking the pirate with pungent ale.
Doucette lurched back, cursing and trying to flick drink from his coat. Isobel seized the chance. Working quickly and stealthily, she recovered the cup and tapped a good portion of the apple-seed dust into the pirate’s drink.
When the dust was back in her pouch, she affected an elaborate apology and took up two rags from the bar. She used one to dab Doucette’s coat and the other she tossed very near the fire.
Doucette shoved away her ministrations, angry about the spill. She fell back and made her way to the bar, stooping to pick up empty tankards on the way. She plunked them down and told the barman in hurried Icelandic to refill all of them.
“Another round?” she called, pretending to be a little drunk.
“We must make the ship by sundown,” Doucette called out, slurping his own drink.
“I’ve never been so grateful,” Isobel shouted, raising an empty tankard, “to sail away from this godforsaken island...”
The pirates shouted their agreement.
In that moment, the alcohol-soaked rag she’d dropped by the fire sparked and caught flame, shooting flames into the air and startling the dogs. The dogs yowled and scuttled away and two pirates leapt up to contain the fire.
It was the ten seconds she’d been waiting for. Moving quickly, she tapped the remaining apple-seed dust into the tankards waiting on the bar.
When she turned around, hands filled with tankards like a Bavarian barmaid, the pirates were just reclaiming their seats. She beamed and sang a little song, distributing the drugged tankards to mystified pirates.
In her head, she thought,I’ve done it.
