“They cannot, senyor,” Pascal says.
“We will hear no protestations,” Bourbon snaps. “She will show me her face or be made to. They all will.”
“They cannot because they are poxed!” Pascal cries.
Bourbon, who had been reaching for the edge of the cushion cover currently doubling as Felicity’s veil, draws back. “Poxed?”
Beside me, Percy, similarly swathed in bed trimmings, sways on his feet, though I’m not certain if he’s playacting or sincerely faint. I want to reach out to him, but I’m afraid of drawing the duke’s eye and exposing my distinctly mannish and unpoxed hands.
“A strain from the Portuguese seas,” Pascal goes on. “We have quarantined them for the safety of the city. So long as they keep their faces covered and the scabs unexposed, there is no danger.”
Percy’s definitely falling—he reaches out for me and I grab him, trying to keep him on his feet. The swaddling over my head starts to slip. The duke turns in our direction, but on the other side of the cabin Ernesta lets out a high-pitched wail and he whirls around. She seems to be really going for the theatrics, for she falls to her knees before Bourbon and clutches his boots, which successfully diverts his attention from Percy’s sincere collapse. Eva follows her lead, face pressed to the ground as she pleads to him in keening Catalan.
Bourbon shakes them off, then signals to his men. They’re tripping over themselves in their haste to get back into the open air.
In the doorway, we hear him say to Pascal, “You Spaniards are to be cleared out of here by tomorrow morning or you’ll be arrested. We will not have you cluttering up the river with your filth. And if we find you’re hiding these criminals, the punishment will be severe.”
Pascal bows his head. “Yes, sir. We want no trouble.”
As soon as they’re gone, Felicity is at Percy’s other elbow, and together we help him to the bed. He sits down hard on the bare mattress, then slumps onto his side and pulls his legs up to his chest. “Are you well?” Felicity asks, then asks again when he doesn’t respond, and for a cold, clenched-up moment, I think he’s going to have another fit and I almost take a step back. I’m not certain I’m stout enough to witness it again.
But he’s nodding, though he’s breathing hard. “Yes. Yes, just faint.”
I’m ready to strip this damn dress off as soon as the king’s men have gone, but no one else moves to do the same, so I suffer and sweat a while longer. When Pascal returns to tell us the soldiers have gone, I whip the veil off my face and take a gasping breath that’s mostly incense and immediately start to cough. Felicity slides off her headpiece and crumples it between her hands, shoulders quavering. “I’m so sorry,” she’s saying to Pascal, “I’m so sorry, your fair, your whole company, because of us, we’re so sorry.” And Pascal is trying to reassure her, though he looks pained.
Someone puts a hand on my arm, and I look around to find Eva standing beside me. “Vosaltres passeu la nit amb nosaltres. Nosaltres farem la nostra pel matí.”
“You stay the night with us,” Ernesta translates. “We go our own ways in the morning.”
The grandmothers and Pascal go with some of the others from their company to clean up the mess of the fair. Felicity offers to help, but they decline in case any of Bourbon’s men spot us. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask.
They return at dusk, and we have supper on the boat, the five of us on the deck while Percy sleeps in the cabin. He’s still ill and unsteady, and I’m starting to wonder how we’re going to move on if he can’t stand straight. Maybe we should stay in Marseilles and find Lockwood and forget all this nonsense after all.
Some people from the other boats come join us, and we eat gathered around the iron stove at the prow. The lantern light pebbled throughout the line of canal boats glitters on the water, reflections the color of a daffodil cone bobbing amid the waves. After supper, Felicity excuses herself to see to Percy, leaving me sitting like a boulder displacing a stream in the midst of all these people who speak a language I don’t understand and live a life I understand even less.
After a time, Ernesta comes and sits beside me. Her joints crack as she moves. “Would you like me to read for you?”
I don’t understand what she’s asking until she slides a deck of tarot cards from a velvet bag slung at her hip. I almost laugh. “Don’t take this wrong,” I say, “but I think all that tarot-tea-leaves what-have-you is nonsense.”
She shuffles the cards, and they make a sound like wind slithering through tall grass. “That does not answer my question.” She holds out the deck, and it feels like an invitation I can’t turn away, the calling card of a traveler far from home. Against my better judgment, I take the deck. “Shuffle,” she instructs, and I do, with significantly less grace than she, then return them. She fans the cards on the ground between us. “Choose your first.”
I make a show of letting my fingers walk over the cards like they’re a pathway. To my great surprise, a warm hum quavers in my fingertips, and I stop, without quite knowing why, and touch one. “Five cards,” she prompts, and I select the rest of my set.
Ernesta eases them ahead of the others. “The first is a representation of you,” she explains as she flips it. “The King of Cups. Emotional balance, stability, and generosity.” That sounds quite good until she pins on: “But, as you’ve drawn it upside down, you are the inverse. Emotional and volatile, a man whose heart rules his life. Confusion in love and relationships. A lack of control and balance.”
Which is less good.
She flips the second card, which is thankfully right side up so there’s no chance of her pulling that bait-and-switch again. “The four of cups,” she says. “A dissatisfaction with life.” She turns the next and clicks her tongue. “So many cups.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, a bit more anxious than I mean to sound.
“Cups are the suit of passion and love. The heart suit. Here, the eight of cups means leaving things behind. The heavy things that cling to us and weigh us down, but we grow accustomed to familiar weights and cannot let them go.”
Ernesta turns the next card over. The lantern light jumps, glancing off the sketch of a skeletal head, upside down. “Death reversed,” she says.
In spite of not believing in any of this, I’ve gotten rather wrapped up in it, and seeing that staring back at me is downright spooky. “Does that mean—”