“I don’t need—”
“What about Holland? If you were well, you could come home. You wouldn’t have to leave. And you and I, we could . . .” I’ve no notion how I was meaning to finish that sentence, so I trail off and let him fill it in however he wants. I’m certain Felicity’s filling it in as well, which is mortifying considering she seems to know more than Percy about my feelings toward him, but I don’t look at her.
“Or, what if we . . . ?” Percy trails off, staring down at the key again. He turns it over with his thumb, his other hand working on the back of his neck. A small crease appears between his eyebrows.
“Whatever we do, we’re the only ones who can get to her now,” I say. “We’ve got to do something with that.”
“You don’t have to—” Felicity says to Percy, but he abruptly returns the key to its resting place in his violin case.
“Fine,” he says, eyes still downcast. “Let’s go to Venice.”
Relief funnels through me, though it’s followed by a bitter aftertaste I can’t account for. Percy looks more stricken than I feel he ought to, and Felicity’s still watching him, like she’s seeing something that I’m not.
“Do we have time to catch the next ship?” I ask. I start to climb to my feet, but a wave of nausea lurches through me, everything left inside of me demanding to be outside of me, and I collapse backward before I’ve gotten far.
Percy’s hand grazes my back. “Steady on.”
“I’m fine.” I try to stand again, and stagger into Percy. He grabs me under the arms and eases me back down onto the stones. “We have to go,” I protest, though it’s pitifully feeble this time.
“We can wait a few days,” Felicity says. She’s looking rather concerned as well.
“But the island is sinking and the Robleses are looking for us,” I murmur.
“Both excellent reasons, but I don’t think you’d get far in this state.” Felicity stands up, brushing off her hands on her skirt. “I’m going to go see if I can find something for us to eat.”
I raise my head. “I don’t want—”
“I was thinking for Percy and me—not all sacrifices being made are on your behalf, you know.” She revels in that telling-off for a moment, then adds, “Though you should try to eat something. It might help.”
“Do you want me to go?” Percy asks, but Felicity shakes her head.
“I’m much more waifish-looking than you—and Monty still looks like he’s recently risen from the dead. Stay here, I’ll be back soon.”
As soon as she’s gone, I slump against the wall, pressing my cheek against it. My hair snags on the stone.
“What if we can’t find it?” Percy asks suddenly.
“Find what?”
“The tomb. The heart. Or what if we get there and it’s already sunk?”
“It won’t be.”
“But what if it is? Or if it isn’t real, or it doesn’t make any difference? If I’m still ill at the end of all this, what do we do then?”
“It’s going to work.”
“But if it doesn’t.” A ragged note of frustration punctures his tone. “What if there was another way?”
“Another way to what? Make you well?”
“No, to keep me from being put away.”
“Stop worrying, darling. It’s going to work.” A chill goes through me and I shudder hard. “It’s cold.”
“It’s not. You’ve just got belladonna in you.” Percy shucks off his coat and wraps it around me, rubbing his hands up and down my arms. He smiles at me, and I slump forward into him, head against his chest. He laughs. “Want to sleep?”
“Desperately.” I think he means to let me lie down on the cobblestones, but instead he pulls me in to him, folded into his arms like we together are a single thing. It is not, strictly speaking, the most comfortable position I’ve ever been in. The bruise on my jaw is throbbing where it’s pressed against his shoulder, and my knees are curled up at an awkward angle that starts them aching straightaway. A strand of his hair keeps fluttering against my nose, threatening to bring on a sneeze, but I don’t move.
“What can I do for you?” he asks, and I think suddenly of Mateu and Helena, a string tying them together so she knew they’d never be apart. Two hearts, knotted.
“Don’t go anywhere, all right?”
“I won’t.” I can feel him breathing, low and even, and I focus on that rise and fall until my own falls into time with it, a stumbling vibrato like the notes from his violin.
At Sea
21
There is a single merchant xebec departing the following day that will dock first in Marseilles, then in Genoa, before moving to the open waters of the Mediterranean. The boatswain, a stocky cove with wiry hair and pox scars spat across his cheeks like holes in a cribbage board, lets himself be sweet-talked by Felicity and agrees to take us on so long as we pay in France. We don’t elaborate on the particulars of how that payment will occur—I hardly think we can pop in on Lockwood, collect some coinage, then dash out the door again, nor do I expect he’s been twiddling his thumbs in Marseilles all this while waiting for us to turn up.
Or rather, the boatswain’s willing until he realizes it’s Percy and me who will be traveling with her.
“Who’s this?” he demands, pointing a finger at Percy that halts us as we start up the gangplank.
“Your passengers,” Felicity replies. “I did say there were three of us.”
“Is he yours?”
“He’s his own.”
“No.” The boatswain is shaking his head. “I’ll not have Negroes on our ship.”
“You have colored men on your crew!” Felicity replies, flinging a hand up toward the deck where two dark-skinned men are hauling cargo.
“Don’t like Negroes we don’t own,” he replies. “Can’t control them. Free Africans get big ideas about their own grandeur. I don’t want him on my ship.”
Percy looks horrified. Felicity looks as though she’d like to skin the boatswain alive, but she puts on at least a pretense of politeness and attempts to elicit some sympathy. “He’s not African, he’s English, same as we are. We’re from highborn families, all. Our father”—and here she scribbles a hand between herself and me—“is a peer of the realm. He’s an earl. We can pay you whatever you ask. We’re stranded here without means, sirrah, please, have a bit of compassion.”
The boatswain is maddeningly unmoved. “No free colored men on board.”
So Felicity abandons compassion and whips out the law. “Slavery is illegal in this kingdom, sir.”
“And we make berth in the Virginia colony, madam,” he replies, then mutters under his breath, just loud enough for her to hear, “Bitch.”
For a moment, it seems a real possibility that Felicity is about to shove him off the gangplank and into the sea. Good luck for the boatswain that he chooses that moment to spit into the brown water, then stalk past her and down the dock. Felicity gives his back a murderous look.
“I’m sorry,” Percy says, his voice hoarse.
“It’s fine,” Felicity says, though she’s clearly mourning the collapse of her plan.