“I’m so sorry,” he says again.
“Nothing to be done about it.” Felicity’s attention has been commandeered by two men shuffling up the gangplank past her, dressed so gentlemanly that they must be passengers. She watches them go, her fingers drumming against her folded arms, then starts to follow.
“What are you doing?” I hiss at her, making a snatch for her sleeve and missing so spectacularly I almost pitch into the water.
She halts midway up the gangplank and turns back. “We have to get there somehow. And he did agree to take us.”
“So we’re going to, what—stow away?”
“The next ship to Genoa doesn’t leave for a fortnight. So unless you have an alternative, this is our only choice.”
Neither Percy nor I follow her, but, undeterred, she continues upward. “Felicity,” I hiss after her, casting around to see where the boatswain’s gone. “What if they catch us?” I’m keen on getting to Venice, but the risk affixed to this stratagem seems far too high. If we’re caught, that would put a knot in our itinerary that could take a long while to untangle. Our beloved island would likely be a sunken thing by the time we reached it.
She turns back yet again, looking rather vexed, which is unfair since she’s the one being unreasonable here. “What will they do? Throw us into the ocean? Maroon us in a dinghy for African pirates to scoop up?”
“What if he catches me?” Percy asks.
She considers that for a moment, then says, “We won’t get caught. Now step lively.”
As she stalks up the gangplank, walking with such confidence that I half believe she belongs there, I take Percy by the arm. “We don’t have to,” I tell him. “We can wait for the next boat.”
“It’s fine,” he says, casting another glance over his shoulder for the boatswain. “Let’s just go quick before he comes back.”
Felicity doesn’t bother to try blending in with the few passengers skirting about—we’re far too vagabond-looking to shuffle unnoticed among the half-dozen gentlemen in their wool traveling suits, and she seems to be the only lady on board. Instead she goes straight below—a few of the sailors deal her curious looks, but no one stops us—all the way down to the nether regions of the ship where the cargo is stored, haphazard shelves of wooden crates protected from the pitching sea by the grip of rope netting. Most of it has already been loaded. The air is thick and stifling, hazy with the smell of packed goods and rotted wood. The only light comes from the sunbeams filtering down from the deck two levels above us, and a lonely tin lantern wavering on its hook. From somewhere in the rigging, the ship’s bell is tolling in warning of departure.
Felicity squeezes herself into a hollow space between rows of barrels stamped with the tangled “VOC” of the Dutch East India Company, her back against the wall. Percy and I follow, Percy with a bit more discomfort due in part to his beastly long legs. He drags his fiddle case after us.
“Not quite the view I was hoping for,” I say once we’re all wedged tight.
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” she replies, with an eye roll that’s far more dramatic than I was being. “It’ll be a quick jaunt to France—seven days, depending upon the weather—then another week to Genoa, after a few days docked.”
“That’s near two weeks,” I say, “and then there’s the time overland to get to Venice, which will be another five days at least. The duke is going to be waiting there if he decides to give chase.”
“Do you think they’ll follow us?” Percy asks.
“They must know where we’re going,” I reply. “Now that we’ve got the key, there’s only one conceivable place. I can’t imagine Helena is the sort to sit back and let—”
“Hush,” Percy hisses, and I fall silent. There are heavy footfalls on the stairs, then the thwack of a load being dropped. The floor trembles. None of us makes a sound, and a moment later the footsteps retreat up the stairs again, the lantern going with them, and we fall into a darkness filigreed by the dust motes and faraway snatches of sunlight.
Felicity shifts her weight and her foot slams hard into one of the barrels. It might be my imagination, but I’m almost certain I hear her curse under her breath. “Comfortable?” I ask.
She scowls at me. “Once we’re out to sea, we’ll be able to move around a bit more.”
“You mean walk all the far distance to the other side of this hold?”
“We can still disembark, if you’re inclined to be moaning all the way.”
I look from her to Percy. He’s got his elbows on his fiddle case and his chin resting upon his hands. “No,” I say. “We’ve got to get to Venice somehow.”
We spend what I imagine is close to five days in the cargo hold of the xebec, and though we aren’t wedged quite so tight all the while as we were those first few hours, we can’t risk much movement. We’ve barely left Barcelona before my knees begin to feel as though they’re going to snap like brittle sticks. My stomach still isn’t quite back to its good-natured, gin-swilling self yet and I spend a not-insignificant portion of the time feverish and nauseous, trying not to be sick as the ship rolls, since there’s nowhere to do so conveniently. It’s uncomfortable enough already, the three of us in such close quarters with nowhere to go for privacy. The farthest we can venture is the other side of the hold, which is hardly any distance at all.
I have little interest in food, but Felicity and Percy are both maddeningly unmoved by the pitching, so we crack into a few of the crates in search of provisions. They’re mostly raw Dutch wares—Holland linens, blocks of nutmeg and black tea leaves and tobacco, crumbly sugarcane in amber cones, and cacao nibs that are so bitter and sharp they make us all gag when we chew them. The barrels yield little-better spoils—the first two we open are syrupy molasses, another flax oil, which sloshes over the rim when the ship rolls and soaks through all our shoes, leaving us skating the planking. The final barrel we try is a cask of dark wine, and we drink it from cupped hands like the philistines we have become.
We rest in staggered shifts, with one of us always on watch in case crewmen decide to make a spontaneous visit to the hold. The lingering effects of the belladonna have me sleeping more than is my fair share, but Felicity and Percy are kind enough not to chastise me for it. Felicity still looks at me like she’s petrified I might start sobbing again with no warning, and Percy’s sharp attention to my every movement is making me feel like an invalid.