In the longboats, we three are bound at the wrists, which is a new experience for me. I’ve never been tied up before—neckwear to a headboard hardly counts. The pirates wedge us on the floor, between oars and the plunder, our stiff knees folded under our chins and hands curled like claws before us to keep the ropes from digging in. The yawning stretch of sea between the xebec and the pirates’ schooner is rough and gray, and more than once, as we’re rowed forward, I’m certain we’re going to be pitched from the longboat into the unforgiving waves. Which might be a fate preferable to whatever waits for us on the other side.
The longboats are hauled up onto the deck of the ship, where I’m expecting to find a whole mess of corsairs waiting, but there’s only two men and a greenhorn, all wide-eyed when they see us curled between the feet of their crewmen. They’re a sundry bunch, all—dark skinned and dressed in the rough ticking favored by tars. They’re also a far smaller and skinnier number than I expected from the size of the schooner. There’s only three and ten of them in total. I’m not certain how they crew it—the tall ships I’ve seen back in England are manned by legions of sharp-dressed navy men. No wonder the pirates disabled the xebec instead of taking it—they’ve hardly crew for a single vessel, let alone a fleet.
We’re left to stand on the deck, barefoot and bound and guarded by one of the corsairs, while the longboats make the journey back and forth between the two ships, dragging over more loot. There’s a frantic energy to the crew, like lions after the kill, bounding and preening and obnoxiously proud of themselves. They almost seem surprised by how well the seizure went.
At last, the captain climbs aboard and calls for all-hands, and I watch our chance of reaching Venice shrink into the horizon, growing smaller and smaller until it’s out of sight entirely. My heart sinks.
The man guarding us calls to his captain in English, which is an astonishing language to hear after so many weeks in foreign lands, “Who are these?” He tips his head in our direction.
“Hostages,” Scipio replies.
“We agreed we wouldn’t take hostages,” the man says. I realize suddenly that a few of the others have abandoned their work as well and are standing in defiance against their captain. It seems we might be witness to some sort of mutiny.
“We won’t deal with the slavers,” another man calls, his arms folded. “Cargo only. That was the agreement.”
Scipio, to his credit, looks unmoved. “You think I’d put us in that business?”
“When we first mustered, we agreed—”
“We’ll take the goods to Iantos in Santorini,” Scipio interrupts. “The trunks can be sold on the island.”
“And what about them?” One of the men jerks his head at us, but Scipio snaps at him.
“Shut your mouth and do as you’re told. Get the plunder below,” he instructs, which seems a rather generous word for what they took—a smattering of passenger trunks and a few crates of Dutch linen are hardly the spoils of a successful pirate raid. The men consider him for a moment, then begin to shuffle off, murmuring to each other and eyeing us sideways as though we are to blame for our current situation as hostages.
The greenhorn bobs at the captain’s elbow, his eyes wide as shillings. “No slavers, Scip,” he whimpers.
As Scipio looks down at him, the ruthless pirate captain seems to vanish, just for a moment, like he was a put-on act. He gives the greenhorn an affectionate scruff on the head. “Trust me, Georgie-boy.”
While it’s good news we’re not to be enslaved, I’m not keen on what the ulterior motives behind our kidnapping might be. Fates worse than slavery begin to dance before my eyes.
As the men begin to haul the stolen goods into a cabin beneath the quarterdeck, Scipio calls to the big man, “What have you?” The man holds up Percy’s fiddle case. A wash of relief goes through me that he brought it—I had lost track of it in our transport, but thank God we are still on the same ship as our Lazarus Key.
“It’s his.” He nods toward Percy, who is frozen at my side with his bound hands clasped before him like the cathedral likeness of a saint.
“Please, it’s only a fiddle,” he says.
“I have no doubt,” Scipio replies, then peers at Percy like he hadn’t seen him before. “You really are English?”
“Yes.”
“But not the earl’s son. That would be . . . you.” Scipio swivels his attention my direction. He has a strange way about him that keeps tricking me into believing he’s not going to slit our throats, but then his eyes will flash in a distinctly nefarious way and I am reminded both of the pistol at his hip and his post as pirate captain. I take a step backward and smash into the big man, scraping my heel on the rough leather of his boot. He collars me, like he’s afraid I was about to dive over the side for freedom. Scipio folds his arms, surveying me. “You are very far from home, sirrah.”
I don’t know what to say in return and haven’t a notion what pitch my voice will be if I do speak, so I settle for defiant silence. Or rather, silence that I hope comes off as defiant.
Felicity takes a different approach—defiant speech. “I don’t believe you’re pirates,” she says. She is standing ahead of Percy and me and in a stance considerably bolder than ours. She’s got her chin stuck out, her dark hair whipping around her face like she’s floating underwater. Even with her hands bound and that bloody bandage upon her arm, she looks nearly as threatening as some of the men.
Scipio runs a hand over his beard as he surveys her. He seems to be already regretting taking such petulant prisoners. “And what makes you believe we aren’t pirates?”
“A pirate ship survives by outrunning and outgunning its enemies and victims alike,” Felicity says. “This doesn’t appear to be an overly fast ship, nor one in possession of enough guns for speed to not be a concern. You’ve hardly more weaponry than the merchant vessel we were on. And all pirates from the Barbary Coast deal with the slavers, especially if there’s so little taken, and you have walked away with hardly any get, for you haven’t crew to manage it, and you would have taken no hostages if Monty had kept his mouth shut. If you truly are pirates, you’re very bad at it.”