Old-fashioned clothes. Old-fashioned accents. Old-fashioned ship?
Etta struggled to sit, and the men’s attention shifted—from her face, down to—she sucked in a sharp, whistling breath, throwing her arms around herself. The gown was sliced down the center, and as the wet, heavy fabric dried, it was losing its cling.
The younger man tossed her a navy-blue coat. The wool rasped against her cold skin, and Etta had to fight the urge to bury her face in it, to disappear. It smelled the way she imagined the man would, like sweat, cedar, alcohol, and the sea itself.
“Madam, are you well?”
The young man sitting a short distance away from her was so slight, so unimposing compared to the others, that he’d simply faded into the background. He lifted his chin to peer at her through the round, almost laughably small wire glasses perched on his nose. The front of his odd pants were soaking wet, as were his knee-high socks and buckle shoes, and Etta had the faint, horrifying notion that she might have thrown up on him when she’d come to.
The young man’s face steeled under her scrutiny; one small hand came up to stroke at the white cloth elaborately tied at his throat, the other to pat down his hair. Those were clean hands—perfectly manicured, which seemed at odds with the fact that they were on…on…
A ship.
With a pulse of fear, Etta leapt to her feet. The coat wasn’t a barrier against their gazes, and it wouldn’t be much of a shield against their weapons, but she felt better for having it close.
“Oh my God—” she choked out.
A ship. She’d seen it just before—before all of those sails had come crashing down and she’d been knocked clear into next Tuesday. Her back had slapped against the freezing water, ankle twisting down as she’d struggled to paddle up. All those years of swimming at the 92nd Street Y for nothing. Her fingers had been too frozen, her vision too blanketed with black, to untangle the netting.
It had hurt, so bad—her head, her chest, every part of her had felt like it was tearing apart with the need to breathe.
I drowned.
Etta looked from the young man with the wire glasses to the one who had spoken when she’d come to, the one with the dark, stern eyes. He watched her calmly, almost as if challenging her. The words registered almost as surely as if he’d taken one of his long fingers and stroked the letters into her skin.
Is this who you are?
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back, bracing himself against the roll of the ocean.
The ocean.
Not the Met.
Not New York City.
Not a piece of land in sight.
Just two tall wooden ships.
Just men in…costume.…
They were costumes. They were.
You know they’re not. Etta tried to swallow, the memory of the concert ripping through her, tearing at her heart, her lungs. Alice is dead. I…the Met…the girl…
The older man with red hair sent the others out of the way, moving with long, efficient strides.
“She’s well, and there’s work to be done,” he told the crew, motioning two burly-armed men forward. Both were missing patches of their beards and hair, as if they’d been singed off in clumps, and both were bare down to their waists. The impressive expanse of muscle was offset by the fact that Etta could smell them from a good ten feet away.
“Mr. Phelps, Mr. Billsworth, please escort this ship’s crew down into the hold. And see that the carpenters begin their work posthaste.”
“Aye, Captain.”
These men…they’d been fighting, hadn’t they? And not just fighting—killing one another.
The man said to bring them down into the hold, she thought. They’re being locked up. Because…they were the enemy? Where the hell was she? How the hell had she gotten from the Met to a ship in the middle of nowhere?
“Now, sweetheart, come here,” the man—the captain—said, beckoning her forward with a hand missing its last two fingers. Etta wasn’t sure she trusted her instincts in that moment; the sight of him, bloodied and massive, made her chest clench. But there was nothing menacing about the way he was approaching her, or even a thread of threat woven through his words. She shook her head to clear that last thought before it made her do something reckless again, like let her guard down. If he thought he was going to grab her, he was going to get every last ounce of New York City she possessed. Etta swung her head around, searching for something sharp.
“Don’t be afraid, sweetheart,” he said, firmly, hand still outstretched. Soft eyes. Soft voice. Perfect for luring unsuspecting ingénues to their untimely deaths.
“I am not your sweetheart!” she snarled.
The man cleared his throat, a poor disguise for his laugh. “We aren’t scoundrels. Any man who attempts harm to you—who casts a single unwanted glance in your direction—will find himself eating barnacles off the keel.”
In some strange way, she did believe him. If they’d wanted her dead, then fishing her out of the ocean and reviving her probably wasn’t the most competent way of going about it.
Funny how it didn’t make her feel any safer.
These people were strangers, and by the looks on their faces when she’d first appeared, they’d seemed just as surprised to see her as she was to see them. If anyone actually knew what was going on, and where she was, Etta knew her best and maybe only bet would be the girl she’d left below deck—the one who had pushed her through that strange door of glimmering air at the museum.
“Scoundrels?” Etta repeated in disbelief. “Are you supposed to be…pirates?”
The young man looked highly offended, but the red-haired man merely shrugged. “Aye, pirates. Legal ones, though I suppose His Majesty would beg to differ. That ship—” He pointed to the ship sitting alongside the one they stood on. Countless lines of rope and hooks connected the ships to one another. “She’s a privateer outfitted in New London, Connecticut. The Challenger. We’ve captured this one,” the man continued.
Right. Etta forced herself to nod. Of course.
The men who hadn’t been sent to the hold were working now, scrambling around the deck like ants rebuilding their colony. Planks and beams of wood were being handed up from below, over from the other ship. Men disappeared below, still bloodied, and reappeared with bandages. Her stomach flipped and flipped and flipped, and she thought that there was a real chance she was going to tear the jacket apart at the seams just to do something. Something other than sit there and feel helpless.
You are not helpless. Being down wasn’t the same as being out. She just needed to—find her bearings. Get her sea legs under her. Or whatever pirates said.
And now they were clearing the deck of…
Bodies. Say it, Etta. Bodies.
Alice. Did they have something to do with hurting her?
Killing her, a voice corrected at the back of her mind.
She swept her eyes back out over the water to avoid the grim efficiency of it, their twisted, stretched bodies—their pieces—being stitched up into linen bags by sailors with faces like stone. There wasn’t a speck out on the far horizon. No land. No other ships. Just a sparkling blue that was darkening along with the sky. Just her, these ships, these men, and these bodies. The water and foam sloshing across the deck had turned a revolting shade of pink from the blood.
Etta barely made it to the rail in time to lean over it, stare into the dark water, and throw up. She closed her eyes, tried purging the images that were clinging to her mind like rosin on a bow. By the time she finished, she shook with exhaustion and more than a little embarrassment.
But she felt better for it. Clearer.
“Ma’am—”
Her shoes were long gone—if she’d ever been wearing them at all? Her heel slid against an edge of sharp metal, and she instantly seized on the idea of finally having a weapon. She stooped to pick it up. The many-pronged hook was nearly the size of her head and weighed twice as much—Etta barely got it in the air before it was
trying to tumble out of her hands.
“Ma’am, please,” the older man said, sparing a brief glance up at the heavens. “If I may, I would far prefer death by harpoon to death by grappling hook. Less of a mess for the men to clean up after, believe me.”
“Perhaps you should take a moment to think through your course of actions.” The younger man remained where he was, arms crossed over his broad chest again. Was he speaking to her?
That’s when Etta noticed that he was as drenched as she was.
Idiot. You didn’t get back up onto the ship by yourself.
“I don’t…You were the one that…saved me?” she asked.
“I should expect that’s obvious,” he said pointedly.
The older man turned back to him, blocking Etta’s view of his expression. When he faced her again, he winked. “Don’t mind him. He’s allowed one day of good nature a year and he’s already spent it.”
The other man gave a curt nod, an abbreviated little bow, and said, “Nicholas Carter. Your servant, ma’am. This is Captain Nathaniel Hall. May we have the pleasure of knowing your name?”
Etta hesitated, looking between them again. Captain Hall clasped his hands behind his back, never once losing his pleasant smile.
The situation was so past the point of being strange, and Etta was still not totally sure she wasn’t dreaming or having a nervous breakdown, that his question gave her pause.
Perhaps you should take a moment to think through your course of actions. The memory of Nicholas’s words made her grip the coat again. She straightened slightly, making her decision.
Whatever this was, she needed to keep herself alive; and, at that moment, the best way to do it might be to cooperate.
“My name is—”
“Henrietta!” a voice called. “Where are you? Henrietta?”
“Henrietta?” Captain Hall repeated.
“Etta,” she corrected, searching for the source of the shriek. “Etta Spencer.”
The girl appeared in a cloud of rustling green fabric and stormy dark hair. An already pale face went chalk white, then green, as she braced herself and took in the scene. She took slow steps through the gore that hadn’t yet been scrubbed away by the small boys with their buckets.
Her. Etta hadn’t imagined her, either.
“Madam,” the small young man with glasses said. “Has your stomach finally settled?”
Etta smelled the sick on her, saw the sheen of sweat coating her forehead and upper lip. The girl’s bloodshot eyes locked on Etta.
“You had me so very worried!” she gasped out.
Etta had to throw her hands out to steady them both—and to keep her from getting too close. The girl was shorter than her, but her presence was made larger by the coiled hair piled on top of her head, now drooping off-center. Her dress’s full skirt enveloped Etta’s wet one, and the shade of ivy green only deepened the queasiness of her complexion.
I don’t think so. Etta struggled out of the girl’s grip and felt her nails dig into her hand. The girl’s brown eyes were framed with full, dark brows, her lips set in a thin line—a smile that was as mocking as it was unforgiving.
The warning was clear: Don’t say another word.
Etta struggled to hold on to her composure. She opened her mouth, with sharp, wild words already poised at the tip of her tongue, before she clamped it shut again.
Perhaps you should take a moment to think through your course of actions.
This girl knew what had happened. Where they were. Information would start and end with her, and the only way Etta was going to get it was if she shut her mouth and listened.
You know what happened. She pushed you. Etta exhaled loudly through her nose, turning to look out at the sea. She didn’t trust herself not to give away her discomfort.
“Really,” the girl said, keeping her voice light and airy, “you must not panic that way. I told you that everything would be perfectly fine! Surely these gentlemen mean us, as passengers, no harm.”
“Battle can rattle even the steadiest of nerves,” Captain Hall said. “Miss…?”
“Oh—Sophia Iron—erm, Spencer.” She gave a little curtsy. Etta watched without a speck of sympathy as the girl straightened and swayed, her eyes clenched shut, her fist pressed against her stomach. “And…this is…my sister.”
She’s seasick, Etta realized.
“Indeed?” There was a wry twist to Nicholas’s mouth. “I can see the resemblance.”
Etta was glad she looked back then, not because he deserved a laugh, but because she caught Sophia’s reaction as she saw him for the first time. Her thin mask of pleasantness slipped into revulsion. It lasted only a moment, but the impression of it stamped itself into her memory.
Captain Hall gave Nicholas a wry look before turning to the young man in glasses. “Perhaps you’d be so good as to tell us your name, as well as this ship’s?”
“Oh! Certainly. This ship is the Ardent,” he said. “I am Abraham Goode, the surgeon’s mate, and now, sir, your most obedient servant.”
“Looking to stay out of the hold, eh?” Captain Hall chuckled. “You’ll serve the prize crew without complaint?”
“It would be my pleasure,” Mr. Goode said bravely, setting his shoulders back in such a way that Etta caught Nicholas rolling his eyes.
“Where is Captain Millbrook?” Etta’s “sister” asked, glancing around. “Are you now in possession of the ship?”
Her accent wasn’t British. More like an old movie starlet’s, with her careful cadences; so different than how she’d sounded at the Met.
“I’m sorry to say he’s dead, ma’am.” The diminutive man in glasses stepped forward from the rail, where he’d been hanging back. He had to raise his crystal-cut voice to be heard above the clanging from the men on deck.
Nicholas and Captain Hall exchanged a look.
“I suppose that makes your job easier,” the older man said.
Nicholas shrugged, but his eyes drifted back to Etta. “Would you like to return to your cabin and rest? Today has been an ordeal, I know.”
“Yes,” Sophia said hurriedly, before Etta could speak. “A good course of action. May we continue to use the cabins near the great cabin?”
“Well, I certainly won’t put either of you in the forecastle with the prize crew,” Nicholas said. “That will be fine.”
Etta turned toward him, surprised. So…he was in charge of this ship, not Captain Hall? Then that meant…Captain Hall led the other ship they’d mentioned, the Challenger, and they’d captured this one, installing Nicholas in command. The men that had been marched down into the hold must have been whatever was left of the original crew of this ship.
Sophia looped her arm through Etta’s, drawing her attention back to her.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Mr. Goode said.
Etta must have looked as confused as she felt, because Sophia dug her ragged nails into her arm.
“Captain Millbrook was the young ladies’ uncle,” Goode said, scratching at his scalp. Sophia, as if suddenly remembering she needed to be devastated, dabbed at her eyes as the surgeon’s mate continued, “He was escorting them back to England following the death of their father and the sale of their plantation in New Providence. We departed from Nassau a few days ago.”
Nassau? New Providence? Why did she get the feeling they weren’t talking about New York or Rhode Island?
“Ah, how terribly unfortunate,” Captain Hall said, strangely unsympathetic.
“Forgive my rudeness, but I”—Sophia swallowed hard—“will take my sister below, and leave you to your work. Perhaps…” She swallowed again, squeezing her eyes shut as the winds picked up and batted at the ship. “Mr. Carter, you would be so good as to accompany us?”
Nicholas looked like he found the idea of pulling out his own fingernails more appealing.
“It would be my pleasure,” he said stiffly.
Sophia smiled tightly and nodded, bidding Captain Hall and Mr. Goode a pleasan
t afternoon. Etta steadied her legs enough to trail behind her. Nicholas lifted the hatch’s cover, a lattice of dark wood.
No, Etta thought as a flash cut through her memory of the body, the blood, the twisted face. Don’t make me go back down there.…
Like she had a choice. Sophia put a hand on the small of her back and pushed her so hard, her foot nearly caught the hem of her dress.
“It’s perfectly safe,” Nicholas reassured Etta, holding out a hand. She focused on the warm pressure of his fingers closing around hers, not the sharpness of the descent, the smell of gunpowder and blood. The ladder wasn’t a ladder so much as a set of steep, shallow stairs. Etta held the sopping fabric of her dress in one hand and kept the other on the rim of the hatch as long as she could for balance. Fabric pooled around her ankles, wet and itchy, as she took each step.
Etta managed to keep both her balance and her eyes open. Smoke hung in the air, heavy but no longer blinding. She got a better look at the long stretch of deck in front of her. Light was pouring through the square holes in the side of the ship, where men were rolling large cannons back into place and securing them with ropes. Etta couldn’t make out what was at the other end of the space—canvas curtains were strung up to hide it from view.
Finally, Etta forced herself to look down, only to find that they’d moved the body. They’d rubbed every last trace of it away until there was only a faint discoloration on the wood. The repairs down here had begun immediately; the debris of battle had been brushed to the sides of the ship. Those men who weren’t patching the walls were picking through the piles, tossing useless wood fragments and unsalvageable broken glass out through the gun ports to be swallowed by the waiting waves.
Etta stepped back against a wall, making room for the others to come down. Her heel glanced off something cold, drawing her attention down, and—there, on the ground, hugging the wall, was what looked like a small butter knife. It was in her hand before she’d realized she’d gone for it, and she pressed it deep into the folds of her skirt.