by Mackenzi Lee
The next time I see Johanna, a maid escorts us downstairs together. On the stairs, Johanna catches my eye and touches two fingers over her stomach, a silent indicator that the map is still there.
We’re shown together to the parlor, where both Stafford and Platt are waiting for us, Platt jittery and pacing, smacking a folded sheet of parchment against his palm.
Johanna does not wait for him to settle or seat us or offer biscuits like this is anything resembling a civilized meeting. “I don’t know why you thought bringing me here would change anything,” she says, crossing her arms and giving the two gentlemen a stare that would have cracked granite. “I will not marry you, and I will not give you the map. I shall scream all the way down the street and refuse to sign the papers and tell every man, woman, and child in this city that I am a prisoner of you and my hand is being forced. I will never call myself your wife, nor Mrs. Platt, and anyone who addresses me as such shall hear the full story of how you deceived and abused me. So I say to you, sir, that this is your last chance to avoid a kidnapping charge, for do not think for a second I won’t take you to court.”
I nearly applaud. It’s a speech I heard her practice a few times while we were picking at our embroidered map, but she delivers it with poise and ferocity that I had not seen in full before. It’s like staring into the sun, so strong and bright she stands, and my heart swells with a sudden adoration for her, my proud and lovely friend.
Stafford looks at Platt, who tugs at the collar of his shirt like it’s choking him. His fingernails are yellow around the edges. He takes a short breath that sounds as though it sticks like toffee in his chest, then crosses to Johanna and holds out the paper in his hand without a word.
She doesn’t take it. “What’s this?”
“Some information that may change your mind,” Platt replies.
“Nothing will change my mind.”
“Read it, Miss Hoffman,” Stafford says over Platt’s shoulder. “You will not be asked again.”
Johanna glances at me, though I have no advice to offer her, then takes the paper. The tips of her fingers are bruised and swollen from our needlework, but either Platt does not notice, or doesn’t understand what it may mean. I watch as her eyes skim the page, trying to decipher what it says from the set of her brows. Then all the color leaves her face, and she sways like a boxer on her last legs. I worry for a moment she may swoon. “Johanna?” I say, reaching out, but she crumples the letter and throws it back at Platt. He lets it strike his chest and bounce off without flinching.
“I do not believe you,” she says, her voice wobbling.
Platt spreads his hands wordlessly.
Johanna’s bottom lip is trembling, eyes welling. All that fierce confidence suddenly wilted like a paper caught flame. As she sinks, my panic rises. I want to dash across the room, snatch up the letter, and see for myself whatever Platt has found to hold over Johanna, but before I can, Stafford has taken up the sheet and tucked it inside his coat.
“I’ll give you the map,” Johanna says breathlessly.
“What?” I say.
Platt glances at Stafford then shakes his head. “Not good enough.”
Someone tell me what is going on! I want to scream. Tell me what rut our plot has struck. The only thing worse than knowing is not, for my mind is unfurling every possible horrific message that could be contained within that letter. He’s threatened her. Her uncle. Me. Our families. Our friends. Every person we’ve ever known. The whole of England. He’ll poison them all if she doesn’t comply.
Johanna swipes a hand over her cheek, but another tear replaces the one she pushed away. “All right,” she says, her voice breaking. “I’ll marry you.”
“No!” It escapes me before I can stop it. Stafford is already heading for the parlor door, and Platt has snatched up his coat and is tugging it on. Johanna is statued at my side, still and weeping silently. I take her by the hand. “What did it say? What’s he done to you?”
She shakes her head. “I can’t tell you.”
“Johanna, whatever it is—”
“Miss Montague,” Stafford barks. “With me, please.”
I don’t let her go. “Whatever threat he has made against you—”
“Montague!”
“Don’t marry him,” I say, my voice a cracked whisper. “You’ll never be free.”
Before she can respond, Stafford has me by the shoulders and drags me toward the front hallway. I look back as Platt extends a hand to Johanna and she takes it, civilized and silent.
The marriage is to be performed at King’s Chapel, a small and brown and very Anglican church on the fringe of the sea. The other places of worship in the city are all mosques stripped and rechristened as Christian halls, but there’s something about this tiny chapel built by Franciscans with its thin interior aisle and brick front that makes me feel like I’m back in Cheshire. Particularly with the prayer books written in English, the priest a pasty man with a greasy wig and thick blue veins standing out under his skin. The money that trades hands in exchange for a hasty ceremony is English. The priest asks no questions about why it is that Platt is determined to be wed to this girl half his age with no notice, or why the bride looks as though she’s about to vomit and one of her witnesses is pinning the other to him, his arm a vise clamping her to his side.
Platt and Johanna could have said their spousals on a hill without anyone knowing and so long as they were on English soil it would have been legal, but I suspect Platt wants any case he may someday need to make for the legitimacy of this union to be as strong as possible, so they have the Bible read, rings provided by the chapel exchanged. They sign the registry book, then Stafford does, before holding out the pen to me. With every step I take toward the podium, I can feel the silky embroidery inside my petticoat brushing my thighs.
Platt presses a chaste kiss to Johanna’s mouth and all I can think of is what could have been in that letter that has kept Johanna silent all this while. She raised no protest. She did not scream. The only words she’s uttered since we left the house were the I do. What was written on that page that has so stopped her mouth? I’m sick with imagining.
After the ceremony, we’re marched back to the house, where Johanna and I are left alone in the parlor, sitting side by side upon the couch for a few precious moments while the gentlemen convene in the hallway. Johanna is crying again, her cheeks swollen and cherry red and her tears absolutely silent. I take her hand on the couch between us.
I don’t press her. I don’t ask what the letter said. But after several minutes of silence she chokes out, unprompted, “You’re going to think me the silliest girl who ever lived.”
I glance sideways at her. “Why would I think that?”
“Because of what I’ve done . . . for . . . You’ll never forgive me.” She pulls her hand from mine and covers her face. “You thought me silly and vain before, but this will truly seal it.”
“Johanna, please, tell me. I swear, whatever it is, I trust you. I trust your heart. I won’t think—”
“It’s Max.”
“What?”
She lets out the first audible sob I’ve heard from her, unexpected and brutal as a hunger pang. “He would have sent the letter back to Stuttgart, instructing them to shoot my dog, unless I married him.” Her hands are shaking against her face. Her whole body is shaking. “I know it’s foolish. If I had told you I was going to sacrifice my independence and my life and our work for some dog, you wouldn’t have let me. You would have told me I was silly.”
“You’re not.”
She peeks at me overtop of her hands. “What?”
“You’re not silly. Or foolish.” I don’t know how to say it and make her believe me. Sincerity suddenly feels like a pantomime, particularly after all the time I spent slyly and savagely telling her just how silly I found everything she loved. But I have no ounce of ill will toward her for it, and nothing seems to matter in that moment more than that she believes me when I say it. “Yo
u are protecting what you love.”
She shakes her head, then slides a hand down the front of her dress, fishing around in her stomacher before she emerges with the tattered map, now stuck through with pinholes and smudged with a few drops of blood drawn from needles. Her eyes flick to the fire snapping in the grate, merry and oblivious.
I press my hands over hers, the map in between them like a shared prayer. “Don’t.”
“I’m so pathetic,” she says, and I can’t tell if she’s laughing or crying. “I’m soft and selfish and sentimental.”
“You’re nothing of the sort, Johanna Hoffman,” I reply. “You are a shield and spear to all the things you love. I’m glad to be among them.”
She lets her head fall over onto my shoulder, and I press my cheek against it. Her face is damp against my neck. We’re both quiet for a moment, then she sniffs and says, “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for—”
“No, I’m a messy crier, and I’ve gone and slobbered on your shoulder.”
“What? Oh.” She sits up and I laugh at the damp, slimy spot she leaves behind. She laughs too, a little wetter than a laugh ought to be, but at least recognizable. “Max would be very proud.”
The parlor door swings open and Platt strides in. I look behind him for Stafford, but he’s absent. Platt stops before us and folds his hands behind his back. “Do you want to make a theater of this?”
“No.” Johanna stands up and squares her shoulders. Faces her executioner on her feet and extends the map.
Platt snatches it from her and unfolds it, a small cry that may be delight or pain or some compound of both flying from his lips when he sees it. “Did you alter it? Remove information?”
“No.”
“If you have—”
“I know,” she interrupts. “Please don’t say it.”
He folds the map with surgical precision and tucks it into his coat pocket, then keeps his hand pressed overtop of it like he’s afraid we may make a snatch for it or a heavy wind will whip through the parlor and pull it from him.
“You have what you want,” I say, rising to my feet to stand beside Johanna. “The map and the folio and all her work. You don’t need us any longer.”
“A good attempt at negotiation, Miss Montague,” he says, his fingers tripping into his pocket again and tracing the shape of the map. “But with your wit and your mouth, I would not trust you to leave this home unchecked.”
“I won’t say anything,” I say. “So long as you uphold your end and Johanna and her . . .” I’m not sure what word best describes Max, so I just say, “family remain safe.”
But Platt is shaking his head. “Commander Stafford has hired a captain with an English Letter of marque to take you both to England. Miss Montague, you’ll be returned to your father, and Mrs. Platt to my home in London. Any whiff of trouble, and I’ll send word to your uncle in Stuttgart at once.”
“There won’t be,” Johanna says softly.
But Platt doesn’t have a cuddly puddle of a dog to hold over me, and I had certainly not expected to be sent anywhere so soon. I thought we had more time here, or at least more time to reorient ourselves now that our plan has changed. “That wasn’t part of the arrangement.”
“Then would you rather I have Mrs. Platt committed to an institution for her hysteria and you tossed back into the Barbary States without a penny? How far will that mind of yours get you then? You’ll truly learn what a woman must do to survive alone in this world.” He takes a step toward me, and I fight the urge to retreat. I can still feel the sting of his hand against my cheek, but I will not back down before this man. It may be a small, hollow gesture, but the refusal to surrender is all I have. He stops, fists clenching at his sides. “I am doing you a kindness, Miss Montague. You should be returned to your family.”
“A kindness?” I repeat with a wild laugh. “You think yourself kind to me? Is that what you tell yourself so that you can sleep at night?”
“Your ambition will eat you alive,” he replies. “Same as it did Miss Glass. I cannot let that happen to you.”
Zounds, does this fool actually think he’s saving me? Another storybook hero to swoop in and rescue a girl from a dragon or a monster or herself—they’re all the same. A woman must be protected, must be sheltered, must be kept from the winds that would batter her into the earth.
But I am a wildflower and will stand against the gales. Rare and uncultivated, difficult to find, impossible to forget.
The bell echoes through the house, then footsteps and the front door opening. Stafford’s voice raised in greeting to the captain who has arrived to return us to England.
“You have not saved anyone,” I say to Platt, as low and dangerous as I can muster. “Not me, not Johanna, not yourself.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Neither do you,” I snap. “At least I know enough not to delude myself into thinking imprisonment is a kindness.”
“Imprisonment?” Someone says from the doorway. “That’s very dramatic. Will she make this much of a theater about everything?”
For a moment, that voice in this house with my stomach calcifying in slow despair is so out of place I’m certain I am imagining it. Or if not imagining it, I am at the very least mistaken. I almost don’t dare look for fear of breaking the spell and resigning myself well and truly to my fate. Hope in any form feels fragile as spun sugar.
But there he is, swaggering into the room in a way that would have been ridiculous had he not been so good-looking, all scruffed up and mussed like he’s been weeks on the unforgiving sea. Had he not lost that ear, he’d be far too pretty to pass as a convincing sailor.
It’s Monty.
Thank God the commander is occupied making introductions under some assumed name I don’t catch and Platt is just as occupied making a handshake with the young man he must think is a very legitimate British shipping agent, so neither of them sees me trying to scrape my jaw off the floor. Monty raises a fuss about his payment, and how he can be assured it will be received, and how half up front doesn’t seem like enough, perhaps they can negotiate something higher. They trade all relevant information of the accounts to be collected and deposited into, and exactly what doorstep I’m to be dropped on, and it’s hard not to go from gaping at my brother to grinning when he meets my eyes for the first time. I expect that, in his rascally heart, he won’t be able to resist a wink, but instead he sizes me up with a peery eye that nearly has me fooled. Were he ever inclined to take to the stage, he’d make a very good actor. “How much trouble can I expect?” he asks Platt. “They look contrary.”
“No trouble,” Platt assures him with a hard look at Johanna and me.
Monty points to me. “That one’s got a squint like she reads too many books.”
I shall break into a thousand pieces with the effort it requires not to roll my eyes at him. He’s taking such great pleasure in his clandestine crowing that he’s going to give us both away.
“Feel free to use any restraint you see fit,” Stafford replies. “And upon the delivery of this letter”—and here he hands Monty a sealed sheet of parchment that I imagine my brother will take great delight in ripping up once we’re gone—“you can expect sufficient compensation from her father.”
Stafford walks with us to the docks, holding on to Johanna while Monty keeps his arm on me. “Dear sister,” he murmurs, so low only I can hear, “look what you get yourself into when I’m not around.”
“Dear brother,” I reply, “I have never been gladder to see you.”
I am near ready to faint with relief when I see the Eleftheria among the British ships in port. Monty trades a last handshake with Stafford, then escorts Johanna and me up the gangplank. There are a few men on board, most of whom I don’t recognize, but at the helm, Ebrahim straightens from the knot he’s clearly pretending to tie, first to trace our progress, then, after a brief moment of eye contact with Monty, falls into step behind us as Monty leads Johanna and me down belo
w the deck.
Monty offers me a hand on the stairs, so steep they’re practically a ladder, and I take it, careful not to catch a toe in my skirt and unravel all our hard work on my petticoat. When he extends the same hand to Johanna, not only does she not take it, but she leaps unaided the rest of the way down to the lower deck, then deals Monty a sharp kick between the legs. He buckles like a hinge.
“You should be ashamed of yourself!” Johanna cries, smacking him across the back of the head with her muff. “You are a terrible man for accepting money to deliver human cargo who are obviously taken against their will. You’re no better than a slaver and a pirate!”
“Johanna—” I reach out for her, but she bats me away with the muff.
“I don’t care what he does to me! I don’t care what any of these bastards do! There’s nothing left to take from me, and I just want to hit something!” She swings her muff at Monty again, nearly clipping Ebrahim as well, who stops just in time on the stairs.
“Johanna, stop!” I seize her by the arm and pin it to her side. “Stop it, he’s not going to hurt you.”
She squirms, trying to pull free of me. “Well, I want to hurt him!”
“Stop it, Johanna. He’s not a sailor. This is my brother.”
“What?” She stares at me, then pivots sharply to Monty, still doubled over. “Henry Montague?”
Monty groans in affirmation, straightening slow as if he were thawing out. He places his hands carefully over his most vulnerable areas, then says, “Miss Hoffman.” Her voice is nearly as high as hers. “My compliments to your cobbler. What are those shoes made of and from where exactly was it mined?”
“You’re . . . weren’t you . . .” Johanna looks wildly between Monty and me, like she’s studying our faces for a resemblance. Then she blurts, “I remember him taller.”