The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy

by Mackenzi Lee

  “It can be,” I say. “We can talk to him. Make an arrangement.”

  But Sim is shaking her head. “He won’t change his mind. He doesn’t want this secret to get back to London. He has men on both ships, more than Scipio does. He’ll rally them if you resist.”

  Johanna stares at her, cheeks sucked in hard for such a long moment I begin to worry for her respiration. Then she lets out all the air in a sharp puff and says, “Well then, I’m not leaving!”

  “Johanna—” Sim says, but Johanna pushes on overtop of her.

  “I’m not. I’ll maroon myself on this island and make the English camp my home and learn to eat that orange moss on the trees and drink sea water and I shall find someone to bring me Max and then I will make this island my continent and my classroom and I will learn everything your father is too cowardly to, and the map won’t matter.” She crosses her arms, legs spread, a defiant general. “You can’t stop me. If you will not let me take the map back to England, then I’ll stay here.”

  “I will too,” I say.

  Johanna jumps, like a fly landed suddenly upon her, and pivots to me. “You will?”

  I lost myself in the wanting to do everything right, to get the certificate, the membership, the license, and the diploma. I thought I needed it to all be the same as what men were given, or else it did not count. I have been tripping my way down the same path as Platt and Glass, less of a care for the work than the fact that I wanted to be noticed for that work, and that I was doing it in a way the boards back home would recognize as legitimate.

  I had lost sight of the fact that I want to do work that matters. I want to understand the world, and how it moves and how the intricate strings of existence weave together into a tapestry, and I want to weave those tapestries with my own two hands. I am filled suddenly by that wanting, to know things, to understand the world, to feel myself in it. It floods me with a ferocious strength. This world is mine. This work is mine. If it is selfish to want, then selfishness shall be my weapon. I will fight for everything that cannot fight for itself. Block the wind and keep away the wolves and put supper on the table. I am suddenly swollen with more than wanting to be known—I want to know.

  The dragons are not ours to expose. The Crown and Cleaver is not ours to throw open the gates to. But this world is still ours. We deserve our space inside of it. Whether that space earns me a spot on the walls of the surgeon’s hall in London or not.

  Sim looks between us, and while she must have known neither of us was the sort to go gently, she must be wishing she had picked less willful companions. “Please,” she says at last, and holds out a weak hand. “Don’t make this harder.”

  “We’re not,” Johanna replies. “Your father is, by going back on his word. If you want someone to pat you on the head and tell you you’re pretty and absolved, go run back to him, for you won’t find it here.”

  Johanna begins to stalk off, then seems to realize halfway up the beach that she has nowhere to go, as this island is deserted and inhospitable, but after only a short stuttered step goes on with her charge up the mountain anyway, as though to prove just how ready she is to tame this wilderness. Even when that wilderness snags her skirt and she has to rip it free, leaving behind a small flag of pink silk waving from a thin-fingered tree.

  Sim looks like she wants to run too, though not in anger. She looks hollowed out and halved, two allegiances doing battle but the one that has been sewn into her blood since birth winning out, no matter how much she may be doubting it. Part of me wants to tell her that I understand, that it’s all right, that I don’t blame her. The other part wants to say she’s a traitor and a coward and should grow a spine and stand up to her father. But that’s a very simple thing for me to say.

  “What happens to Platt?” I ask at last.

  Sim drags a hand over her eyes. “My father and I will take him back to our garrison. See if there’s any of him left and make certain he doesn’t return to London.” A flock of black birds nesting upon the cliff behind us takes flight. She looks at me, strangely expectant, and when I raise my eyebrows, she says, “You didn’t ask me if we’re going to kill him.”

  “Oh. I assumed you wouldn’t, because that’s what I’d very much like to do, and you’re far more decent than I am.”

  Her lips part, the ghost of a smile. “When we first met, you would have assumed the worst of me.”

  “I would have, and that was terribly unfair,” I reply. “Though in my defense, one of our preliminary interactions involved you pulling a knife on an innocent man.”

  “Because you needed him to punch your brother in the face.”

  “Not punch him! We decided no punching.” She laughs, and I lean my shoulder into hers. She lets my weight sway her sideways like dune grass in the breeze. “How long have you known your father wouldn’t give us the map?”

  “He never told me outright.”

  “But you knew.”

  She shrugs. “Pirates.”

  “He should have been a man and told us himself instead of sending you.”

  “He’d rather follow in the great tradition of women cleaning up the messes made by men.”

  “Ah, the history of the world.” I push a handful of my hair out of my face. It’s gone greasy as bacon over the last few weeks, and I almost wipe my hand upon my skirt as soon as I’ve touched it. “I suppose he wouldn’t believe you if you said it was lost and let us keep the petticoat.”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “And I suppose you agree with him, that the dragons should be left alone and undisturbed.”

  “If we leave them undisturbed, we also leave them unknown,” she says, and it sounds so much like something Johanna would say that it catches me under the chin. Sim cants her head to the side, one finger tracing the shape of her bottom lip. “It may be his choice, and he may be the commodore, but I don’t think it’s the right one.”

  “That’s very bold of you to say.”

  “It would be bolder if I were saying it to him. I’ve thought for so long that the only way he’d ever consider me a contender was if I made myself into the best version of him in miniature that I could, so that he’d know his legacy wouldn’t be disrupted if he gave his landholdings to me. But I don’t want to be my father. I don’t want things to stay the same. And if that costs me my birthright . . .” She falters, resolve weakening when faced with voicing it.

  “What will it mean for the dragons?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” she replies. “But there are always consequences. Even in standing still. And I’m tired of stillness.”

  We stand side by side, staring out at the ocean, watching the waves fan across the shore, leaving constellations of white shells behind. A beached starscape at our feet. “Do you ever wish time could be lived backward?” I ask. “So you could know if the decisions you were making were the right ones?”

  Sim snorts. “Are there right ones?”

  “Righter ones, then. Ones that won’t end in wasting your life and getting nowhere chasing something that might never be anything more than a mythology.”

  “Mythology is all shite anyway,” she says. “It never has stories about people like us. I’d rather write my own legends. Or be the story someone else looks to someday. Build a strong foundation for those who follow us.”

  I wrinkle my nose. “That’s not very glamorous. Foundations are buried in dirt, you know.”

  “Since when have you cared for glamour?”

  “I don’t. It’s you I’m worried for.” I pluck at the loose fabric around her thigh. “Wouldn’t want anything to happen to those fashionable trousers.”

  She tips her head at me, eyes narrowing. “You’re mocking me.”

  “I am,” I reply, as solemnly as I can muster.

  That oil slick of a smile spreads over her lips, and I want to touch a candle to it and watch her smolder, this dangerous, gorgeous, wildfire of a woman. “Just because you’ve never seen me cleaned up doesn’t mean I can’t lean deeply
into the princess part of my piracy.”

  “Oh, can you now?”

  “Felicity Montague, if you saw me dressed for Eid in my blue-and-gold kaftan, you’d faint dead away. You’d propose marriage to me on the spot. And maybe my kisses aren’t magic for you, but of course I’d say yes, and I’d treat you right and we’d be very happy together. You could have your house and your books and your old dog, and I would have a ship and sail for years at a time and only stop by to see you on occasion, so you’d never grow tired of me.”

  “And would we be happy?” I ask.

  “Ecstatic,” she replies.

  Her tongue darts out between her teeth and her eyes flicker to my mouth. I think for a moment she might kiss me again. Every amatory novel would say this is the moment for a back-bending, knee-weakening embrace, lips on burning lips, though I can’t imagine there’s any book in existence in which two people like us kiss. If we are not the stuff of myths, we are certainly not the coupled lovers of any modern fiction either.

  “We’d grow weary of each other eventually,” I say. “We’re cactus girls. We’d prick each other with a glance.”

  “I withdraw my cactus comparison,” she says. “Or, if you’re to be a cactus, you’re one of the furry ones. The ones that look like they have spines but if you’re brave enough to press your hand against it, you realize it’s soft.”

  I roll my eyes. “That sounds fake.”

  “Then you’ll be the first of your kind. Wild and rare and impossible to forget.” She opens and closes her fist, flexing the striped scars along her arm from the broken glass. A reminder of the strange things the ocean grows. All the mysteries of the world we still don’t know. Questions we haven’t even thought to ask.

  “I can’t give you the map,” she says. “But if you’ll let me . . . and if Johanna will let me . . . there may be another way.”

  We find Johanna at the skeletal remains of the English camp, releasing her rage by methodically destroying anything Platt’s men left behind that will not prove necessary to her survival should she have to make good on her promise of installing herself as queen of this island. She stops when she sees us coming, a pan in her hand already dented from several times struck against a tree trunk. “What?” she calls flatly as Sim and I pull ourselves up the hillside toward her.

  Sim halts at the camp’s edge, takes a moment to catch her breath, then says, “Would you hear a proposition?”

  “I’ll hear it,” Johanna says, “but I may not entertain it.”

  “What if,” Sim starts, “you return to London—”

  “With the map?”

  Sim hesitates. “No.”

  “Then the answer is no.” Johanna flings the frying pan into the shrubs, startling a pair of birds into flight. She squeaks, looks like she might apologize to the birds, then realizes that would undermine the fury she’s trying so valiantly to put on. “I told you, I shan’t leave without it.”

  “Well, hold those convictions for a moment and let her finish,” I say.

  Sim takes another deep breath, looks as though she’d like to move the rest of the cookware out of Johanna’s reach just in case, but then says, “Go back to London. Mapless. Make certain everyone knows that Platt’s ship sank and his expedition failed and everything he was studying was nonsense. He was a crazed addict. He was out of his mind.”

  “So far none of this is proposition-worthy,” Johanna says.

  “Then, as his wife, take whatever finances of his remain for yourself.”

  “He won’t have much,” she says. “Opium is expensive, and he’s been without a post for a long while.”

  “But you have a dowry,” I say, “which will have reached his bank accounts by now.”

  She pauses. Considers this. Then scowls again. “All right, so I have some money. What do you propose I do with it?”

  “Purchase whatever equipment you’d need to do this work right,” Sim says. “Get your house in order, fetch your giant dog, pay these corsairs to fix up their ship and bring you to the Crown and Cleaver garrison when the time is right. And then I’ll bring you back here, and we do this work together.”

  Johanna was so ready to flatly refuse any offer from Sim that she looks put out by how reasonable this solution is. “And what then?” she demands. “What happens when we find a way to entirely end death by using the dragon scales?”

  “I don’t know,” Sim says. “We’ll have to work that out together when the time comes.”

  “Though if we’ve ended death, we’ll have a good long while to figure it out,” I add.

  “What about you?” Johanna asks me.

  I look to Sim. “You could go with Johanna,” she says. “Or, if you wanted . . . come back to Algiers with me. Our medical institutions are different from yours, but we have surgeons and physicians in our fort. You could learn from us. With us. And make certain I uphold my end of this bargain.”

  “Yes, I’d feel much more comfortable with that,” Johanna says. “Felicity will keep you pirates honest.”

  “I know it’s not what you wanted,” Sim says, and I can feel her eyes on me.

  It isn’t. It’s leagues away from what I pictured years ago, reading medical books in secret and romping through the grounds with Johanna and harboring an illicit vision of a future away from my father’s estate. It isn’t what I wanted. But I don’t care. It is not a failure to readjust my sails to fit the waters I find myself in. It’s a new heading. A fresh start.

  “We can’t disappear from London forever,” Johanna says. “We’d have to keep some sort of contact back home if we want to go back. If Platt has accounts, or a home, or any assets, someone will have to manage that so I can keep a claim to it and we have something to go back to when the time comes.”

  “My brothers,” I say, and the word feels warm and round against my tongue. “Monty’s rubbish at figures, and his penmanship is a disaster, but he and Percy could handle it. Monty can charm investors and Percy can make certain all the sums even out. And they can live in the house while you’re away. I’m sure Monty would be thrilled to impersonate your husband if need be. He’s gotten very enthusiastic about playacting.”

  “The three of us could rally at my father’s garrison in a year and return here together,” Sim says. “I know it’s not what we promised, but it’s a start. It’s the best I can do.”

  “You’re right,” Johanna says. “It’s not what you promised.” Her voice is so sharp my heart sinks, but then she goes on, “But it’s the start of something. And I’ll take a start.” She holds out a hand to Sim, like she wants to make a formal stamp upon this accord. When Sim doesn’t take it, Johanna says, “Is there a different way you corsairs seal your bargains?”

  “We can shake, if you want.” Sim stares at her open palm, then adds, “But I have a better idea.”

  “Am I going to catch some ghastly disease of the blood from this?” Johanna asks as she watches Sim mash lampblack and laundry bluing in with the white of an egg. The mixture shifts from milky to the bluish obsidian of the underside of a raven’s wing. Sim spits into the bowl, then tests it with her thumb.

  “Almost definitely,” I reply. We three are sitting on the deck of the Eleftheria, our skirts spread like puddles collected from a rainstorm as, all around us, the men make ready to cast off. They’ve done enough repairs to limp back to the mainland, with Johanna aboard, while Sim and I will go with her father’s men, back to Algiers. Scipio, who only stays off his bad leg when I’m looking, is shouting orders from a perch near the helm. Percy and Monty are nearby as well, Percy stretched out on his back with his head in Monty’s lap. They’re both soaking in the sun, which has appeared for the first time since the battle. Percy doesn’t color in the sun like Monty does, but it makes him look glowing and healthy and—thank God—alive. Monty says something I can’t hear, and Percy laughs, then puts a hand to his chest with a wince. Monty flips at once, from goading to doting, pressing his hand overtop Percy’s as he whispers admonitions I can’t
hear but are almost certainly something like steady on. Or perhaps they’re far more explicit descriptions of what he plans to do to Percy once he’s healed. When it comes to my brother, both are equally likely.

  “And you do know how to draw, don’t you?” Johanna asks Sim, scraping her nails against her palm as she bounces up and down like a tea kettle trying to let the steam out. “I’m not going to end up with a permanent mark upon my skin that looks like a penis with a party hat on, am I?”

  “No, that’s a different piratical fleet entirely,” I reply dryly.

  Sim flicks her eyes at me with a glancing smile, then turns back to Johanna. “I’ll draw it out in charcoal for your approval before I do the ink.” Johanna lets out a wild giggle. “Why are you laughing?”

  “Because it’s going to hurt! And this is how I cope!” She throws her arms around my neck, nearly pulling me over into her lap. “Comfort me, Felicity. I haven’t Max to hold so you’ll have to do. This is going to hurt terribly, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it will,” Sim says, but I shake my head when she turns away. Johanna looks between us, not sure whose credentials to believe.

  “Where do you want the mark?” Sim asks us. “Before you answer, consider that, in order for it to be most effective in a time of need, you’ll have to show it off.”

  “Consider also,” I add to Johanna as I lean backward into her embrace, “your fondness for low-cut party dresses.”

  “Oh, I don’t know!” Johanna flaps her hands. “It’s too much pressure to choose!

  “Do you want me to go first?” I ask. “That way if I don’t survive, you can change your mind.”

  “Yes, please.”

  Johanna releases me from her strangulating snuggle, and I turn to Sim. “Where am I marking you, Miss Montague?” she asks.

  “Right in my elbow, I think,” I say, fiddling with the button on my sleeve.

  “Same as mine?” she asks, and I hesitate.

  “Yes. Is that strange?”

  “No,” she replies. “It’s symmetrical.”

  As promised, she draws the sketch upon my skin in charcoal first—no partying phalluses, just the faint outline of the Crown and Cleaver on my forearm—then picks up her instrument. She’s wrapped needles from the ship’s surgical kit together with string to create a tiny, many-toothed nib. It’s certainly not the dodgiest tool that has been used to put a permanent mark on a person’s skin, but still far from the sort of instrument that would have been approved for use by the governors of Saint Bart’s.