Betrayal

by Lady Grace Cavendish

  He was quiet for a long time. “I think it’s the capstan for the anchor,” he said eventually.

  “Eh?” He was talking Sailorish.

  “They’re pulling up the anchor,” Masou clarified.

  “Oh,” I said. “Um … does that mean they’re getting ready to sail?”

  Masou nodded, and then he started banging again. Except nobody heard because of all the noise from the anchor.

  Masou was panting heavily by now, so I took hold of his hands again and patted them. It was very frightening being locked up in the dark, and knowing that the ship was getting ready to sail soon. But trying to calm Masou helped me not to feel so frightened myself. I’d never known him be so scared before—I’d seen him juggle with fire while balancing on top of a little pole, and not so much as blink. I had been the one with my heart in my mouth then. And seeing him frightened now made me feel guilty for bringing him on such a mad escapade. We had found no trace of either Lady Sarah or Olwen anywhere.

  There were thuds and bangs and shouts. The ship began to rock in a different way. There was more creaking, the sound of counting, and men shouting, “Heave!” And then two big splashes. More shouting. The ship was definitely moving—it seemed to find a new way to rock every minute.

  I had thought it would be simple to rescue Lady Sarah, but now we needed rescuing ourselves! What if they didn’t need sails for days and days? What if they were going to the Azores or New Spain? What if the ship got caught in a storm and sank? What if it went into battle with the Spanish? I felt horribly sick with panic, but I forced myself to keep quiet for fear of making Masou any worse.

  I don’t know how long I sat there in the dark, listening to the happy squeaks of the kittens with their mother, and worrying about what would happen to us. Masou calmed down a bit after a while—I could hear him breathing more steadily. The ship was rolling from side to side, which was making me feel peculiar. I tried to take my mind off it by thinking about Lady Sarah—what if Drake’s regard for her had been nothing but an act and he wanted her only for her wealth? Or what if he had lost patience with her—which, heaven knows, is easy to do—and had put her in irons in the brig, with the rats? She’d be so frightened. She didn’t even like mice and she was so silly and timid. …

  After what felt like a very long time, there was another kind of movement—like a horse makes when it canters. It was quite soothing, really. Although I was so frightened and worried (what would the Queen do when I got back—if I got back?), the motion was comforting and I curled up on one of the sails and dozed off.

  The next thing I knew there was a bright light! A loud bang! A rough man’s voice calling, “Tom?” in the distance. Then the man’s voice shouted, “What the—! God’s teeth, what’s this? What the hell are you two boys doing here?”

  I was thick-headed with sleep, trying to work out how a man with a big gold earring and a pigtail had got into the bedchamber of the Maids of Honour. …

  Masou scrambled to his feet, looking terrified.

  The man called over his shoulder, “Mr. Price, we’m got stowaways again, bloody little rats.” Then he turned back to Masou and me. “Come on, you! Out of there—and you’d better not’ve damaged any of they sails, you hear?”

  He not only had a pigtail, he was as wide as a barrel and one of his front teeth was missing. He grabbed hold of Masou by the arm and slung him out into the passage, where Masou rolled neatly and came to his feet. Then he strode towards me, grabbed my jerkin, and did the same to me. I landed in a heap.

  “Why did you do that?” I shouted, climbing to my feet again, outraged at his unfairness. “It’s not our fault, we got locked in!”

  The man swung his arm and hit me so hard round the head that I fell over again, my head ringing and my ear burning. I felt too dizzy to get up for a bit. Masou came and stood between me and the man.

  “What were you doing in there at all? Looking for vittles to steal, I’ll be bound!” shouted the man.

  “No, sir, we weren’t,” replied Masou. “We were lost.”

  I was very impressed at how steady his voice was.

  “Call me a liar, would ye?” roared the man, and he aimed a clip round Masou’s ear too—except Masou was clever enough to duck and roll so he didn’t get hit.

  I struggled to my knees and then decided it might be sensible to stay on the floor. “It’s true,” I said. “We were lost.” But I could hardly tell him that we’d become lost while looking for the girl his Captain had kidnapped, now could I?

  “A likely story!” He kicked at Masou and then at me. “Up! Get up and explain yourselves to the Mate.”

  At least he wasn’t taking us to the Captain—yet. I rubbed the bruise on my bum where I’d landed on the floor, and my swollen ear, then scurried up the ladder after Masou.

  As we got to the top, Masou muttered to me, “Shut up and let me talk. I don’t want you making him so angry he throws us overboard.”

  “He wouldn’t dare—” I began.

  “Who’d know?” Masou pointed out. “You’re not important now, Gregory, so be quiet!”

  I realized with a chill that Masou was right! I was no longer Lady Grace Cavendish, with the protection of Her Majesty the Queen. I was Gregory, suspected stowaway! I could see that Masou was frightened—a different sort of frightened from when we were shut in—and it was making him fierce. I started to get frightened, too. This wasn’t at all what I’d planned. We were supposed to be back at Court with Lady Sarah, safe and sound, by now!

  We went up another ladder and found ourselves in the middle of the deck, next to the biggest mast. There was a strong wind blowing, and big waves, and no land anywhere around. When I looked up I could see lots of sails billowing in the wind, and ropes everywhere, all crossing each other.

  The wide man who’d found us gripped us both by the shoulder and shoved us forwards, until we were standing in front of another broad man in a woollen doublet and a ruff. His hands tightened and he shoved us again so we both fell on our knees.

  “Stowaways, Mr. Newman, sir,” he said. “Found ’em in the sail locker.”

  Mr. Newman looked down at us as if we were dead rats, and sighed. “Have either of you sailed before?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” answered Masou quickly, “I have. A two-master out of Dunkirk when I was younger.” I remembered Masou telling me that he’d only been six years old at the time, but I didn’t think he’d want me to mention that. “I’m an acrobat now,” he added. “My name is Masou—and this is my mate, Gregory.”

  Mr. Newman looked a bit more interested. “Acrobat, eh? Can you climb?” he asked Masou.

  “Yes, and I can tumble, sir,” Masou told him proudly.

  “Go on then,” said Mr. Newman, folding his arms.

  Masou bowed, stood on tiptoe, then bounced—turned a neat somersault in the air—and came back down lightly on his feet.

  “And you?” said Mr. Newman to me.

  “Um, please, Mr. Newman, where’s the ship going?”

  He scowled. “None of your business, boy. That’s up to the Captain. Now, have you sailed before?”

  “Er … no, I haven’t sailed,” I said, then, as he frowned, remembered to add, “sir.”

  “So what can you do?” Mr. Newman enquired.

  “Um, I can … I …” I thought desperately for something. “I can embroider, sir … I was apprenticed to the Queen’s Wardrobe, but I ran away because it was boring. And … I … can paint and draw, too,” I added, hoping that the patterns I’d designed for my embroideries would stand me in good stead.

  “Soft as a girl, in other words,” said Mr. Newman disgustedly. “You, Masou, are you afraid of heights?”

  “No, sir, not at all,” Masou replied.

  “Good,” Mr. Newman said. “The banner’s snagged at the topsail yard. You and your mate go up there and free it.” He pointed up and up and up the mast that was nearest the front of the ship, to where there was a sort of lump tangled in the ropes.

 
Masou knuckled his forehead. “Yes, sir.” He went over to the rail and climbed on it.

  I stared in horror at the enormous mast stretching upwards into the sky. “What if we fall?” I quavered.

  “You’ll die,” said the man who had found us. “And that’d be an easy way out.”

  “You can do as you’re told, boy,” added Mr. Newman, “or you can go in the brig. But you get no food if you don’t work. Up you go.”

  Well, it was long past breakfast time and I was thirsty, too, so I gulped and nodded.

  Mr. Newman frowned. “I don’t like your manners, Gregory,” he said. “Mend ’em or you’ll be in worse trouble than you can imagine.”

  “Y-yes, sir,” I replied, and went to follow Masou.

  He hadn’t started climbing yet. “You go first,” he whispered to me. “Then if you slip, I can catch you. Just think of it as a tree,” he suggested.

  “Hell’s teeth!” I exclaimed nervously. I don’t mind climbing trees, but this was a tree that was rocking back and forth with the waves.

  “Wait for the ship to roll the other way,” instructed Masou. “Now, up …”

  I climbed, holding on as tight as I could. My knees were knocking, but at least I could hear Masou behind me. We went up and up, past the huge yellow-white sheets of the sails and about a thousand ropes. But the ladder—what was it Captain Drake had called them? Ratlines? Anyway, the rungs got narrower and narrower and then stopped under the platform, halfway up the mast, that he’d called the fighting top.

  “Now what?” I wailed. “There’s no more ladder!”

  “See the ropes going out to the edge of the fighting top?” called Masou from below me.

  I looked, and saw ratlines I hadn’t noticed, stretching from the mast out to the edge of the top—but what good were they? I’d be hanging right out over the deck, which was really far below us now. “Yes,” I whispered, knowing what Masou was going to say.

  He did. “We have to climb them.”

  “What?” I squealed, sounding almost as squeaky as Lady Sarah when she’s seen a mouse. “I can’t!”

  “Yes, you can,” Masou said firmly.

  “But … it’s too high … I’ll be hanging by my hands. I can’t, Masou!” I pleaded.

  “Yes, you can!” shouted Masou fiercely. “You can do it, because you have to!”

  Masou had never spoken to me like that before. Nobody had. But I still could not move.

  “Allah save us,” he muttered. “Grace, I cannot coax you, there’s no time. You’ve climbed harder things; I know you can do this, but the only way for you to know it too is to try. Now climb the tree! Or else you will have to go back down and confess that you’re a girl.”

  Suddenly I felt furious with myself. Who was acting like Lady Sarah now? Masou was right. I would not give up and admit to being a girl just because I was scared of climbing the ratlines.

  Heart hammering, I put my hand up, gripped one rung of the rope ladder, then the other, got my toes into a narrow gap, then my other foot … I was leaning right out, with nothing under me for miles and miles … If I fell, I’d die! Toes clawing round the rung of the ladder, I reached up for the next rung, then the next. The edge of the top was the worst, I had to hold on with one hand, move the other over the edge to the new set of ratlines there, then wrap my arm around it, then reach over with the other hand …

  Suddenly Masou was there, hauling me up onto the top by my jerkin. He must have whisked up on the other side of the mast. “Well done,” he whispered in my ear. “You see? You did it!”

  I lay there for a minute, gasping and shaking, and then got slowly to my feet.

  Masou pointed to the next, narrower set of ratlines, which went right up to the point of the mast where the cloth was tangled in a rope.

  “Oh no,” I gasped, my heart thundering enough to crack my chest.

  Masou grinned encouragingly at me and began to climb.

  I didn’t want to be left alone on the high tossing little platform. So I started following him.

  He looked down at me and shook his head. “Not this one. The other side.”

  So I climbed down, edged over to the other set of ratlines, and started climbing again.

  When I caught Masou up at the highest place on the mast, he was already struggling with the cloth bunched in the ropes. I wrapped one leg around the ratlines and tugged at the tangle. Then I stopped and looked more closely. It was pulled up too tight. I could see we’d never get it free like that. “Loosen it!” I yelled down to the deck, as loud as I could.

  There was a movement down there, which I could hardly see for all the sails in the way. The ropes moved past each other a couple of times, and then I could see the bit that was caught and tease it out with my fingers.

  Suddenly the banner flapped and took the wind and floated out above the ship.

  Masou grinned at me. “See, my lady? You did it.”

  I smiled back, trying not to think about getting down. “You should call me Gregory,” I reminded him.

  Masou scampered back down to the fighting top like a monkey. He waited for me there as I edged my way much more carefully, trying not to look down.

  When I reached him, he showed me how to slide my feet out over the edge of the fighting top, catch my toes in the rungs and then let myself down onto the main ratlines.

  Then he grabbed a rope. “Now don’t try to get down this way,” he warned me with a mischievous gleam in his eyes. Next thing I knew, he was sliding down the rope, hand over hand, all the way down to the deck!

  I climbed my way down the ratlines—but much more quickly than before, because I was so relieved to be going down, not up.

  Masou flourished a bow at Mr. Newman when we landed back on the deck. I copied him.

  “Hm,” Mr. Newman said, looking at Masou with some respect. “You’ve not been a ship’s boy before?”

  “No, sir,” Masou answered.

  “You might make a very fine topman with care,” Mr. Newman decided. Then he turned to me. “You, Gregory, I don’t know what use you might be. Did you say you could paint?”

  “Yes, sir,” I lied.

  “Good. Go and report to the Boatswain. In fact, both of you go,” Mr. Newman ordered.

  I wondered if we were going to get any dinner. My stomach was grumbling. But I didn’t think it would be a good plan to ask. So I went the way he pointed and found a harassed-looking white-haired man carrying some clay pots towards the Great Cabin—the last place I wanted to go, in case the Captain saw me. I heard Masou groan behind me.

  “Sir, sir, are you the Boatswain?” I asked.

  “Aye. Ah yes, Mr. Newman said you claimed to be a painter and stainer,” the Boatswain declared.

  “Only a ’prentice, sir,” I hedged quickly.

  “No matter. Come this way,” he said, and led us into the Great Cabin.

  I followed, with my shoulders hunched. Captain Drake wasn’t there, thank goodness. “Where’s the Captain?” I asked.

  “He’s training some new gunners,” the Boatswain replied. “Now then. See here, this painting needs finishing.” It was the scrawl of people standing on balls looking at waves. “This is to show the Queen when she came to Tilbury.”

  Aha! They weren’t balls, they were kirtles. I nodded and tried not to smile at how crude the picture was.

  “There’s the paint,” said the Boatswain. “And there’s the picture. Get to it.” And he left us to it.

  “Are you angry with me for ordering you about up there?” Masou asked me, once the Boatswain was out of earshot.

  I smiled at him. “No, it helped. How did you know what to say?”

  He flashed his white teeth in a grin. “It’s how Mr. Somers talks to me if I think I cannot do a tumble he wants.”

  I looked at the paints. There were some good colours—a red and a blue and a yellow and a black and a white. I took one of the brushes—which were far too thick—and gave it to Masou, then started to improve the kirtles of the Ladies-in-
Waiting. “You know, since we’re stuck here,” I said to him, “I think we should do more investigating. I’m determined to find some way to spoil Captain Drake’s wicked plot, and if we really look, we’re bound to find Lady Sarah somewhere.”

  I think Masou groaned softly but I wasn’t sure. He wasn’t very good at painting, so I found a bit of wood for mixing colours on, made some blue-green and set him doing the waves, which were easy.

  I started to enjoy myself. It was hardly the same as embroidering a petticoat’s false front, and the paints smelled terrible—I remember someone telling me once that white paint is made with mercury and sends alchemists mad—but it was interesting to try and make the scene look better. I decided I couldn’t do much about the faces: they were just blobs of pink. But I was able to make the Queen’s kirtle look something like it really does, and when I took a quick look about the cabin, I even found some pieces of paper left for kindling by the brazier—and a pen and ink on the desk.

  At last I could scribble some notes on all that had happened to put in my daybooke later. I longed to write of my adventures, but of course I had not brought the daybooke with me because it is quite big and very precious and might be ruined by sea water—and what would Gregory the page want with a Maid of Honour’s daybooke anyway? I would most likely have been taken for a spy—and thrown overboard or something terrible—had it been found!

  Even writing a few notes took a while—and used up all the scraps of paper, which I folded and tucked in my pouch when I’d finished. Masou just shook his head at my lunacy and said nothing.

  For a long time the painting and writing had kept my mind off a very serious problem, but I could not distract myself any longer. I realized I simply had to go to the jakes!

  When I told Masou this he laughed and shook his head. Then he went outside to find the Boatswain. “Sir, may I show Gregory where the jakes are?” he asked.

  The Boatswain, who was sitting outside like a guard, and drinking from a flask, nodded. “Mind you come back quick,” he added.

  Masou elbowed me. “I’ll show you,” he said.

  We walked to the front end of the ship, where the painted beakhead jutted over the waves. Then we climbed onto it from the foredeck—which was hard, because it was going up and down quite a bit. One of the sailors was sitting there, his breeches untrussed and his bare bum over the side, as he peacefully smoked on a pipe.