by Amanda Dykes
Or speak.
“Stay away,” a voice said. That of a boy, trained low into that of a man.
Frederick turned. Elias Flint stood beneath the falling dark, his very presence shadowed.
“You stand on Hanford land,” Frederick said. “’Tis not for me to stay away.”
“From her.” Elias stepped closer. “Stay away from her.”
He did not need to say who her was. Frederick had no intention of going anywhere near the girl in question. Even so, the insolence of the situation drew out what little Hanford pride he possessed.
“I did not go anywhere near her,” he said. He gestured a hand broadly over the moors, over Edgecliffe. “Hanford land, as I said.”
“Oh, aye. Hanford land, which you know so much of.”
He did. He knew every inch of it. He’d seen to it. Hiking across meadow and moor, watching the workers in the fields, witnessing the sheep shorn and the mill grind and the way the work-worn savored water as if it were the sweetest thing in all creation.
But that was not what Elias meant.
“You’ve no business here,” Frederick said, and turned to go. Elias blocked his way.
“Swear it,” he said. Something in the protective timbre of his voice gave Frederick pause. This was not the act of a jealous boy. There was nothing of envy or possession in him. Instead it was protection—tempered by something unspoken. Elias closed the gap between them, gripped Frederick’s forearm with strength of a boy the land and sea were turning into a man.
Frederick yanked himself away, jutted his jaw out. He’d sworn to stay away long ago, but this demand rankled.
“What do you mean by it?” Frederick had little patience for talking around something. Especially when it was important.
For the first time, Elias’s guard flickered. His eyes darted out beyond the cliff.
“You . . . When she sees you it reminds her.” He swallowed. “It hurts her.”
Frederick stared at his boots, his fists uncurling. “I know,” he said, pride dissipating. “I did not mean to come upon her today,” he said. “And I will do all I can to not see her again.” Truly, he had no desire to. He wished them both happy—and wished himself away. Far away. “I will join the navy soon,” he said, “and be gone.”
Elias relaxed. “Good,” he said. “Her mother ails. She does not need this.” His eyes raised and lowered, scrutinizing Frederick’s lanky form.
And with that, he was gone.
But that night, from his chimney watch, Frederick saw the light again.
nine
The figure—Juliette Heath, he now knew—disappeared again over the edge of the cliff. Frederick was ready this time. Lantern, rope, and club in hand, for he did not know what would await him.
Minutes later he was once more at the cliff’s edge, flat upon his belly, squinting to see in the moonlight. This coast was riddled with sea caves, each of them storied with pirates and smugglers and even soldiers convalescing after battle. But none of those stories centered on the cave below. Though it was striking, the mouth stretching to great heights, it was so shallow that it held none of the reaches and caverns that drew smugglers, even if it were reachable by ship. The sea towers out in the breakers beyond kept it useless for all underhanded purposes.
But there was the wiry figure, clambering up with a swiftness that showed this was a place frequented. Who would it be but Juliette? As she reached the cliff top, gripping what appeared to be a scroll, he hid himself and then followed her back the village way. Halfway to the village she crouched, pulled a rock from the seawall, and slipped the scroll inside. With a furtive look around, she stole farther down the road and into the village, where the tavern windows glowed bright. She ducked inside.
“Stay away.” The warning pierced his thoughts. He strode into the tavern. Yellow light and stale air scented with the musk of fishermen and sheepherders at day’s end mingled with a fiddler’s tune. Metal cups clinked and sloshed, and a woman carrying a tray with a teapot piping steam from its spout wove around the bustle without spilling a drop. Frederick scanned the booths, the stretch of the counter, the corners . . . but to no avail. He did not see Juliette.
While moving along the perimeter, he grew keenly aware of the way conversations halted and eyes grew wary at every table he passed, and he willed himself invisible. He felt heat creep up his spine but forced himself onward. If this was no place for the likes of him, it was tenfold no place for the likes of Juliette Heath.
There. In a shadowed room beyond. She, in her boy’s getup and with the brown hood cloaking her further, gave over a paper and held out a palm. A man who looked too polished for his shadowed corner said something, his countenance grim. He leaned forward. Juliette spoke, thrusting her open palm farther toward him. Tension swarmed between them until finally, the man slowly reached into his navy coat pocket and withdrew a dull coin. Holding it as if to show who held the power in this arrangement, he finally deposited it in her palm and waved her away with a flick of his hand.
Sickness turned in Frederick. These wars were not just fought out on the open sea. Yes, England had filled the English Channel and beyond with her “wooden walls,” her mighty fleet of ships. They gave chase, battled, captured enemy ships, brought in prize money, took ground one waterborne vessel at a time. But this war was waged on land, too, through secret missives, codes spun into letters, signals given through lights and flags and he knew not what else. Espionage, Reskell called it. Bold of him, to use a French term in times like these.
Fishing harbors were primed for such activity. And a girl desperate to bring food to her ailing mother’s table, a girl with a countenance fierce as the north wind . . . was she, too, primed for such? Frederick swallowed. The burn of responsibility raced down his spine.
Juliette placed her fists on the table. She had made good study of the ways of a boy. A man, even. If he didn’t know it was she beneath that charade, he never would have guessed it.
She turned suddenly. Frederick swallowed, sure he had been discovered. But no—her hood was draped low, her pace swift, and she was gone into the night.
He followed. Outside, the air slapped his cheeks with coolness and cleared his head. He looked to the left and saw her turn around the corner of the cobbler’s stone shop. He started out at a slow run to catch up but was careful to stay far enough back that she would not notice.
She would not appreciate being tracked—most especially by her sworn enemy. But if she was in any danger, caught up in something dishonest . . . the thought pounded that this, too, was his fault. If she still had a father to provide. If her mother had had an easier time and was not ailing. If the coin to run a home and feed two mouths did not rest on Juliette’s shoulders—a child still and unable to earn wages as a man could . . . All this, and more, urged him on.
But as he rounded the corner, he heard a scuffle. Black-booted men emerged from the shadows. “Oy, stop!” one said. “By command of His Majesty’s Navy.”
The vicar’s earlier warning whispered down the dark alley: “There be press gangs about.” Bile rose in his throat, thinking of Juliette landing on a ship. She would be thrilled, no doubt. But she did not know what he did, what the son of an admiral knew—of maggots in bread and floggings and maneuverings among crew and bullying and worse. The fate of an unprotected girl aboard a ship of men. Things unfit to be spoken. Scars that ran far deeper than skin.
Not her. The thought fisted his stomach. As she turned to run, his feet flew into motion. Not her. Not this.
“Stop, I say!” a man hollered after Juliette. She ran around the back of the cobbler’s shop, where a hill rose behind. Good—she would disappear there. Hide among the gorse shrub or outwit their maneuvers.
But a sickening thud sounded as she collided, instead, into a man coming from the opposite way. They’d cornered her. They had a quota to fill, hands needed in order to set sail once more. And if that meant capturing boys from the tavern in the night, that’s what they would do. It was l
egal. Somehow, this kidnapping by infamously brute force was sanctioned by the king. And what then? Would this news break her mother?
He was nearly there. All he could do was run faster. Heart pounding, he hurtled himself into their midst. “Stop.” His shoulders heaved as he uttered the word with more force than he believed was inside him. A force that reminded him too much of his father. Pretend you’re him. That was the sort of force it would take to stop these men who were, after all, performing their duty.
One of the larger men raised a club. Gritting his teeth, Frederick reached for the yelling that once filled the halls of Edgecliffe. But just as his voice gripped those corridors of his childhood, it wasn’t his father’s wrath that he took hold of. It was the notes of Handel’s Messiah marching their steady strength, billowing into something perhaps stronger.
“Take me,” he said. Blinking as the words registered. Then standing straighter, stretching to the height of the sacrifice.
And for an instant everyone froze.
“Take me instead,” he repeated.
The men stared. One of them started a low, rolling laugh. Something dark. Frederick turned his head to whisper fiercely, “Run.”
She hesitated. What was she waiting for?
“Go,” he said, desperate. What was this—some show of misappropriated courage?
“Aye, we’ll take ye, boy,” the tall man said. His figure was reaching and shiny—not the sort to instill fear or acquiescence in his targets. Less like a brute and more like a—well, an oar. If a man could resemble an oar. But his presence was commanding, and the thick men about him awaited his direction.
“Come,” he said. “Both of you. Count yourselves lucky. You’re bound for the HMS Avalon.” He gripped Frederick around the wrist.
Cold fear buried itself in his belly. Not for his own fate—for he had been bound for the Avalon anyway, once Father thought him ready. He thought of his father’s assessing gaze, the way he raised a brow whenever he sat in on Frederick’s tutoring session and proclaimed his disappointment in his son without uttering a single word. Yes. It was better this way. He would go now. Find sea legs. Earn respect outside the schoolroom, ropes and gunpowder in hand. And most importantly, he would let no further harm come to the girl whose childhood he’d ended.
He had no weapon. No cunning words. The only thing he had was the logbook in his pocket, and what was he to do with that? Toss it at someone’s head and hope the paper cut the man deeply?
He thrust his free arm out, palm up. Blocking their way to Juliette while offering all of himself. One final try. He turned to look her full in the face—if her face he could have seen, beyond the shadow of her hood. He saw only resolution in the posture, defiant as he hissed through his teeth one last time. “Go to her.”
Surely this would move her. To plead on behalf of her mother. “Who will she have left, if not you?” He hated himself for the harshness of those words, but the sickness inside abated when she turned her head toward the hills. Toward home. Good.
But her way was blocked now. The man from behind was encroaching, raising his own club.
“Don’t ye think of runnin’, now,” he said. “Come along quiet and ye’ll know no harm from us.”
“Speak for yourself,” another said, and made for Juliette’s head. Frederick lunged to block them, face colliding with the man’s fist. Pain exploded in his lip. He flinched but opened his eyes to see the man yanking back Juliette’s hood.
Only . . . it was not Juliette.
The taste of blood filled Frederick’s mouth as he locked eyes with Elias Flint.
What followed was a blur of ropes burning wrists, the two boys bound for the HMS Avalon.
ten
Greenwich, England
2020
Lucy paced the gallery, her ballet flats tapping lightly on the museum floor. There was something magical about any museum after hours, but this one in particular . . . She paused at the Implacable’s stern, which protruded straight out from the wall of the National Maritime Museum as if the ship had sailed out of the Napoleonic wars and right into the building, where it decided to make its resting place.
The stern’s reaching windows, which had once looked out over expanses of sea and battle, now looked out over the museum’s ornate display of gilded riverboats and storied uniforms, history breathing around every corner. She ran her hand over the Implacable’s surface. What waves had crashed against this ship? What lives had it once housed? What history had it altered, forever? It was just wood, built into a boat, painted and sealed. But the thought of a single ship’s significance to time sent a thrill through her. That was why she was here.
She checked her watch. Any moment now, the committee would summon her into the lecture hall to present her proposal. If all went well—Please, God—she would be on her way to finding the lost ship Jubilee. And who knew? Perhaps one day it, too, would be housed in this hall of history.
She rested against the wall beside the Implacable and took a deep breath. Silence stretched from floor to glass ceiling. She was alone again, but she could do this.
“The disappearance of the HMS Jubilee has long perplexed historians,” she practiced. Closing her eyes, she saw the speech scrawled out in her script on the white-and-blue graph paper left in scads from Father’s stores of it. “When a traitor during the Napoleonic wars was caught in the act of transmitting information proprietary to His Majesty’s Navy, he was held aboard the Jubilee in port until his trial. The ship vanished when—”
A door creaked across the gallery, and a balding man with round glasses and the dark uniform-suit of a docent nodded congenially at her. She waited until his footsteps receded and continued her practice in a whisper.
“If the committee finds it fitting, I would submit this proposal for research into Hurd’s Deep in the English Channel. Though explored before in search of traces of the Jubilee, recent developments in technology mean that a second trip, if funded, could reveal the whereabouts of—”
“Miss Claremont?”
Dr. Pomeroy, the chair of the Committee for Maritime Archaeology, leaned out from the lecture hall. “The committee will hear your proposal now.”
Lucy smiled and nodded, inwardly quelling the barrage of doubts that swarmed. They’ll never award the research funds. It’s a wild-goose chase. Who are you to put yourself forth as a scholar? They came in a steady stream, punctuated by the clicking of her shoes, that door drawing ever nearer, ever larger, until she was inside.
The tiered rows of green chairs sat empty, and at the front of the lecture hall, Doctors Finchley and Muller sat shuffling papers, murmuring to each other. Stage lights poured over their solemn faces seated behind a long console carved with renderings of Norse, Greek, Roman myths. Seas tossing ships. Leviathans rising from the deep. She could almost hear the crash of waves and sense the scores of years gathered in this place, of the ships and swords and uniforms that lay on display just outside that door.
Horatio Nelson, for goodness’ sake. His belongings, his uniform—the greatest fighting sailor in Britain’s history—and here she stood. Plain old Lucy who, being a Londoner, had been to the sea only twice in her life. She felt dizzy.
“Pardon?” Dr. Pomeroy raised his bushy eyebrows. He’d sat next to the others as she’d pondered.
“Oh . . . nothing.”
“Something about Horatio Nelson?” His smile was broad in a kind way.
She gulped. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “I was just thinking about the amount of history gathered in this museum.”
“Ah, yes. A humbling thing. But this is the place many of their ideas were born, too, so don’t let their legacies intimidate you. We’ve all been in your shoes, Miss Claremont.”
She eased at his words.
The other two committee members, however, seemed less amiable. They watched with skeptical gazes. The clock’s ticking in the corner grew louder. So loud it threw her right back to when she was fourteen years old, the Harrison clocks at th
e Royal Observatory just up the path ticking right into her soul with their volume. Dash beside her, seeing something in her come alive.
“Miss Claremont. The floor is yours,” Dr. Finchley, a woman with white-blond hair pulled back severely into a bun, said.
“Thank you,” Lucy said, her mouth dry. “The disappearance of the perplexing history of the . . . ”
No. That was all wrong. She paused and cleared her throat. Thrust her hand into her pocket, feeling the old pocket watch, seeing her young self unfold a story with delight and mystery. Let the story begin. She took a deep breath, and started again.
“Members of the committee, thank you for hearing my proposal this evening. The HMS Jubilee has perplexed historians for over two centuries . . .” She felt the story of that ornate old ship come alive inside of her. Felt it roll from her tongue, the magical pull of the mystery of a traitor that all children learned by fifth form in school. Even the open and close of the door from up and behind her didn’t pull her from the narrative. It barely registered. The passion of the project swept her away, and she saw in the glimmer of a smile on Dr. Pomeroy’s face that it was—at least she hoped—contagious.
She finished, breathless. Waiting.
And now for the real battle.
“I would be honored to take your questions,” she said. This, she knew, was where her proposal would sink or swim. And her future along with it.
The committee asked about the research of Vincent Ashford, the renowned expert on the Jubilee from decades past, how hers would differ. They inquired as to the vessel she wished to commission for the purposes of research in the Channel.
And then, with a shuffle of papers, they asked the question she feared would be the proposal’s death sentence.
“What is the pecuniary implication of this proposal, Miss Claremont?”
It came down to the money. She gulped and named a figure larger than she had a right to even speak.