Set the Stars Alight

by Amanda Dykes

  She shook her head. “But she’s home with us now, and she’ll have a home here as long as she likes. She’s a quiet one, she is, but don’t let that put you off. When you find a friend in Violette, you find a friend for life.”

  Clara’s sweeping slowed, and she grew pensive but then seemed to shake off the mood as if it were a cloak and brightened. “Dash and Sophie will be finished preparing your accommodations by now,” she said. “Such as they are.” This, more quietly. “But it’s snug, and the bed is comfortable, and you’ll have birdsong to wake you in the morning. Not a bad lot in life, all things considered.”

  Lucy repeated Clara’s assurances to herself with every step as they passed one stone building, then another, then one without a roof—thankfully they did not stop at that one—and then stopped at a stone pen containing a single pig.

  “This is Salt,” Clara said. “Odd name, I know, but it’s a family tradition. None of us know why that is, but we carry it on, even so, and the pigs seem to like it. This here is Salt the Twenty-Ninth. Occasionally known as Morton.”

  Lucy patted the pig on the head tentatively, rather warming to his pitifully dirty snout. Then they continued on the path until a green knoll rose and a stream sang.

  “Here we are.” Clara hesitated almost imperceptibly before turning her gaze on Lucy, gauging, it seemed, her reaction.

  But to what? The stream, the tall grasses? She turned a circle, searching. Had she missed a structure? Her rotation complete, she looked quizzically to Clara, who nodded her forward. She took a step. And there, just beyond the tall grasses and a gentle bulge in the knoll, was a door.

  A door in a wall, to be more precise. A door in a wall in a hill, to be exact. A grassy roof sloped over the stone wall, and the door was weathered and slightly warped beneath its white paint. A small square window looked as if it had recently been added, and for that she breathed a little easier. Perhaps it wouldn’t feel entirely like a dungeon cell.

  The door in the mountain was to be her temporary home, then. She half expected to see a hobbit pop out from this hill-embedded home.

  “I know it doesn’t look like much,” Clara said. “But the spring cellar is one of the most unique spots we have here. Sometimes people request it specially. They like the coolness of it, and . . .”

  Her cheery chatter faded as Lucy’s old fear slithered out of its long-buried place. She shoveled as much feigned courage onto that fear as she could. Dark is just dark. Small is just small. Don’t make of it more than it is. She smiled and nodded, forcing herself back to paying attention to Clara.

  “Truly, it’s a delightful spot. I’ve spent many a happy afternoon jollying it up from the storage place it once was.”

  Storage. Dark. Doubts filled Lucy’s heart, telling her this was perhaps her rightful place. Dark obscurity, her career about to be put in cold storage.

  Dash opened the door and ducked out. “Oh good, you’re here. It’s ready for you,” he said. “Sophie went to get some extra blankets.”

  Clara nodded. “It does get a little cold in there. And I know it’s dark—but we tuck light in wherever light can be tucked. ‘Don’t let the gloom settle over your bones so,’ my grandmother used to say, and so we chase it off however we can.”

  Funny words, that phrase—lilting and hopeful and shadowed, all at once. Lucy let them wrap her as she stepped inside and blinked in the darkness.

  She did not see much, but was that . . . running water that she heard?

  “That’s the stream,” Dash said, ducking back in.

  The space was more comfortable than she’d expected, a step down into the earth making the ceiling feel almost lofty to her—and just tall enough for Dash’s lanky form.

  “This was where they used to stick stuff to keep it cold,” he said.

  “Such a technical explanation from the astrophysicist.” Lucy laughed lightly.

  Dash smiled and shrugged. “No need to overcomplicate something so simple and effective that it’s sheer genius. If you ask me, we don’t even need a refrigerator. They could keep all the milk and eggs in here and be just fine. Stick the stuff you want extra cold right into the stream. Put the rest on the shelves and call it good. Right?”

  Lucy inhaled spiced, earthy air. The stream babbled along, and as her eyes adjusted, she took in little outcroppings of stone jutting out from the mortared walls here and there. Perhaps they had once housed food, but now they were stacked with books, each of them with jars containing tiny fairy lights in place of bookends.

  The space was tight—just big enough for a cot. Or rather . . . What was that? She squinted. “Is that a hammock?” she asked of the platform hanging from four thick ropes that looked as if they’d been taken straight off a ship. Sheer fabric hung alongside it, lending airy elegance to the rustic feel. Throw pillows piled at the back of the bed against the wall, and an old trunk stood on its end as a bed table of black painted wood and gilded carvings that looked quite aged. A partner, perhaps, to the kitchen table in the farmhouse? Lucy reached out and switched on a hurricane lamp, warming at its soft light.

  “Not quite a hammock,” Clara said from the door. “It’s a cross between a hammock and a wooden swing. A hanging platform bed, Barnabas calls it. I drew my vision for the place, he made it real.”

  Lucy shook her head in wonder. “I can see why people request to stay here,” she said. Despite it being dark and a little claustrophobic at first, it felt . . . safe, with a sprinkling of magic and an invitation to linger and rest. That window to the outside would be her sanity, she knew. A portal through which the weight of darkness was lifted, and that made all the difference.

  When was the last time she’d rested? It seemed a foreign concept, and she suddenly felt an aching tiredness.

  “You rest awhile, dear,” Clara said, as she entered and fluffed up a few pillows on the bed. “You look like you could use a wink or two.”

  “Oh, but there’s so much to do, I couldn’t possibly—”

  “Take it from me,” Clara said, laying a hand on Lucy’s shoulder. “When you’re so busy you can’t possibly rest, that’s when it’s most important to throw caution to the wind and take a nap. Here.” She patted the mattress on the platform and waited until Lucy sat, feeling the lull of the gentle sway of the bed.

  “We’ll catch you later, Matchstick Girl.” Dash winked and vanished through the door. Clara followed, but just as she was about to close the door, Lucy stopped her.

  “Please,” she said, “would you mind leaving that cracked open?” She flushed, embarrassed and feeling approximately six years old. “I love the fresh air.” That much was true. And the last thing Clara needed was the full explanation, saga that it was.

  Clara smiled and left the door ajar, and soon Lucy—who twelve hours before had stepped away from the only home she had ever known, was nearly jobless, and pretty much one hundred percent alone in the world—was laying her head against a feather pillow impossibly soft, sung to sleep by a stream running through her own bedchamber, with the best friend she’d ever known whistling a tune somewhere in the green meadow beyond.

  fifteen

  HMS Avalon

  The English Channel

  August 1805

  The only person Frederick might have called friend was half-enemy. But Elias was the only soul he knew here and felt for all the world like a best chum. A best chum who was nowhere to be seen.

  Sails snapped. Masts groaned and swayed, reaching up into the impossible beyond. The HMS Avalon was a floating monarch worthy of its legendary namesake, a vessel where one could well imagine the sword Excalibur being forged, as it was said to have been on King Arthur’s mist-shrouded Isle of Avalon.

  Through his schoolroom telescope, Frederick had often admired the gold-on-black paint, the wall of windows that reached the heavens, and the sails that layered one another in perfect symmetry, looking like angels’ wings. He’d watched the crew—like little ants from so far away—traverse rigging so swiftly and seamlessly, it
seemed an art.

  When he pressed his eyes closed now, ignored the burning rope rubbing into his wrists tied behind his back, he could still see it that way—majestic. But here on the grand ship’s deck, the stench forced his eyes open, his whole body lurched in a gag. Though the Avalon looked a stately queen from afar, up close she was a rank cesspool of hundreds of men living close, farm animals kept in the hold for future meals, and the aftermath and byproducts of both those things mingling to create a putrid odor.

  And yet, here he was, lying on the deck of the ship he’d dreamed of boarding for so long. Did it matter, then, that he’d landed here by force? He felt . . . robbed, somehow. With a little more time he could have stepped onto this vessel in honor, his place secured, his father’s good name preceding him, making a way for him at Admiral Forsythe’s table. For the man was known to be kind to the young members of his crew, unlike many of the tyrants at sea.

  “Oy,” a man with skin as tanned and weathered as a saddle said, “you lot stay put ’til Reynolds can look over ye.” He strode off into bright sun.

  Another gag seized Frederick’s body, clenching his stomach and releasing it only at the sound of jeering.

  He closed his eyes, saw the diagrams Reskell had made him label twenty times over. He was on the forecastle deck. Ahead, past the bow, the Union flag rippled its blue-and-white into a grey sky. Shouts sounded all about—above and below, beside and beyond—this place where he and Elias had been deposited along with three others. Two of them were boys who appeared two or three years older than him—fifteen, perhaps? They looked none too pleased to be here but appeared to be quite at home at sea. They took twin stances, legs spread wide and standing as sure as if they stood on solid ground. Frederick forced himself to his feet and moved to imitate their stance, surveying the swift movements of the seamen, the low conversation of officers on the quarterdeck. The ship tilted and splayed him flat on his stomach.

  “Green as green water,” someone said, and Frederick watched their boots carry them past his face.

  But where was Elias? Remorse filled Frederick when he thought of having placed himself between the press gang and the likes of him. He scraped sheer will together, dredging it past a dark force gathering inside him, bent on making him retch.

  A hand thrust itself into view. Weathered but scrappy, dirt outlining fingernails where skin was stained with black ink.

  “Come on, then,” a voice said, gravelly and buoyant all at once. A hand made for Frederick’s rope with a knife so swift he didn’t have time to register panic. The rope snapped loose and relief flooded in.

  The hand appeared again. “Give me yer ’and.”

  Frederick looked up into the face of a man who was all points. A dark beard, peppered with white, combed into a triangle, whose tip reached his chest. Moustache groomed into thin points stretching past the edge of his face, one end bent, apparently from the misadventures of the evening before. He was a caricature in human form, with a once-ivory cravat that looked to have come from a tailor but now bore layers of dust and grime that bespoke a long time between washings.

  “Wh-who are you?” Frederick sputtered, taking the man’s hand and glad for the strength it offered as it lifted him to his feet. If he could but imitate that strength, he might make it two minutes without flopping like a fish out of water. His words were floundering, too. Father would be raising his eyebrows at that. “That is, to whom do I owe my thanks?”

  “Killian Blackaby, at your service,” the man said.

  “Killian . . . Blackaby?” Frederick didn’t know why he repeated the name, other than it seemed a name that should be spoken, a name one would spot more readily on Father’s bookshelves rather than onboard a man-o’-war.

  The man seemed pleased, and took the repetition to mean he’d been recognized. “The very same! Glad to see my reputation precedes me.”

  “But I didn’t . . . That is, I don’t . . .” Frederick’s head throbbed.

  Killian Blackaby beamed, and he bit his tongue. Best not take the man’s pleasure, when it cost him so little.

  “Did you see another boy, Mr. Blackaby?”

  “What, those two louses?” He thumbed toward the seaworthy fellows. “Louses,” he muttered. “Blouses. What a rhyme. If I but had my quill to write it down . . .” He patted his trousers and jacket as if their pockets might hold such a thing. “Or paper, at the very least.”

  Frederick thought to the logbook he’d stuck in his jacket pocket yesterday. A lifetime ago. He bit his tongue. For all he knew, the man would abscond with the whole lot.

  “No matter,” the man said. “I’ll keep it in the locker.” He winked, turning toward the side of the ship. Frederick hastened to stop him, horror reaching his toes. Did the man mean to toss himself overboard?

  “No, don’t!” Frederick planted himself in front of the man, who lifted a quizzical brow, as pointy as his beard. “It’s not as bad as all that. Please don’t jump.”

  “Jump!” Mr. Blackaby hooted. “Indeed not. Not with a rhyme like that pounding to be writ down.”

  “But you said . . . the locker. Did you mean Davy Jones’s locker?”

  The man stooped, and Frederick despised the way it made him feel a child. He did not need to appear any smaller or less capable than he already did. “The locker is what I call this.” He tapped his forehead. “The place ideas go to . . .” He waited.

  Was Frederick to fill in the blank, then? “To die?”

  Killian Blackaby took a step back, hand to his chest as if Frederick had dealt him a blow. “Certainly not! To be kept safe from that fate. A balladmonger needs a healthy arsenal of rhymes.”

  Frederick had never heard poetry described as weaponry before. But it seemed fitting for this pointy man. “I see.” Frederick shook his head, clearing the fog again. “But no, I wasn’t referring to those boys. Another boy. Closer to my age. Looks as if he ate anger for breakfast.”

  Killian Blackaby hooted again, and this time it drew stares from the seamen about deck. “Now, that’s another one for the locker. Mind if I use that?”

  Frederick shook his head, and it throbbed the harder.

  “Eh? Was that a yes?”

  “Yes,” Frederick muttered, pressing his eyes shut as the odd man turned away.

  “So, what’s your plan to get us out of this mess?” Elias Flint. Frederick searched for the source of the voice and saw the boy sitting with knees wide, wrists resting upon them, and leaning against a spool of rope as if he were merely soaking in the sun in a pasture somewhere.

  “My plan?” Bitterness swarmed. Frederick crossed the deck to stand, arms crossed, in front of Elias. Don’t fall. Don’t fall. Do. Not. Fall. “Your plan, more like. I’m not the one who got us into this mess.”

  “No?” He opened one eye, squinting, then shut it again as if Frederick did not warrant open eyes. “You think I didn’t see you there, following me in the dark?”

  “Why did you not say anything?”

  “Why would I? Besides, you’re the one who tipped them off, led that crew right to me.”

  That wasn’t true. Frederick’s jaw clenched, injustice mounting into a boil.

  “Thought you’d be a brave defender, did you? Win Juliette’s heart by freeing me from the big bad press gang?”

  Frederick’s brow pinched. “What are you talking about?”

  “I heard you. ‘Go to her.’ Telling me over and over to go to Juliette. As if she’s not the very reason I stayed.”

  The pieces began to fall into place. Frederick had thought he was telling Juliette to “go to her.” To her mother.

  But it had been Elias, whose countenance now twisted in disdain. “As if she’d even think twice about a useless nobody like you who wouldn’t know a shovel if it hit him in the head.”

  Something hot billowed up in Frederick’s chest. He didn’t care what anyone thought of him, and he certainly had no eyes for Juliette Heath. But he had made a promise to a grave, and it was solemn and so far from what
the scoundrel implied.

  “Stand up.” The words barely slipped past the prison of Frederick’s clenched teeth.

  “Why.” Elias’s reply was so dry, it tossed oil on the fire.

  Frederick strode over and gripped the boy’s elbow, pulling him to his feet. “Because I’ll not attack a sitting duck.”

  Elias sputtered laughter.

  “Defend yourself,” Frederick demanded, fists rising, circling in some instinct he knew nothing of. If he’d had a sword, if this were a fencing match, he could parry, plan, strategize, and advance with precision that would leave Elias no hope. But he had only ire and knuckles and a smirking target. And the old familiar swelling up inside, urging him to fight for justice, no matter the cost.

  Elias’s smug expression flickered almost imperceptibly into concern, his muscles stiffening. But the dubious look he gave Frederick told him he did not believe he had anything to fear.

  “What?” he said. “A boy like you going to do me in?”

  Frederick’s fist shot back and let loose. Even as it flew through the air he knew it was wrong, knew he should halt, knew a thousand other truths that fell away in the wake of that fist. Only one word blazed, fueling the fire: Boy. He was eight again, his father running him through masts and decks and captains and calling him boy. Never looking. Never seeing.

  Boy.

  And finally, he was not a boy. He was here now, on the Avalon. Owing to none but his own foolhardy antics for thrusting him into the clutches of the press gang. Frederick’s body took over as if to pound that word straight out of the world.

  Pain split across his knuckles. The sight of blood at the corner of Elias’s mouth sent remorse pummeling through him.

  Elias touched his mouth, withdrew his hand, and stared at the red. An eerie stillness overtook him. Frederick had seen it too many times to count, looking out from his window over Pevensey Bay. The calm before the storm, and all one could do was brace for impact.

  Frederick clenched every muscle, jutted his jaw, and stood—he hoped—like a man. But the rage of a child flared when Elias threw himself into him. Frederick did not register the pain, other than the way each blow contained rage. They were down. Blind limbs launching, bodies colliding with the deck, a fog of shouts and jeers mounting.