‘If the captain says keep ’em, we keep ’em,’ Street said, his voice a warning growl. ‘He’s got his reasons. You check the water and let me know if they’re sickening. I’m not taking a lashing for you if you let any of them die.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ the man grumbled, hefting a couple of buckets and shuffling off, followed by his mate.
‘Mr Street?’ Clemence ventured. ‘I’ve come for my dinner, sir.’ The cook waved a bloodstained hand towards a rather more savoury-looking cauldron of stew. He seemed out of temper, but not with her, so she ventured, ‘Are there prisoners on board?’
‘None of your business, lad.’ He swung round to glower at her. ‘You keep your nose out of things that don’t concern you if you want to keep a whole hide. And don’t go down to the orlop deck, either. You hear?’
‘Yes, Mr Street.’ The orlop deck? Why mention that? It was the very lowest deck, below the waterline where the cables were stowed. There would be no cabins down there, just dark holds with bilge water, rats and darkness; it would never have occurred to her to visit it. The cook went back to wielding his meat cleaver on a leg of pork, so she took bread to sop up the stew, poured some of the thin ale into a tankard and retreated to her refuge on top of the barrels.
The stew was better than she had expected and her appetite sharper, but Clemence spooned the gravy into her mouth absently, her eyes unfocused on the expanse of blue stretching out to the horizon. If there were captives down on the orlop deck, then they would be common seamen, she assumed, otherwise, if they had any value, they would be up in a proper cabin being kept alive with some care.
And if they were seamen, then some of them might be men from Raven Duchess. She stared down at the planking, scrubbed white by constant holystoning, the tar bubbling between the joints in the heat. Somewhere down there below, in foul darkness, could be men in her employ, men who’d been kept prisoner for six months. Men she was responsible for.
‘Then lay in the course you suggest through the channel, Mr Stanier. We’ll take it at first light.’ It was Captain McTiernan, Nathan at his side, Cutler behind them. All three men had their hands clasped behind their backs, just as she had seen her father pacing with his captains. It seemed impossible that pirates would behave in the same everyday way, but the more she saw, the more she realised they were not bogeymen out of a children’s storybook, they were real men operating in the real world. Their work just happened to be evil.
Instinct made her wriggle down amongst the barrels as though she could hide in some crevice, then common sense stopped her. It was not safe to cringe and cower; if McTiernan saw her, he might assume she was spying on him. As they drew level she wiped her crust round the tin plate and drained her tankard with an appearance of nonchalance, despite the fact that her heart was thudding against her ribs.
McTiernan stopped, bracketed by the two men, and looked at her. Clemence stared back, trying, without much difficulty, to look suitably nervous and humble. His eyes were flat, without emotion, staring at her as though she was no more, nor less, than one of the casks. Her eyes shifted to the left. Cutler was more obviously assessing—now she knew what a lamb in the slaughterman’s yard felt like. She shivered and glanced at Nathan, trying to read the message in the deep blue gaze. Warning or reassurance?
McTiernan blinked, slowly, and she half-expected to see an inner eyelid slide back into place like the lizards that scuttled up every wall in Raven’s Hold. Then, without speaking, he turned. Clemence felt the breath whoosh out of her lungs just as there was a shout from above.
Everyone looked up. Something was falling. Wedged between the barrels, Clemence tried to wriggle away, then the tail of her shirt caught, jerking her back. She felt a sharp blow to her head and the world erupted into stars.
Minutes passed, or hours. Her head hurt. She was on her back on the deck and above her she could see the captain, staring upwards towards the mast-tops that seemed to circle dizzyingly with the ship’s motion. Then someone bent over her. Nathan. The sick tension inside her relaxed; it was all right now. He was here.
‘Lie still.’ His hand pressed down on her shoulder and she lay back, closing her eyes. Her head hurt abominably, but the warm touch meant she was safe, she reasoned with what parts of her brain still seemed to be working. Something else, her common sense presumably, jabbed her. Nothing was all right, least of all the way she was feeling about this renegade officer.
‘Is he dead?’ Cutler. If I’m dead, he’ll eat me. The words whispered in her mind; she was beginning to drift in and out of consciousness.
‘No, just stunned. I’ll take him below.’
‘Flog the bastard.’ It was McTiernan, his voice flat calm.
But I haven’t done anything, she wanted to shout. It wasn’t my fault! She shifted, trying to wriggle away, but Nathan’s hand curled round and held her.
‘Steady, Clem. He’s angry with the hand who dropped the fid.’ So that was what it was. Her memory produced the image of a heavy wooden spike. Point down it would have killed her.
‘Because it hit me?’ she murmured. McTiernan was this angry because a cabin boy had been hit on the head?
‘No.’ Her eyes opened as he knelt, slid one arm under her knees, the other under her back. ‘Because it almost hit him.’
Nathan straightened with her in his arms. The world lurched, steadied, to reveal a man on the deck, cowering.
‘Fifty. Now.’ McTiernan turned on his heel and walked away, leaving the man screaming after him.
‘All hands for punishment!’ Cutler roared, making her start and try to burrow against the security of Nathan’s hard chest.
‘I’m taking the lad down,’ he said. ‘You don’t need me for this and he’s no use to me unconscious. I need to check his head.’
Fifty? Fifty lashes? ‘That will kill him,’ Clemence managed to say. Her view, mercifully, was confined to the open neck of Nathan’s shirt, the hollow at the base of his throat, the underside of his jaw. She made herself focus on the satiny texture of the skin, the few freckles, the pucker of a small scar, the way his Adam’s apple moved when he swallowed.
‘Oh, yes, it most certainly will. Close your eyes, lie still, I’ve got you.’
Oh, God. He had got her, oh, yes, indeed. The realisation of her danger thudded through her throbbing headache seconds after Clemence let her head sink gratefully on to his shoulder.
She was closer than she had ever been to Nathan and his hands seemed to be in the places that were most dangerous—th
e curve of her hip, her tightly strapped ribcage. She couldn’t see what had happened to the hem of her long shirt that she had been using to disguise the fact that there were no bulges in her trousers where a boy ought to bulge.