The recoil trembles through the whole boat. I lurch into Percy, my chin catching hard on his shoulder, and he grabs me, one hand fisted around my shirt and his other around my wrist. The bell is really going—somehow I’d failed to hear it—and the sailors are shouting, orders and “all hands” alike. There’s a holler of “Fire!” and another cannon blasts. We hear the bang at the discharge, then again as the frame slams into the planks, straight over our heads. The smell of gunpowder kicks through the rot. My heart begins to pound for a different reason.
On the other side of the hold, Felicity’s dark silhouette tears itself away from the shadows. “What’s going on?” she calls, and Percy’s hands slide away from my waist.
“They’re firing—” I start, but then a cannonball tears through the wall above our heads.
I throw my hands up over my face as the air rips apart around us. Percy yanks me to him, his head over mine as we both hit the deck. A shower of dust and splinters speckles the back of my neck. There’s a second splintering from above, another cannonball breaching our hull. My ears are ringing, and when I take a breath, I gag on the dust and gunpowder—the air is hazy and sparkling with it. On the other side of the hold, Felicity starts to cough.
“Are you all right?” Percy takes my face between his hands and raises it to his. He’s kneeling before me, his dark skin powdered and his hair sprinkled with flakes of wood. Above us, a stream of water sluices in through the hole left by the cannonball and dribbles down in a thin waterfall. The knees of my breeches go damp.
“Fine,” I say, though the word comes out as more of a gasp. “Fine, I’m fine. Felicity?”
“I’m fine,” she replies, though her voice sounds too tight. She’s hunched over between the crates, one hand clamped against her arm. A thin line of crimson leaks between her fingers and spills down her knuckles.
“You’re bleeding!” I scramble to my feet, Percy crawling after me. “Fire!” is called again, and the guns buck, pitching us sideways into the cargo.
“I’m fine,” she says, and I almost believe her—beyond a clenched jaw, she hardly looks like she’s pained. “Just a graze from the splinters.”
“Can you—do you need to bandage it? Or can I—what do we—should we do something? What do we do?”
“Calm yourself, Monty, it’s not your arm.” She crooks her finger at me. “Give me your cravat.”
It’s Percy who hands his over first, and Felicity peels her fingers from the slash above her elbow and wraps it so fast I hardly get a look at it. She pulls the cloth tight with her teeth before either of us can offer assistance, then wipes a bloody palm print upon her skirt. The sight of it makes me a bit woozier than is admirable.
There’s another blast and the ship gives a spectacular cant, so violent that one of the rope nets around a stack of crates breaks and they go flying free. From high above us—higher than the top deck, even—there’s a creak like a tree falling, then the long, low wail of wood splitting. We all three duck, pressing closer to each other, though we can’t see what it is that’s coming down. The ship gives its greatest heave yet. A barrel tips and breaks, flooding the hold with violet wine. Another swell of seawater pours in through the hole.
Then, silence, a long, eerie stretch of it. None of us say a thing to each other. Up on the top deck, a few sailors yell. There’s a single gunshot, like the bark of a seagull.
After a long while, there’s a hard slam on the deck above our heads and we all jump. A chorus of shouted surprise follows, then a man calls in French, “Everyone above!” A whole chorus of gunshots. Loud voices in a language I don’t recognize.
“What’s going on?” I ask quietly.
“We need to get out of sight,” Felicity replies. She’s watching the stairs, her face drawn in a way that is nothing like pain.
“Why?”
“Because I think we’re being boarded by pirates.”
For a moment, there seems to be no conceivable way that our ship is truly under siege by actual, godforsaken Mediterranean pirates. Not a chance. We already did our time with the highwaymen, and I am certain that no tourists—not even those in possession of an alchemical key—should have to endure both.
There’s a commotion above, heavy footfalls and then another shot and a scream of pain. Felicity scrambles into the trench between the rows of VOC barrels, with Percy and me close behind her. We collapse in a heap between the barrels, our heads ducked low and backs pressed into their divots, all of us breathing like we’ve been sprinting. Between the near-kiss with Percy and now goddamned pirates, my heart is certainly being put through its paces today.
For a time, all we can hear are indistinguishable noises from above. Shouting and cursing and the chink of hobnailed boots and axe heads ripping into wood. The bell tolling like mad. Then, the first certain sound in a long while, thundering footsteps on the stairs leading down to the hold, accompanied by men’s voices in that foreign tongue. Between us, Percy’s hand fumbles for mine.
Then three men who are most certainly not members of the xebec crew come bounding into view, a lantern thrust aloft by the one in the lead. He’s dark-skinned, with a thick black beard and a tar’s garb. His fellows are all similarly skinned and outfitted, and they’ve all got pistols and wicked axes strapped to their hips, belts weighted with pouches of grapeshot and musket balls. I can hear the lead chatter with itself as they move.
They spread themselves across the hold, prying the tops off crates to get a look at what’s inside and riffling through. One of the men cracks a barrel open like an egg—graceless, with the head of his axe—and his mate gives him a reprimand.
The first man comes near to our hiding spot and all three of us shrink backward. A cloud of splintery dust from the cannon blast blooms from the material of my shirt.
And Percy sneezes.
The pirates freeze. We freeze too, except for Percy, who claps a hand over his mouth. Behind his fingers, he’s wearing the same look of horror Felicity and I are both giving him.
And then he goddamn sneezes again. His hand isn’t near enough to stifle it.
The pirate nearest us disappears from our view, calling out to his mates in his dialect. I think for a moment we might miraculously be unnoticed, but then the barrel shielding us is kicked out of the way and there they are, looking as shocked to see us as we are to see them. For a minute, we all regard each other in stunned silence. Then one grabs me by the front of my shirt, dragging me to my feet. “We said everyone on deck,” he says in French, his face very close to mine. His breath could strip paint.
Before I can protest, I’m shoved into the arms of the biggest of the three men, which seems unfair because I’m nearly as small as Felicity. Before the men can grab Percy, he snatches up his fiddle case and swings it at one of them like there’s some hope of escape if we resist, but they are impervious to the stunt that felled the Duke of Bourbon in the forest. The pirate, a man with a bacon face and a glass eye, catches the fiddle case and wrenches it out of Percy’s hand, then hauls him to his feet and pins his arms to his sides.
The man with the lantern holds out a hand to Felicity to help her to her feet, but, proud thing that she is, she doesn’t take it. The makeshift bandage done up around her arm is beginning to blush as the blood seeps through it.
The man laughs. “Let’s report,” he calls, then bows Felicity up the stairs. “After you, miss.”
They march us out of the hold—not a one of us is fully dressed or wearing shoes, and we leave purple footprints from the spilled wine on the stairs—and up to the top deck, where chaos reigns. One of the yards has come down—that must have been the final tremendous ruckus—and is caught on sails around it, dragging them all out of alignment. The mast itself looks unsteady, wobbling in the wind as though it might tip at any moment. The sailors and the handful of passengers—most of them still in their nightclothes—have been herded like sheep onto the quarterdeck, more of the Moorish pirates roaming between them with swords and axes drawn. Everyone’s been made to kneel and put their hands upon their heads. Spread at their feet are what must be their luggage, trunks and cases looted and their contents scattered. No one seems injured, but those hangers and axes and steel-toothed marlinspikes in the pirates’ hands look ready to reverse that with little effort. It’s the early hours of the morning—the horizon is the color of a tarnished ha’penny with a few stars left fading into its blush. Against the rust-colored burn of the sunrise, I can make out the pirates’ ship, a gaunt, three-masted silhouette. From the top yard, they fly a black pennant.
The xebec’s captain is nowhere to be seen, but there is a pirate standing guard before a cabin door and the latch is rattling like someone’s shaking it from the other side. The first mate and the boatswain are being held at gunpoint by a fellow who seems to be in charge of the corsairs, since he’s the one with the biggest hat, and the only cove watching everyone do something rather than doing something himself. He’s got a lanky build, with a black beard and a long coat fastened by a sash with frayed edges. “Who did you find?” he calls to his men as they approach with me and Percy pinned and Felicity trailing them like a martyr.
“They were belowdecks,” the big one holding me calls.
The boatswain must be truly furious we snuck past him, because as soon as he spots us he goes from looking as though he’s fearing for his own life to looking as though we should be fearing for ours. “You,” he hisses at Felicity.
The captain of the pirates tips his pistol toward us. “Friends of yours?” he asks the boatswain.
“Stowaways,” the boatswain replies, like it’s an oath.
“What’s below?” the captain calls to the big man with his arm around me.
“Dutch East India goods,” he replies. “Spices, fabrics, and sugarcane. It’s all dead cargo.”
“Rudder chain’s disabled, Scipio,” comes a call from the quarterdeck.
The captain’s—Scipio’s—jaw tightens. “Bring up the Dutch goods and consolidate the passengers’ trunks.” He stows his pistol but keeps his hand on it as he says to the officers, “And then we’ll be away. I was in earnest when I said we meant you no harm.”
“Is this some kind of trick?” the boatswain demands.
“Not at all.”
“You aren’t going to kill us?”
“Would you like me to?”
“Then you’re selling us into slavery. I know how you Barbarians operate. You’ll torch our ship or claim it for your fleet, then trade us innocents to be Muslim slaves in Africa! We’ll be forced to convert to your godless ways or else be slaughtered. You’ll make our women your whores.”
Scipio lets out a tight sigh through his teeth. He still has a hand on his pistol and looks tempted to use it.
“We won’t be enslaved to heathens,” the boatswain says, clearly believing himself to be making some sort of impassioned speech that will save his crew from a fate worse than death. “We would rather be slaughtered by your blade than made your prisoners.”
“Not all of us,” I pipe up.
The boatswain growls at me like a feral dog, then points to Percy. “Take him with you,” he says to the pirate captain. “He’s your breed of African filth.”
“He’s not African,” I call, my French slipping into English as my temper rises. I’m not sure how we are in the middle of a pirate siege and I’m arguing with this bigot about Percy’s nationality. “He’s English.”
The boatswain laughs. “I believe that like I believe you’re an earl’s son.”
“I am an earl’s son!”
Scipio pivots in my direction, his hand slipping off his pistol, and I realize suddenly what a grievous error I’ve made. Blame it upon the lack of sleep or the lack of food or simply the deliriousness brought on by pirate-induced panic.
“You’re an earl’s son?” he asks.
I swallow. “No. Yes.”
He stares at me for a moment, then says to the boatswain, “We’ll take them.”
“Well done, Monty,” Felicity says under her breath.
I’ve hardly time to get a hold on what’s happening before the big man shoves me forward, down the rope ladder they’ve strung up along the side of the ship and into a longboat waiting in the choppy water below. Percy and Felicity are shoved after me.
And so it is that we come to be hostages to pirates.