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Louis Henri de Bourbon, Duke of Bourbon, Prince de Condé
visit. “There’s a bookshop,” he says. “Down the corner. I mean around the corner. Down the street and around the corner.”
“You may—might—might try that. Or we have books here. If you care to . . . stay in.”
God bless the book people for their boundless knowledge absorbed from having words instead of friends.
“Ladies haven’t the luxury of being squeamish about blood,” she replies, and Percy and I go fantastically red in unison.
“Why does it matter if we keep them here?” “We need to wait . . . ,” I hear Helena say, but the rest of her sentence is drowned out by Percy starting up with the violin again from above.
Love may be a grand thing, but goddamn if it doesn’t take up more than its fair share of space inside a man.
But what about Holland and the asylum? I want to say. We came here to help you and instead we’d be leaving with nothing.
“We should still speak to Mateu Robles. Even if we can’t . . . for Percy . . . I think . . . we could help. Someone.” “Yes, someone.”
“Never have strong-willed children, Montague. Or at least don’t allow them to adore you. Don’t turn them against their mother because you think you need an ally.”
“The whole thing is collapsing. If you don’t get to her soon, she’s going to be sleeping at the bottom of the sea forever. You’re not going anywhere for a while, but we could bring her to Barcelona, if you want. Or at least take her somewhere else where she’d be protected until you could get to her. Or destroy the panacea. Whatever you want, but you’re running out of time to make peace with this.”
maybe because he trusted me with those six letters scraped into the dust and now I don’t have a clue what I’m meant to do with them. He gambled all he had on me—the slowest pony in the race.
Perhaps none of us needs it. Perhaps none of us deserves to know. But it’s me—hopeless, pathetic me—who does. “Sorry,” I say, “but he didn’t.”
What if the cipher is the melody notes?
We’re trying to stay together. I’m trying to keep us together. I rebuild my surety of that, one shaky brick at a time, as I lie there in the blood-colored room, which grows darker as the night ages. You’re right, you’re right, you’re doing the right thing for the person you love.
“Don’t like Negroes we don’t own,” he replies. “Can’t control them. Free Africans get big ideas about their own grandeur. I don’t want him on my ship.”
Percy is black???
“He’s not African, he’s English, same as we are. We’re from highborn families, all. Our father”—and here she scribbles a hand between herself and me—“is a peer of the realm. He’s an earl. We can pay you whatever you ask. We’re stranded here without means, sirrah, please, have a bit of compassion.”
“Slavery is illegal in this kingdom, sir.”
“‘Dear Percy, I saw this boy across the dining hall with a dimple in his chin.’ ‘Dear Percy, his name is Sinjon and he has eyes so big and blue you could drown in them.’ ‘Dear Percy, blue-eyed Sinjon put his hand on my knee in the library and I thought I might lose consciousness.’”
“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.”
“This doesn’t appear to be an overly fast ship, nor one in possession of enough guns for speed to not be a concern. You’ve hardly more weaponry than the merchant vessel we were on. And all pirates from the Barbary Coast deal with the slavers, especially if there’s so little taken, and you have walked away with hardly any get, for you haven’t crew to manage it, and you would have taken no hostages if Monty had kept his mouth shut. If you truly are pirates, you’re very bad at it.”
The lie doesn’t stick for long. “Are you running from the navy?” Scipio asks. “We might be. Look, we’ve as much need to avoid being caught by them as you do. But if you trust me, and if you let them board, I think we can get away from here.”
A good deal of stolen cargo, no papers verifying our charter, and also there’s Percy lurking back there with the crew,
“My father told me before I left I was not to bow to the whims of foreigners who would endeavor to take advantage of me because I was a young man far from my homeland. Of Scotland.”
You board my ship with weapons drawn, accuse me of piracy, and insult my upstanding crew. I’d like you to apologize, or leave this ship at once.”
“Well, do you think I enjoy being mistaken for your manservant everywhere we go?” “But you’re not my man, so what does it matter?” “If he doesn’t understand it, don’t explain it to him,” Felicity mutters.
We’re privateers. Or we were, until recently. My crew and I were employed by an English merchant during the war with Spain. He had us issued letters of marque so we were legally permitted to seize Spanish vessels that attacked his ships in the Caribbean.”
Our employer wouldn’t pay for us—he freed his captain and the other officers, and left the rest of us to rot. We were there for a year when pirates raided the town and we were able to escape. We took a ship. This ship. And since we had no letters of marque and needed funds and had a difficult time finding legitimate work for . . . obvious reasons, we thought we might take up the piracy we’d been accused of. We’re . . .” He scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. “New at it.”
Even though he wouldn’t pay for our return, we still belong to him. And I’d take a noose as a pirate before I’d go back to living a slave.”
Some of those admiralty men are bastards to Negro sailors, but he was kind. Makes more sense why now. Damnation, Thomas Powell’s ward. What are the chances?”
“He wouldn’t care that you were a colored crew—he’d get you the letters of marque,” Percy says. “Valid ones, in exchange for transporting us.”
They’re not bloodthirsty, drunken rogues passing round-robins and black spots and ready to knock the man in charge on the back of the head with a belaying pin.
STOLEN FROM THE HOME OF MATEU ROBLES BY A TRIO OF YOUNG ENGLISH RASCALS, TWO GENTLEMEN—ONE SMALL AND TALKATIVE, THE OTHER OF A NEGRO COMPLEXION—AND A LADY, BELIEVED TO BE HARBORED IN VENICE. UPON THE RETURN OF THE KEY AND THE CAPTURE OF THE BLAGGARD THIEVES, THE REWARD AND ALL REASONABLE CHARGES WILL BE PAID BY THE FAMILY.
It is remarkable how much courage it takes to kiss someone, even when you are almost certain that person would very much like to be kissed by you. Doubt will knock you from the sky every time.
Jakarta,
Wasn't it still called Batavia?
“I didn’t let you—you never gave me a choice. You never gave me a choice about anything—about speaking to Mateu Robles or taking the key or going with the pirates. You never think what anyone else might want but you! And now you’re only interested in being together if it doesn’t require any sacrifices on your part.”
“That his children not turn over their mother’s heart to the Duke of Bourbon or any man who would use it wrongly.”
“You mean a man such as you? You want to use it as well, don’t you? That’s why you stole the key once Dante told you about our father’s work.” “We wouldn’t use it wrongly.”
“Now,” he says, one finger fiddling with his pistol, “we wait for your friends to bring me my key, Montague.” “It isn’t yours,” Helena says, so quiet I almost don’t hear her. “Then whose is it, Condesa?” Bourbon barks, but she doesn’t say anything. Her forehead is nearly touching the stone vaults. “Yours? Your brother’s? Mr. Montague’s? Your mother will have died for naught if none of us use it.”
“When you love someone. That’s what I meant to say. When you love someone, you stand by him. Even when he’s being a bit of a rake.”
“I love you, but I don’t know how to help you. I still don’t! I’m an emotional delinquent and I say wrong things all the time, but I want to be better for you. I promise that. It doesn’t matter to me that you’re ill and it doesn’t matter if I have to give up everything, because you’re worth it. You’re worth it all because you are magnificent, you are. Magnificent and gorgeous and brilliant and kind and good and I just . . . love you, Percy. I love you so damn much.”
We are not broken things, neither of us. We are cracked pottery mended with lacquer and flakes
of gold, whole as we are, complete unto each other. Complete and worthy and so very loved.
The first step will be unlearning all the things you’ve
taught me for my entire life. It took several thousand miles for me to begin believing that I am better than the worst things I’ve done. But I’m starting.
