I raised a face of good-natured innocence. “I recognised this gentleman from the day Mr Fflytte asked him to leave. I wondered why he hadn’t gone.”
I kept the expression raised like a mask, kept my feet casually swinging, although I could feel the rapid beat of my heart and wanted nothing more than to flee from those black eyes. They bore into me, and after a minute, I permitted myself – permitted my character, Miss Russell the assistant – to frown a little. “Is there something wrong?”
“You can tell me that, I think.”
“Well, if you mean am I going to report it to Mr Hale, no, I hadn’t intended to. I mean, what could he do, throw the poor fellow overboard? As far as I can see, there’s little harm done. However, perhaps he shouldn’t collect any more pay packets from Fflytte Films.” I pronounced the last sentence like a chiding schoolteacher. Then I waited, hoping his ears wouldn’t pick up the pounding of my heart over the music.
Samuel’s eyes slid shut in a slow blink, then he was looking at the book-keeper and I was breathing again. He spoke, and Mr Gröhe tugged at his hat and scurried away, below decks. Then Samuel turned back to me.
“You will not tell Mr Fflytte and Mr Hale about this.”
I decided that Miss Russell had taken enough. I tipped my head to the side, frowning. “You know, that sounded suspiciously like a command. I’m going to assume it is a problem with your English and not that you imagine me to be one of your employees. I told you I did not intend to expose your Mr Gröhe. But I’ll admit that if you try to bully me about it, I’ll be tempted.”
His eyes went even darker; the fingers of my left hand crept towards the blade in my boot-top.
And then he smiled. In amusement and appreciation, as if I’d done something just adorable. He stretched out the hand that had dug into Gröhe’s shoulder and patted my cheek, then turned on his heel and passed through the revolving couples to the quarterdeck.
Furious and perplexed, I realised that we’d had an audience for the tail end of our meeting. Annie stood nearby, watching Samuel’s retreat. Behind her I spotted Holmes, alert to the tension and oblivious of the demands of the dance.
“Did you want something?” I snapped at the girl. (Silly, really, to call Annie a girl – she was older than I was, no matter what she claimed.)
“Oh! Sorry. It’s just, well, some of us were just wondering how long we’re going to be at sea, but there’s something rather intimidating about the quarterdeck, isn’t there, even though it’s only a couple of steps above the rest. And when I saw Mr Samuel come down I thought I might ask, only he seemed somewhat … preoccupied.”
I pulled myself together and shot Holmes a glance while summoning a rueful laugh for Annie’s benefit. “He’s a strange one, isn’t he? Touchy.”
“Oh, isn’t he just? At first one thinks Mr La Rocha the more terrifying of the two, but then Samuel will snap at one of the men over something and one feels oneself sneaking off like a scolded kitten.”
Annie had more intelligence in her than those wide blue eyes and ripe-cherry mouth suggested. I turned the talk to the approximate length of journey ahead of us, and from there to supplies, and then to Maurice’s cooking.
But my mind was holding up Samuel’s words to Gröhe, examining them, considering.
Samuel had spoken in Arabic, a language I understood well enough: If you don’t want me to feed you to the fish, he had said, you will disappear until we hit land.
* * *
The party showed all signs of continuing until luncheon, and no doubt after that, Fflytte would claim the deck and all actors for his purposes. If Holmes and I were to finish our conversation, we had to be out of earshot for longer than three minutes at a time.
The only way I could think of required steeling my nerves and donning an additional layer of clothing. And if I found the below-decks deserted, as I expected I would, I could take the opportunity for a bit of snooping.
But as I made my way to the common cabin, I was surprised to hear voices from below – surely everyone was on deck except Mr Gröhe? And Maurice, of course, at work transforming inadequacy into magnificence. But this was a woman’s voice, answered by a child: Aha, Edith and her mother, Mrs Nunnally.
I pressed my ear against the cabin door. What was the woman doing? Edith’s whines of complaint were punctuated by sharp exclamations of discomfort: “Ow! I wasn’t doing anything, I was just dancing like Mrs Grimley taught- Ouch!”
“I told you to take care, that we didn’t have a chance to do this yesterday and that if anyone came too close – stand still!”
Edith’s voice kept whining, until I could not stand it. Yes, the child had made my life a trial, but there was no cause to mistreat her. I lifted the iron latch and stepped inside. I am not sure what I expected to see, but it was not what lay before me.
Mrs Nunnally was bent over Edith’s face, the customary below decks gloom brightened by the light from a small lamp. She whirled, and I looked in confusion at the object in her hands. A pair of tweezers. What …?
She dropped the implement into a pocket and presented me with a wide and utterly artificial smile. “We were just finishing up here, I noticed that my Edith had neglected to keep her eyebrows neat, and there’s nothing Mr Fflytte dislikes more than-”
I looked around her at the child, whose cheeks gave clear evidence that the tweezers-work had not been above the eyes. Many things about my tom-boyish admirer fell into place.
“Perhaps I should call you Eddie?” I asked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
SERGEANT: With stealthy step the pirates are approaching.
“Oh please, Miss, have mercy on us!”
THE WOMAN BURST into tears and threw herself on my mercy and at my feet, but as she pleaded and tried to explain, all I could think was, why had it taken me so long to recognise a child of changed gender? Heaven knows I’d dressed in boys’ clothing often enough myself.
I pushed the dreary female to one side and dropped to my heels before Edith. “Do you want to continue on this picture?” I asked her – or, him.
He nodded. I could see a couple of dark hairs Mrs Nunnally had missed, where this adolescent chick was beginning to fledge. It explained the sudden height gain as well.
“If I let you stay on, you have to promise me: no more pranks. No more cutting June’s hair or gluing together the pages of Celeste’s romantic novels or putting push-pins through the soles of Linda’s shoes. No more torturing the others, or me. Absolutely none. Or I tell Mr Hale, who will send you home instantly. Agreed?”
The pretty blonde head jerked vigorously up and down. I held the child’s eyes long enough to be sure he meant it – and long enough for him to know that I did, too.
God knew where Fflytte Films would find another blonde child at this late date. And Edith was going to have a tough enough time concealing all that sprouting pubescence by the time filming ended next month.
It was not really my problem.
I fetched my jumper and went back up on deck.
Holmes was dancing – still, or again – with his buxom admirer, and I thought it would not be long before his desperation began to show to the others. I pulled on the woollen garment and set my fingers into the rope ladder – no, call it by name: the ratlines of the fore shrouds.
I had seen the men climbing often enough to know it was not only possible, but possible to do it with equanimity. The first few hemp rungs were easy; then the ship rolled to the side I was occupying, and I knew instantly, without a doubt, that the entire vessel – deck, rigging, French cook, and parrot – was about to tip over and come down on top of me, smashing me into the surface of the sea.