“But you mustn’t say a word,” Phoebe insisted again. “Not one single word to anyone. You understand.”
“All right,” he said after a minute, his fingers closing over the coin. “I’d best be off now.”
He ducked out of the cabin, leaving Phoebe to look around her surroundings and wonder whether she was quite mad. When she’d left the inn, she hadn’t intended doing anything so unimaginable.
Or had she?
She looked at the purse in her hand. Why had she brought it with her if she hadn’t had some idea that it might prove useful? Why had she pawned the rings in the first place if she hadn’t envisaged doing something outside Cato’s jurisdiction?
A tremor of excitement slid down her spine. Whether she’d intended it or not, it seemed she was now set on this adventure.
Phoebe frowned around the cabin again. She had to hide herself somewhere. Cato mustn’t find her until it was too late to turn back to port. Did the two bunks mean he was sharing the cabin? That could prove a nuisance. But the cabin boy hadn’t said anything about another passenger. Either way, there wasn’t anywhere in the cramped functional space for a fugitive.
She opened the door and peered down the passage again. The only light came from the open companionway at the end. Voices mingled with running feet on the decks above her. She thought she could detect a heightened degree of urgency, as if preparations were growing close to fruition. If so, Cato would come on board within a short while. She had to find somewhere to hide.
Phoebe ventured into the corridor, closing the door gently behind her. A very narrow door in the wall opposite caught her eye. She opened it and peered into a tiny space occupied by several thick coils of rope, a bucket, and a mop. It smelled offish and tar, with undercurrents of a more noxious odor. However, it would have to do.
She slipped inside, pulling the door to behind her. Immediately she felt as if she couldn’t breathe; the rank stench filling her nostrils made her gag. She opened the door again a crack and sat down on the coils of rope, drawing her legs beneath her, holding the door almost closed, leaving just the tiniest crack for a reassuring breath of reasonably fresh air.
Phoebe lost track of time. Above her head the sounds of impending departure continued. She listened for the sound of Cato’s voice but it never reached her. Once she had a moment of panic, imagining what would happen if he’d decided at the last minute not to board the White Lady and she’d be heading off for Holland all alone. But no one came down to the cabin opposite to retrieve his portmanteau.
A great rattling sound from immediately below her startled her so that she jumped and banged her head on the cupboard’s low ceiling. A rattling, creaking, banging racket that set her perch shivering. And now the thudding feet above her took on a new urgency interspersed with voices raised in command. The ship began to move in what to Phoebe seemed a cumbersome swinging motion.
Above, Cato stood with the captain on the quarterdeck, watching as the ship’s boats with their long sweeps of oars towed the White Lady to the mouth of the harbor. All around them ships riding the high tide were following the same course.
“What kind of a crossing are you expecting, Captain?” Cato inquired with an assumption of only mild curiosity, although his peace of mind, not to mention stomach, rested on the answer.
“Oh, quiet enough, sir,” the captain replied, gazing upward into the deep blue sky now thickly studded with stars. “We should pick up a brisk wind come morning for the North Sea passage, but it’s set fair for the moment.”
Cato muttered a response and turned to look up into the rigging where sailors were moving purposefully, preparing for the moment when they’d pass the harbor bar and the oarsmen would return on board, their boats winched after them, and the White Lady would hit the open sea. He grimaced in anticipation.
“Grog, Lord Granville?” the captain inquired as a sailor ran up the gangway to the quarterdeck bearing two steaming pitch tankards. Captain Allan had no other passengers for this crossing; his cargo was tin from the Cornish mines for the Flemish market. Lucrative enough but not as much as the delicate Delftware, Brussels lace, and Flemish wool that he hoped to bring back to the quality English markets.
Cato took the tankard with a nod of thanks. The grog had a good spicy aroma, and its steam curled into the now chill air. He drew his cloak more securely over his shoulders, determined to remain on deck most of the night. Fresh air was the best antidote to seasickness.
They had reached the harbor bar and the oarsmen shipped their sweeps and swarmed up the rope ladders back on board the White Lady while the boats were winched up and secured on deck. Sipping his grog, Cato looked up at the masts as the sails were run up, bellying in the fresh cold wind. Phoebe would be asleep by now, snug beneath the feather quilt in the big four-poster at the Ship.
Cato sighed. He had hated to leave her, and the shadow of her absence was getting in the way of his clearheaded appraisal of the mission that lay ahead of him.
To be absent from thy heart is torment…
Mother of God, why couldn’t he rid himself of that damned scene? The lines kept popping into his head completely unbidden. At least he thought they were unbidden. But supposing there was something over which he had no control…
The captain said something and Cato banished introspection. “I beg your pardon, Captain…?”
Phoebe remained in her cupboard until she felt the motion of the ship change and its slow steady progress seemed to quicken, to rise and fall beneath her. She found she rather liked the motion, although when she stood up, she tottered and had to grab at the cupboard door to steady herself.
She edged out of her hiding place and stood in the passage listening. Voices still called orders from above, feet still raced across the decks, but it was an orderly sound, as if the activity had settled down into an accustomed pattern.
Phoebe opened the door to the cabin and slipped inside, closing it at her back. No one had come down during her stay in the cupboard, and everything was just as she’d left it, the oil lamp throwing a swaying glow over the sparse furnishings. The ship lurched abruptly and she nearly fell against the bulkhead.
Righting herself, she looked around with rather more attention than hitherto. To her relief, she saw a commode in the far corner. She’d been puzzling about necessary arrangements on board ship, remembering the inadequate facilities at the Cotswold farmhouse. It seemed Cato had a degree of privacy in his cabin.
She took off her cloak, boots, riding habit, and britches, laying them neatly over the stool, then climbed the ladder into the top bunk. The ceiling was so low it seemed to press down upon her as she wriggled beneath the thin blanket and lay very still, feeling her body settle into the motion of the ship.
The scratchy sheet of rough calico covered a straw-filled pallet that rustled at the slightest movement. The sound of water flowing against the bulkhead and the gentle motion of the ship had a soporific effect, so that within a very few minutes, Phoebe felt her eyes growing heavy. She wasn’t sure whether they were yet in the middle of the sea, but surely they were too far from shore now for the ship to put back to harbor. Cato was stuck with her now… on this journey to Holland.
How could he have told her he was going to Italy? He might never have come back to her, and she would never have known where he’d died. Sometimes she couldn’t begin to understand why she loved him to such distraction.
It was gone midnight when Cato decided to go below. It was too cold to sleep on deck, and the sea seemed calm enough for the most susceptible stomach. The captain had long left the quarterdeck to the quartermaster, who stood at the helm, whistling softly between his teeth as he steered by the North Star.