Heiresses of Russ 2012 Read online

  Outside, there is little sign of pursuit, though the continuing rainfall would make it difficult to hear from inside the house.

  “Better not to know more,” I tell him. “I will join the crew, or failing that, stow away until we’re too far gone from shore for them to do anything but keep me.”

  “Or walk you over the side of the ship,” George suggests. “Or did you fail to notice your general womanliness?”

  “Not so very much,” I assure George. “That’s why I’ve come to you.”

  I make, it transpires, a passing good boy, though George’s clothes are a little too large for me, requiring the trousers to be turned up a number of times and the boots to be stuffed at the toes, pulled tight around my ankles. With my hair rough cut to my shoulders, my shape disguised between my lack of curves and the looseness of the clothes, I look several years younger than I truly am. Not so well as I would were either of us to use our skills to turn me completely, but then, I do not wish to be turned forever, only for long enough to go unnoticed.

  “It will serve you well,” George says, surveying his work. “Far easier to explain your voice, then.”

  He may have spoken more truly than he realized, I think, standing at the dock and looking up, up at the imposing wooden ship currently moored there, on which I hope to make my way when it sails the next morning. Although the dock is once more crowded, the rain having come to a halt and left behind a sun so strong it seems to burn away the last of the puddles, no one pays me terribly much mind where I stand in the shadow of the harbor wall. So very different from being a woman, too low class to be politely led away, but not low class enough for the worst of the suggestions made to most women who frequent the harbors.

  It is not so hard to imagine taking one of those women to bed, but for the trouble of them revealing truths I would prefer to keep hidden.

  There are a number of men working on and around the boat, hauling supplies on board, and with the day edging ever closer to its end, it surely cannot be long before they leave for their evening meal. My first choice would not be to stow away; it will be now or never.

  “Hello, there,” I say, stepping from the shadows and approaching the nearest, trying to lower my voice to something more masculine.

  A man steps back from a crate—a large man, red haired and tanned, old enough to be my father, possibly even my grandfather—and looks me over from head to toe. When he looks back to my face, he seems less than impressed. “If you’re looking for your father, I’d say he ain’t here.”

  “I’m not.” My father is long dead and buried, enough of a reason for me to have come to London three years ago. Now is not the time to think of him, nor of my mother, waiting at home for my weekly letter. “I’m looking for work. On the ship.”

  Another look. Compared to his, my clothes—George’s clothes—look terribly well made, too well made for this life.

  “There was—some trouble,” I go on, creating the tale as I go, “with a woman and her husband, and now I must leave the city, most urgently. I’m used to hard work. I can cook. I can clean.”

  He looks me over again, and I wonder if he sees the truth behind my clothes, my hair. Though I’ve never had features so very womanly, I would not have said that I have features so terribly masculine, either. “We sail in the morning and we’ve a full crew,” he says, but perhaps I look desperate, because he goes on. “But who knows how many of them will be too much in their cups come morning?” I wait and try not to look either too desperate or not enough. “You’ll have to earn your keep,” he tells me, firmly. “And it’s to be a long journey, to the Americas on the open seas.”

  “A long journey suits me quite well,” I tell him. “And I said I’m not afraid to work.”

  He nods, slowly. “Aye, then. What’s your name, lad?”

  “Daniel,” I tell him, and from that day on, I am.

  •

  Francis Drake is captain of this fleet, they tell me. Queen Elizabeth’s man, or one of them, sailing for the Americas to bring the Spanish Main under control of good Protestant Englishmen, take it back from traitorous Spanish Catholics. Who am I to say otherwise, though I have heard Drake’s name before. One who carries a letter of marque on his ships has license for that which would otherwise have him and all aboard hanged.

  My place is not to question but to do as I am told, and in those first few days at sea, I am told so very many things that I half forget I am at sea, so little time do I have to appreciate it, or even on some days to see it. The hectic length of my day is something to be grateful for, however, to keep me from dwelling over much on all that I am leaving behind, now it is too late to return to it.

  I live, of course, with the other sailors: all men, or at least all passing for men as well as I. I believe, after a little more than a week at sea, that I am one of two women on board, though she—Jonas, as she calls herself—keeps her disguise as I do. Keeps her distance too, which seems to me to be wise; where one might pass easily, two would draw too much suspicion, and so I have little to do with her.

  Instead, I study the other men, trying to seem more like them, or at least more like those who are like me at the start: the quiet ones, the shy ones, those who speak little of women and are not so much given to brawling across the crew’s quarters for the slightest reason.

  Though my choice may be driven, a little, by the way that the quieter, shyer boys are not the ones who lie together at night, keeping all of us awake in their passion. There are many ways to hide many things, though many of them are not ways that I would choose, or use in anything but the direst of straits. But there are some circumstances in which there is no way to keep a secret, and I have no desire to try to swim for land, so far away from any.

  Life swiftly becomes routine, and if I am keeping a secret beyond that of my sex, well, it has been many years since I lived without the keeping of that secret.

  •

  Of course, in the end, there are few secrets that do not come out. In my case, perhaps I am lucky that it is only one of my secrets which I am forced to reveal.

  Though I say it was the death of my father that led me to seek something more in London than I could have for my family in the small village where I grew up, that would perhaps not be the truth, or at least not the whole of the truth. A better part of the truth might be that, when I wished, in a damp spring that threatened the crops or a heat wave that did likewise, for a change in the weather, my wish was granted. That ever since I was a child, I had only to want something for it to come to me, and if I was frightened of the darkness, I could make a light without candle or tinder.

  The only wish I ever made that was not granted to me was for my father to stay with me, because what world is there which can bear that kind of imbalance, give me what I wanted without taking the same from someone else? For all that I wished it, perhaps it was better for my gift—for I did see it as a gift, though my mother saw it, when she spoke of it at all, which was rarely, as a curse—to fail me then. Perhaps I wished for the failure as much as for the success.

  What I had was more than a healer’s art, more than a traveler’s trick, a secret I knew to keep from almost the moment I knew that I had it, and where better to try to keep it than London, the largest city in the country? Where better to keep it than the Americas, a land so untouched by civilization that magic still ran free in people’s blood, unhidden? All there was to do was to make it there, undiscovered.

  It was not to be.

  The storm comes up from nowhere, or at least it seems to me, curled in my bunk and lulled into sleep by the motion of the waves. The first I know of it is when I am flung into wakefulness and from my bunk, landing in a tumble with several other sailors.

  “What the devil?” someone shouts.

  “All hands on deck,” comes what seems like an answering cry from above, a single lantern swinging wildly with the pitch of the ship, more violent than anything I have felt since coming aboard. Above deck, the moon is completely hidden by the c
louds, come up thick and fast while we were all sleeping. The wind, likewise come from nowhere, seems to whip through my thin clothes, and men standing next to each other have to shout to be heard over it. I cling to a mast and watch the waves, not yet so high that there is any risk of them overcoming our ship, but still growing toward something that could. The flash of lightning on the horizon startles me into a shout, which catches the attention of Jack, standing nearby.

  “You’re not here for your health,” he shouts, his long, dark hair blowing over his face in the wind as he pushes me away. “Get below, see that everything that can be made secure is.”

  “What’s happening?” I shout back, as though it is not quite clear, the whole ship rushed into wakefulness.

  “Storm’s coming straight for us,” he shouts, willing as he always is to explain to me that which should be obvious. “Go on below, make yourself useful.”

  It is only thanks to the few seconds’ drop in the wind that I catch his voice following me: “For all that it will do for any of us.”

  I think to head for our stores but the surgeon catches my arm before I can. “Daniel, just the lad. Come along with me, quickly now.” I try to pull away, instinct with so much temptation laid out in his small rooms, so many souls I could touch and make better and must not, but he pulls harder, insistent. “Don’t dawdle.”

  “No, sir,” I say, resigned, and follow him, my arms out to catch my balance as the ship continues to sway. Surely the storm must be growing stronger, closer, and I long to be up on deck, to see our fate coming for us.

  “What will happen when the storm hits?” I ask.

  Our surgeon loads my arms with bottles, points me to a trunk in the corner. “Wrap those in cloth, set them in there. Please God, the captain can outrun it.”

  “And if not?” I throw myself to the floor, fumbling small bottles that try to roll away from me as the ship rocks.

  “Then by God we’d best hope He’s looking out for us,” the surgeon says, handing me more bottles. “Quickly lad, we can’t afford for those to be broken, so far from help.”

  The ship surges, sudden and wild, the wooden frame creaking with it, and I cannot swallow down my gasp. Fear strikes in my heart—I do not wish to die out here, far from home, consumed by the sea.

  Our surgeon clings to the edge of his table for one more moment, then turns his glare on me. “I said hurry, we—”

  He’s cut off by the thunder of feet on stairs, the call for a surgeon on deck. He sighs and reaches for his bag. “Everything breakable, wrap it and secure it away,” he tells me, and then he’s gone, following the shouts for help up to the deck. I long to follow, as much as I dreaded being brought in here, but I have no place there.

  I continue at my work, fingers tangling in haste and fear, trying to hold my balance with the pitch of the ship, but every time I close my eyes I feel the storm drawing closer. We will not outrun it, no matter how good our captain.

  It is almost without conscious thought that I lay down the bottles and turn my hands to rest palm up on my knees, closing my eyes. Knelt where I am, any wild sway will send me tumbling the length of the room, but there is no better place.

  I have wished up many a rainstorm before, many a storm-filled day for those as needed it. The only hard part of doing the reverse, wishing away a storm already near arrived, is in finding the calm space inside that powers my wishing. I think of the fields behind my mother’s house on a summer’s day, lying hidden by the long grass with nothing but a cloudless sky above me. I think of the sea from the bow of our ship, scudding waves and swift winds driving us on. I think of being held by my mistress’ lady before she went away, that one perfect moment when the world seemed to fade, leaving me shuddering and spent.

  And then I wish for a giant wind to blow the storm out to where it cannot touch us, to blow us beyond its path, into the clear sea, for sight of the moon and stars above us, the pure reflection below us.

  The first dropping away of the storm is like fire in my veins, a jolt so strong I almost reach out for something to hold onto, but riding it out is no harder than riding out the coming of the storm has been. After that, it is easier; my body begins to sway with the easing motion of the ship, and I hear myself start to hum, unsure of what the tune is.

  When I open my eyes, I feel deeply sated, as though I have slept for many days and woken to sunshine, the sky washed clean by a summer storm. I am met by a room full of crew members staring at me as though I have just torn off my clothes and revealed myself a woman, so much so that I risk a swift glance to ensure that I have not.

  “What are you?” Jack asks, soft-voiced. I suspect they already know; why else would they have waited so quiet for me to emerge from my wishing?

  “I wish for something and it comes true,” I tell him. If there are words for what I am, or what I do, I do not know them. “A devil,” someone calls from the back of the press of people, “come on board to charm us all to our deaths.”

  A mumble of agreement goes through the gathered men, but it is Jonas, who has had little to do with me, hiding as I am, who speaks up. “If he wanted that, why turn the storm aside? You all saw it happen.”

  “Wanted to save his own neck,” the same person as before says, though he sounds less certain.

  My feet are grown numb from so long on my knees, but I am afraid to try to rise, afraid to return their attention to me, and so I stay where I am, waiting.

  “And if he were a devil, powerful enough to turn away the storm, I suppose there’s no way he could fly away to safety also?”

  Jonas asks, disgust in his—her—voice. “Be grateful for all of our lives.”

  “Indeed,” comes a voice from behind all those gathered to watch me perform my secret as though it were nothing. It is not a voice I hear often, but I recognize it nonetheless as that of our captain. “I am sure our young warlock will be of great use to us, upon landfall. More so than any of you standing here trying him for a crime not committed.”

  And, curious as it sometimes is, the captain’s word is never less than law.

  •

  That night, Jonas comes to my bed in the dark, sliding her hands under my shirt and over skin that no one has touched since before I came on board, cupping my breasts in her hands and stroking her thumbs over my nipples. “I knew,” she says, breath warm against my neck. “I knew I was not the only one.”

  I turn my head, kiss her deep and long. With her short hair, she looks more of a boy than I do, but so close together, I feel her breasts against mine. I long to ask why she is here, if she, like me, is running with a secret, but when she lifts her mouth from mine, it is to bite at the skin of my neck as she pushes her hand between my legs, her fingers inside me.

  “You should have seen it,” she tells me. I clutch at her shoulders as she crooks her fingers, pushes into me, and wonder how many others are listening to our coupling. “It was as though God himself reached down to turn the storm aside. Even without the moon, we watched the clouds break apart.” She pulls her hand back, pushes into me, again, again, a rhythm I recognize from many nights lying in the dark, listening to others take their pleasure together, though surely it cannot be so glorious for them as this for me.

  “I wanted to go to my knees and give thanks,” she says, the words pressing into my skin as she licks at my nipple between them, and I cannot control the high gasp that escapes me. I rock my hips, trying to take her deeper, wanting to urge her on. “And then I saw you, you who’d saved all of us, and I wanted to do so much more.”

  Her fingers are rough inside me now, fast and demanding, and I hear my own breath as I pant for it, desperate and close. “Though it is so much more satisfactory like this,” she says, and I give up, shuddering and falling apart on her hand, pleasure washing through me so intensely that I cry out with it, my back arching and my head snapping back. I am certain I do not mistake the sound of a grunt of release somewhere else in our small quarters, which sets me shuddering once more, until I lie spent b
eneath her.

  “If it is so terribly satisfactory,” I tell her, releasing her from my arms so I can slide the length of her body, “I believe it is only fair to allow me the same chance.”

  •

  Though the revelation of my part in saving all of our lives fails to lead to me being walked over the side of the ship as I feared it might, it is not without consequences that I would not have wished for—the first among these being the way that all aboard are now so much more aware of my existence than I would have wished. Even their awareness would not be so much of a problem, were it not for the additional attention it brings to me, where before there was little concern shown if I chose not to sit up late over cards and drink. Instead, now, I am often called to perform a simple trick—a transformation, a conjuring, even an occasional healing of some injury deemed too minor for the surgeon’s hands. Perhaps I should have made my objection sooner, but I feared, even having been so many days at sea undiscovered, that any further strange behavior would render me too suspect to continue to hide, and I was less sanguine about the captain’s response were I to be revealed for what else I was. Less sanguine of Jonas’ protection of me if I were, when she too had that to hide. And perhaps I enjoyed too much the chance to use what I had within me without fear of discovery, the satisfied feeling it left me with at the end of a day made hard by our ever-diminishing rations and the other sailors’ dissatisfaction with yet more days of endless sea, when they had been promised a chance at great riches once we made the Spanish Main.

  “If he’s so powerful,” Francis, a young sailor late of Her Majesty’s navy, says one evening, “why not raise up a wind to carry us to land a little faster?”

  “Fool,” Jack says, stealing Francis’ mug and downing the contents. I stay where I am, tucked in the corner of the room, half in darkness, watching Jonas as she gambles at cards and wondering if she will once again come to my bed, as she has on occasion since the revelation of my secret. “Wouldn’t it blow everyone else in just so fast?”