“The workhouse system doesn’t give a fig about charity,” I reply hotly, then add, “He doesn’t know.”
“Oh, defiance!” Monty claps his hands together in delight. “I love it. When will you spring the news on him?”
“Hopefully never.”
“That’s disappointing. I was hoping you’d have him rolling in his grave before he was even in it. What’s the good of ideas if you don’t share them?”
“I do share them,” I say. “I write political pamphlets.”
“Do you really?” He loops his arms around his knees and leans toward me and oh my God, are we having an actual real conversation about ourselves? Did my list actually work? I hate it—I had meant for this to be about him, not me—But. We. Are. Actually. Talking. I bite back a grin, afraid I’ll break the spell. “I hope they’re horrifyingly liberal. Are they under your own name?”
“God no,” I say. “I have a pseudonym.”
“Have I heard of you? Dear Lord.” He clutches Tom Jones to his chest. “Are you Henry Fielding? Should I have you inscribe this?”
I snatch the book back. “They’re daft. Just silliness, really. Something to do until I take my seat. I’m not a real writer.” He goes on staring at me, waiting for an answer. I swallow.
“I write as John Everyman.”
His teasing smile falters. “You’re joking.”
“It’s daft, I know, I came up with it on a whim—”
“Adrian!” He punches me lightly in the arm, and I realize with a jolt that he knows them. I can’t decide whether that makes me proud or panicked. “You are famous. Sod Henry Fielding.”
“I’m not,” I mumble.
“Someone threw one of those pamphlets at Percy when he was walking through Hyde Park a few weeks ago and he brought it home.”
“Did you read it?” I ask, trying not to sound as horrified as I feel.
“Yes! Well.” He scrunches up his face. “Percy did, and gave me a very thorough summary. I’m not much for reading.”
“It was two and a half pages.”
“God. Liberal political pamphlets.” He looks me up and down with that same sly smile as before, but this time, it feels like I’m in on the joke. “I didn’t think you’d be a hellion.” He leans backward against the hatch, letting his hat fall over his face once more. “Careful,” he says from beneath it, “or I might start liking you after all.”
Rabat
10
The journey to Morocco seems to be going well, I say, as a passenger with no understanding of seafaring. But the skies stay blue and the wind at our backs as we push south. It doesn’t take a trained sailor to assume those are positives.
But the mood among the crew shifts in the opposite direction, like we’ve crossed an invisible demarcation. One morning twelve days into our voyage, I emerge from my cabin to find that same blue sky and gentle breeze, but the sailors gathered around the main mast. The salt smell that always thickens the air is smothered by an herbal haze, and I realize one of the sailors is carving a symbol into the wood of the mast with a poker, the end glowing red. When it cools, he shoves it into the brazier burning at his feet, smoke spewing up in a column and trailing behind the ship like a pennant.
Monty is leaning against the banister of the stairs leading to the upper deck, watching this strange ritual with a mug pressed against his chin. I’m not sure whether he looks amused by the sailors or his face simply rests in disdain.
He barely glances at me as I approach, but when I sit on the bottom step with my own coffee balanced on my knee, he asks, “You’re not hiding that book somewhere, are you? I haven’t thought of a favorite color yet.”
“It’s too big to properly hide.”
“Ha! See?” He nudges my shin with his toe. I try to take this as a gesture of affection and not be repulsed by his bare feet in such close proximity to me. “Even you admit eight hundred pages is longer than a book has any business being.”
“What are they doing?” I ask. In spite of our conversation, neither of us has looked away from the men gathered around the mast. The poker has been withdrawn again, its end now white-hot, and the smell of burning charcoal fills my lungs as the man sets in again.
“Being superstitious,” Monty replies, taking a sip of his coffee. “Sailors are always looking for ways to shield themselves against the dangers of their profession.”
“How is that a shield?”
“They’re burning a stave—it’s a rune from somewhere up north. It’s meant to be protection.”
“Protection from what?”
Monty shrugs. “The charms are never very specific. Makes it easier to explain why they fail to ward away anything.” He takes another drink. “Well, that’s disgustingly cold.” He pushes himself straight, then leaves me without another word.
I sit alone and watch the sailors until they finish. They leave behind an eight-armed cross, veins and spikes carved from its center that then jut into more lines. It looks like a snowflake caught on a mitten and held close to the eye the moment before it melts.
Some of the men touch it every time they pass. Others leave small offerings at the base of the mast throughout the day—tobacco and ivory dice and cannikins of grog. One man even pulls out his boot laces and wraps them around the stave. I don’t ask what dangerous land we crossed into that morning. I don’t need something else—imagined or not—to fear.
As we draw closer to the Barbary Coast, the weather warms until it’s pleasant enough to be on deck without a coat. Over the rail, I catch glimpses of the silky backs of porpoises as they surface amid the waves. Sometimes pods follow the ship for miles, laughing and chattering as they chase us across the world. At night, the moon on the clouds makes rainbows of the darkness, and the stars clutter the sky, their light enough to keep me sleepless.
Whatever dangers the sailors meant to ward away with their etched stave, it must prove effective, for we dock in Rabat late in the night two weeks and three days after our departure. Monty and I go straight from the ship to a seaside inn. We take a day of recovery, most of which I spend trying to remind my body what it’s like to stand on ground that isn’t pitching, and the next morning meet first thing in the dining room before we make our way into the city to find our sister—I’m too anxious to eat, so I tell Monty I finished my meal before he came in hopes he won’t nag me about it. I keep having uninvited thoughts about unfamiliar food, and although I know there is nothing wrong with what I’m offered, my brain refuses to be argued with.
“So we aren’t actually going into Rabat itself,” Monty says as we leave the inn and start to walk to the north. “About a mile from here, the Bou Regreg River drains into the Atlantic, and on the other side is a city called Salé—well, it used to be a city. Now it’s a part of Rabat. But it operates as an independent port.”
A school of cobalt-blue fishing boats is moored along the dock, their sides clacking together as the waves rock them. “Why are we going there?” I ask.
“Because that,” Monty replies, “is where the pirates live.”