Breathe, I remind myself, but how can I possibly?
Her handwriting is the neatest I’ve ever seen it, though the page itself is crinkled with age. I can’t remember her hand without a wobble, but here, her penmanship is smooth. Each word is chosen carefully, the sentences constructed with the same precision I remember from the letters she used to send me from the country spas and coastal towns she sometimes visited. That was yet another thing we had in common—we were always better spoken in print.
The Persephone rolled. That is all I recall.
We were rescued by another ship that came from the ocean and was unaffected by the storm. We stood on its deck, and the captain inspected us before inviting each passenger to go belowdecks. When she reached me, she asked my name. I found I could not speak, but she told me it was not yet my time. She knew my end and it was not this. When I asked how, she showed me a spyglass with the name of her ship engraved upon the side. She said that, were I to look through it, I would see my own death. She saw it too, and she knew I was not meant to die today. I begged her for a look—would you not want to know? Wouldn’t anyone? She would not give it to me and I fought her. I fought her and clung to the spyglass and she pushed me overboard into the water and the spyglass broke.
I was rescued by fishermen and brought to Porto. I have the half of the spyglass I took from her. I recall nothing more.
I do not know whether the bow was cracked intentionally. I do not know anything about the structural integrity of the masts. I do not know if the ballast—
I skim the rest, my eyes glancing across the final paragraphs denying any knowledge of insurance fraud. At the bottom, in a different script, there’s a short paragraph with the judge’s signature below it. It’s all in Portuguese, and I don’t recognize any of the words, except one.
Lunática.
On the way home, I stop at the countinghouse where the captains come to pay port taxes and log their ships and wares. Among the vessels listed is the Dey. I leave a note with one of the clerks for Saad, telling him I’ll be at the In’t Aepjen that night at midnight. I know where the rest of the spyglass is, I write. And we’re almost out of time.
As soon as I let myself into Johanna’s house, I know something is wrong. All three dogs lie lumped together in the hallway. None of them get up to greet me, even after I shut the front door. They stay in a fluffy puddle, watching me with their eyebrows twitching. The parlor door is closed, and as I bend down to stroke Cleves along the ridge on the top of his head, I hear Monty and Felicity on the other side, shouting at each other.
“—burned every bridge you ever built?” Monty is saying, but Felicity interrupts him.
“Do you know how long I worked without funding? The first classroom I taught in, they put up a screen so the men would not grow distracted looking at me. I was paid half of what my male counterparts were at the university. I should have been promoted long before—my work was twice as good, and I was a better teacher—”
“I don’t need your goddamn biography; I know you think you’re brilliant—”
“I have seen what the Berbers do with those scales—they save lives. And I cannot duplicate it without money and backing and quite frankly a penis. I proposed to Sim that we might bring him from my university to be the face of our research, and she agreed.”
I sit down with the dogs, my knees pulled up to my chest. Boleyn raises her head just enough to put her chin on my foot. The weight is substantial.
“We haven’t been able to sail around the Horn for years,” Monty says. “Saad’s men were targeting our ships and stripping them to the bones. We lost cargo and sailors and vessels, and most of our clients. And investors. We need those shipping routes open to us again. Without that, there’s no company left.”
“I made a mistake,” Felicity says, her voice hoarse. “But I will not apologize for wanting to help people.”
“So long as most of those people are you,” Monty snaps. “You can talk all you want about healing and medical research and doctor shite, but at your core, you are cunning and ambitious and brutal, and those are brilliant things to be until they almost get you killed and ruin my goddamn livelihood.”
“I’m sure she didn’t—” Johanna starts, and I realize she’s in on this too—hence the pile of dogs, most likely—but Monty cuts her off.
“No, she did. With all due respect, Jo, you stepped back a long time ago, so I’d rather you not weigh in on the subject of who’s accountable for the implosion of my life.”
“I’m sorry,” Felicity says. “You’re right. I was ambitious and frustrated and I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry. Monty, I’m so sorry, if I had known—”
“You had to have known!” He’s shouting again. I can hear my father in his voice, walking that same razor’s edge between cutting remarks and a cutting blow. My father never hit me. But he hit Monty. I press my face against my knees. “You had to have had a tiny inkling—at least one moment you weren’t so goddamn self-obsessed and realized what you did had an effect on someone other than yourself. You’re far too smart to be that stupid.”
“Don’t call me—” Felicity starts but Monty’s humorless laugh drowns her out.
“All this, and that’s still the cruelest thing anyone can call you? Johanna, is there somewhere I can lie down that doesn’t involve dogs or stairs or my sister? I’m feeling poorly.”
“Oh. Yes of course.” There’s the scrape of chair legs against the floor. “There’s a couch in Jan’s study—”
“Brilliant, perfect, thank you.”
“Do you want me to show you where—?”
The parlor door bangs open. All three dogs leap up and rush inside, nearly knocking Monty off his feet. He grabs the frame and swears under his breath. It’s a moment before he realizes I’m sitting on the floor too. His face is flushed, and his eyes are red. When he sees me, he claps a hand over them. “Jesus Christ, Adrian.”
“I found it.” I struggle to my feet, pulling my shirt up over the spot I rubbed raw on my collarbone while I read that morning. “I found the—”
He shoves a hand through his hair with such force I’m shocked he doesn’t rip it out by the roots. “Sod the couch, I’m going. Where’s my coat?”
He starts for the front door, and I am in his way sort of on purpose and sort of just because the hallway is narrow. I step in front of him without thinking, suddenly desperate to show him the page of our mother’s testimony tucked in my pocket and for one thing in this moment to be right. “Listen to me. I found—”
But I’m interrupted again when Felicity appears in the parlor doorway behind him. She looks exhausted, but her voice is even, unlike Monty’s. She has her hair down, and it hangs almost to her waist in long tangles. The ends have a distinct slope to them, and I remember Monty handing me her surgical scissors and trusting me enough to turn his back and let me cut his hair. “Monty, stop. I’ll go.”
He’s riffling through the overstuffed coatrack, struggling to balance his cane in the crook of his elbow and keep weight off his leg while also searching for his overcoat. “Really?” he snaps over his shoulder at Felicity. “You’ve ruined everything, do you really want to take the satisfaction of being the one to storm away from me too?”