Author: Megan Shepherd

“Have you tried a banana?” Montgomery offered.

I scowled. “I haven’t got a banana. And unless you do, clear out!”

Laughing, he went back to tending the caged animals. I folded my arms, puzzled and frustrated. I’d been methodical in my attempts to get the monkey down. First I tried setting a trap, then luring it into a cage with food, and then climbing into the rigging until the boatswain and the whole first watch tried to look up my skirt. Nothing had worked.

I slid the watch into my pocket and watched the monkey swing effortlessly from bow to boom, graceful as a bird. Its skill was astounding. It never missed, never hesitated, never doubted. I was overcome with an urge to try myself, though I knew it was impossible. I’d learned enough from Montgomery’s lessons and Father’s books to know we weren’t built for climbing and swinging, though humans and monkeys had the same basic limb structure. The only major difference was the double-curved spine on a human and the flexible ligaments in a primate’s feet. Both easily alterable through surgery. My mind wandered, curious whether science would ever find a way to make us as graceful as animals.

“Don’t you wish you could do that?” I called to Montgomery over my shoulder. “It’s like they’re flying.”

There was no answer. I turned, but Montgomery had gone below. In his place was the castaway, awake, upright, watching me from across the deck. Surprise drenched me like a splash of cold water.

The sun blisters on his face had faded, though the gash on the side of his face was a constant reminder of the shipwreck. He’d cut the tangles out of his dark hair and it now fell just below his chin, unfashionable but at least clean. Only a whisper remained of that haunting apparition, and now he was merely flesh and blood and bone and bruises. He looked naturally lean, so his gauntness was even more pronounced, yet there was something undeniably strong about him.

He waved.

I hesitated, and waved back.

Ten

THE NEXT AFTERNOON I found a lidded bowl full of live worms and roaches outside my door with a note written in a gentleman’s handwriting. It wasn’t in Montgomery’s hand, and none of the sailors could write, so it took little reasoning to determine who it was from.

Monkeys adore insects, it said.

I went above deck, set the teeming bowl under the rigging, and removed the lid. One roach saw its chance to escape and crawled up the side, but I flicked it back in. I hid behind some crates, settling in to wait, but heard the sound of the ceramic bowl moving within only a minute. The monkey was so engrossed in the bowl that he didn’t even notice when I sneaked up behind him and slipped a collar around his neck. I let him finish eating before putting him in his new cage.

Monkey secure, I found the castaway sitting in the corner of the forecastle deck outside the boatswain’s hold, his back to me, leaning over an old backgammon board balanced on top of a barrel. He was studying the game’s red and black tokens by the fading sunlight. They were set all wrong. He didn’t seem aware of the sailors throwing him angry glances for taking up space on the deck.

I studied him as carefully as he studied the backgammon game. Despite the gash along his face, there was something undeniably attractive about him. Not handsome in a classic way like Montgomery, but more subtle, deeper, as if his true handsomeness lay in the story behind those bruises and that crumpled photograph. Something to be discovered, slowly, if one was clever enough to decipher it.

“They say you’re mad,” I said.

His arm jerked as he turned toward my voice. The backgammon game spilled to the floor, red and black tokens rolling across the deck. I fell to my knees to collect them, and he bent to help. He seemed reluctant to meet my eyes. Reserved. His fingers absently drifted to the gash under his eye. A muscle twitched in the side of his jaw. He was scarred from the shipwreck, of course, but there was something in his guarded movements that spoke of more, as though the scars might continue deep below the surface.

“I couldn’t remember much at first,” he said, daring a glance at me. This close, I saw that his brown eyes had flecks of gold that caught the fading sun. “But it’s coming back to me.” His hand dropped away from his face. A sailor passed, kicking one of the tokens down the deck and grumbling curses about cadging stowaways.

The castaway added, “I’m not mad.” For a moment his eyes shifted oddly to the left, as though half his mind was still trapped on that dinghy or had sunk with the ship. He had suffered so greatly, and the sailors seemed keen to make him suffer more.

“Mad enough to come above deck and get in the sailors’ way. You aren’t making yourself popular with them,” I said, and then lower, “You should be careful.” I handed him the tokens I’d collected and nodded at the board. “Would you like to play a round?”

The corner of his mouth twitched again, this time in a half smile. He straightened the backgammon board and stacked the tokens one by one.

I folded my legs and sat across from him. I tried not to stare at the bruises on his arms and face. His knuckles were scraped raw nearly to the bone, and I remembered that hand clutching the photograph, clutching to life. Hard to believe this was the same person.

“Do you remember what happened?” I asked. “The shipwreck?”

His eyes slid to me, only a flash, judging whether or not to trust me. He picked up the dice. “Yes.”

“And your name?” I asked.

“Edward Prince.” He said it slowly, as though he had little information about himself to share and had to ration it carefully.

“I’m Juliet Moreau.”

He nodded slowly. “I know.” And I remembered he’d asked Montgomery about me.

It was my turn to stare, wondering what he’d thought of me that first day, when he’d been lost in a whirlpool of delusion. He’d said something that none of us had heard. Now he stared at the tokens, just slices from an old mop or broom handle, with the dice waiting in his hand. The tokens were still set wrong, and I instinctively reached out to rearrange them before starting our game. It felt good to put something in order.

“How did you survive?” I asked.

My question caught him off guard, and his hand curled around the dice. He gave a cautious shrug. “The grace of God, I suppose.”

I watched his broken fist working the dice, the tic of his bruised jaw, the strength in his wiry shoulders. His words came too easy. He’d said what I wanted to hear, not what he was truly thinking.

“I don’t believe you,” I said. He tilted his head, surprised. “Twenty days at sea. No food. No water. No shade. The sole survivor of dozens of passengers. God didn’t save you. You saved yourself. I’d like to know how.”

He studied my placement of the tokens on the board, memorizing it, learning everything over again from scratch. “Montgomery’s first question was about the family I must have lost,” he said. “The grief.” He rolled the dice, a little too hard. His reaction told me I should have had more sympathy, like Montgomery.

I blinked, unsure of myself. I hadn’t meant to be cold. “I’m sorry. Your family . . . were they with you on the Viola?”

“No,” he said, surprisingly flat. “I was traveling alone. My father’s a general on tour abroad now. The rest of my family is at Chesney Wold—our estate. Probably entertaining dull relatives and glad to be rid of me.”

His tone was so cavalier as he scratched his scar with a jagged nail and studied the board. Something felt a little too forced. There was almost a harsh, layered tone that spoke of pain and anger and made me suspect he wasn’t being entirely honest. “But you said—”

He shrugged. “I thought it strange you were more interested in the details of my survival than the dozens who died on that ship.” He started to move his tokens, and I should have thought about how heartless I must have seemed, but instead all I could focus on was how badly he was playing backgammon.

He slid a token slowly around the points. “Montgomery told me you’re to be reunited with your father. A doctor of some sort,” he said.

“That’s right.”

He picked up the token, running his finger over the rough-hewn wood. “It’s odd, don’t you think, for a wealthy doctor to want to live in such a remote place? It makes one wonder.”

I caught the undercurrent in his voice, and it intrigued me. Whatever he was insinuating wasn’t good, and it was awfully bold to speak it aloud. Maybe there was more to him than a sea-mad castaway who’d never worked a day in his life.

I picked up the dice. “What do you mean?”

“What would make a man give everything up to come out here?”

I shook the dice and spilled them out across the deck. “I could ask you the same thing, Mr. Prince. What made you leave England if all your family is there?”

His jaw twitched again. “You’ve come to find your father. I’ve come to get away from mine.” Once more, that subtle layer of anger laced his voice.

“Why? What did he do?” I moved my tokens like an afterthought.

He paused. “He didn’t do anything. I did.” And then he shook the dice and threw them, abruptly, as if he’d said too much. A three and a six. He started moving the token in the wrong direction.

“Captain Claggan isn’t exactly pleased I’m here,” he added, and the change in subject caught me by surprise. “Did you know he came with that first mate of his, last night after Montgomery was asleep, and dragged me to the rail? He was going to throw me over until I told him I had relatives in Australia who would pay dearly for my safe return.”

My hand was frozen in midair. The game suddenly didn’t seem to matter anymore. “Did you tell Montgomery? He won’t let the captain get away with that.” I shifted on the rough floorboards. “Just the same, it’s lucky about your relatives.”

He gave me a guarded look, though something like amusement peeked through. “I don’t know anyone in Australia. I just made that up. I sought passage on the first ship I could from London, regardless of its destination. The Viola just happened to be it.”

“So what happens when you get to Australia and he finds out there are no wealthy relatives?” Once we were gone, without Balthasar and bribery and guns, Edward Prince would be on his own.

His fingers drummed on the wooden board. The last ray of sun slipped below the horizon, casting half of his bruised face in shadows. “I don’t know.”

A cry from the crow’s nest made me drop the token in my hand. The castaway and I exchanged a breathless glance.

“Land ho!” the watchman called.

NIGHT HAD FALLEN QUICKLY that day, obscuring the land the scout had spotted. The sailors sent Edward back to the galley and me to my quarters and told us to stay there. But obedience wasn’t one of my virtues. I found Montgomery on the quarterdeck speaking in hushed voices with Balthasar below the glowing mast light. The captain and first mate stood by the gunwale with a lantern held above the sea charts.

I leaned over the rail and studied the black horizon. Moonlight reflected on the waves like scales of some dark dragon. I couldn’t tell where the night ended and the sea began. Between them, somewhere, was my father.

Montgomery caught sight of me and rushed over, a spark of energy to his movements. I’d forgotten that this place was his home. He pointed to the horizon. “It’s volcanic. Do you see the plume?”

My mind scanned the horizon for dark shapes, but my eyes found nothing to settle on. Then I discerned a faint line, like a column of smoke, rising to the stars.

“I see it. It looks so far away.”

“A league and a half maybe. There’s a sandbar around the harbor, so we’re here for the night. We’ll dock in the morning.”

“What about Edward?”

The boyish excitement on Montgomery’s face faded. He studied the cold sea. “What about him?”