Betrayal (9 page)

Heart hammering, I put my hand up, gripped one rung of the rope ladder, then the other, got my toes
into a narrow gap, then my other foot … I was leaning right out, with nothing under me for miles and miles … If I fell, I’d die! Toes clawing round the rung of the ladder, I reached up for the next rung, then the next. The edge of the top was the worst, I had to hold on with one hand, move the other over the edge to the new set of ratlines there, then wrap my arm around it, then reach over with the other hand …

Suddenly Masou was there, hauling me up onto the top by my jerkin. He must have whisked up on the other side of the mast. “Well done,” he whispered in my ear. “You see? You did it!”

I lay there for a minute, gasping and shaking, and then got slowly to my feet.

Masou pointed to the next, narrower set of ratlines, which went right up to the point of the mast where the cloth was tangled in a rope.

“Oh no,” I gasped, my heart thundering enough to crack my chest.

Masou grinned encouragingly at me and began to climb.

I didn’t want to be left alone on the high tossing little platform. So I started following him.

He looked down at me and shook his head. “Not this one. The other side.”

So I climbed down, edged over to the other set of ratlines, and started climbing again.

When I caught Masou up at the highest place on the mast, he was already struggling with the cloth bunched in the ropes. I wrapped one leg around the ratlines and tugged at the tangle. Then I stopped and looked more closely. It was pulled up too tight. I could see we’d never get it free like that. “Loosen it!” I yelled down to the deck, as loud as I could.

There was a movement down there, which I could hardly see for all the sails in the way. The ropes moved past each other a couple of times, and then I could see the bit that was caught and tease it out with my fingers.

Suddenly the banner flapped and took the wind and floated out above the ship.

Masou grinned at me. “See, my lady? You did it.”

I smiled back, trying not to think about getting down. “You should call me Gregory,” I reminded him.

Masou scampered back down to the fighting top like a monkey. He waited for me there as I edged my way much more carefully, trying not to look down.

When I reached him, he showed me how to slide my feet out over the edge of the fighting top, catch my toes in the rungs and then let myself down onto the main ratlines.

Then he grabbed a rope. “Now don’t try to get down this way,” he warned me with a mischievous gleam in his eyes. Next thing I knew, he was sliding down the rope, hand over hand, all the way down to the deck!

I climbed my way down the ratlines—but much more quickly than before, because I was so relieved to be going down, not up.

Masou flourished a bow at Mr. Newman when we landed back on the deck. I copied him.

“Hm,” Mr. Newman said, looking at Masou with some respect. “You’ve not been a ship’s boy before?”

“No, sir,” Masou answered.

“You might make a very fine topman with care,” Mr. Newman decided. Then he turned to me. “You, Gregory, I don’t know what use you might be. Did you say you could paint?”

“Yes, sir,” I lied.

“Good. Go and report to the Boatswain. In fact, both of you go,” Mr. Newman ordered.

I wondered if we were going to get any dinner. My stomach was grumbling. But I didn’t think it would be a good plan to ask. So I went the way he pointed and found a harassed-looking white-haired man carrying
some clay pots towards the Great Cabin—the last place I wanted to go, in case the Captain saw me. I heard Masou groan behind me.

“Sir, sir, are you the Boatswain?” I asked.

“Aye. Ah yes, Mr. Newman said you claimed to be a painter and stainer,” the Boatswain declared.

“Only a ’prentice, sir,” I hedged quickly.

“No matter. Come this way,” he said, and led us into the Great Cabin.

I followed, with my shoulders hunched. Captain Drake wasn’t there, thank goodness. “Where’s the Captain?” I asked.

“He’s training some new gunners,” the Boatswain replied. “Now then. See here, this painting needs finishing.” It was the scrawl of people standing on balls looking at waves. “This is to show the Queen when she came to Tilbury.”

Aha! They weren’t balls, they were kirtles. I nodded and tried not to smile at how crude the picture was.

“There’s the paint,” said the Boatswain. “And there’s the picture. Get to it.” And he left us to it.

“Are you angry with me for ordering you about up there?” Masou asked me, once the Boatswain was out of earshot.

I smiled at him. “No, it helped. How did you know what to say?”

He flashed his white teeth in a grin. “It’s how Mr. Somers talks to me if I think I cannot do a tumble he wants.”

I looked at the paints. There were some good colours—a red and a blue and a yellow and a black and a white. I took one of the brushes—which were far too thick—and gave it to Masou, then started to improve the kirtles of the Ladies-in-Waiting. “You know, since we’re stuck here,” I said to him, “I think we should do more investigating. I’m determined to find some way to spoil Captain Drake’s wicked plot, and if we really look, we’re bound to find Lady Sarah
somewhere.
”

I think Masou groaned softly but I wasn’t sure. He wasn’t very good at painting, so I found a bit of wood for mixing colours on, made some blue-green and set him doing the waves, which were easy.

I started to enjoy myself. It was hardly the same as embroidering a petticoat’s false front, and the paints smelled terrible—I remember someone telling me once that white paint is made with mercury and sends alchemists mad—but it was interesting to try and make the scene look better. I decided I couldn’t do much about the faces: they were just blobs of
pink. But I was able to make the Queen’s kirtle look something like it really does, and when I took a quick look about the cabin, I even found some pieces of paper left for kindling by the brazier—
and
a pen and ink on the desk.

At last I could scribble some notes on all that had happened to put in my daybooke later. I longed to write of my adventures, but of course I had not brought the daybooke with me because it is quite big and very precious and might be ruined by sea water—and what would Gregory the page want with a Maid of Honour’s daybooke anyway? I would most likely have been taken for a spy—and thrown overboard or something terrible—had it been found!

Even writing a few notes took a while—and used up all the scraps of paper, which I folded and tucked in my pouch when I’d finished. Masou just shook his head at my lunacy and said nothing.

For a long time the painting and writing had kept my mind off a very serious problem, but I could not distract myself any longer. I realized I simply had to go to the jakes!

When I told Masou this he laughed and shook his head. Then he went outside to find the Boatswain. “Sir, may I show Gregory where the jakes are?” he asked.

The Boatswain, who was sitting outside like a guard, and drinking from a flask, nodded. “Mind you come back quick,” he added.

Masou elbowed me. “I’ll show you,” he said.

We walked to the front end of the ship, where the painted beakhead jutted over the waves. Then we climbed onto it from the foredeck—which was hard, because it was going up and down quite a bit. One of the sailors was sitting there, his breeches untrussed and his bare bum over the side, as he peacefully smoked on a pipe.

I clutched Masou’s hand. “Masou, there’s somebody here,” I gasped.

Masou squeezed my hand briefly and winked. “You can do it, Grace,” he whispered, “I know you can.” And then he swung himself down, unlacing as he did so, and sat next to the sailor with his bare bum hanging over the waves as well.

And I simply
had
to go. I was ready to burst. So I undid the lacing, then lowered myself down by one of the rope handles, until I was sitting on a plank with my bum bare like the other two and my shirt hanging down in front. My face was burning red, so hot I thought it would burst into flame, and even though I was so desperate, I couldn’t do anything
for ages. I just had to sit there with my privy parts getting colder and colder, hating Lady Sarah more and more each moment (although I knew it wasn’t really her fault)!

Just as I was starting to relax, the sailor belched, farted, and sighed, banged the dottle out of his pipe into the sea, then heaved himself up and off the plank. “Best be quick, boys,” he said. “No skiving on this ship, the Cap’n won’t have it. He’ll come down here looking for you himself, if needs must.”

I could hear Masou snorting with suppressed laughter, though I don’t know what he thought was so funny.

Once the sailor had gone, I concentrated hard on pretending to myself that I was just using a jakes on progress, and at last I managed to do what I had to do.

When I had got the laces done up again and heaved myself off the plank, I saw Masou waiting for me. “Never, never, never tell anyone …,” I whispered through gritted teeth.

“And have the Queen clap me in irons, throw me in the Tower, and then take my head off?” Masou replied, chuckling and shaking his head. “Never fear. But I wish you could see your face.”

We went back to painting in the Great Cabin, with Masou still snorting with laughter every now and then. I don’t know how sailors can bear it, I really don’t.

A minute later the Boatswain came in and tapped me on the shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Time for vittles.”

“I’ve got to clean the brushes first,” I told him. Then I wiped them on the rag I’d been using to rub things out, and looked around for soapy water. The Boatswain pointed to another pot of bad-smelling stuff, so I dipped the brushes in that, and the paint did come off quite well. Once they were clean I left them to dry, and followed him and Masou back onto the deck.

“Well, he ain’t lying about painting, at any rate,” said the Boatswain to Mr. Newman. “He’s done handsomely on the Captain’s picture. Reckon they’ve both worked hard enough to get fed, now.”

That was a relief. My stomach was so hollow it was making very strange
squeak-bubble
noises.

Mr. Newman nodded, so we went down steps and then more steps, down and down to the bilges where the Cook was. He was a scrawny man in a filthy shirt and jerkin and when I said “sir” to him,
remembering what Masou had told me, he snorted. “You call me Cook, boy, that’ll do. Squat over there to eat.” He pointed to a space between two beer barrels. Then he slopped something that looked like vomit into two wooden bowls and gave them to Masou and me, along with a hunk of bread each and a big leather beaker of ale.

I drank my ale down at once, then looked at the stuff in the bowl. Masou was already hunkered down on his haunches, next to a barrel, throwing bread into his mouth. There wasn’t room for us at any of the benches, and all the men were ignoring us.

“What is this?” I whispered, squatting next to him.

“Bacon and pease pottage,” he whispered back. “As I am a Mussulman, I should not eat it, for the pig is unclean, but there is nothing else.”

“Oh.” I looked at it. I don’t think I’d ever had it before. I tried a bit, and found it was very salty and strange tasting, but I was so hungry I ate half of it. Then somebody barged into me from behind and knocked me flying, so the food went on the deck.

“Watch where you’re going!” I shouted, furious that my bit of bread was now on the dirty floor.

It was the sullen-looking boy again. “You watch
where you’re sitting,” he sneered. “You’re in my way.”

“No, I’m not,” I defended myself. “You just did that on purpose—”

“You calling me a liar?” shouted the boy.

One of the men laughed, and tapped his neighbour. “Temper, Tom!” he called. But instead of doing something about the boy, they settled back to watch. Another man put down some pennies, and then another, and I suddenly realized they were laying bets on us.

Tom lifted up his fist and waved it under my nose. “I’m older’n you and I’m a sailor and you’re not. So you do what I say.”

Masou could see I was tempted to answer back and elbowed me hard. “Leave it,” he whispered in my ear. “We don’t want to get into a fight.”

But then Tom kicked Masou’s bowl over and shoved him flying into a barrel!

“What did you do that for?” I shouted at him.

“’Cause I choose,” he spat. “’Cause I’m better’n you and that slave boy, and you better remember it.”

I slapped him hard across the face. How
dare
he call Masou a slave?

He roared, and then hit me so hard on the side of the face, I fell to the ground. Tom had punched me! Me! A Maid of Honour to the Queen!

Masou cannoned into him, fists flying, and knocked him sideways. I stared for a second as I climbed to my feet, astonished at Masou, who was supposed to be the sensible one. Unfortunately, he isn’t very big—or good at fighting—and that beefy Tom knocked him down with one of his big fists, and then kicked him.

That really made me lose my temper. Everything went all slow and cold. I’m not sure how I managed it, but I caught up some of the pottage from the floor and threw it in Tom’s face, and then somehow I got my arm round his neck while he was trying to wipe it off, and started squeezing. He was terribly strong, and his arms flailed, but I just kept on squeezing while his face went red—and I hit his ear a couple of times too. …

Masou had climbed to his feet, with a wicked look on his face and his knife in his hand; at that, two of the men pounced on us, lifted Masou out of the way, and grabbed me by the shoulder.

“Let go,” growled the one holding me. “Let go, right now.”

After a moment, when the roaring in my ears had faded a bit, I did let go of Tom’s neck. Tom fell to his knees, choking and gasping. Then he stood up, with a knife in his hand, too.

“Put it away, Tom,” said the man behind me. “You got beat, now live with it.”

Some of the other men clapped and started paying their bets. I thought we’d get some terrible punishment—but nobody said anything.

Masou picked his bread up off the floor before a hopeful rat got to it, and I did the same. Then I decided not to eat it because it had got trampled in the fight. The rat could have it, and welcome.