Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 26 Read Online Free PDF Page A

body but finding only a cooling shadow.
    He was already awake, lying against the bulkhead. His gaze was transfixed by some inner harpoon.
    He and Settle had hardly spoken since the hunt. “Settle,” he said, “My ship is coming.”
    He was trying so hard to be strong, but tears coursed his cheeks. “I promised you. I promised you.”
    She touched his leg, shushed him.
    “Settle, tell me about our wedding day.”
    “My love will be dressed in silk the colour of an undiscovered ocean. I will be dressed in pearls.”
    “I wanted to be strong like you. I wanted to be you.”
    “And our families will sit down to a feast of roasted whale.”
    “Settle, please—I do not want to leave.”
    She gathered him to her, rocked him. “Then stay.”
    Long Preston had told her: in the dreams of your heart’s desire, you can hide your ship. Hush, hush, she told Apple, and fiddled with the buttons on his trousers.
    The fever got stronger and Settle swayed with the violent motion in her heart. But the strength was in her now. She rolled on top, kissing around his stubble, still so much a boy’s, and called him to a safe harbour.
    It was a waking dream. The sea opened before her as she closed her eyes. After nervous fumbling, she commanded a rhythm, until finally, it glided into view: a smart schooner, two-masted, but with sails half-rolled, uncertain. Apple’s ship. She made the clouds stay apart and withheld the waves, and the schooner settled into sunlight and calm waters.
    They slept. Only Settle woke the next morning.
    When the Judge and Apple’s duty master came, they inspected the empty manacles and glowered. “He crews a galleon in Heaven now,” she told them.
    They accepted this—where else could a prentice hide aboard the Ship? He would not have been the first to take a final midnight stroll on the upper deck.
    But Settle waited for the Judge to leave her alone at her swabbing the next morning before she put down the bucket. She had to be sure that Apple was away. Quickly, she scooted the circumference of the hull, through the stores, the crew quarters, moving quickly, looking for signs of new infusions—but while she found recent sections in the bulkhead for the two Wessex boys, Apple had been spared.
    What of the dead? The Ship took them as well. From the hatch that led to the belly, Settle heard the susurrus of the dead and other things. Father had taught her how to pick locks when he started forgetting keys in his drinking, so she easily threw open the hatch door. The darkness within made her suddenly vertiginous. She uncoiled the rope ladder hooked into place around the hole, took the lantern and descended into the bilge.
    Water splashed below—a foot deep. The dead rose and fell like shouting in a fog, so many of them that Settle marvelled at how long the Ship must have been stitching and re-stitching the sea with its restlessness. But in all the voices, she did not recognize Apple. He was safe from the Ship now.
    Settle held the lantern up—the light reflected off the ceiling two yards above her and illuminated the surface of an ocean filling the Ship’s belly. Pegged at regular intervals around the bulkhead were small bottles taped green and blue, catching drips like the sap from a tree. In the water, she saw small coloured lumps, a false seabed of pebbles carpeting the floor. Tiny jewels—smaller than those the Monster had sported, and Settle remembered the treasure the figurehead had swallowed. She thought of seeds.
    Beneath the dead chorus, there was another sound. In the ocean’s middle, the water was bubbling, spitting upwards in small fountains. Settle waded towards it, feeling the stones under her boots. Standing above the disturbance, she lowered the light.
    The ground slanted down, a pocket that exited into an underwater tunnel. Opening to the sea? Perhaps a valve the Ship periodically released—but it was not the sea that was thrashing.
    The light glinted off a tiny whale. A white creature that