Setting sail on a voyage with her father, into the wide promise of sea and sky, had always been Cordelia’s dream. But she had never imagined it would come tangled with feelings of fear and regret.

Goose was left behind, and her family too, and she had not said goodbye to her friends, or thanked the brave Maker families who had closed ranks around her to save her from arrest. Even Hatmaker House had not had a proper goodbye: the books in the library and the Quest Pigeons and the fern that unfurled when she sang it lullabies.

It is one thing to leave your home on a great adventure; it’s quite a different thing to flee, not knowing if you’ll ever be able to return.

She was a fugitive now. On the run. Wanted for treason.

A heavy hand on her shoulder interrupted her thoughts.

‘Cordelia.’ Her father’s voice was stern. ‘The king’s hat – what on earth possessed you?’

‘I can explain!’ Cordelia cried. ‘Princess Georgina wanted me to change her father’s mind about the betrothal, and she promised that if I helped her, she’d free Master Ambrosius.’

‘Your intentions might have been good, Cordelia, but you committed treason. You made a Meddling hat and conspired to put it on the king’s head.’

Her father wore all the stern authority of the captain that he was. His uniform buttons glared and his eyes were terrible with disappointment. Cordelia suddenly couldn’t look at him.

‘Turbidus turbida,’ he muttered. ‘Trouble, trouble. That plant certainly delivers what it promises.’

‘I didn’t put a Turbidus Vine in the king’s hat!’ Cordelia said, raising her chin. ‘It must have got in as a seed.’

‘Trouble always begins as a seed,’ Prospero said. ‘And if we do nothing about it, it will grow and grow.’

Cordelia wanted to say something – something to mend things – but digging through her exhausted brain to unearth the right words was like digging through mud.

‘I’ve got to take you somewhere safe, Dilly,’ her father murmured, eyes roving the horizon. ‘Somewhere the king’s men cannot reach you.’

Before Cordelia could find the words she was searching for, her father barked, ‘Melchior, take the wheel! I’ve got to chart a course to St Freerest.’

With that, he strode across the deck and disappeared down the hatch, Agatha riding on his shoulder.

‘St Freerest?’ Cordelia repeated.

The name brought a thrill of danger. Hadn’t her father called St Freerest a lawless place? Was that the sort of place she belonged now: a dangerous island full of criminals and outlaws?

She looked around, feeling all at sea. Which she was. Everything was moving beneath her feet – her home was not solid ground any more. It was made of wood and rope and canvas, shifting with every breath of wind, rolling on the waves.

Cordelia crept past Sam, who was still asleep, and went down the hatch after her father. She pushed open his cabin door to find him frowning over an old sea chart, Agatha peering curiously over his shoulder. Behind him, the wide windows looked over the sparkling sea.

‘Father?’ she began tentatively. ‘Isn’t St Freerest where Admiral Ransom’s going?’

Prospero looked up. Cordelia lingered uncertainly in the doorway. Around them, the ship creaked and swayed.

‘St Freerest is a republic,’ Prospero explained. ‘Nobody answers to any king there. So the admiral can’t carry out the king’s orders.’

A squeezing feeling of relief grew hotter behind Cordelia’s eyes. She staggered into the cabin as the ship rolled, and her father caught her. He hugged her so tight she felt her bones creak and her heart grow its courage back.

His voice thrummed in his chest. ‘Now, can you help me find St Freerest on this old map?’ he asked.

Together, father and daughter examined the map. It was very old and hand-drawn in fading ink. Agatha hopped on to the map, strutting across the Bay of Biscay and out into the Atlantic. She pecked curiously at the Canary Islands.

Cordelia found tiny inked creatures patrolling the edges and curling words promising forgotten legends.

Here Be Sea Dragons

Tempest Chase

The Susurrating Squid

Ye Turbulent Seas

‘Here’s St Freerest!’ Prospero said, pointing.

Cordelia leaned across to look. The island of St Freerest lay in the middle of the tropics, a tiny freckle in the western Atlantic, far from the shrugging shoulders of continents.

‘About ten days’ sailing on Little Bear,’ Prospero said, ‘with her Fleetwood hull and no cargo weighing her down, not to mention the Flocculent Cotton in her sails and the Wind Bags from the Weather Pantry.’

Cordelia squinted. There was a mark on the map near St Freerest. Peering closer, she saw it was a faded silvery triangle of swirling waves with a writhing Sea Dragon weaving in and out. In a circle around it, written like a spell, were the words: Beware! The Island of Lost Souls!

Cordelia’s heart was beating faster.

‘Look!’ she gasped.

The Sea Dragon and the words seemed to have been drawn in unusual ink, possibly made of very faded purplish starlight.

Prospero frowned. ‘I can’t see anything,’ he said.

‘It’s right there!’ She showed her father.

But he shook his head. ‘It just looks like blank parchment to me. What can you see?’

‘It says Beware! The Island of Lost Souls!’ she read. ‘And there’s some kind of monster.’

Prospero fetched a brass instrument and measured from Cordelia’s finger to the island of St Freerest.

‘Not five nautical miles between them!’ He stared from his daughter to the map and back. ‘Dilly, I think you might have found the Troublemakers’ hideout!’

Cordelia remembered the legend he had told her as they’d searched for Turbidus seeds in the kitchen. ‘You mean the island that doesn’t appear on any maps?’ she asked.

Her father nodded. ‘It’s exactly where the lost island is rumoured to be – five nautical miles south-west of St Freerest.’

Cordelia frowned. ‘But … why can I see it?’

‘Perhaps because you’re a Troublemaker too, now?’ her father suggested. ‘I’m sure treason counts as trouble!’

Through the storm of emotions swirling round Cordelia’s mind, an idea struck fast as lightning.

‘If I’m ever to be allowed to return to England, I’ll need to find some way of winning a royal pardon,’ she whispered. ‘If we get to the Troublemakers before the admiral, and defeat them and rescue Sir Piers’s daughter, we can claim the reward! Sir Piers himself said it was the price of a king’s ransom or something of equal value. A king’s pardon’s as valuable as a king’s ransom.’

It would be difficult, perhaps even dangerous, but Cordelia knew that, together, she and her father had enough wildness in their wits and magic in their fingertips to outsmart hundreds of Troublemakers.

Prospero’s lips twitched in a smile.

‘You, littlest Hatmaker, always come up with the biggest ideas.’

Up on deck, the air was free and the sun climbed high. Cordelia was used to her horizon being hemmed in on all sides by London’s buildings. But out on the open sea she watched clouds assemble themselves in the distance, then pour themselves away again in great sheets of rain.

Ahead lay the absolute hugeness of the Atlantic. Prospero set the course according to the compass: sou’-sou’-west. Miles and miles beyond the snout of Little Bear’s figurehead lay St Freerest.

‘We’ll take watches of four hours,’ Prospero told his crew. ‘It’ll be a tough ten days’ sailing. So sleep when you can.’

He and Davey took first watch. Cordelia and Sam helped them raise every remaining sail, then, when even the bowsprit jib swelled its belly in the wind, they went below with singing, burning muscles, to roll into their bunks and sleep.

They were roused four hours later, jumping up to deck as Prospero and Davey went below to rest. Melchior kept Cordelia and Sam busy finding the best places to climb into the rigging and release the Wind Bags to maximum effect. Sea spray splashed up from the prow as Little Bear surged onwards. They took turns at the wheel, holding the course true to Prospero’s compass.

Cordelia was so busy with the business of sailing that only when she stood at the wheel, eyeing the compass and feeling the surge of the ship held in her grasp, did it occur to her that perhaps going after a bunch of kidnapping, chaos-loving pirates might not be a good idea. Indeed, sailing directly into seas that an old map warned contained vicious sea monsters seemed especially reckless, even for a person who had recently committed treason and fled the country.

But as the sun made itself gaudy in the west, sinking into the sea in a glory of crimson and pink and orange, Cordelia forgot her misgivings.

The world is so beautiful; sometimes there aren’t words for it, she thought. That’s when you just have to give yourself up to the beauty and become part of it.

Stars appeared – secrets that had been there all along, kept by the sunlight. The night glittered with them. One came loose, streaking across the sky in a silver blaze. Sam pulled threads of starlight down, delicate as spiderwebs, and wove them into cats’ cradles between her fingers.

Melchior took the wheel, sending Hatmaker and Lightfinger to make food in the galley.

‘We’ll take turns cooking,’ he said, seeing Cordelia open her mouth to object to being sent to the kitchen.

Cordelia (slightly reluctantly) obeyed the order, thinking it would not be wise to stage a mutiny over cooking. She and Sam found a small bag of flour, sugar, eggs, six oranges and a box of salt ready on the countertop and made zested cakes for everyone, which they placed in the brick oven to bake. Half an hour later, with the galley smelling of fragrant orange, they turned out ten golden cakes on to a plate to cool.

They went to the captain’s quarters, where a polished dining table stood in the window with twelve chairs around it – a reminder of how many crew were really needed to sail the ship. They laid five places at the table, quietly, so as not to disturb Prospero, who slept in the adjoining room.

When they returned to the galley, there were only nine cakes cooling on the plate. Strange.

‘Davey?’ Cordelia called. ‘Melchior?’

Sam put her ear to the wall.

‘Davey’s still snoring,’ she said. ‘And Melchior’s at the wheel.’

Cordelia frowned at the plate.

She checked the floor, in case the cake had rolled off the plate when the ship tilted in a wave. She held the lantern high, peering into the shadowy corners, but there was no sign of it.

‘Crumbs!’ Sam whispered, pointing. ‘Somefing’s eaten it!’

Crumbs were scattered along the worktop.

Cordelia’s neck hair immediately prickled. ‘Rats!’

But … why had the rats only taken one cake?

She and Sam followed a trail of crumbs along the galley floor. There was a creak down the dim corridor ahead of them and Cordelia clutched Sam. It must be a very large rat to cause floorboards to creak like that.

Sam flung open the door, thrusting the lantern into the dark.

‘AAAAAAARGH!’ came a terrified squeal from inside the cabin.

Cordelia and Sam gaped at the creature they had cornered.

Its eyes were round. It clutched a half-eaten cake and wore the kind of expression usually found on the faces of wild beasts with their legs in traps.

After making several astonished noises, Cordelia found a word:

‘GOOSE!’

Goose beckoned them desperately into the empty cabin and shut the door quietly behind them.

Cordelia hissed, ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘It was a mistake – sort of,’ he explained. ‘Yesterday afternoon, while you were all in Parliament, I sneaked aboard to put some food in a little hidey-hole I’d found. Then I got surprised when I heard voices on deck, then musket fire! And I – I panicked and hid, and then we were moving! And now –’ Goose swayed as the ship tilted. ‘Now we’re at sea, aren’t we?’

Cordelia nodded.

‘Why were ya putting food in a hidey-hole?’ Sam asked.

Goose looked shifty and Cordelia realized.

‘This is why Master Ambrosius’s Scruple sweet tasted so bitter to you!’ she said, grinning. ‘You were planning something naughty! You were planning to come with us, even though your mother forbade it!’

Goose’s mouth twisted with guilt, but Cordelia was filled with a rush of gratitude: it was really Goose! With his familiar rumpled hair and anxious eyebrows! She flung her arms round him, finding him reassuringly solid.

‘I’m so glad you’re here!’ she said into his shoulder. She could never feel like an outcast with Goose and Sam by her side.

‘But you know what they do to stowaways on ships,’ Goose muttered fearfully. ‘Your father can’t find out!’

‘Can’t find out what?’ a voice rumbled in the corridor.

‘Oh no!’ Goose wailed. ‘Hide me!’

But it was too late. The door swung open, revealing Captain Hatmaker.

‘Lucas Bootmaker!’ he thundered. ‘A STOWAWAY!’

Goose jumped to attention. ‘Aye, aye, Cap’n!’

The captain leaned into the room, eyes dancing in the lantern light.

‘And what do we do with stowaways?’ he asked.

Goose’s voice came out as a series of mumbles and squeaks. Cordelia thought she heard the words ‘walk the plank’ among the mumbles.

‘Follow me,’ Prospero ordered, turning smartly on his heel.

Goose briefly seemed to consider jumping out of the nearest porthole, but then stumbled after Prospero. Cordelia and Sam hurried behind them as Prospero marched through the ship, Goose scuttling in his wake.

Melchior Brown looked astonished as he saw an extra person emerge on to the deck.

‘We have a stowaway, Melchior!’ Captain Hatmaker announced.

Cordelia was ready to leap forward and defend Goose. But she suspected, from the twitch of his lips and the arch of his eyebrows, that her father was not quite as angry as he appeared.

Goose shuffled under the scrutiny of the captain and first mate.

‘Are you the reason Jack Fortescue wasn’t on board when we left London in a rush?’ Melchior asked sternly. ‘He lives aboard ship, so it was strange he wasn’t there.’

‘I – I gave Jack a new pair of boots that I made for him specially,’ Goose admitted. ‘Balancing Boots! But I … I wove them with Turn-About Laces, so he’d go in the wrong direction on his way home. But I didn’t mean for him to get left behind! I – I only did it so I’d have a bit more time to hide my … my … stowaway supplies.’

Possibly to avoid the first mate’s fierce glare, Goose grabbed a rope and began twisting it.

‘I know all the knots – look! Jack taught me,’ Goose gabbled, presenting Captain Hatmaker with an organized chaos of twisted rope: a perfect sheepshank knot. ‘And I’m willing to scrub the decks and keep lookout in the crow’s nest –’

‘I’d set you ashore at the nearest English port if I could, Goose,’ Captain Hatmaker growled. ‘But it’s too risky. We’d be arrested right away.’

As Goose’s eyes grew large with confusion, Cordelia whispered to him, ‘There’s a lot to explain.’

‘As it is, we’re a very small crew,’ Captain Hatmaker went on. ‘And we could do with the extra pair of hands.’

Goose looked as though he barely dared to hope.

‘So … you won’t make me walk the plank?’ he asked.

‘Not today,’ Prospero said, half smiling. ‘But I will tell your mother.’

The breadth and depth of every ocean in the world would not be enough to protect Goose from his mother’s fury, which was bound to be the kind of fury that could follow a person off the edge of any map into lands unknown. But he was soon too busy to worry about this. Before long, the Bootmaker was clambering up and down the rigging, carrying out the first mate’s orders to light all the ship’s lanterns.

‘There’s a lot to fit on the scroll I’ll be sending home with Agatha,’ Prospero said wryly, watching Goose dangle from the end of the yardarm as he lit the starboard lantern. ‘Sam safe with us. Bootmaker stowaway discovered. Treason-committer in good health. Quite the band of rebels and runaways we make, don’t we? We’ll be more notorious than the Troublemakers soon!’

While Prospero went below to try to squeeze all this information on to Agatha’s tiny scroll, Cordelia woke Davey, who greeted Goose with a shout of laughter and a slap on the back.

The crew ate their orange cakes up on deck, wrapped in blankets against the chilly night air. As Cordelia watched Agatha winging away, a tiny silver shape disappearing into the dark, her heart twisted and her eyes stung. Agatha was journeying to somewhere Cordelia could not go: home to Hatmaker House, where the windows glowed at night and the house hummed with love.

Homesick tears spilled down her cheeks, but Davey Fogg ruffled her hair as Sam and Goose squeezed her tight.

Melchior Brown began to play his fiddle and suddenly Little Bear was a party travelling across the ocean. The bright thread of music weaving around the masts cheered Cordelia immensely. She, Sam, Goose and Davey Fogg danced a boisterous jig across the deck as Prospero watched from the wheel.

After several jigs and a hornpipe, the festivities were really underway. Cordelia felt such a party deserved a proper feast to go with it. She took a lantern and hurried down to the storage hold to gather victuals from the barrels there.

‘Bring some grog!’ Davey called after her.

But she found the storage hold empty. There was not a single barrel, sack or bottle: just the empty belly of the ship.

‘There is no grog,’ Cordelia announced, climbing back on deck.

Melchior’s song slewed into discord as he stopped playing.

‘N-no grog?’ Davey Fogg gulped.

‘Never mind,’ Sam consoled. ‘Fiddle music’ll help pass the time!’

‘Grog’s the only thing that makes the fiddle music bearable!’ Davey groaned.

‘What supplies are in the hold?’ Melchior asked, ignoring the slight against his musical ability.

‘Absolutely none,’ Cordelia had to admit. They would find out sooner or later – when they ate invisible porridge for breakfast tomorrow, followed by air pie for lunch. ‘We’ve got another half a bag of flour, half a bag of sugar, a small barrel of dry biscuit, an ounce of salt and one last orange.’

‘I hid three apples and some toffees in the capstan,’ Goose volunteered, before adding sheepishly, ‘My stowaway supplies.’

‘I got some sweets in my pockets,’ Sam added. ‘Scruples and nougat …’

But sweets wouldn’t keep them alive for ten days out on the ocean.

Prospero stepped down from the wheel.

‘In all the chaos I forgot: the victuallers were due to arrive this morning with provisions for the ship. The holds are empty.’

In the sober silence that followed this statement, several rumbling stomachs could be heard.

‘Who enjoys the taste of seaweed?’ Melchior asked hopefully.

Nobody did.

‘We can ration the food. We won’t feast like kings, but we can survive on ship’s biscuit and the fish we catch until we reach St Freerest,’ Prospero announced. ‘It’s water that we can’t live without – and thankfully there’s a large water barrel on deck, right here! I filled it myself, two days ago!’

He strode over to it, held a tankard to the tap at the bottom and turned it. A tiny spurt of water came out before quickly trickling dry.

Prospero frowned.

Goose leaped forward with a wail. ‘Look!’

Near the bottom of the water barrel was a perfectly round hole the exact size of a musket ball. Sam scrambled to the other side of the barrel.

‘There’s another one here! They shot right through it!’

Cordelia immediately felt the dry tug of thirst in her mouth. All around them water sloshed. Undrinkable salt water.

Prospero’s frown deepened. ‘This is quite a serious problem.’