Cordelia spent a restless night in her bunk, tormented by dreams about empty deserts and dry wells, while all around the sound of sloshing water mocked her.
She woke with the sun, its unblinking eye peering through her porthole. Her lips were cracked.
On deck, Davey Fogg stood at the wheel, staring at the horizon. His face was grey as the dawn. Cordelia tried to ignore the scratch in her throat as she swallowed.
Goose slouched, sleepy-eyed, out of his cabin.
‘Change of watch!’ he said, yawning as he rang the bell.
Cordelia took over from Davey. It was her turn at the wheel, and Davey’s turn to fall into his hammock and get some sleep.
As Davey passed the water barrel, he threw it a despairing look.
‘We should fix it, in case we get any rain,’ Cordelia said, mustering all her hope. ‘Dowels and wax should do it. Goose, fetch a candle.’
‘But the sun’s coming up,’ Goose pointed out sleepily. ‘We don’t need candles!’
‘For the wax!’
With Melchior at the wheel, Cordelia and Goose soon had small plugs of wood and wax fixed firmly in the musket holes at the bottom of the water barrel. Hatmaker and Bootmaker stood back to inspect their work.
‘It’s watertight,’ Goose said. ‘But it doesn’t look like rain.’
The sky was blue from horizon to horizon. Cordelia, however, was not looking at the horizon. She was looking at the Weather Pantry.
‘Maybe not …’ she said slowly. ‘But we’re Makers, aren’t we?’
Cordelia, Goose and Sam (newly roused from her bunk) pushed the water barrel into the middle of the deck. Cordelia had raided the Weather Pantry and taken out a heavy Fog Bottle. (‘Fog can be helpful if you need to hide,’ Win Fairweather had said as she’d heaved the bottle on to the shelf. Cordelia, however, had other plans for it.) Goose and Sam had laid dozens of Breeze Strings in a perfect circle round the barrel, and now stood poised for action.
Cordelia took a deep breath. ‘Ready?’
They nodded.
She uncorked the Fog Bottle. A great mass of grey bellied out, swallowing Cordelia in a dense, wet blanket.
‘GO!’ she yelled, though her voice was muffled.
They undid strings as fast as they could, running around the patch of fog, pushing it back into itself with the breezes they unleashed, hemming it in with wind.
‘Keep going!’ Cordelia shouted to the others. ‘It needs to be as tightly scrunched as possible!’
The fog grew thicker, denser, as it was squished inwards by the wind. It grumbled.
‘It’s working!’ Cordelia cheered.
She stuck a hand into the fog and it came out covered in droplets. She licked her hand.
‘Just a few more!’ she cried over the whipping of winds coming from several directions.
The fog formed into a miniature tower of cloud, stacked over the empty barrel, stormy grey and getting darker. Cordelia, Goose and Sam closed in, untying more Breeze Strings to concentrate the cloud. It protested, uttering a deep grumble followed by a crack of lightning.
A drop of rain fell into the barrel.
‘One last push!’ Cordelia yelped, grabbing the final handful of Breeze Strings from the Weather Pantry.
They untied them in a crazed kind of dance, circling the barrel and yelling encouragement as the cloud they had made gave itself up to rain. Before long it was sprinkling, then splashing. It thrummed and drummed into the barrel. The water sloshed as the great body of fog poured itself out of the air.
Eventually the cloud tower thinned, and soon Cordelia could see the exhilarated faces of Sam and Goose through it, sparkling with dew. The cloud became a bobbing wisp of white above their heads, and dried up to nothing as the final raindrops fell.
The three children stared at each other over the top of the sloshing barrel.
‘We did it!’ cheered Goose.
Sam clapped her hands. ‘It worked!’
‘We’re … Rainmakers!’ said Cordelia, laughing.
The water was cool and tasted minerally and heathery, as though it had been gathered from a purple granite mountainside. Cordelia, Goose and Sam all agreed that it was the most refreshing drink they had ever had, while Melchior declared it ‘better than grog’.
The barrel was about half full. They carefully covered it so the sun would not evaporate the liquid, and woke Prospero and Davey with cool tankards of fresh water.
Days passed in a sea-sprayed, wind-blown, sunny haze of hard sailing. Cordelia soon got used to the rotation of the watch, sleeping for a few hours and waking with the bell, before falling back into her bunk when the watch was done. The Weather Pantry was opened every day, and Wind Bags were released into the sails to keep Little Bear speeding on her course sou’-sou’-west.
Davey could not read a book, but he could read the bulges of clouds and the curls of waves like they were a secret kind of handwriting. Melchior, it turned out, spoke Boat. He taught Cordelia the language of Little Bear: how a certain groan in her bow meant the topsail needed to be reefed, or the creak of a rope told that they were a little too larboard of the wind.
Cordelia slept with pods of dolphins rushing under the ship, beneath her dreaming pillow. In the mornings, dolphins jumped through the bow waves, laughing, and she answered back with wild cackles of her own.
The skies changed as they headed south, growing more intensely blue by the day. Clouds further south were different from the clotted-cream English ones Cordelia knew – these clouds were rowdier, more capable of violence. They floated like despots across the sky, ready to lash rain or churn up thunder as they chose. The sunsets flooded the west with fire.
At night, Cordelia would climb up on to the figurehead of Little Bear, gripping the ridges of his fur under her fingers, and gaze out between his ears at a purple star twinkling above the horizon. It whispered a secret to her: too quiet to hear above the roaring waves, but somehow she understood it was a comforting kind of secret. She only needed to get closer to discover what it was. Every night the star called, and Cordelia climbed up to listen as its light caught in her chest.
The only slight inconvenience was that Cordelia found her dress increasingly annoying. It was not made for sailing, and she had already ripped several decorative ribbons off it. She envied everyone else’s trousers, which were much more practical than skirts trimmed with lace, and was delighted when Davey presented her with a neatly sewn pair of canvas breeches.
‘I made them out of spare Flocculent Cotton sailcloth,’ he told her, as she bounded across the deck, legs finally free of petticoats. ‘They’ll put a spring in your step, right enough!’
To her delight, Cordelia found she could now jump high enough to reach the jib.
With great enjoyment, she cut her dress in half, separating skirt from bodice, then hemmed the bodice with Starlight Twine to make a shirt that twinkled slightly at the edges. Using a bit of the discarded skirt, she sewed a patch pocket on the shirt (because the more pockets a person had, the better) and twirled in front of Sam and Goose, who were suitably impressed by her new suit.
In return for Davey’s kindness, Cordelia mended the hole that had been shot in his hat, using a small patch of rainbow from the Weather Pantry.
‘Thank you, young Hatmaker! It’s better than new!’ Davey chuckled.
‘The only thing that would improve things,’ Goose mused on the sixth day, picking fishbones out of his teeth, ‘is something else to eat. I know the fish we’re catching are different from the ones we caught further north, but they’re still very fishy. I’d just like something different for a change.’
Melchior offered him some seaweed.
‘Not that,’ Goose clarified.
Luckily, they still had several clear inches of water left in the barrel. Once this barrel was empty, they would have to get to St Freerest as quickly as possible.
Captain Hatmaker rationed the water carefully, making sure everybody had their fair share. But, even so, the water was gone by the end of the seventh day.
At noon on the eighth day, Sam called two words from the crow’s nest – ‘Sail ho!’ – prompting a squall of activity aboard Little Bear.
Everyone rushed to the prow to see a sail winking white on the eastern horizon.
‘Friend or foe?’ Melchior asked Captain Hatmaker, who squinted through a telescope.
‘Any ship with a water barrel is a friend, if ya ask me!’ Sam rasped.
‘Run up the colours!’ Captain Hatmaker ordered. ‘We’ll hail her!’
A heavy signal flag – a red X on a white background, meaning I require assistance – was dragged out of its crate and hoisted up the main mast. Then all they could do was wait, willing the ship to see their signal.
Far away and tiny, a square of colour jerked up through the rigging. Then the sails changed.
‘She’s coming!’ Sam yelped triumphantly.
Soon the ship was close enough for Cordelia to see the scales on the mermaid figurehead and read the name Splendora painted on her prow.
‘AHOY, CAPITANO!’ Captain Hatmaker yelled. ‘COME ALONGSIDE!’
Ropes were thrown between the two ships. Little Bear and Splendora bucked on the ocean swell, reined together after days of ranging freely over the ocean. A gangplank smacked down, forming a bridge from deck to deck, and Prospero, Cordelia, Goose and Sam wobbled across it.
Dozens of faces grinned at them from the rigging. The Splendora was populated with whistling sailors, jaunty in their blue suits. Cordelia was amazed to see the captain, a small but splendid man in a white lace cape and big straw bicorn, stride across the deck to throw his arms round her father before kissing him on both cheeks.
‘Prospero Hatmaker!’ he roared delightedly. ‘I heard you were sunk! And now here you are aboard a brand-new ship!’
‘My old friend!’ Prospero laughed. ‘Capitano Boniface!’
‘Dio mio!’ the capitano exclaimed, looking more closely at Cordelia. ‘Is this the little bundle?’
‘Indeed it is!’ Her father grinned, and Cordelia suddenly found herself clasped to the capitano’s chest.
‘Ah, bambina!’ he exclaimed. ‘I first met you as a very small bundle being rescued from a shipwreck!’ He cupped her face in his hands. ‘You were a piccola creatura wrapped in rags, carried in a hatbox!’
‘It was Capitano Boniface who found us, Dilly,’ Prospero explained, ‘after the wreck that claimed your mother when you were a baby. He came across us floating on the ocean.’
Cordelia had always treasured that story. To meet its hero felt like meeting a character from a legend.
‘You rescued us!’ she said, her eyes wide.
‘And it seems I’m rescuing you again!’ Capitano Boniface winked. ‘You signalled you’re in distress?’
‘We need water,’ Cordelia told him. ‘We’re parched!’
‘Acqua!’ the capitano called, beckoning his sailors. ‘Subito!’
Sailors swung down from the rigging and soon produced glistening goblets of water for the thirsty Londoners. A barrel was swung across to Melchior and Davey on the deck of Little Bear. Davey prised the lid off it and dunked his entire head inside.
Everybody gurgled their gratitude through great gulps of water.
‘But I cannot invite you aboard my ship and give you merely water!’ the capitano cried, when everybody had drunk so much that their bellies sloshed. ‘Makers from London! Makers of Hats!’
‘And Boots!’ Goose added.
‘And Boots!’ Capitano Boniface made a specific and flowery bow towards Goose’s boots. ‘We shall feast!’
After beckoning Melchior and Davey across to the Splendora, Capitano Boniface led them all to his splendid cabin. At his groaning table, they ate delicious Italian cakes and nougat, creamy cheeses and chewy, salty bread fragrant with rosemary. As the old friends caught up on all the news, Cordelia, Sam and Goose admired the treasures in the capitano’s chests: creations of the famous Venetian Glassmakers. They found swirly marbles that sang, harmonizing when they struck each other, and musical wine goblets and delicate glass-blown lampshades that refracted candlelight into rainbow hues. There were also mountains of frothy lace bonnets, silk dresses and magnificent brocade cloaks.
‘I was worried you’d been attacked when I saw your distress signal,’ the capitano confessed. ‘There’s a dreadful gang of pirates sailing these waters. They’re rumoured to have burned the sails of a frigate with sailors still in the rigging, just for fun, and blasted a sloop clean in two with their cannons after plundering all its treasure.’
Cordelia shuddered, imagining a gang of hulking, flint-eyed men with ruinous swords that tore courage to shreds.
‘The Troublemakers, they call themselves,’ Capitano Boniface said fearfully. ‘They paint their name on the decks of the ships they destroy and leave the wreckage as a warning to others.’
Cordelia felt this warning resound in her very bones. The Troublemakers were much more dangerous than she had realized.
Goose frowned. ‘But the Troublemakers just play tricks on people, don’t they?’ he piped up. ‘They’re not – not evil.’
The capitano shook his head.
‘They are more than tricksters,’ he said. ‘They sink ships and take no prisoners. I saw the ruins of a ship they destroyed, barely two days’ sailing north of here. It was still burning when we found it – the masts felled like a forest and the hull gutted. There wasn’t a soul left alive.’
Silence hung heavy in the cabin. Although what Goose said had been true in London, Cordelia realized, out here, on the fierce and savage seas, the Troublemakers’ villainy went unchecked. They clearly had a dangerous thirst for destruction.
And yet nobody had ever seen the Troublemakers. They slipped like shadows, quiet as cut-throats, wreaking havoc and attacking innocent people. That made them even more dangerous.
Perhaps by the time you saw a Troublemaker, it was too late.
Little Bear and Splendora parted as the westering sun turned the sea into shimmering gold.
‘Look out for the Troublemakers!’ the capitano advised, yelling over the widening gulf as the ships pulled away from each other (he had barely stopped talking since clapping eyes on Prospero). ‘If you see a strange ship, catch the quickest wind you can and sail in the opposite direction! Get to St Freerest as fast as possible! We’re slower than you so we’ll be there in a few days!’
Little Bear, well stocked with water and provisions, plunged once more towards the setting sun, the west and adventure.
Little did her crew know what awaited them just over the horizon …