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 secured, 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 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 in 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. “Yes, 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 twitch of his bruised jaw, the strength in his wiry shoulders. His words came too easily. He’d said what he thought 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 Balthazar 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 FELL 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 Balthazar 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?”
The edge in his voice made me hesitate. “We can’t just leave him here. You said yourself—”
“He can’t come with us.” He cursed under his breath and leaned on the rail. “I shouldn’t have said anything before. It’s impossible.”
“But why? It isn’t safe here. There’s no doctor, and the only reason the captain hasn’t thrown him overboard is because he thinks he can ransom him once they reach Brisbane, which is a lie.”
“You don’t understand. It isn’t safe on the island either.”
I looked back at the island. The plume of volcanic smoke snaked toward the dark sky like tendrils escaping a gentleman’s pipe. My eyes found a single light, halfway up the hill, the only sign of civilization.
“Not safe?”
Montgomery took my shoulder and turned me away from the island. His face softened. “There’s no room, I mean. We’ve one extra bedroom, which you’ll have. He’ll have no place to stay, and there are wild animals in the jungle. Besides, your father is a very private man. He’d be furious if I brought a stranger.”
I traced the wood grain on the rail. Would Father consider me a stranger? No, of course not. I was his only family, the little girl who used to crawl onto his lap with a dusty volume and beg him to read theories of how birds were once great, lumbering lizards. But then why had he never once sent a letter? Why did I have to learn he was alive from a bloodstained diagram at a late-night vivisection?
“He’s my father,” I said. “He’ll listen to me. He’ll understand it’s safer for Edward to stay on the island. It’s just until the next ship comes.”
“It crosses his wishes, Juliet.”
I leaned against the rail, studying his worn clothes, his scuffed boots. “You keep saying you’re no longer his servant, but you don’t act like it. You can think for yourself, you know.”
Montgomery’s jaw tensed, but he didn’t argue. I knew I’d hurt him, but I didn’t know how to take it back, because it was true. He strode away, bristling. The sudden solitude made the thoughts in my head louder. I wanted to go back to that moment when Montgomery and I stood on the deck, hands interlaced, as he told me he’d thought about me often. But a shift had occurred, slight but significant enough that things weren’t exactly the same between us. I leaned on the rail and measured the moonlit distance between me and the island.
THE NEXT MORNING, I was packed before dawn, though maddeningly, because of the tides, we couldn’t dock for hours. While I waited, I dressed in new white summer clothes that I’d bought with Lucy’s money before we left. The startling clean whiteness hurt my eyes. The rest of my things—my medication, the worn books, even an old hard-bristled brush of Mrs. Bell’s—I tucked away in the carpetbag. I left out Father’s copy of Longman’s Anatomical Reference, flipping anxiously through the black-and-white drawings. The book of a scientist. A madman, too, perhaps.
Either way, I was about to find out.
When I climbed above deck, I was distracted by a flurry of activity. The mizzen boom was rigged to unload the cargo and cages. A handful of sailors dragged the panther’s cage toward a hook bigger than my head. But what stole my attention was the mountainous green island looming off the port side, big as a kingdom, with a column of wispy gray smoke coming from its highest point. After weeks of water as vast as the known world, the island seemed unreal. A soft line of sand touched the sea, edged by a cluster of palms waving in the breeze. The palms gave way to a wild tangle of jungle, packed as tight as stitching with vines and the canopies of trees I couldn’t identify. I wondered what lay under that green curtain, waiting for me.
Edward watched the island as well from the forecastle deck, until he caught sight of me. He touched his forehead, an old-fashioned gesture one used when greeting a lady. I’d have to dissuade him of that notion someday.
He came down the steps, wincing slightly from his bruises. “Montgomery said I may come to the island until the next supply ship passes,” he said. “I suppose I have you to thank for that.”
Surprised, I stood a little straighter. Montgomery had changed his mind—my jab about acting like a servant must have struck a sensitive nerve. As guilty as I felt, I couldn’t help but smile that he’d finally made his own decision. “Are you going to come, then?”
“If my choices are between spending more time with Captain Claggan or with you, it’s an easy decision.” He brushed a dark strand of hair back from his face, not taking his eyes off the ocean. My stomach tightened at the compliment, unexpectedly. I wasn’t used to getting compliments from gentlemen. I picked lightly at my dry lips, realizing this meant I’d be spending a lot more time with Edward Prince. Scarred, clever, sea-mad Edward Prince. Who was surprisingly bad at backgammon.
His fingers drummed on the rail. “Montgomery didn’t seem entirely happy about it, though.”
I cleared my throat. “He’s worried what my father will think. He shouldn’t; he’s not a servant anymore.”
“A servant?” Edward interrupted. His hand fell away from his face.
“Montgomery was our scullery maid’s son. He used to work in the stables. Didn’t he tell you?”
“I was under the impression that you were traveling together.… Sharing a cabin …” His eyes slid to me, asking a question without asking.
There was no breeze to cool my burning face. “He’s my escort,” I said quickly. “That’s all.” I would have liked to say more to prove otherwise, but the evidence was against me. We had spent the night in the same room, more than once. And I couldn’t pretend the idea had never crossed my mind.
“Well, I’m not sorry to hear that. I’m glad you’re not spoken for.” He paused. “I like getting to know you, Miss Moreau.”
I kept silent, watching the island, though inside I was a mess of confusion. I wondered if I should acknowledge his comment. He was probably a perfectly nice young man. But I’d seen too much of what men were capable of to trust a stranger. And there was something unsettling about him. He had even said himself that he was running from something he’d done. It must have been serious if he had to flee England. I glanced at him askance, wondering what the wealthy son of a general had to run from.
Edward matched my silence, too reserved to say what else was really on his mind. But then again, so was I.
The Curitiba sailed toward a natural inlet that opened like a yawning mouth. From the farthest point, a narrow dock extended toward us, beyond the breakers, longer than any dock I’d ever seen. Waves washed over it, threatening to swallow the whole structure. At the edge, next to a bobbing launch, stood a small party of figures. They began to take shape as the Curitiba drifted closer.
There were three men as large as brutes, larger even than Balthazar. They had the same odd hunch to their shoulders as Balthazar, and their heads seemed set too low on their necks. I wondered what had made all the natives so disfigured. It was as though God had started here before he made man.
One of the hunched men shuffled to the edge of the dock and crouched on his haunches like a beast. As he moved away, I saw another man behind him, this one of regular size, with a straight back and spindly limbs. He wore a white linen suit and shoes so polished the sunlight reflecting off them made me squint. A parasol shaded his face from the sun and my eyes, but my heart would recognize him anywhere.
As I stared, the parasol slid back and the man’s eyes met mine.
I gasped.
He was my father, and yet he wasn’t. The face was the same, as was his stiff posture, but his once carefully groomed dark hair flew wild and gray like a swarm of wasps about his head. What unnerved me most was the peculiar way he calmly stared back at me, unflinching, as if he’d known I was coming.
As if he’d been waiting for me.