He had been drawing, or trying to draw. Clo, silent, hardly breathing, had watched him try to outline the profile of a woman. His gestures were awkward, hesitant; the drawing, too, was awkward, hesitant—more a lopsided collection of angles and corners than a woman. But Clo, a child, had been delighted.
She had reached over him to touch the lines of the sketch. Is that my mother?
Why she had asked this, she did not know. Even then, small as she was, she knew it was the wrong question.
He had snatched the book away.
Clo, confused, had asked again. Is that—
But white, red, trembling with a rage that seemed to overwhelm his small frame, her father had not answered.
This is all I ask of you, he had finally said. All I ask, Clo. This is not for you. I forbid it.
The depth of his fury—his widened eyes, his shaking voice—was enough that she never touched the book again.
Even now, feeling the book still forbidden, she held it gingerly in her fingertips.
This was all. A wheel of cheese. Her father’s notebook. And a stolen painting that was surely the reason her father had been crouchin’ in th’ pens.
Clo felt the earth tilt a little under her.
Hesitantly, she turned over the notebook. It was tied, as her father kept it, with a band of leather. A slip of paper had been tucked under the band. Clo, it read, and then, in smaller letters beneath, be brave.
She worked the paper out from under the leather and unfolded it. Heart sinking, she saw at once it was not a letter from her father. She saw nothing familiar or expected at all.
What was this? How could she even begin to understand this? Her head swam. She felt as though something were unspooling deep within her.
The writing was strange, stretched, not her father’s dense, neat script.
1/2 paffage only! was scrawled and underlined in the corner, next to a wavery signature, CMDRE Haros, and a thick gob of red wax with an imprint of an oar. Clo ran her thumb over the raised impression on the wax.
Haros? Haros? The words of her father’s ink-splattered letter came back to her: travel alone. Passage? Passage where? Or half paffage where? What, who was Haros? Where was her father sending her?
Clo felt something tighten on her shoulder. “Girly,” said a voice next to her ear.
Clo jumped. Startled, confused, she could only think that the sea must have grabbed her.
“Girly,” said the voice again. “Yer wit’ me.”
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
RELATING CHIEFLY TO A SLIP OF HALF PAFFAGE
IT WAS NOT THE SEA THAT HAD GRABBED HER. CLO TURNED to find a man—not one of the barrel-shaped men moving between the ships and shore, but a bony, sallow, decrepit figure with fingers sunk deep in her shoulder. He was grinning, if it could be called grinning, with teeth—a few—stained and pebble-like, and when he spoke again, “Girly,” all the stench of things that rotted on the shore followed on his words.
Pulling from his grasp, Clo scrambled to her feet. She clutched her turnip bag, the slip of paffage, her father’s cloak, the stolen painting, and the notebook to her chest. The wheel of cheese sat on the rock beside their feet, its sunny orangeness far out of place.
“Ah, now, girly.” A laugh rattled from the man. “No need to take fright. ’Tis the way of things. Yer t’ come wit’ me.”
Clo shook her head, backing away. “No.”
“It is, it is.” The man laughed or coughed again. He paused to spit, half turning away. A gray line of phlegm remained dangling from his lip. He lifted and flicked it away with a knuckly finger.
Clo raised her eyes from the phlegm shimmering on the rock. “No,” she repeated. “I’m here… I’m here with my father. He’s coming. To meet me.” She glanced toward the town. She knew she could outrun this fellow; surely he could not keep his footing on the slick rocks for long. Still, the lingering impression of his bony grip on her shoulder unnerved her. She stepped farther away.
“No, no, girly. You’ve got it wrong. See there”—he nodded at the bundle she was clutching—“you’ve got passage on my ship. I see the ticket there in yer little fingers. That’s the seal—I see it. The oar, it is, no? It is. Yer t’ come wit’ me.”
Clo looked from the paffage paper to the pebble-toothed man. “Your ship?”
Pinched and weather-beaten as it was, the man’s face did not hold much room for anything besides its lines and crags, but still it seemed to Clo that, at her question, a kind of sadness shifted over it.
“To which I’m bosun.” He spat again. “An’ you’ll not get on without a hurry. Departure’s now—t’other passengers are filing on already. An’ if you miss th’ boarding, well, you’ll not enjoy th’ wait for our next docking. Why, I’ve got a family now”—he jerked his thumb toward the ships—“that’s been resting here for months waiting for Cap’n Haros. So, girly”—he nodded at the wheel of cheese—“gather yer things and follow.”
Clo, who had begun to back away, started at the name. “Haros?”
“Ay, Cap’n Haros, girly. An’ he’s not much for waiting, bein’ as it is what it is an’ he is what he is. You’d best come along now.”
A knobby finger was beckoning her forward. Clo did not want to follow this man, this stringy, sea-rot-smelling bosun-man, but he had said the name Haros, the word from the letter, and Clo, as adept as she was at staying in the shadows, at seeing her way through a forest at night, could not think how else she was to find Haros in this town filled with boats and barrel-shaped men.
With the man watching, with her hands trembling, Clo wrapped her belongings in her father’s cloak: the wheel of cheese, the sack of turnips, the painting, the notebook. She kept the odd slip of paffage in her hand.
The man’s little line of pebbles grinned again. “That’s good.” He nodded approvingly. “An’ come along.”
Scrawny and bent as he was, the man moved with surprising grace over the rocks. Hugging her cheese-shaped bundle, Clo followed uneasily as they made their way through the boats. The vessels loomed over them. The barrel-men, shouting, stomping, lugging their goods, took no notice of the two figures. Even when the bosun, pausing, sank his hand deep into one of the casks and pulled out a briny pig’s hoof, which he popped into his mouth with a wink at Clo, no one so much as blinked at them. Clo felt the men might have walked straight into her if the old man had not taken her by the shoulder and guided her through the crowds.
“Here, here, girly,” he said, by turns pushing and pulling her. “Here, here.” He led her past fluyts and schooners and sloops and clippers—though to Clo they were only boats and boats and boats, some larger, some smaller—to the far end, where a small dinghy bobbed and pulled against its rope. Rowboat, thought Clo, taking comfort in at last knowing the name of something.
“I’ve got one for you.” The man pushed Clo ahead. “She’s got passage an’ everything. All formal-like.”
Stumbling forward, Clo found herself staring up at a wild, tangled gray mass—something like the nets the barrel-men pulled and carried, something that might have been dragged along the shore. It was matted and damp and flecked here and there with bits of sea-things. It was attached to a chin. A man. The shape of his face hidden beneath the hairiness, he looked down at Clo with eyes that seemed far too bright. Clo lowered her gaze.