Read Chapter 3: Casting Off

The rain over Plymouth was a grey, spiteful curtain that had not lifted in three days. Hartley stood at the water's edge, watching the *Swan* strain against her moorings, a lean, black-hulled topsail schooner that had once been the pride of a navy he no longer belonged to. Now her decks were scarred, her canvas patched, and her holds gaped empty. She was hungry, and so was he.

"Seven days," he muttered to himself, counting the hours he had already burned in London. Six now. Maybe five by the time the tide turned.

He walked the gangplank, boots slick with salt and rain. A single figure was already aboard, hunched beneath the mainmast, scraping rust from a cannon's breech with a worn file. The man looked up, revealing a face like cracked leather and a beard that had gone grey in streaks. Elias Pike. His first mate. His only friend.

"You found us, then." Pike's voice was a low rumble, unimpressed.

"You doubted I would?"

"I doubted you'd be alive. London eats men like you."

Hartley dropped his satchel on the deck. "London tries."

Pike snorted and returned to his scraping. "Word is you got a commission. A real one, from Whitehall itself."

"Word travels fast."

"Word always travels." Pike set down the file and straightened, joints popping. "The crew'll ask questions. What do I tell them?"

"The truth. That we sail for the Crown, for prize money, and for the settling of a debt."

Pike's eyes narrowed. "That's a truth with holes in it."

"It's the truth they'll get." Hartley turned, scanning the harbor. The *Swan* was a skeleton of herself, and he needed men to bring her back to life. "Where's Redmund?"

"Keeping dry in the Boar's Tusk, likely drunk. He said he wouldn't set foot aboard until you came back with gold in your pocket or a warrant in your hand."

Hartley allowed a grim smile. "Then he'll be pleased. I have both."

---

The Boar's Tusk was a low-ceilinged pit of a tavern, thick with the smell of tallow, stale ale, and desperation. Redmund occupied a corner table, a man built like a cask of gunpowder with a face that looked perpetually mid-explosion. His hair was the color of burning copper, and his hands—scarred and calloused from a lifetime of tending cannon—cupped a tankard the size of his head.

Hartley slid into the bench across from him. Redmund didn't look up.

"I've got a commission," Hartley said.

"I heard."

"Privateer's license. Royal seal. A target with Spanish gold in her hold."

Redmund finally lifted his gaze. His eyes were the pale blue of a winter sky, and they held no warmth. "And what do we get?"

"A share. A fat one. And the Crown's protection."

"That's not what I asked." Redmund set the tankard down with a thud. "There is a difference between what a man is paid and what a man is promised. I've starved on promises before. Mostly yours."

Hartley felt the sting of the words. They were earned. He had brought this crew through storms and broadsides and had delivered them to empty holds and empty wages more than once.

"Three hundred pounds, divided among the crew if we take the prize," Hartley said. "Plus bonuses for the gunners if we sink anything that resists."

Redmund's eyebrow rose a fraction. "Three hundred. Up front?"

"On the prize."

"Then we'd best not miss." He drained his tankard and stood, brushing past Hartley without another word. At the door, he paused. "I'll round up the lads. But if this is another ghost hunt, Captain, I won't be rounding them up for you again."

---

The afternoon passed in a blur of curses, hammering, and the creak of strained rigging as the *Swan* was made ready for sea. Pike moved among the men like a sheepdog, directing repairs with an economy of words. Redmund emerged from the dockyards with a dozen surly faces in tow, men who looked at Hartley with the wary respect of those who had sailed with him before and knew precisely how much trust to afford.

It was not enough. It was never enough.

Near dusk, Hartley left the ship and walked the narrow streets to a house that leaned against the harbor wall like a drunk against a lamppost. The door bore no sign, but the knocker was shaped like a coin, worn smooth by grasping hands. He rapped twice. A small panel slid open, revealing a pair of rheumy eyes set in a face like crumpled parchment.

"Captain Hartley," he said. "I need two hundred pounds."

The eyes blinked slowly. "The tide of your fortune has not yet risen, then?"

"My tide rises when I pull it. Can you lend?"

"There is always coin for a man with a ship, a license, and a target." The panel slid shut. A moment later the door opened, and Hartley stepped into a room that smelled of dust and old silver. Jacob was a usurer of the old school, thin as a rake, with fingers that moved like spiders across his ledger.

"Two hundred," Jacob repeated, sitting behind a desk cluttered with pages. "At the usual rate."

"Twenty percent."

"Forty."

"Thirty, and you get first claim on my prize share."

Jacob's smile was slow and predatory. "Thirty-five, and I'll deduct it from your fee. You'll have your coin tonight."

Hartley placed his hand on the desk. "Done."

Jacob counted out the coins—English pounds, not the clipped continental silver that flooded Plymouth's docks—and slid them into a leather pouch. He did not release it immediately. "A word of advice, Captain. What you borrow, you must repay. The sea is an excellent creditor, but she is a brutal one."

Hartley took the pouch. "She's never let me down yet."

"She is patient. That is worse."

---

By dawn, the *Swan* was ready. Canvas bent to the wind, the tide began to pull, and Plymouth fell away behind them like a debtor fleeing his keeper. The crew of twenty-three moved about their duties with the practiced efficiency of men who had done this before, and Hartley felt something loosen in his chest for the first time in months. The ship was alive again, and so, in some small measure, was he.

He stood at the helm, watching the Channel unfold before them, grey and endless. Pike came to stand beside him.

"Course?"

"Southwest, past the Lizard. The Dutchman's last known position was off the Scillies, bound for the Channel."

"Cecil's information good?"

Hartley touched the folded commission in his coat. "I don't know yet. That's what we're going to find out."

---

They were three hours out when Redmund found him. The gunner's face was darker than usual, his jaw working like a millstone.

"There's something you need to see."

Hartley followed him below, through the cramped companionway to the orlop deck, where the stores were kept. Redmund stopped before a stack of salt barrels and kicked the bottom one. It did not move.

"Tap it."

Hartley frowned, crouching, and rapped his knuckles against the barrel. The sound was hollow, too hollow for a barrel packed tight with salt. He looked up at Redmund.

"It was stowed before we left," Redmund said. "The cooper swears he didn't touch it. But the hoops are loose, and there's air moving inside."

Hartley drew his knife and worked the lid loose. Inside was not salt but a tangle of dark hair and a pair of wide, frightened eyes. A woman—young, barely out of girlhood—stared up at him from the shadowed hollow of the barrel. She was dressed in travel-stained wool, her hands bound before her in rope that had chafed her wrists raw.

For a long moment, no one spoke.

"Who are you?" Hartley asked at last.

The girl swallowed. Her voice, when it came, was steady despite her trembling. "Isabel. Isabel Marlowe." She licked her lips. "I paid a sailor to hide me aboard. I'm running from London. From a marriage I did not choose." Her eyes flicked to Redmund, then back to Hartley. "There is a ship at the bottom of the Channel, and everyone aboard her is dead but me. If you turn me out, you might as well kill me yourself."

Hartley studied her. Her accent was too refined for a beggar, her clothes too well-made for a servant. A merchant's daughter, perhaps. Or worse—someone whose disappearance would raise questions he did not need.

"Who was the sailor?"

"He drowned. Not an hour after we cleared the harbor."

Hartley's jaw tightened. He looked at Redmund. "Search the ship. Find out if she's alone."

Redmund grunted and disappeared up the ladder. Hartley crouched before the barrel, bringing himself level with her eyes.

"You chose the wrong ship, Mistress Marlowe. I sail for prize, not for passengers."

"Then let me earn my passage." Her chin lifted. "I can read, I can write, and I know something of ships. My father was a merchant captain."

"Was?"

"He was lost two years ago. Off the Azores." She said it without blinking. "The sea took him. It will not take me."

Pike appeared at the top of the ladder. "She's alone, Captain. No one else hiding."

Hartley made his decision. "Cut her loose. She can have the aft cabin, and she can work for her keep until we make port." He turned to leave, then paused. "And find a length of sailcloth for those wrists."

He climbed back to the deck. The sun was low now, burnishing the water to bronze, and the wind had freshened from the west. A good sign, if he believed in signs. The *Swan* leaned into the swell, and beneath his feet Hartley felt the familiar vibration of a ship under full sail.

Isabel Marlowe. A stowaway with a dead sponsor and a story that hung together just a little too neatly. He did not believe her, not entirely. But she was only one of many mysteries now aboard his ship, and the greatest of them still lay sealed in his coat pocket—Cecil's orders, which he had not yet opened.

He would open them when the time was right. Not before.

The wind freshened. The *Swan* ran before it.

Behind them, Plymouth dissolved into the haze of distance, and before them lay only water, and the horizon, and the unknown shape of what was waiting there.