Dead water - Barbara Hambly [31]
He backed away from the cubby-hole, signed to Rose silently to show him the trunks she hadn't so far had time to see. They moved from one to the next, January noting addresses and names, comparing the handwritting with the letter Granville had given him, and the shopping-list—15 yd pink lustring, 60 yds blond lace, 4 pr silk stockings, soap—that Sophie had let Rose take to make a note of something to herself on the back. “Sophie's already contrite over her outburst against Madame last night,” whispered Rose. “She begged me this morning not to repeat any of what she said, about Mr. Weems. She was angry, she said, but of course Madame has had so difficult and painful a life, and Mr. Weems treats her so kindly—I take it Madame expressed proper shock and sympathy over Sophie's experience last night. The world is terribly unkind to women who must fend for themselves.”
“I'll put my money on Mrs. Fischer against the world any day of the week,” muttered January, remembering the hard glint in the woman's dark eye, as she'd strolled the deck with Weems, and the masterful set of her red mouth. “Which,” he added bitterly, “I seem to have done. Here, you were a schoolmistress, you must have learned all the ways girls fake handwriting. Does this look like . . . ?”
Daylight spilled briefly across the ceiling of the hold, vanished again with the shutting of the door.
Silence, then the cautious creak of footsteps on the deck.
January blew out the candle in that first instant, drew Rose behind a stack of crates. Threads of gold light outlined a trunk, glinted on the brasswork of a box-corner, then vanished suddenly. But the darkness was full of another living presence, watching and waiting. Listening. January felt that his own breathing, and the thudding of his heart, were audible for the length of the hold. Something scraped behind him, a furtive skittering—rats, probably, but he startled nearly out of his skin.
Anyone with any business in the hold would have called out, Who's there?
But only silence met him, silence that waited for him to make the first sound.
January touched Rose's shoulder, eased gently behind the crates, moving in the direction of the bow-deck door. The light he'd seen had been to the left of the door, and he edged right, feeling the wood of crates, the leather of trunks. Circling around the unseen intruder and hoping she—or he—wasn't doing the same. They'd gone what felt like miles when the door opened again and daylight streamed into the hold, daylight and the yellow glare of a lantern as the steward Thucydides came down the steps. “Who's in there?” he called out, holding the lantern high, and January, not wanting to have questions asked and attention brought to him, crouched behind the canvas bales of osnaberg cloth and waited until the steward had advanced into the darkness.
“Who's there?”
From the back of the hold came a sudden sharp clank. Thu turned in that direction and January caught Rose's wrist to make a dash for the door, only to be forestalled by another dark form breaking from cover, pelting behind Thu and up the steps to the deck. From where he and Rose crouched, January could see nothing besides that it was a woman, a frothy white flash of petticoat under pale, vanishing skirts. Thu cursed and followed, and January drew Rose quickly to the doorway, opening it and slipping out, listening for a moment before scrambling up the steep steps to the deck. He held his breath, waiting for someone to call out, What you doin' down there, nigger? But nobody did. Looking neither to the right nor the left, he led the way around the corner and down the promenade deck again, and back to the stern.
Rose gasped, “Whew!” as they dropped into their niche among the wood-piles. Then she giggled like a schoolgirl who's gotten away with a prank, and January, too, was overcome with the exhilarating urge to laugh.
“It isn't funny,” he told her. “We could have been put off the boat—they'd never think we weren't down there to steal, especially since someone I could mention still has pick-locks in her pocket.”
“Did