Cast Off by Eve Yohalem Read Free Book Online Page A

Here I would live beneath the sea like a mole beneath the earth.
    What had I done?
    I straightened my back even as my spirits sank. “It’s perfect.”
    Broen handed me the canvas sack and used his lantern to light a candle, which he put in a holder shaped like an upside-down L with two pointed ends. “You carry it around with you and stick the bottom or the side piece in the wall or wherever’s handy,” he explained. “But be careful, Miss De Winter. Nothing’s more deadly than an open flame on a wood ship. The light should be enough for you to get stowed away, and I’ll be back before long. Is there anything else you need?”
    He’d already risked so much, I wouldn’t dream of asking for more.
    â€œI’m perfectly content. Thank you, Mister Broen.”
    â€œBram,” he said.
    â€œThen you shall please call me Petra.”
    And I stepped down into the blackness.

11
    I rubbed my arms against the chill. The air was still, cool, and heavy with damp. The hold was dark and always would be because there were no portholes. It reeked of bilge. Cloves and dried lavender would help, but of course I had none. I spun a slow circle, holding out the candle. The light showed a mountain range of crates and casks and caught the glassy eyes of rats scurrying into corners.
    Much as I envied them, I hated rats. When I was small and I slept in a trundle next to Albertina’s bed, they’d run across my blanket at night. I learned to sleep with the covers over my head, which was suffocating, even in winter. When I grew bigger and Tina and I shared a four-poster, I made her double knot the bed curtains.
    Relief and fear dueled in my heart, with excitement and dread standing by as seconds. These would be my living quarters for the next six months. If I was lucky.
    And yet, I could well understand the boy Bram’s thinking. Dark, roomy, plenty of hidey-holes, and when I needed air or food, I could go up the hatch and use Master Clockert’s crates to climb over his storeroom wall.
    Cautiously, I explored my new home. My section of the hold was at the back end of the ship. Midship was where the everyday stores were kept. The ceiling was lower there, and barrels of water and salted meats took up a good portion of the space. The cargo was lashed together or packed in box-frames to keep it from shifting. A wall between my area and the main, everyday area would keep loose things from rolling too far.
    These explorations took no more than a quarter hour. Idleness being my mind’s worst enemy, I put together a makeshift sleeping platform out of two trunks, and a table from a barrel of grain. A crate of knives worked as a chair, and I used my sleeve for a duster. I lacked only a proper scrub brush and some damp sand.
    When I emptied the sack, I found the supper Bram had packed for me. My fingertips began to tremble—
    I tore into the stale bread. Bram had pilfered cheese too, and a stone bottle of beer, which I gulped down in one long swig. Albertina would have been appalled.
    My meal finished, the pail stowed, the blanket spread, there was nothing more for me to do but sleep, and so I lay down on my new bed and wrapped myself in the blanket, which, it turned out, was very dirty but very warm.
    But sleep was impossible. My mind bolted from thought to thought like a kitchen mouse with a cat after it. How would I fill the empty hours? How would I bear the loneliness? What would become of me? And, worst of all, what had Father done to Albertina after he failed to spend all his wrath on me? He might have beaten her or dismissed her from her position. A good job wasn’t easy to find, especially without a reference from her employer. Albertina had put her own life at risk when she saved mine.
    The ship rocked slowly at its mooring. I could hear the slap of the water against its hull and the creaking of its ribs. I missed the weight of nasty old Henry Hudson the cat on my feet. I