Cast Off by Eve Yohalem Read Free Book Online Page B

pulled off my slippers and set them upside down on the end of my bed as Albertina did with hers. To ward off witches, she said.
    For better or worse, tomorrow I’d be at sea.

    I woke some hours later to the sound of bells. The candle had burned out and not a speck of light leaked through the ship’s tightly caulked timbers. It could have been midnight or noon for all I knew. I stared into absolute darkness and wondered when Bram would return and hoped it would be soon. Then I remembered I’d sworn never to bother him again.
    I’d nothing to eat. For the first time in my life, I’d nothing to do—even as a small child I’d helped my mother and Tina with the housework. I lay on my trunk bed and listened to rats skipping among the loads of cargo and sailors clomping on the floors above my head. Also a strange sweeping sound I couldn’t put a name to.
    I sat up.
    I lay back down.
    â€œGreetings, fellow rats,” I whispered into the dark. “Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Petra De Winter, and, like you, I’m a stowaway on this ship bound for the East Indies, where, not incidentally, I’ve recently learned I’m forbidden by law to disembark. I’ve no idea how to solve that problem, and so I shall put it out of my mind until I resolve my more immediate concerns. Namely that I’m so hungry I could eat one of you vermin uncooked and in a single swallow if I could only catch you. I would steal food from the galley—as I’m sure you do on a daily basis—but judging by the thunder of sailors’ feet and all the shouting and singing going on, it seems that now would not be an opportune moment.”
    I covered my face with my hands. “God’s teeth, I’m talking to rats.”

    The ship’s bells followed a pattern. First one bell, then, perhaps half an hour later, two bells, then three, and so on until eight. After that, they began again with one. I didn’t know what the bells signified, but counting them helped pass the time.
    Alas, counting bells was no help for seasickness. My stomach was no match for the sour smell of bilge and the lurch of the ship now that we were under way. I’d been on boats countless times, of course—Amsterdam is a city built on water—but I’d never felt the roll of a one-hundred- fifty-foot -long East Indiaman at sea. My nausea slithered from the pit of my stomach up my throat to squeeze my head, octopus-like, with slimy sucking tentacles. I curled up on my trunk bed and begged my body to purge itself, but the sickness neither increased nor decreased. And so I lay, sweating and counting bells, and listening to the strange sweep and shuffle somewhere above my head.
    Shortly after the second round of eight, Bram came back.
    â€œYou still here, Miss Petra?” he whispered into the dark.
    â€œI am.” I pushed myself up and willed my back to stay straight. Moaning was also out of the question.
    Bram carried a lantern with him and used the candle inside to light mine. “I brought you a tinderbox for when your light goes out. Some more rations too.”
    â€œThank you.”
    He set another hunk of bread and some cheese on the table. Also a bottle of beer and more candles.
    â€œDid you go up the hatch today?” he asked.
    â€œI didn’t dare,” I said. “I heard voices in the surgeon’s cabin.” But I needed to go up soon to empty the slop bucket through the surgeon’s porthole. The smell was nearly as bad as the bilge water.
    â€œThat’s no matter,” Bram said. “If you take care, you should be able to stay there as long as you like. Clockert almost never unlocks the storeroom, and Krause, his mate, don’t have a key. Also, I oiled the hinges on the hatch for you last night. When things settle down a bit you should be able to get some food from the galley. You’ll need to, ’cause you can’t get into the bread room from