Crossing Over by Anna Kendall Read Free Book Online

questions he could answer with certainty. The fear had not left his misshapen face, nor the knife his hand, but I sensed that as long as I kept his attention focused on me, he would not panic. The knife had a curved blade, wickedly sharp, and a wooden handle carved like an openmouthed fish.
    I said, “How many hands aboard the ship?”
    “Eleven, and the cap’n, and Mistress Conyers.”
    “What was your cargo—no, don’t look down—what was your cargo?”
    “Gold from Benilles and cloth from . . . I forget.” He hung his head.
    “It’s all right that you forgot,” I said. Cloth and gold—a rich cargo, a small ship, a light crew. A good choice for wreckers.
    “Oh!” he said, brightening. “And we brung a man from Benilles—someone important, he was! With medals on his chest!”
    The man, his medals, and his importance had all been devoured by the hungry sea. “What is your name?”
    “Bat.”
    “No other name?”
    “No, sir. Bat be all I carry.”
    “And what kind of captain was James Conyers to you, Bat? A fair master?”
    This question was too complicated. Bat looked at me hopelessly.
    “Did Captain Conyers ever have you flogged?”
    “When I fouled the line. The cap’n, he give me three lashes. But they was light. He tell me that I . . . I be trying as hard as I can, and that be true .”
    “Did he—”
    But Bat had found his tongue. “The cap’n have the bosun flogged for stealing, and we put him ashore at Yantaga, we did. No pay, neither, and lucky he warn’t sent to no gaol. The cap’n, he stood on deck when the big storm came, and he won’t let no man leave his post, and then afterwards he said—”
    I heard all of what the captain said, what the captain did, what the captain was. This simple-witted man stood before me, salt drying on his ruined clothes, and painted the picture of an idol, a man such as I, at least, had never known. Fair. Kind. Intelligent. Capable of doing anything. How much was true, and how much blind devotion?
    Bat finished with, “But where be the cap’n now? I can’t leave my post!” Panic took him. “Did you witch my cap’n?” The curved knife in his hand twitched.
    “I did not.” More figures had emerged from the sea to wander the beach below. One might even be Captain Conyers. “Bat, come with me.” I tried to make my voice as full of authority as I could—I, a skinny and fearful murderer fighting for his very life. Which, in this country, hardly even existed. But Bat followed me.
    I led him to a stump halfway between the cliff and the clearing. “Sit there. Wait for me or the captain or the first mate. One of us will come.”
    “Aye, sir.” He sat. I had no doubt that he would wait there until the end of time, if necessary. I left him.
    Behind thick bushes, I tried to make myself fly through the air, as Bat had done. I willed it, I jumped, I closed my eyes and tried to command myself. Nothing. Apparently it was not enough to merely be here; one had to also be dead.
    I bit my tongue, enough pain for a return, and crossed over.
     
     
    “He’s reviving,” a woman’s voice said. I lay on the floor of the cabin. Mistress Conyers’s face, weary and grieving and disgusted, sagged above me. “Guards, take him outside and set him free.”
    “No, wait!” Beyond shame, I clutched the sodden hem of her velvet gown. “Listen to me! I—”
    “Out!” Her voice rose to a shriek. She was not, I sensed, a woman giving to shrieking, but here and now . . . Her husband lay dead in the roiling sea, his ship wrecked on the rocks, her life in ruins. A soldier seized me, not gently.
    I blurted, “Captain Conyers bought you roses in Yantaga! When you put into port to put the bosun ashore for theft . . . yellow roses, masses and masses of yellow roses!”
    The soldier had me halfway out the door. Mistress Conyers said, “Wait.”
    “Mistress—”
    “ Wait .” And to me: “What do you know of yellow roses at Yantaga?”
    I knew what Bat had told me, no