Promise Me This by Cathy Gohlke Read Free Book Online Page A

There’ll be a purse! Hope tripped his heart. A purse could mean a new shirt and trousers, a room with a meal and a bath.
    A sudden gritty determination for Mr. Bealing’s steady job fought for attention in his brain. He could imagine the weight of the pound notes and coppers sagging against the leather as he reached into the gutter and rummaged through the kit. A shirt, a coat, to be sure, but what he had hoped was a purse was flat and hard and held no notes at all.
    Michael’s throat thickened. It was nothing but a book. What use had he for a book? He opened it beneath the gaslight and frowned. In the yellow glow he read the letters slowly—the name, the occupation. He tried to grasp what he held in his hands.
    Not a wallet filled with pound notes to set him on his new road in England, but a stoker’s fair lifeline lay in Michael’s hands. A seaman’s book—a “Certificate of Continuous Discharge” belonging to one Mr. Hart, assigned to Titanic .

Michael tacked layers of cork to the soles of his hobnails and padded their heels with the same, adding two inches to his height. He stuffed the shoulders and sleeves of the coat he’d pulled from the crewman’s kit with newspapers scavenged from a rubbish bin. Michael pulled his cap low and his collar high. If anyone clapped a hand on his back, he’d be done for, but from a distance and in the dim light before dawn, he looked the part of any fireman or trimmer boarding Titanic .
    Michael knew his uncle Tom would be one of the last to head for the ship after his hours in the pub. By boarding and unloading his gear before the other crewmen, he gambled that he could stow away somewhere in the ship’s dark bowels—maybe find a hiding place in the cargo area—long before the eight o’clock muster.
    He dared press his luck no further. His disguise would never make it through the ship’s medical inspection. By leaving the seaman’s discharge book on a bunk with Mr. Hart’s gear, Michael figured it more a case of borrowing than stealing. It would surely make its way back to him someday. Michael pushed back the nagging guilt of such a notion.
    How he’d manage for food or water during the voyage Michael didn’t know, but he would sort that out as it came. He figured that since he’d stolen aboard in Ireland and walked ashore in England, he could surely find his way ashore in New York.
    The trick was to avoid Owen until they docked. But if he could find Owen once they’d landed, if he followed him to the place called New Jersey, maybe Owen would give him a job in his family’s gardens. If not . . . well, he’d be no worse off than he was now. And wasn’t America the “golden land of opportunity”?
    The bells had not tolled five o’clock when Michael followed the first man aboard who looked a member of the black gang. He kept his face low and trailed slowly through the mess, the stokers’ general room, and into a large cabin lined with bunks. As the seaman stowed his gear, Michael tossed his kit and discharge book onto the nearest bunk, as though he’d done it every working day of his life, then disappeared down the first stairwell he found.

    Annie stood at her dormitory window and swiped tears from her eyes with her apron.
    Owen had taken his last good-byes before breakfast. He’d told her to stay behind with Miss Hopkins, to help in any way she could during the days before school resumed, then to faithfully attend classes, to mind her studies.
    She’d begged and wheedled to go to the docks to wave him off, but Owen had held firm.
    “It’s hard to leave you, Little Sister. I need to know you are safe and warm and cared for. I need to go with this picture of you in my mind—here, with Miss Hopkins—not shivering and tearful at the docks. Do this for me, Annie.”
    Unhappily, Annie had finally agreed, though only to bring peace to Owen’s brow. He’d kissed her good-bye so tenderly. She’d bitten her lip to keep from crying, for love of Owen.