It was a pleasant morning, a couple weeks since I’d been dumped by the pirates, and I was chilling on the quarterdeck, watching covertly as Davis went about his duties. I turned to see Ned Taylor gesturing to me, walking towards me. Immediately, I became nervous. Taylor did not want me there and resented that Davis was protecting me for a pirate. Once again, I found myself in the protection of a single man, a man I knew little about, and a man who knew even less about me.

This scenario was getting old.

“I will not have an idle pirate sitting aboard this ship,” he said to me. “You’ve taken your rest, now I’ll see that Davies puts you to work.”

“Fine,” I retorted lamely. “You see to that.”

“I can keep the boy busy,” a gruff voice said. Behind me stood the sailor who had condemned Skinner to death, the burly fellow with the crooked nose. He squinted one eye at me and spat on the deck. I swallowed hard. What had Davis said this guy’s name was? Blaine? He looked more like a pirate than most of England’s crew did. All he needed was some calico, a bit of bling, and some fancy weapons.

Taylor nodded. “Very well, then, Blaine. Make sure he doesn’t spend too much time sitting on his lazy arse, pretending to be injured.” Then he left us, Blaine casually coiling a tarred rope, and me, looking around desperately for Davis.

“’Fraid of a bit ‘o hard work, are ye, lad?” Blaine said with a chuckle. Then he grabbed my injured arm and I gasped in pain. “I’ve worked through much worse than that! Seems we have a li’l milksop in our midst!”

Some sailors in the vicinity began to laugh, and one even went so far as to shove me as he walked by. “A smock-face, he is!” one of them jeered. It occurred to me that pretending to be a teenage boy was probably not much better than admitting I was a woman. I could see that I was going to get bullied mercilessly by this band of unhappy sailors.

I wished I was back with the pirates.

“Leave the lad be, you mangy curs,” Davis said calmly, appearing out of nowhere, it seemed.

“I can work,” I insisted. “I want to work.”

Blaine chewed something that turned his teeth black, probably tobacco. “He can swab the deck, cain’t he, Davies?”

Davis nodded. “Can you do that, lad?”

“Yes,” I answered quickly. I was going to have to prove I wasn’t a wimp, I realized. I was ashamed of my inability to be masculine, to put them in their places. But between my injured arm and my natural inclination to be feminine, I felt helpless.

In order to deceive the men of the Cadogan, I kept either a knit cap or brimmed hat on my head, low over my eyes. I avoided eye contact and kept my face deliberately smudged with dirt. I used strips of linen to bind down what little bosom I had, and went to the head to relieve myself, just as the men did. I slept on the deck with the crew, in a poorly-lit corner so that I might have a modicum of privacy. My period had been on hiatus for several cycles, much to my relief. Perhaps it was the rapid weight loss, or maybe the whole, you know, time travel thing. In any case, I’d been fairly successful in concealing my sex. But this, this insistence that I behave like a man, was what would get me in trouble. As I contemplated proving myself to the crew, I wanted to cry. This was going to be miserable.

But I hadn’t accounted for Howel Davis.

He’d noticed that his crew had taken a particular dislike to me, the effeminate boy favored by the pirates – and now, as it were, the slaves. He’d noticed that the sailors pushed or tripped me at every opportunity. He realized, as did I, that the men thought I’d been a “play-thing” to the pirates, a little diversion. Perhaps I had become too much of a diversion, which was why they had pawned me off to the Cadogan sailors. Whatever their thoughts, their bullying became increasingly hostile, and while Davis only stepped in at the last moment, I knew he watched me carefully.

He read my need to prove myself and took me, as well as Sam, under his wing, teaching us the difference between standing and running rigging, the different lines for each – ratlines and shrouds, braces, halyards, bowlines, buntlines, clewlines… I would never get it straight. It just looked like a web of chaos to me. Sam, on the other hand, caught on immediately. You’d have thought I was the one from an entirely different culture, not Sam.

Over the course of the next couple weeks, Davis showed us how to haul a line and secure it, to help hoist a sail, to ease out a bit of line in a controlled manner. He encouraged us to learn the thirty-two points of a compass, and he taught us how to make various knots – reefline, bow knot, all the different hitches.

As we sat together eating one pleasant evening, Davis said, “Since your arm is a bit better, I’ll show you how to lay aloft on the morrow.”

We were sitting on the deck, drinking coffee, watching the sun set into the sea. I knew what “aloft” meant – it was any area above the deck. But I wasn’t sure what the “lay” part meant. I looked at Davis over the brim of my cup. “Who and the where and the what now?” I asked.

Davis rolled his eyes. “You have a funny way ‘o saying things sometimes, Will,” he commented. Then he said, “Lay aloft – climb the rigging.”

The hot coffee, although nothing like the Venti Skinny Vanilla Latte I used to have at Starbucks every morning, was warm and comforting. As it slipped down my throat, I wondered if telling Davis that I was afraid of heights was appropriate. Would it undermine my “masculinity”? I looked up into the sails and shuddered. I’d been too afraid to climb Sophie’s treehouse in 2009, which was just a couple yards off the ground and stationary. How would I manage this without plummeting to my death?

Davis saw the fear in my eyes and smiled. “Not a seafaring man, are you, Will? How be it that you came into the company of pirates?”

I met his gaze. “I thought you weren’t asking questions.”

His smile became roguish. “Is that how it be, then?” He reached for a piece of hardtack and tore a bite from it with his teeth. Between chews, he said, “Well, let’s see. I’d say you’re about fifteen or sixteen, a bookish lad, very learned and all that. You haven’t an ounce of muscle on you, and your hands are soft like a maid’s. You talk like an American colonist, more or less, but you have some queer expressions I never heard before. I’ve kept an eye on you, and you like to be clean, to wash your hands, and you do it often.” I had lowered my head so that he couldn’t see my face under the brim of my hat. I poured myself another cup of coffee just to keep my hands busy. Davis considered for a second, then said, “You ain’t the pirate’s nephew, that’s for certain. I’d wager you were kidnapped to serve aboard the rovers’ ship, maybe because you know a thing or two about physic or reading and writing, or maybe because you look like a lass.”

I looked up sharply to find Davis still smiling, and relief washed over me as I realized he was trying to get my goat – he didn’t necessarily think I was a woman. I feigned anger. “A lass! Why, you… you… sod!” I chucked a piece of the heavy biscuit at him, which he caught easily.

He laughed and tapped his forehead with the chunk of hardtack I had thrown. “Egad! We should have just slung our food at the pirates to keep ‘em away.”

I laughed, but a seed of doubt had been planted in my mind, and I resolved to be “tougher” before Davis to ensure he didn’t start digging deeper into my story.

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