Jonah shoved the mop forward, then pulled it back.
“I could have figured that out all by myself,” Jonah said. “And I’m not even invisible, and I can’t go around listening to what people say without being seen.”
The coils of dingy braided cloth that made up the mop head got caught on a rough place in the wood, and Jonah had to bend over and pull it free. Jonah could have sworn he could feel someone watching him, but when he straightened up, there was no one else there besides him and Katherine. The leaders of the ship—Hudson, Prickett, and King—had retreated into the captain’s cabin to eat their lunch; the rest of the crew had disappeared into the hold. The weather had warmed up slightly, enough that the water he was swabbing on the deck didn’t instantly turn to ice. But it still wasn’t a great day for sitting out in the open air eating lunch.
Or for dipping your hands again and again into a cold bucket of water, Jonah thought sourly.
It wasn’t fair that he was stuck mopping, while Katherine could just stand there watching.
Jonah made a mocking face at his sister, and rolled his eyes just for good measure.
“Okay, genius, if you’re so brilliant, tell me this: Why is Prickett out to get you?” Katherine said. “That’s what I can’t figure out. I heard everything Prickett told Hudson about what you did in the crow’s nest—which everybody’s calling the top, for some reason. He made it sound like you practically spit in his eye and defied him and swore at him like … well, like a sailor.”
“The liar!” Jonah said. He tightened his grip on the mop handle and hit the mop head against the deck with unnecessary force.
“It took you forever to get down here,” Katherine said. “Prickett had time to tell John King he thought Nicholas Symmes should be promoted to first boy, ahead of you. And to tell that scary-looking cook person that you lost one of the fishing rods. You didn’t even touch a fishing rod, did you?”
“I didn’t,” Jonah said. “But maybe the real John Hudson, before he vanished …”
Jonah shoved the mop harder. He was okay as long as he focused on minor actions: mopping, moving the bucket, snarling at Katherine. But if he let his thoughts creep toward anything approaching a broader viewpoint, he started feeling weak-kneed and panicked again.
Whatever the real John Hudson did before I got here, that’s going to affect me, Jonah thought. And so does whatever happened that made the ship come back for the shallop instead of letting us float off into nothingness … and whatever Second wanted to accomplish in 1611, when he changed 1600 … and whatever happened to JB that he can’t even talk to us through the Elucidator anymore. … Aaah! I don’t know what any of it means!
The mop got caught on the rough wood again, and Jonah bent over it. The weird sensation of being watched hit him once more—he whirled around quickly, but it was only Katherine standing there, looking frighteningly see-through.
Jonah tried not to actually look at her, since he didn’t like seeing her as glass.
“It’s too weird, having you look and sound like someone else,” Katherine mumbled.
Great. Each of them creeped out the other.
“I’m going to go listen at the captain’s door, to see if I can hear anything Prickett and Hudson and King are saying,” Katherine said. “And then I’m going to look around the ship and see if there are any other notes hidden anywhere. Maybe the crow’s nest letter writer left a note somewhere about why Prickett hates John Hudson.”
“Maybe,” Jonah muttered. His stomach growled and he added, “See if you can find a nice pepperoni pizza lying around the ship while you’re at it, okay?”
Katherine slugged his arm. At least that felt normal.
“I think I’ll be doing well to find a few bread crumbs that aren’t covered with mold,” she muttered as she left. “And that they don’t have counted, that they won’t miss.”
How could the Discovery have gotten so low on food? Jonah wondered.
It was a stupid thought, just because back home he was so used to having food available any time he wanted it. He gazed out at the gray horizon—of course food would be scarce here. It was too cold for much of anything to grow on the land. Probably too cold for much of anything to come from the sea. And if they’d left England in April of 1610, that was fourteen months ago. How could they have carried more than fourteen months worth of food?
And what would happen to him and Katherine if everyone was just going to starve?
Jonah applied himself to diligently mopping the deck, because that was a way to fight against all the worries.
“Psst,” someone called behind him.
Jonah turned around. It was Staffe, carrying a tray toward the captain’s cabin. He was looking around fearfully.
“I’ve been watching for the right moment …,” he whispered.
As he walked past, he slipped something into Jonah’s hand.
“Cheese,” Staffe murmured. “So you can eat, after all.”
So Staffe’s been watching me this whole time? Jonah wondered. He hoped he hadn’t looked too suspicious, talking to Katherine. He eagerly closed his hand around the cheese, his mouth already watering.
But the “cheese” was hard as a rock. If Jonah actually bit into it, he’d probably chip a tooth.
Still, Jonah was pretty sure Staffe was risking a lot by giving it to him.
“No, thank you,” Jonah said, slipping the cheese back to Staffe. “You eat it. I—I’ll take my punishment like a man.”
That sounded like something someone would say in 1611, didn’t it?
Staffe stared at him. The man had startlingly blue eyes that stood out in his scarred, chapped, scruffy face.
“The wrong Hudson is leading this ship,” Staffe whispered. Then he looked around nervously, as if fearing someone else might have heard. But even Katherine was out of earshot—she was way across the deck now, her ear pressed against the door of Hudson’s cabin.
Wrong Hudson leading …, Jonah thought. Was that what was going on between John Hudson and his dad? Did lots of people think John should have led a mutiny? Is that how the mutiny went wrong? No—not if John Hudson was supposed to end up in the shallop.
Jonah’s head was starting to hurt from trying to figure everything out. Staffe turned to walk away.
“No—wait,” Jonah said desperately. “I have to ask you—”
But what could he ask that the real John Hudson wouldn’t have already known? Why does Prickett hate me? Nope. Why are you and I such great buddies? Nope. What else am I supposed to do as ship’s boy besides going up in the crow’s nest and swabbing the deck? Nope.
And then he knew what he could ask.
He dug in his pocket and pulled out the drawing of Andrea. He resisted the temptation to stand there gazing at it for a few minutes before showing it to Staffe.
“Look,” he said. “I found this. See—it says this girl joined a tribe. What tribe do you think she joined?”
Jonah thought he’d worked up a pretty clever plan in just a few seconds. Whatever Staffe answered, Jonah could say, “Will you write that down?” And then Jonah could look at his handwriting and see if it was the same as on the papers in the crow’s nest. At least that was one mystery Jonah might be able to solve.
But Staffe snatched the paper away, hiding it from view.
“You ripped this from one of your father’s books?” Staffe asked, his words weighted with as much horror as if he’d just discovered that Jonah had killed someone.
“No!” Jonah protested automatically. “Well, actually … yeah, I kind of did. But not on purpose! It was an accident!”
This was true. In his very first moments after arriving in 1611 he’d brushed away something he felt against his face, heard paper rip, and realized that he’d torn out this page from a book. It’d been his first clue that Andrea and his other friends had survived 1600—and that their actions had changed time.
The picture never would have existed in original time.
“Your father worships his book
s!” Staffe muttered. He looked around frantically, as if searching for a place to hide the evidence of what Jonah had done.
Jonah’s brain was running a little behind. He and Katherine had been so vague and out of it in their first few moments on the ship—and then they’d rushed so quickly into dealing with the mutiny. What had happened to the rest of that book?
And what would Henry Hudson do if he found out that Jonah had torn out this page?
Staffe was acting as though this changed everything—as though Jonah’s very life might be in danger.
Jonah reached out for the paper, because he didn’t like the way Staffe was crumpling it.
“Well, don’t tell anyone what happened, okay?” Jonah said, even though he was pretty sure people didn’t say “okay” in 1611. “It’s just, this girl …”
A bit of sympathy crept into Staffe’s expression.
“The girl,” he said, almost gently. “Of course. We all miss seeing females, and for a young lad like yourself …”
Jonah’s fingers brushed the paper, but Staffe pulled it away, out of reach.
“If I give this back to you, you’ll get caught with it,” Staffe said. “You’ll forget; you’ll pull it out just to look when others are around….”
“No, I won’t,” Jonah said.
Staffe shook his head. And even though Staffe had sunken cheeks and numerous scars and a long, ratty beard that whipped around in the wind—and so looked absolutely nothing like Jonah’s clean-shaven, unscarred, slightly overweight father—for a moment Jonah had a flash of feeling like he was back home, waiting for his dad to tell him, once again, “Jonah, you’re a kid. You’re a good kid, and there are a lot of decisions your mother and I trust you to make on your own. But—this isn’t one of them.”
Staffe took three steps, over to the railing. And then, before Jonah could stop him, he dropped Andrea’s picture into the water.
“What’d you do that for?” Jonah demanded, rushing toward the railing.
“For your own good,” Staffe said, sounding just like Jonah’s dad again.
It always made Jonah furious when his dad said it, too.
“That was valuable!” Jonah said. “Priceless!”
He wasn’t even thinking about what the paper represented, the way the paper was evidence of how Second had changed time. The way that, if Jonah held on to it and kept looking at it, maybe it could become evidence that Jonah and Katherine had fixed time.
All Jonah could think was, What if I never see Andrea again? And now I don’t even have her picture anymore….
He leaned far out over the railing.
“I’ll jump in and get it,” he said.
But the waves had already washed over the paper, dragging it out of sight. And, well, Jonah had seen Titanic. He knew: People died in a matter of minutes in water that cold.
The door of Hudson’s cabin opened suddenly, making both Staffe and Jonah jump. Jonah almost fell over the railing.
“Were you bringing the captain’s tray?” Prickett asked Staffe. “Or merely laying about, chatting with the miscreant?”
“Miscreant” was yet another word Jonah had never heard before, but he could just tell by the way Prickett said it that he was supposed to be insulted.
“Bringing the tray,” Staffe said. “Sir.”
He rushed toward Prickett. Prickett took the tray from him and said, “Begone from my sight.”
Jonah expected Prickett to shut the door again, giving Jonah and Staffe more chance to talk. But Prickett kept standing there watching.
“It would be wise for you to be careful about whom you associate with,” Prickett told Staffe.
“Yes, sir,” Staffe said, backing away.
Staffe reached the stairway and went scurrying down into the hold. And still Prickett kept standing in the doorway.
Jonah saw Katherine slip past him, into Hudson’s cabin. She was shaking her head and frowning at Jonah—she must have seen everything that had happened between him and Staffe.
And then Prickett stepped aside and let the door slide shut behind him.
Jonah went back to swabbing the deck, but this time the action didn’t soothe him at all.
Andrea’s picture is gone, he thought, angrily shoving the mop around. And Katherine is alone in that cabin with crazy Henry Hudson and awful Abacuk Prickett and even John King, who seemed so eager to pull out his sword and start slicing it through the air back during the mutiny….
Jonah kept pushing the mop back and forth, but his eyes were playing tricks on him in the pools of water on the wet wood. He could see each and every time that invisibility had failed to protect them—or even put them in greater danger—during their previous trips through history.
At the Tower of London guards had thrust flaming torches at them—even setting a small lock of Katherine’s hair on fire before Jonah managed to put it out.
At the Battle of Bosworth, Katherine had suddenly fallen down, and Jonah had been certain she’d been hit by a flying arrow.
And at Westminster Abbey, Jonah and Katherine and their friends Chip and Alex had suddenly lost their invisibility—right in front of the king of England.
Katherine’s invisibility was even less reliable here and now, when everything about time travel was messed up. What would happen if she suddenly became visible in Captain Hudson’s cabin? If he and the others caught her spying?
Jonah broke out in a cold sweat.
He shoved his mop closer to Captain Hudson’s door. If someone came out, it would just look as though he was cleaning this side of the deck, right? He looked around quickly and, seeing no one coming from belowdecks, he pressed his ear against the door.
All he could hear was a low rumble of voices.
“… the passage …”
“… loaded with treasure …”
“… sailors we trust …”
It was frustrating, to catch only about three words of every ten. He couldn’t blame Katherine for wanting to dart inside.
“… divide up …”
Were they planning to divide the treasures, or divide the sailors?
“Oh, no!” Prickett cried suddenly in a startled voice. “What’s that?”
They’d found Katherine. That was the only explanation.
Jonah rammed his shoulder against the door, forcing it open. It gave way more easily than he expected.
Jonah landed flat on the floor of Henry Hudson’s cabin.
Jonah looked up to see everyone circled around him: Hudson, Prickett, King—and the still-invisible Katherine.
Katherine was shaking her head in despair and mouthing the words, What were you thinking?
The others just looked furious.
“Caught listening at doors,” Prickett muttered darkly. “Eavesdropping.”
“No,” Jonah said, thinking hard. “I wasn’t. I—”
He decided to buy some time—and a little dignity—by trying to stand up. But Prickett quickly grabbed Jonah’s mop and pressed the handle against Jonah’s chest, pinning him to the ground.
“He lies,” Prickett accused.
“No, really,” Jonah said, wishing he could come up with a good lie. The mop dripping against his chest gave him an idea. “I was just leaning against the door, trying to get the best angle to—er—swab the corners of the deck. I wasn’t eavesdropping at all! Didn’t hear a thing!”
It was so frustrating telling a lie with John Hudson’s voice. It came out sounding squeaky and untrustworthy.
Not that Jonah’s real voice would have worked any better.
“We must make an example of him,” Prickett said.
The year 1611 wasn’t one of those times when people had their hands cut off for stealing, was it? If so, the punishment for eavesdropping might be … what? Having an ear cut off?
Jonah lifted his hands to grab both his ears, which probably made him look even guiltier.
“Please,” Jonah said. “F-father …”
He was appealing to Hudson, but Hud
son’s eyes wheeled about, his gaze lighting first on Prickett, then King.
He wouldn’t look directly at Jonah.
“We could bring out the stocks,” Prickett said. “Put him right in the middle of the deck, for all to see.”
Stocks? Jonah thought frantically. He looked at Katherine, hoping she would know what this meant. If it was too bad, maybe he needed to jump up and try to escape.
Though, where could he escape to?
Katherine looked every bit as baffled as Jonah felt. She was mouthing something else now—maybe, I’ll rescue you if I have to?
It was virtually impossible to lip-read her almost-invisible lips.
John King reached down and grabbed Jonah by the shoulders, holding him so tightly that Jonah wouldn’t have been able to escape, regardless. King hustled Jonah out of the cabin.
“All hands on deck!” Hudson called down into the hold. “Immediately!”
“Bring the ill and the lame, too!” Prickett called behind him.
Including all the sickest people meant that “immediately” took a long time. Jonah stood shivering in John King’s grasp.
“Really, I didn’t—,” Jonah tried again.
“Silence!” King growled, and struck him across the face so hard that it jarred Jonah’s teeth.
He decided silence might be a good idea, though he kept looking around, trying to figure out what punishment Prickett and Hudson and King intended to give him.
Mutineers always hang, Hudson had said, just that morning. But surely being caught eavesdropping wasn’t considered mutiny, was it?
Finally the rest of the crew was assembled on the deck. In the past hour or so Jonah had stopped feeling so horrified at the sight of scars and missing teeth and oozing sores. But the whole crew, all together, was hideous. They were walking skeletons covered in rags. They were skin diseases stretched over bone. They were death masks come to life.
In the twenty-first century, every single one of them would be in a hospital bed, Jonah thought. In an isolation unit, probably.
Beside him Katherine took a step back.
“Hear ye, hear ye!” Hudson cried. “This boy shows no respect for the ship’s rules! Therefore, he is sentenced to the stocks until sundown tomorrow!”