The other girls from the cabin, including Sarah, were sprawled out nearby, playing a game with cards the ship’s boy had smuggled them. Since Mrs. Robb had left earlier in the longboat to Port Stanley, they could mostly do as they pleased, so long as they stayed within their confined area of the deck.

Some of the other poor women were plucking and cleaning birds too, as happy as Mercy to have something to do to pass the time while they were forced to remain on the ship.

“After the roasting, what about soup?” Ann blew at a feather that drifted near her face.

“Duck soup sounds right good.” Mercy scooped more feathers into the mattress.

“Can’t remember the last time I had soup.” After the weeks at sea, the girl’s face was grimy, her black hair stringy and hanging in limp braids. All the more reason the women should’ve been allowed to go ashore, so that they could have washed up with something besides salty seawater.

Once again, Mercy’s chest stung with the indignation of their being left behind. And with the guilt that their plight was partly her fault.

A shadow fell across them. “Why, you little thief!”

Lifting a hand, Mercy shielded her eyes from the sun to find that one of the middle-class women was standing in front of Ann and glaring down at her. She was one of the women in Miss Lawrence’s cabin, though Mercy couldn’t recall her name. She was short and husky with a wide face, made wider by the looped braids she wore on either side of her head, which drooped like the ears of a basset hound.

“You’re a thief,” she said again to Ann.

Ann leaped to her feet, her fists balled, eyes flashing before Mercy could set aside the mattress. “Curses on your head!” Ann spat out the words.

“I do declare, you’re wearing my necklace.” The woman reached for the chain and pendant that had slipped out of Ann’s collar.

Mercy stood and brushed her feather-coated hands against her skirt, catching only a glimpse of the necklace—an oval shape with a few pearls and other small jewels affixed to it—before Ann’s fingers closed about it in a protective gesture.

“It’s mine, that it is,” Ann insisted. “And I won’t let the likes of you try to take it away from me.”

The women lounging on the crowded deck grew quiet, all eyes upon Ann and her accuser.

“The likes of me? You’re the dirty imp!” the woman snapped. “Now give me back my necklace this instant, or I shall report you to the captain and demand that he have you whipped for your insolence and thievery.”