He motions with both hands, telling us to get moving before we become ghosts ourselves.

15

We are above deck, clinging to the railing as we make our way along it. I am behind him, and he seems to fear I will slide straight into the sea. He has insisted, therefore, that I hold his left hand as we both use our right to grip the railing. His insistence is not as ridiculous as it seems. The lurching is worse now as the ship reaches open water beyond the cove. The wind has picked up, the mainsails snapping.

“She should be sailing straighter than this,” Nicolas says as the ship sways. “She is damaged worse than I realized. I tried to keep her afloat, but I am not a shipwright.”

“Could someone have damaged her?” I say. “While she was docked in Whitby?”

“I have considered that. The galley should not have collapsed as it did. Vandals must have set upon the ship . . .” He trails off, as if he’s realizing what has just occurred to me.

“Someone did it after Andrés . . .” He swallows, the sound still audible even with the water smacking the side of the boat. “He did not return to the ship from York. The damage was done after he was nailed in that room. Someone did not want him found, his body discovered, and so when I returned to the ship and found the galley impassable, I left it.”

“His slate was on the shelf,” he continues a moment later. “It was where he always kept it. If he returned from York to fetch something from his quarters, he would not have brought it along and put it there—”

The ship lurches again, and this time, we both slip and smack into the railing. Nicolas’s hands cover mine as we wait for the ship to even out again. Then we carry on in silence. When we reach the spot where he hung the rope, he peers over the side.

“Miranda?” he says, his voice strained. “Do you see a rope in the water?”

I lean, gripping his hand and the railing, and I squint down to see the pale snake of a rope whipping along the side of the ship.

“The skiff,” I whisper. “They found the skiff.”

“Found it and cut it loose.”

The ship makes a sound. A terrible, low creak that has Nicolas’s head jerking up. He scrabbles to his feet and looks around. Andrés appears, running across the deck. He’s motioning wildly at the ship.

“Something is wrong,” I say. “Something is breaking.”

Andrés nods and continues gesturing, telling us to get off the ship and quickly.

I turn to Nicolas. “Andrés is here. Tell me what I can ask him to know what is wrong.”

Andrés shakes his head, his gestures turning panicked.

“Non,” Nicolas says. “It does not matter what is happening. We cannot fix it.”

Andrés nods emphatically. He runs to the side and looks down. When he glances back at me, his eyes are huge.