“Are you sure she could tolerate the move?” I asked doubtfully. “She looks quite unwell to me.”
“To me, too.” Dr. Verney looked down at his memorandum book. “Judging from the evidence we’ve collected so far, she’s weakening quickly. The strain of the move might kill her.”
“Well, we can’t have that,” said Sir Samuel. “If she dies, we won’t learn anything.”
“True, true,” the King said worriedly. “Chantress, can you suggest another course? Is there any other way we could learn her intentions?”
The mermaid was still watching me. Just looking into those sea-washed eyes was enough to make me feel that I knew her somehow, that we were sisters under the skin. . . .
But that was pure imagination.
“I can’t read her mind without moonbriar,” I said. “And we don’t have any.” The last vial had been destroyed in full sight of the King’s Council last year.
Penebrygg said consolingly, “Never mind, my dear. There must be another way of approaching the problem.”
“Yes, indeed.” Sir Barnaby gave the mermaid a speculative glance. “If we could engineer it so that she could talk but not sing, we might be able to get something out of her. Perhaps if we experimented with her vocal cords . . .”
My own throat convulsed.
“No.” The word flew out of me. Everyone turned to stare at me, and I realized my fists were clenched again.
“Chantress?” the King said.
“There must be another way.” As I looked into the mermaid’s eyes, I felt her fear almost as if it were my own. Her fear, and her longing for the sea.
“You’re not going to take the gag off, are you?” Captain Ellis said, a little suspiciously.
“We’ve already settled that point, I believe,” the King said. “Tell me, Chantress. What exactly do you have in mind?”
“I want to listen.” Now, where had that idea come from? Never mind. It was worth pursuing. “To listen to the mermaid the way I listen to water.”
Nat looked intrigued, and so did Penebrygg. Everyone else looked confused.
“But with that gag on, she can’t make a sound,” the Lord High Admiral protested.
“Not to your ears, no. But I can hear things in water that no one else does. I can sense what it wants and needs, and what tricks it might play—all without it speaking a word.” I nodded at the mermaid. “The same might be true of her. She’s a creature of the water, after all. And if Paracelsus is right, you could even call her the spirit of water.”
Gabriel nodded at the mention of Paracelsus. “An interesting idea.”
“Interesting, yes—but will it work?” Sir Barnaby questioned. “If you were going to hear something, Chantress, wouldn’t you have heard it already?”
“It’s hard to listen when there’s so much chatter,” I said. “We’ve hardly been silent a moment.”
“Then from now on we’ll be as quiet as monks,” Nat said.
The others followed his lead, even the King. Captain Ellis sent an order down to the crew to keep still belowdecks. A few minutes later, all you could hear was the wind in the rigging and the quiet lap of the Thames against the sides of the frigate.
I looked at the mermaid, and she looked at me—and I gave myself over to listening.
At first I heard only the water in the barrel and its vexation at being contained. Round and round it went, an endless circling melody. But then I caught a glimmer of something else, a chilling music that told me that something in the barrel felt hunted; something felt afraid. And it wasn’t the water.
Sir Barnaby leaned forward again, as if he wanted a closer look at the mermaid.
With a splash, she submerged, trailing a line of bubbles. The music came for me again, more powerful this time, panicked beyond reason.
“Back,” I said. “Everyone needs to step as far back as you can.”
Sir Barnaby looked annoyed, and so did the Lord High Admiral and Captain Ellis. But Nat and the King motioned for everyone to step well away from the barrel.
Safe, I tried to communicate to the mermaid. It’s safe. But I’d lost all connection with her.
Frustrated, I wrapped my fingers around the edge of the barrel. She was right there in front of me, but I couldn’t reach her, and I didn’t dare touch her, not when she was so frightened already.
The water in the barrel bobbled. As it washed over my fingertips, a wave of feeling washed over me too, a bath of remorse so strong that it made me pull my