Torn-missing 4 (12 page)

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 Hudson’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!”

“Sun don’t go down until practically the middle of the night around here, this time of year,” Staffe muttered.

“I am well aware of that fact,” Hudson said, a dangerous edge to his voice. “Since you seem to doubt my knowledge as much as this boy doubts my authority, would you care to join him in the stocks?”

Staffe looked straight into Jonah’s eyes. Then he looked away.

“No,” he said.

Jonah heard a rolling sound behind him, some sort of contraption being moved forward. John King shoved down on his shoulders, forcing Jonah onto his knees. And then King yanked Jonah’s head forward.

Jonah’s throat hit hard wood.

If “stocks” is just an old-fashioned word for “guillotine,” Katherine would figure out how to stop this before anyone actually kills me. Wouldn’t she?
Jonah wondered dizzily.

Someone pulled Jonah’s hands forward, his wrists slamming against wood now too.

Jonah struggled to turn his head to look for Katherine—and to see what was going to happen to him next. He caught a quick glimpse of something descending toward his neck and wrists.

“Noooo!” he screamed.

Jonah heard wood crashing against wood on either side of his head, but nothing hit him.