Free Betrayal by Lady Grace Cavendish Page A

thundering enough to crack my chest.
    Masou grinned encouragingly at me and began to climb.
    I didn’t want to be left alone on the high tossing little platform. So I started following him.
    He looked down at me and shook his head. “Not this one. The other side.”
    So I climbed down, edged over to the other set of ratlines, and started climbing again.
    When I caught Masou up at the highest place on the mast, he was already struggling with the cloth bunched in the ropes. I wrapped one leg around the ratlines and tugged at the tangle. Then I stopped and looked more closely. It was pulled up too tight. I could see we’d never get it free like that. “Loosen it!” I yelled down to the deck, as loud as I could.
    There was a movement down there, which I could hardly see for all the sails in the way. The ropes moved past each other a couple of times, and then I could see the bit that was caught and tease it out with my fingers.
    Suddenly the banner flapped and took the wind and floated out above the ship.
    Masou grinned at me. “See, my lady? You did it.”
    I smiled back, trying not to think about getting down. “You should call me Gregory,” I reminded him.
    Masou scampered back down to the fighting top like a monkey. He waited for me there as I edged my way much more carefully, trying not to look down.
    When I reached him, he showed me how to slide my feet out over the edge of the fighting top, catch my toes in the rungs and then let myself down onto the main ratlines.
    Then he grabbed a rope. “Now don’t try to get down this way,” he warned me with a mischievous gleam in his eyes. Next thing I knew, he was sliding down the rope, hand over hand, all the way down to the deck!
    I climbed my way down the ratlines—but much more quickly than before, because I was so relieved to be going down, not up.
    Masou flourished a bow at Mr. Newman when we landed back on the deck. I copied him.
    “Hm,” Mr. Newman said, looking at Masou with some respect. “You’ve not been a ship’s boy before?”
    “No, sir,” Masou answered.
    “You might make a very fine topman with care,” Mr. Newman decided. Then he turned to me. “You, Gregory, I don’t know what use you might be. Did you say you could paint?”
    “Yes, sir,” I lied.
    “Good. Go and report to the Boatswain. In fact, both of you go,” Mr. Newman ordered.
    I wondered if we were going to get any dinner. My stomach was grumbling. But I didn’t think it would be a good plan to ask. So I went the way he pointed and found a harassed-looking white-haired man carryingsome clay pots towards the Great Cabin—the last place I wanted to go, in case the Captain saw me. I heard Masou groan behind me.
    “Sir, sir, are you the Boatswain?” I asked.
    “Aye. Ah yes, Mr. Newman said you claimed to be a painter and stainer,” the Boatswain declared.
    “Only a ’prentice, sir,” I hedged quickly.
    “No matter. Come this way,” he said, and led us into the Great Cabin.
    I followed, with my shoulders hunched. Captain Drake wasn’t there, thank goodness. “Where’s the Captain?” I asked.
    “He’s training some new gunners,” the Boatswain replied. “Now then. See here, this painting needs finishing.” It was the scrawl of people standing on balls looking at waves. “This is to show the Queen when she came to Tilbury.”
    Aha! They weren’t balls, they were kirtles. I nodded and tried not to smile at how crude the picture was.
    “There’s the paint,” said the Boatswain. “And there’s the picture. Get to it.” And he left us to it.
    “Are you angry with me for ordering you about up there?” Masou asked me, once the Boatswain was out of earshot.
    I smiled at him. “No, it helped. How did you know what to say?”
    He flashed his white teeth in a grin. “It’s how Mr. Somers talks to me if I think I cannot do a tumble he wants.”
    I looked at the paints. There were some good colours—a red and a blue and a yellow and a black and a white. I took one