Page 38 of Escaping Pirates
Harlan stayed quiet.
“I won’t tell,” I hastened to say. “But they said that Jameson is still there in Berkway. How…?”
“I have a body double,” he confessed quietly. “In the event that anything happens to me, it’s meant to be a protection. If word got out that Prince Jameson was lost at sea, and pirates have a hostage who fits a missing-person description, they would demand ransoms or the release of prisoners or could very easily kill me. When I travel, I always assume the identity of a sailor and my double takes my place until I’m back. Everyone in my family has one. Harlan is one of my middle names and is the one only my family calls me. When I was captured, it was the easiest name to think of that would keep my identity hidden.”
“But…but if you’re…” I sat down on my bed, head swimming. “I had no idea.”
“I know. I wanted to tell you, but?—”
“No, no, I understand; of course you can’t tell anyone. But that means…” My voice died as I realized that I wasn’t just talking to a fellow prisoner. I was talking to a prince. Royalty. I clamped my mouth shut. I had flirted with him. Hewould have had princesses falling at his feet. A simple merchant’s daughter who’d been reduced to scullery maid covered in cinders would be nothing. How silly I must have seemed to him.
“Elena?”
“Y-your Majesty, I?—”
The rest of my sentence was drowned out as Harlan burst out laughing. “Don’t start with that now! I’m a prisoner aboard a pirate ship. There are no titles here.”
I couldn’t share his merriment. “What if they find out?” I whispered. “What if they realize who you are? They’ll kill you.”
“I know.”
“I won’t ever tell,” I vowed. “I promise I’ll keep your secret safe.”
“With any luck, we won’t need to keep it safe much longer.”
I raised my eyebrow. “I thought people make their own luck.”
Harlan grinned “That’s true. Whether or not the navy shows up, we can swim to shore in the morning. Or swim to another ship. Or we’ll shout until someone comes once we’re in port. That will be our luck.”
“I hope you’re right,” I told him. “I’m ready to be off this ship.”
“Once this bottle reaches the right hands, my family will send the navy, I know it. I’m assuming that no one from my crew survived, or the navy would be out, searching every ship in the ocean for me. They think I’m dead.”
“Let’s let them know you’re still alive then. Can you reach that porthole?” I nodded toward the porthole in the cell beyond Harlan’s.
He grinned. “I think so. I don’t have much else to dowhen I’m locked down here during the day, and I thought we might need a backup, just in case the privy hole didn’t work.” He waved a hand at the cell next to his. “Watch.” Harlan scooped up something that looked like a stick the size of a bottle, but when I squinted, I saw that it was merely a bundle of straw knotted together and twisted to a shape similar to a bottle. He stuck his arm through the bars into the empty cell, took a few trial swings, then released. The bundle sailed straight out the window and vanished with splash so quiet it wouldn’t raise any alarms.
“Impressive,” I told him. “Do you think you can do that with the bottle?”
“I hope so. I’m not always successful,” he admitted, pointing to a small pile of twisted straw sticks heaped in front of the porthole.
“Do you feel confident enough to try?” Now that the time for action had come, my nerves had rushed into overdrive. Every creaking board from above and every barked order set my blood to pumping.
“No, but I’ll do it anyway.” Harlan did several more practice rounds with straw before he nodded, picked up the bottle, and blew out a long stream of air. Carefully, he swung his arm back and forth as he had done with the straw, then released.
To my horror, the bottle’s base hit the bottom of the porthole and fell back. I expected it to smash into a thousand tiny pieces, but it landed on the pile of trial straw and rolled to the middle of the cell. I clapped my hands over my mouth to avoid screaming, and Harlan growled his frustration.
Had anyone heard the bottle? Did they suspect? I waited, teeth on edge, to see if someone would come running.
“Did it crack?” I asked Harlan. He had dropped to his knees and reached through the bars up to his shoulder to reach the bottle but he was several inches short.
“I don’t think so,” he said with a grunt, still straining to retrieve the bottle. “But I can’t reach it.”
“Maybe once the ship tilts it will roll this way,” I suggested, watching anxiously as Harlan tried to crawl his fingers even farther, now less than a hand length but still too far away. “Or, here, try this.” I handed him my pillow.
He tried to use that, stretching out and trying to swing the pillow down in an arc to coax the bottle closer, but to no avail.
“It’s stuck in some kind of rut,” Harlan said, withdrawing his arm and massaging his shoulder. “My legs are longer, hold on.”
