Maddie was starting to believe this may have been a bad idea.
The ship she had secretly boarded was old and beaten up rather severely. The sails had a bunch of holes and even more patches, and the deck was scuffed from the boots of many over the years. The few people she had seen on board as she scurried about from hiding place to hiding place were not the dashing sailors she had imagined, but gruff, angry men with coarse tongues and short tempers.
Her father was going to kill her when he found out.
If she even managed to get off the ship. It turned out it was a lot easier to sneak aboard than to escape. And somehow she didn’t think the men on board would take kindly to any kind of stowaway, much less a girl that had disguised herself as boy to roam the streets alone at night, and make it to the docks without trouble.
She waited in a storage closet, breathing silently. It was quite cramped, with barely any room for her to stand in front of the shelves with the door closed. Of course it would probably be easier if her belly, developed from years of the easy life of a nobleman’s daughter, weren’t so round that it spilled over the trousers she had squeezed into.
Most days her father absolutely insisted she wear a corset. Most days she fondly imagined ripping the thing off and setting it afire.
The footfalls in the narrow hall outside grew quieter, until it was completely silent. She cracked the door and peered out. Seeing nobody, she entered the hall and closed the door behind her, moving forward on her tiptoes further down the corridor.
Suddenly she heard voices. Loud ones, getting closer. Panicking, she pressed her ear to the nearest door and when she heard nothing, opened it and darted inside.
It turned out to be the kitchen, with a large wood burning stovetop along one wall, and a rack of pots and pans as well as an assortment of kitchen tools beside it. She saw cleavers and about twelve different types of knives, and she quickly looked away, moving around the wooden table in the center of the floor.
The voices were still approaching, and to her horror it sounded like they were right outside the door. She looked all around, spotted a few large barrels in the opposite corner, and hurriedly climbed into the one on the right after discovering the other two to be full, one with flour and the other with dried beef. Hers was mostly empty, save for a few apples that she pushed to the sides so she could settle herself onto the bottom.
It was not the most comfortable hiding place. Her body was scrunched down with her knees bent, and her shirt had ridden up in her scramble to get inside. Her round belly stuck out over her hips even more than usual as she tried to adjust, but it was no use.
The door opened, and two men stepped into the kitchen. “—telling you, I saw something!”
“And I’m telling you, you’re drunk again.”
“Aye, I might be,” one slurred, “But that don’t mean I din’t see anything, Toby.”
“Come off it, mate. Tomorrow you won’t even remember this conversation.”
“Don’t tell me what I won’t remember,” the first man said stubbornly.
“Alright, alright.” Toby sounded annoyed. “I just can’t wait to get out of this miserable bloody port. What did the captain say we were waiting on?”
“Dunno.”
A snort. “Well, you’re helpful.” There was a soft thump, followed by a creak. If Maddie had to guess, she’d say Toby had hopped up and sat on the edge of the table.
Footsteps, bringing the other man closer to the barrel. “I feel like skinning something,” he said, his voice followed by the rasping sound of a sword being drawn from its scabbard. “You want an apple?”
