He is gone. They are on shore leave in Porto Delgado til eventide, while he goes off on business, to see a man named Colonnade.

"About what?" she'd asked.

"The less you know of such matters, the better. Can you not see that?"

"For my protection. Is that it?" Her nails had dug into the flesh of his shoulder. "My husband also wished to protect me from business matters. 'Don't worry your pretty little head,' I believe his phrase was."

She had clung to him, as nymphs do to heroes in paintings. Like them, he had manfully turned on his heel and departed from her.

Lorna is excited about the shore leave. She wishes to buy some trinkets, and a cake for Robert.

Porto Delgado is a small town, but a busy one. They do brisk business with the many ships in the harbor, anxious to restock with provisions between Europe and the New World. The merchants and the street hawkers wear huge smiles and overcharge everyone royally. Pearl and her girls are the first off the ship once it's docked, arrayed in their best low-cut gowns...ready for work.

"Will you look at all these sailors! Now that's what I call a handsome harvest."

"Aye, and plenty of British ones too. No doubt homesick for a bit of fine London cunt."

"Only so long they can stand to bugger each other!" The women laugh.

Robert blinks in the bright light, stares.

Zilpha fishes in her purse and hands him some pocket money.

"Enjoy yourself," she tells him softly. At least one of us should be able to. Lorna's eyes widen when she notices the amount.

"You spoil that boy entirely too much," she says as he runs off.

Zilpha forces her mouth into a light, easy smile. "That's what comes of not having children of your own! You wind up spoiling everyone else's."

Lorna takes her arm: "Let's see what there is to do in this town." As if they were lifelong friends. It is presumptuous, but then Lorna always was. Insinuating herself right from the start, boldly cozying up to their cursed family. Is this the charm Father fell for? No, Father saw her first in greasepaint and a black braided wig. Tatted up in deerskins and feathers: the charm of an actress is that she's whatever woman you want for the night. In the sun, Lorna's hair glints red.

"What is there to do?" Zilpha replies, bored with this town already and only half listening to her answer.

"Everything! We'll buy cheap paste jewelry—"

"Nothing here is cheap."

"—that we'll pass off as diamonds—"

Calm yourself. She doesn't know.

"—so we can tell everyone we're heiresses, then stuff ourselves silly with whatever it is they eat in the Azores, then perhaps drop in on a very disreputable tavern and say hello to the other sailors."

"My God," she says. A silly commonplace, since she no longer believes.

"No? You don't like it? Not proper enough for a good Christian lady in mourning?"

Zilpha sighs. "You know it is not."

There are other gods, he had told her last night, as she lay in his arms. Ones who do not reveal themselves in books, but open our eyes that we may see them for ourselves in their naked power.

But he has opened her eyes but a crack. On some matters, he still wishes her to remain blind. This Colonnade, for instance.

They find themselves in a curio shop, books and out-of-fashion china and other sundries piled haphazardly all around. She picks up a book and rifles through it, a slim volume about the torments awaiting sinners in hell, illustrated throughout with helpful lithographs. The punishment for sodomy, interestingly, appears to be more of the same, albeit done by huge grotesque capering devils instead of handsome men. Lorna takes the book from her hand, looks at the illustration and firmly closes it.

"Same rot they fed me every week as a child. Two sentences on heaven and God's love to every eight on sin and hell and the Devil."

"So you don't believe in hell anymore?"

"I hardly could believe in it then. That fat old lecher we had for a priest, it was hard to take a word he said seriously." She smiles mischievously at the other woman, picks up the book again, finds another lithograph on the evils of sodomy. "Don't tell me you think any of that's what really awaits us when we die?"

"I do not think we have to wait so long for our punishment." Lorna does not ask what she means, merely slips her hand gently into hers. Zilpha feels the eyes of the shop owner on them both, suspicious, searching.

The taverns near the waterfront are showy dens of sin, drunken patrons spilling out loudly into the street, whores (the ones from aboard ship are among them; Zilpha averts her eyes) outdoing each other in colorful low-cut dresses and bold flirtation, displaying themselves as advertisements for the rooms upstairs. The White Horse Inn, farther into town, is not quite like that. It is a large but ramshackle property on a quiet street, keeping sullenly to itself. It caters to local drinkers, and to the spillover trade from the taverns that don't have rooms. They enter because they want a drink, because their feet are tired, because the sun has beat down on them remorselessly all day in a way it never does in England. They enter because by next evening, they will be long gone.

"I am glad to see you and your brother appear to have made up," Lorna says as she settles down in her seat, brushing off the men's eyes on her in a way that suggests she's been brushing them off all her life. "I remember when I first got up the courage to approach you about James, you seemed so cold towards him, as if you hated him. As if you judged him by reputation alone, no familial bond at all. It made me rather shudder to see it."

"Why?"

"Because family should support each other. I always try to send at least a little bit back home to mine. And, well, because I know what it's like to be unfairly judged. But now I've had time to understand, I see you do care for him deeply. As deeply as he cares for you."

He has fucked me near every night since we've been on this ship, and barely spoken to me in between.

"He told you that?"

"Not in so many words. But it's clear to see. I think you two are alike in that way: you both care more deeply than you let on."

Despite her best interests, Zilpha lets out a bitter laugh. "My brother cares for me no more than he cares for you. He cares for no one and nothing but that pile of barren rocks we're headed to."

She realizes with a start that she does not want her brother to write another will. It is hers now, this piece of land that everyone wants. They will try to kill her for it; they will fight for her favor because of it.

"I don't think that's fair at all," Lorna says. "James is a good man at heart, for all he likes to puff up his chest and declare himself damned. He has compassion for the downtrodden." She looks hurt. Every woman wants to feel cared for, even if it's nothing but a pure romantic delusion. Zilpha sighs.

"Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I am a terrible sister, to scorn him so..." the old habit of self-recrimination coming to her automatically, more verbal tic than thought, her true self thinking: I do not want him to write another will. If he tries to write another one, I will burn it.

Lorna shrugs. "Siblings fight. I fought all the time with my brothers when we were children."

As land alone it's worthless, but as control of the shipping route it's everything. She can hear Um-iiqsu's voice like a drumbeat inside her mind, warning her that land cannot be owned by one person. But it has to be owned by one person under English law, so why shouldn't it be her? What makes her any less?

"You have your own money, don't you?" Zilpha asks Lorna abruptly.

"Yes, from my roles."

"And from your male admirers."

"No, from my roles. I know very well what's said about actresses, but it's not true in my case."

"Was it? I'd hazard you're closer to my age than Father's." Why am I even asking her this? I don't want to know the answer. Lorna is incensed...or appears to be.

"Horace was lonely and half mad when I met him. I seem to have an attraction to men like that."

Zilpha looks deep into Lorna's still-young face. She is lying. I don't know why or what she really felt toward him, but she is lying.

"And another thing," Lorna says, "I was never his mistress. He married me proper..." Zilpha winces despite herself at the turn of phrase. It disturbs her far more deeply than James's African tattoos ever did "...as they say."

Lorna's been losing more control of her speech with every swig of gin, or should she say, with every minute in this tavern? They have not really drunk so much. As if to prove her wrong, Lorna takes another swig. Zilpha grasps her face firmly and turns it to her and regards it closely, without pity.

"This is the face my father fell in love with. Hm? The face he married?" This lying face, she wants to say, barely restrains herself from saying. She had taken Lorna's chin in her grip with her brother's animal roughness, her brother's unthinking sense of ownership.

The skin of the other woman's cheeks is slightly flushed, and very soft.

Zilpha lets go, tries to fold her hands decorously in her lap, tries to pretend her hands had done nothing but stay folded the whole time. Perhaps she too has had too much to drink, though in the years of her marriage drink did no more than send her to bed earlier. Lorna lets out a forced laugh.

"Is that so hard to believe? You don't answer. I don't think I've ever been told so clearly before that I was ugly."

That fluttery forced laugh again, light and tinkling and exaggeratedly feminine. Her mother's laugh, her own in the days when suitors came to call. Whore's arts. My brother would eat your flesh alive and crunch on your bones for dessert. But she doesn't really know what her brother would do.

"You're not ugly, Lorna," Zilpha says tiredly. The correct response.

"Of course I'm not," Lorna retorts. "Even back when I was grubby-faced and skinny as a stick I had men and boys calling me a handsome lass."

"You mean in Dublin?"

"Yes, in Dublin. Not that you'd know anything about that."

Just then a man approaches them, scraggly bearded and stinking of rum. "My mates over there want to know how much. For the both of you." He shoves his thumb in the vague direction of a group of men seated in the corner.

"More than you can afford," Lorna says smoothly.

"That right now?" He opens a fat purse glittering with coins. Lorna barely glances at it, but Zilpha cannot turn her eyes away. She is money hungry, despite the diamonds...James's diamonds. "All this," he says, "and we won't do a thing. Just watch."

Lorna lets out a real laugh at that, a sharp, contemptuous bark. "She's my sister, you disgusting pig." As if men cared. She lowers her voice further and says, "I have a knife on me. You won't know where. And my sister does as well."

"Sure you do," he says, but he leaves them be after that. Zilpha hears snatches of the report back to his mates: the redhead's ugly up close, doesn't really look much like that London stage actress, and her sister looks like a pinch-faced old crow in all that black.

Zilpha lets out a laugh of her own. It feels too good to stop. Lorna soon joins her, and then there they are the two of them, laughing their fool heads off, completely shameless, and it's all right, it's all right for them to be shameless because they both have knives.

"We were fools to come here," Zilpha says.

"Total fools."

"They say it's the sun in these islands. Too much of it. Drives women mad."

"Oh, I don't know about that. They say Irishwomen are mad and foolish as well, and we've got about as much sun as England does."

"You're hardly like that, Lorna."

"Of course I am! I'm a potty drunken actress with, as you'd have it, terrible taste in men."

Zilpha doesn't want to talk anymore about men. "Is it as green as they say in Ireland?"

"In the countryside, yes. 'Green hills of Erin,' just like the songs. I sing them more here than I ever did over there...ah, you wouldn't know."

They talk about travel for awhile, about how long the journey will take them, about the weather in America, that fabled place. But Lorna speaks less and less. She grows as sullen as the old man at the end of the bar, the one who hunches over his drink like a miser and never looks up once.

Then, suddenly, she raises her head:

"Perhaps I am a fool to believe your brother cares for the downtrodden. Perhaps I'm a fool to believe anyone does."

Lorna takes up her glass and drinks it down to the dregs. When she speaks again, her voice is quiet.

"We lived under the Penal Laws. Nobody could own land who wasn't Protestant. When they couldn't pay the rent on their holdings, lots of people packed up and moved to Dublin, my family among them. It was better in the city for us, but not by much. Corn, grain, meat, everything was for export, with the remainder sold back to us at usury prices. Whatever you know of material suffering, and I imagine it isn't much...take the worst things gone through by the dregs of London's streets, then multiply that by ten. I remember mostly fighting with my brothers for food. Until one day someone decided I had a pretty enough face, a good loud singing-voice and an ear for comedic timing, and the next thing I knew I was touring all Ireland and England, performing for the gentry. In ninety-eight the whole country rose up. Dublin was put under martial law. We saw men tortured with pitchcaps and hung from lampposts, on suspicion of conspiring with the rebellion. But I was in the theatre by that time; they protected me."

Zilpha holds her breath, waits.

"The theatre was a refuge for a lot of us who didn't fit in. Men like Godders. James took Godders with him on that ship, and for that alone I'll love him..."

The actress's eyes are a soft grey, the grey of clouds over the sea. There are no tears in them, only strength.

"...I suppose you think it's improper. I really don't care."

"I used to care a great deal about what was proper," Zilpha says.

"And now?"

"And now...well, here I am."

"Yes. Here we are."

Lorna reaches out, fiddles with the thin chains around Zilpha's neck. "A cross," she mutters, "of course a cross, and a locket, no doubt with a little bit of Thorne's hair in it." Her soft white hand lingers unnecessarily long on the other woman's skin. We are both of us deceivers... How fortunate is the one who does not have to deceive.

The men have stopped paying them mind. They might as well be alone here.

They are not.

...

A familiar terror runs through her. It's the same terror she felt when her breasts first began to bud, the same terror she felt when her brother first began to notice them.

"I feel sick," Zilpha says. "I'm not used to so much drink."

"Do you want to get some air?"

"No, I want to lie down."

She lets Lorna handle the rest. What else is an actress good for?

Lorna falters after she closes the door behind her. "You're not really sick?"

"No, of course not."

She nods. "It feels good to be alone here. You're never really alone on a ship."

"The—my brother would say the dead are always with us."

"I don't want to think about the dead."

Lorna crosses the room's short length to sit down on the big bed. She stretches out her legs under the heavy skirts.

"Will you be a dear and help take off my boots? This pointed-toe style will be the death of me..."

Zilpha nods, kneels beside her and takes them off. "At least they don't have heels. My mother wore heel shoes and tried to make me wear them as well, even though they were going out of fashion. I don't know how she could bear it." A kiss for her foot now...to soothe the pain...

"The stockings too. Please."

And as Zilpha does as she commands she notices that Lorna is shaking. It is nothing, a few kisses, they've both drunk too much gin, why is Lorna shaking?

A kiss for her leg now. No reason. She wants to, that's reason enough. There are no gods in this room to condemn or approve, just Lorna, her body lying draped over the stale sheets of this tavern bed, her body which Zilpha now knows she can do what she wants with. Just Lorna here, because she chose to be, and not because she wants the Nootka Sound. There are no legal ties that will ever bind them. Just this flesh under Zilpha's mouth, reddening now at the imprint her lips have made.

"Yes... Please..."

She parts the creamy white flesh of Lorna's thighs, rubs her cheek against the generous softness of each one in turn, then plunges her face into Lorna's flame-red, autumn-red cunt. Drinks her in, all of her, like cream, like wine, she is drunk on the scent of this other woman. Mindless oblivion in a woman's flesh—is this what her brother felt?

The shock of Lorna's fingers running through her hair. Taking hold, now. No longer faltering.

A miracle, a lightning strike. The taste of clouds over green hills. She doesn't know why it should mean so much to her, to make Lorna happy like this. Above her she can hear soft gasps, quiet whispers. "My Zilpha. Yes." She is restraining herself, making sure the other patrons won't hear. This, at least, is something that Zilpha can understand.

When the fingers wound in her hair drop away, she rises up and kisses her. Wet lips on wet lips. Then she turns around, silently presenting the other woman her back. Lorna's fingers on the cords are sure and expert. Such an ordinary thing: women undoing each other's stays. Most of her life it was her mother who unlaced them, or the maid. On ship she's had to loosen them up herself most nights, to make things easier for her brother's fumbling fingers. She did much the same when she was a girl—what did he know of such things? He was in seminary most of the year, learning how to kill. Her underclothes were fascinating to him, a beautiful mystery. How she'd hated that.

"My Zipha," the other woman whispers again, gently taking the stiff garment off her, then slowly peeling the shift off over her head, and Zilpha lets her muscles un-tense, lets herself belong, for just a little moment, to this strange other woman. Lorna's hands on her breasts are every bit as strong and sure as they were on her stays. Of course they are. And it is Zilpha's turn now to restrain her joy.

"Do you know," the woman mutters, "when we first met at that soiree I'd hated you? My Zilpha. I understand, now." Zilpha doesn't know what it is she understands, and does not ask. And after that neither of them speaks a word for a very long time.

Silently they undo each other, in this stupid room, and she lets herself believe it doesn't matter about Erin or Nuu-chah-nulth. Her hand is buried in Lorna's cunt, her face in Lorna's hair. Lorna's fingers are dancing over her, feather light. They are both women but Lorna is nothing like her, for her touch is gentle.

Was this what you'd meant to show me then, back in London, when we'd locked eyes across all that fine furniture in my old dead drawing room—half a lifetime ago.

...

"How did my Horace die?"

My what? Her thoughts are still drowned, her sensibilities still blurred from the aftermath of their passion. It takes her a moment to realize Lorna is speaking of her father.

"'My' Horace? You loved him, then?"

You are too beautiful to have married him, let alone loved him.

She sighs, so clearly pained by the memory that Zilpha wonders she could have ever thought the woman mercenary. Although perhaps that too is nothing more than stagecraft. "No. Not as a girl does. But he loved me, and I pitied him for it. He was not my grand passion, nor I his, but there was a certain tenderness between us. I would like to know at least how he met his end."

"Some disease brought on by too much drinking. I don't know the medical name for it." She does not meet Lorna's eyes: a liar will know another liar.

"James had said he was poisoned."

"My God."

"He did not say by who."

"The East India Company, it must be. Their greed and wickedness know no bounds."

"He did not tell you that? I thought you were the only one he spoke to. He never told you of his suspicions, all those nights you've spent whispering together in his cabin?"

My God.

"God knows he bore no love for your father," Lorna goes on, "but as your brother he could have at least..."

"No, nothing," she says. Coldly, to cover the stab of fear: "You have the sin that brought down Sodom in your heart. You seduced me..."

"Really?" Lorna says, laughing.

"...a widow in mourning, alone and undefended, deeply susceptible to temptation in her anguished state. I was thirsty for a kind word from anyone, an ounce of affection, and you used that to beguile me into sin."

She rolls her eyes. "I never heard such nonsense in all my existence. After all that we've done together, to sit here and tell me I led you into mortal sin, over what, a few tender kisses? Which you very much enjoyed, by the way."

"I was alone," Zilpha says. And starts to cry, because she is truly alone now. Lorna's turned away now, she's putting on her shift, covering up all that white flesh. Let the tears fall, let Lorna think she is ashamed of what they have done in this bed. Let her tears come down and cover her.

"Unbelievable. You really think I ruined you."

You saved me. Were it not for you, I'd have stayed exactly as I was: a virtuous married woman, a prisoner. I adore you, Lorna. I adore you because you are a better woman than I have ever been. I adore you because you are free.

Zilpha is free now too. So why can she still not meet the other woman's eyes?

"Well, if you think that way, there's nothing more to be said."

"Indeed there is not. I'm not a gossip though, I won't bandy your name about. I'll thank you to do the same."

Lorna stares at her, searching, then shrugs and says, "Help me with these stays, will you?"

Zilpha feels the sharp pain of desire rising in her again as she complies. They are so close, it would be so easy for her to drop another kiss on the back of Lorna's neck. She does not. But she knows, with sudden dread, that she will not be able to hold out forever. She will visit Lorna's cabin on this voyage, as surely as she will again visit James's. I have a son, she tells herself. I cannot. I shame him with this, I put him in danger. But even as she thinks these words she feels the walls closing in, the walls of the fine old house she once shared with her husband. And she knows that she will do any wickedness on this earth rather than return to the way she was.

...

James grabs her arm as she is about to retire for the night.

"Zilpha." He inhales deeply then frowns, unable to put a name to his unease, but smelling on her the stranger, the enemy. As if she'd been with another man. "Did you enjoy Porto Delgado?"

It was always so easy to pity him when he stood before her like this, weak, choking on his own inarticulate desire. But give him what he wants, and what is left for her? Oblivion in the flesh, and no more. They are the same person—she believed that, once. But she knows by now that he does not.

A man you'd kill. But Lorna...your two women in bed together, how you'd love that. A happy little household bound together in sin and perversion, with yourself as lord and master of course.

She shakes his hand off.

"I did," she says, and closes the door on him.