Part I
What’s in a Name?
Prologue
For the firstseveral weeks of her life, she did not have a name.
It was an oversight. Perhaps an understandable one, given that her mother had fallen so ill in the process of delivering her to this world. With everyone focused on that and their ultimately futile efforts to save the life of the sickly woman, it was to be expected that there had been little time for frivolities for the healthy baby girl.
And what was a name, if not a frivolity?
In the end, it was a mistake that had named her. A well-meaning wet nurse, come to feed her from the bassinet at her ailing mother’s bedside, mistook the name scrawled in chalk on the door for the child’s and not the woman’s.
“You’ve a good appetite, little Miss Elizabeth,” the nurse had said whilst feeding her and in earshot of the doctor.
And so she had become Elizabeth.
She had taken the name, just as her mother had surrendered it, passing into a plane where she wouldn’t need it ever again.
Her father couldn’t stand to call her that. So he would call her all the things people called girls named Elizabeth without sayingElizabeth. Some days she was Bess, others she was Liza, and occasionally she was Betty. Beth, Bess, Lizzie, Lilibet, Betsy, and Ellie, and Libba.
It was the last one her brother liked best. To Malcolm, who was already a grand old age of four when she’d been born, she was always Libba.
So that was the one that had stuck. Or at least, it was the one that had stuck at home.
Out in the world, while her papa worked at his desk at the shipyard, she could try on all the different varieties of her name, and each one had its own story, its own affectations, and its own likes and dislikes.
Eliza had different friends than Bess. Lizzie had a terrible sweet tooth, but Ellie preferred to eat her meat and vegetables to grow up nice and strong.
In the absence of many other children to play with, save for her brother, who was often too grown up and busy and not at all interested in excellent things like dolls and dress up, Libba had found that being so many little girls at once often filled the gap left by the social offerings of a childhood on Brighton wharf.
There were a few other children, of course, but most of them were boys, and the boys all preferred Malcolm.
Libba suspected that was a temporary state of things, based on her observations of the older boys on the docks and where their attentions often went, which was to the pretty women in bright colors and spinning parasols who wandered the coast.
She would have bright colors one day. She would have many parasols. Of that, she was certain.
Of all the shipyard boys, Jasper Townsend was easily her favorite. This was lucky because he was Malcolm’s favorite too, with his bright-red hair and his quick smiles and his boundless knowledge of all things to do with the ocean and its depths.
The three of them would often explore the shingle beach together, looking for shoals of fish or abandoned treasures from the wealthy tourists, or sometimes mystical things that were rumored to hide in the surf. Often—perhaps always—themystical things were beautiful women who were partially or occasionally also sea life.
Libba liked that.
She thought she’d be wonderful friends with a selkie or a mermaid, and perhaps they would understand one another in a special way, as she too was often half or occasionally someone else entirely.
She was already just a little bit mystical, anyway, on account of looking very different to most of the other children on the docks. Malcolm and Libba were darker than most everyone else. Their hair was much curlier, and they did not burn so easily on hot summer days.
That was on account of their late mama being from a far-off land.
Faitherworked for the East India Company. He was pale and straight-haired and spoke with a Scottish brogue. Mama, however, had been from the West Indies. Libba thought there were some questions that begged to be asked about that, east and west, but she never found the right time to deliver them.
It always madeFaitherso terribly sad when she asked about her mother.
But that bi-directional quandary always sat right on the edge of her mind and made her wonder. It made her wonder if they had been forbidden lovers, like Romeo and Juliet. East and west, and in love, anyway.
She hoped that was true. Even if she couldn’t ask.
If itwastrue, it madeFaither’ssadness and his tendency to seem very far away, even when right in front of you, somehow magical and romantic and not horrible and mean. It meant that he was still looking for Mama in the bottoms of his cups and those full days he spent in bed, and not ignoring Libba and Malcolm at all.