Printer's Devil (9780316167826) (9 page)

As the sun was beginning to cast a weak glow through the mist, and long after I’d begun to wish I’d stayed in bed, I drifted
through a gap between two tarry, groaning hulls and spotted a lance-like prow with the letters “LCUTTA” emerging from behind
the nearest ship, bobbing high above my head. The boats were creaking in a deep-throated medley as though in the throes of
waking yawns. Propelling myself toward an iron ladder set in the dockside, I found my little boat wedged between the dock
and the
planks of the
Sun of Calcutta
. I’d never be able to get Lash up onto the dockside from here: I’d have to leave him in the boat until I came back. He seemed
to understand; and, praying he wouldn’t decide to take a dip in the filthy river while I was gone, I was soon letting myself
over the side onto the deserted quarterdeck of the ship.

My feet landed dead in the center of a coil of rope, laid like a sleeping snake guarding an Oriental treasure house. I looked
around. The deck was damp and slippery, and a shiny green color in places, especially at the edges. There wasn’t a person
to be seen. To my right a huge mast rose, taller than any tree, with its grubby sails tied in clumps along the beams and piles
of nets which surrounded it. To my left was the forecastle, where ladders and doorways led into the cabins and spaces in the
foremost part of the ship. Ropes sat everywhere, some secured, some trailing over the deck; and as my eyes followed them back
along the rails I suddenly noticed a sailor’s boot poking out from a corner near the mast behind me. I was about to dive back
over the side when I realized with relief it was nothing more than an empty boot, without a sailor attached.

I was terrified in case I met anyone onboard, and I winced at every creak my weight squeezed from the timbers, despite their
being lost amid the orchestra of
groans and bumps the massed boats were uttering. As I pushed open the door into the forecastle, my heart was thumping so loudly
it seemed to echo around the damp little chamber I was entering. There was a sudden hot stench of sweat and sewage from deep
within the ship, so strong it made me instantly dizzy, and I had to grab the doorframe to stop myself swaying and falling
into the dark hole below my feet. As the light fell across the boards, the tails of brown rats slithered like rapid worms
into ragged little holes in the woodwork. It was a long time before I could pluck up the courage to set foot on the ladder
which led down to the ship’s interior.

The first little door I opened revealed a small, dimly lit cabin, with the tiniest of windows covered by a canvas curtain.
Now the smell which met my nostrils was a mixture of oak and tobacco. In a dark corner, another curtain hid a narrow bunk
in which, I suddenly realized, someone might be sleeping. I listened carefully. I could hear the water beneath the ship and
a hollow banging from the timbers; but the only breathing I could detect in the little cabin was my own, bated and apprehensive.
I reached over and pulled aside the curtain to let the light in.

Immediately something began to twinkle in the opposite corner. As the room lit up I saw for the first time a large golden
lantern hanging there, on a level
with my head. It was the most beautiful object I’d ever laid eyes on. Its flame extinguished, it was revolving slowly with
the motion of the ship, firing sparkles of golden light back at me as the daylight struck its intricate surface. I couldn’t
imagine how any goldsmith could have made this: surely it must have been created, like the sun, by something or someone beyond
the scope of our knowledge. It was breathtaking, magnificent, a dense basket of fine, glinting, crisscrossed lacework, made
entirely of gold, sending its bright reflections over the furniture and walls of the little cabin. For a moment I stood spellbound,
hypnotized by its beauty. A jeweled globe; a ball of bright tears.

So this was the kind of object Coben and Jiggs had been trying to steal! If they’d escaped with anything half as precious
as this, they’d be rich men. It was also clear that, with something like this just hanging here for the taking, the place
wasn’t going to remain unguarded for long. I’d better not linger.

I glanced around me. There were a few pieces of furniture in here: a couple of ancient chairs covered in worn red leather,
and in the center of the room a map table with several charts laid out upon it. Their lines and figures meant little to me
as I lifted their corners. But there were also two drawers beneath the table, and, pulling them open, I found a pistol, a
small jeweled snuffbox, and a number of documents. With
trembling hands I picked up the sheaf of papers and began to shuffle through them. Many of them were very grand-looking, with
big elaborate seals in blood-red wax; but as far as I could see they weren’t very interesting. I was about to put them back
when a word boldly written near the bottom of one of the sheets caught my eye.

DAMYATA.

Something about it made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Here it was again. The word which wasn’t a word. Was it
somebody’s name? One of the other documents held a long list of names, and was headed “Licensed Traders under His Majesty’s
United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies.” Beside each name was a date, and a sum of money mentioned.
The writing was florid and difficult to decipher; but as far as I could make out, none of the names meant anything to me.
I wondered whether I ought to take this list with me; but something about their official appearance and their grand seals
persuaded me that, if I got caught with papers stolen from here, I might find myself in real trouble. As I slid them back
into the drawer I caught sight of an inscription in gold leaf on the lid of the snuffbox, in the same strange characters I’d
seen in the note among Coben and Jiggs’s papers. It looked like writing, except that the letters
seemed to hang down from the line instead of sitting above it.

I didn’t have time to take it in properly though, because I suddenly heard a sound from above my head. A regular
thud … thud … thud
… Someone was walking across the deck, and the footsteps were moving with some determination towards the forecastle and the
ladder I’d just come down.

Panic welled up through me. The forecastle door swung open and the footsteps began clomping down the steps towards me. My
innards felt like a column of hot lead, from my groin up to my throat. I was going to be discovered! Diving for the bunk,
I rolled behind the curtain just as the cabin door clicked open and the heavy footsteps came in.

I could hear a man breathing heavily, almost grunting. I didn’t dare to move, or breathe myself, simply hoping that whoever
it was would go away. He was
standing just a couple of feet away from my head, his boots creaking on the floor. My lungs began to crave air as I held my
breath, terrified, trapped. I was going to die.

Long seconds went by. They might have been hours. I was frozen, my eyes closed, my brain intoning “Go away! Oh, go away!”
as the heavy breathing continued on the other side of the curtain. Still he stood there, listening.

And then suddenly his boots creaked again and I almost breathed a sigh of relief as I supposed he was leaving the cabin. But
he wasn’t. In a flash the curtain of my hiding place was pulled aside and I was staring up at a giant sailor with a face like
a beam-end. I was too shocked to scream: I simply looked at him, as though if I said nothing he might close the curtain and
go away and I might wake up and find all this had been the most hideous nightmare of my vivid young life. For what seemed
like ages, nothing happened.

Then, a frenzy of movement. With a convulsion like a man in a fit, he launched his meaty arms forward and yanked me with practiced
violence out of the bunk and onto the wooden floor. Then, equally roughly, he yanked me to my feet, so that I thought he’d
bring my arms clean out of their sockets. I looked up at him. A smile spread across his flat,
weathered face and all the way down his powerful arms, tightening the grip of his hands on my fragile shoulders. He showed
me a long, ragged skyline of widely spaced yellow teeth.

“Caught in the hact,” he said, savoring every word and grinning horribly into my terrified face. “A thief about to make off
with the Sun o’ Calcutta — and I caughtim! I caughtim in the hact and strangled ’im dead before ’e could say a word! Well
done sailor! Extra rations for you, sailor!” His grip tightened still further. I had gone completely numb with terror: it
was as though the rigor of death had seized me in anticipation, before I was even killed.

“I’m not a thief,” I heard my voice saying, weakly.

“Oh no? Caught in the hact in the captain’s cabin and not a thief?” With every noun his grip came closer and closer to throttling
me and before long all I could see was the blood crawling in blotches across my eyes, and all I could hear was the gurgling
of my own breath.

But he must have changed his mind at the last moment because I was suddenly drawing gasping breaths again, realizing he’d
released his grip on me.

“Hexplain yerself,” he was saying, as the cotton wool cloud around my head seemed gradually to disperse. “What was you doin’
in ’ere?”

I coughed a couple of times, gathering myself, trying
desperately to think of an answer. As I looked into his big flat face he was still grimacing, but I thought I detected a flicker
of alarm behind his eyes, as though he’d found himself suddenly unable to cope with the act of killing me.

“I wants to see the captain,” I said, putting on my best urchin-boy voice. “I come lookin’ for ’im.”

“You come lookin’ for
somethin’
all right,” the sailor replied, grimly. “I seen you sneakin’ onboard. Up in the riggin’, I was, watchin’. Never thought to
look up, didja? Never thought you was bein’ watched from above!” He was grinning triumphantly and I suddenly panicked again,
convinced he was still going to kill me.

“I told you, it’s the captain I wants,” I said. I’d seen his name on his documents: what was it, oh what was it? “The captain,
captain … Captain Shakeshere,” I said, in sudden relief. The sailor was still looking suspicious; but I could see his hostility
abating as his brain worked to fathom how I knew the captain’s name.

“Oo sentcha?” he asked.

I had a sudden flash of inspiration. Yesterday I’d been mistaken, in my tarry clothes, for a bosun’s boy. Well, in that case,
I might have a perfect reason to be onboard. “The bosun,” I said. “I’ve a message for Captain Shakeshere from his bosun.”
Something in
the giant face told me I was onto a lifesaver. “I was told ’e might be aboard. Important message, I got.” My nerve was starting
to come back. “And the cap’n might not like it,” I continued, “if his bosun’s lad got strangled before ’e delivered his message.
And my Pa might not like it,” I said, “if I was brought back to ’im dead.” I knew enough about life at sea to be sure that
the average sailor preferred to stay on the right side of the bosun; and the consequences of harming the bosun’s lad were
clearly starting to filter through even to this dim-witted brain. I saw him swallow. “And ‘Is Majesty’s Company of Merchants
Trading to the East Indies might not like it,” I said grandly, rather enjoying myself now, “if their business was to get neglected
’cos of a strangled messenger.”

He was obviously flustered. “Well,” he said, crestfallen, “I ain’t to know that when I sees you sneakin’ onboard, am I? You
might’ve bin any old common panneyboy come to see what you could get yer ‘ands on. Anyway,” he continued, “the cap’n ain’t
’ere. ‘e’s at the three friends.”

I opened my eyes wide.
“Where?”

“At the three friends. The Three Friends Inn.” He pointed vaguely toward the dockside buildings, and before he had time to
say another word I’d ducked past him and was scrambling back down the ladder to the welcoming bark of my dog, still sitting
up in the
bobbing rowing boat as the morning sunshine glinted on the water.

We found the Three Friends without much difficulty, on a steep little lane opposite a cracked old church with a high, blackened
spire. It was a tall, narrow house with a pointed roof, embedded in the grime of the city, the glass in its windows opaque
with scratches, the stone discolored by long streaks of filth and damp. It proclaimed its function with an inn sign the shape
of a gravestone, which hung from an old iron frame as a man hangs from a gallows, swinging gently every now and then and giving
a faint creak. Nevertheless most sailors laughed when they clapped eyes on it, because of the cracked painting of three naked
women which adorned it. Not only this, they laughed because they knew it meant a chance to drink as much beer, rum, and other
intoxicants as their paltry pay would afford them.