The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards (25 page)

Henrietta snorted with one hand clamped over her mouth.

“Was that a video camera?” Zeke asked.

Henry nodded. Somewhere that cop had his glove. For a moment, he thought about stepping back out and asking for it, but that wasn’t really an option.

Henrietta couldn’t stifle her laughter any longer. She slumped against the door, shaking. “Maccababy,” she said. “What’s a Maccababy?”

Henry felt his smile growing. He couldn’t have stopped himself if he’d tried.

“Whatever it is,” Zeke said, “don’t hit one.”

Henry’s laughter grew quickly. “I wish we could see the tape.” He wiped his eyes. “Your mom might see us on the news. Do you think they’ll recognize us?”

Zeke shrugged and shook his head. “Don’t know. The camera was a little low. Maybe not.”

“Either way,” Henry said, “we’re eating in Hylfing. Does The Horned Horse have hamburgers?”

Red
-shirts marched the walkway. Cracking whips kept the slave heads down. The captain stood in front of Frank, with his hands behind his back.

“Stand up!” he demanded. “Now.”

Frank smiled. “Can’t. Tried. But can’t.”

The captain pulled keys from his belt and bent down to unlock Frank’s shackles. “What have you been doing, Francis? Trying to take your hands off?”

Frank’s arms fell loose, and he stood slowly, refusing to look at his wrists, though he heard Dots gasp behind him. He nudged Monmouth’s clothes with his toe. “He went out the hatch. The back door for the dead.”

“We are a great distance from land,” the captain said. “It is only a shadow on the horizon.”

“Must be a swimmer,” said Frank. “Why else would he leave his clothes?”

The captain looked around inside of Frank’s eyes and then scanned the hold. “Why would he leave you?” he asked. “Did he learn the lesson I did so many years ago? Was it time to shake off the horrible taint of your family? Only fools stand with you.”

“Maybe,” said Frank. “But here you are, right beside me, little Roderick from Hylfing. How close do you have to get before you’re tainted?”

The shorter man turned and stood chest to chest with Frank, flaring wool-filled nostrils. “Your family is done. Hylfing will be just another northern port, smelling of fish and poverty. You will not survive the anger of the emperor.”

“We’ve survived worse, but then you know that already.” Frank patted the captain on the cheek. His wrist was banded with blackened blood.

Roderick knocked Frank’s hand away and drew a knife from his belt. Behind him, the sound of a long chain snaking through a hook and collapsing to the deck echoed in the beams. And then another. And another. Three at once. Chains were dropping on both sides of the walkway.

Green leaves sprouted from the beams of the ceiling. Silver bark began to wrap them. The soldiers on the walkway stepped back, ducking, pushing to get out from underneath the creaking growth.

An oar slid in from its oarlock and cracked a soldier in the temple. And then, from both sides, slaves leapt from their seats, yelling, brandishing chains.

The soldiers fired crossbows into the swarm, but the bodies tumbled on. A big man, with dark skin and a bald head above his full beard, cracked bones with his blows. The soldiers were trampled like grapes, whipped with chains, and crushed with knees and feet. James stepped through the mob of skin and anger and grabbed the captain’s
wrists. He dropped his knife and tried to twist away. James cracked him head to head, and the big man stepped from behind James and looped a chain around the captain’s neck.

“No!” Frank yelled. “No! Deal with him later.”

A space cleared around the ladders. Crossbow bolts were pouring down into the hold. The slaves, still yelling, sending taunts up through the decks, stripped weapons off the killed soldiers. There was no fear. These men had forgotten to care for their lives long ago. They scrambled up the ladders like so many half-naked pirates, and Frank listened to the pounding and the shouts of victory, the shrieks of killed and killer.

James ripped the keys from the captain and jumped to his mother. Frank pulled the captain to himself, the heavy chain dangling loosely around his neck.

“Roderick,” he said. “You taste this? You smell it?” He pulled the fleece out of the captain’s nose. “You’ve been baking with death and agony for too long. Taste it now. They’ll kill you, and I’m not thinking that it will be quick. More than likely you’ll get eaten or made into a shirt and trousers. I’m giving you one chance, more than you gave me. Out the hatch. Swim. Die free in the open sea. Haggle for mercy with God, but you’ll get no more from me. Go.”

The captain stood motionless, his eyes glassy with terror and confusion. A strong third of the slaves were still in chains, craning and shouting at the others to free them. Pale Monmouth moved slowly down the walkway, bending and stroking the beams as he came. The wood livened
and grew leaves. Dowels became limbs. The new life pushed out the iron hooks that anchored the chains, and more slaves leapt from their benches, armed with their own shackles.

“Go, Roderick,” Frank said. “I can’t save you from this storming. Reach land and take a new path with your life, or make your peace and sink. But get on. It will be worse if you stay.”

A torrent of slaves rushed by, scrambling up the ladders and up each other, eager for air and the blood of their captors.

“You can save me.” The captain looked into Frank’s eyes. “Let me row. Chain me to an oar. Hide me. We were boys together. You can’t let them kill me.” He pulled at Frank’s shirt.

Frank shook his head. “Swim,” he said. “Drown. Both are better than what they’ll be handing out, and better than what you’ve been giving to them.” He turned the captain and pushed him onto the walkway. Monmouth stepped aside. The hold was empty of all but the bodies of the masters and soldiers and the slaves who’d fallen to arrows.

The captain walked slowly through the hold until he reached the hatch in the stern.

The struggle above had quieted. Songs and cheers had replaced the clatter of steel.

“Find him! He’s below!” The voice was big, rumbling down the ladder. “His head on a pike! His skin for our banner!”

The captain opened the dead man’s hatch and took one look back. He was a boy again, looking at a family that could never be his, at blood that he could never share, at courage he didn’t understand. Feet pounded on the deck above. Muffled shouts reached his ears. Filling his lungs, he clenched his teeth and looked to the sea. Then, like hundreds of men before him, he tumbled out beneath the watching gulls, above the watching beasts. Roderick of Hylfing was never known again.

Not by that name.

The hatch banged on the breeze. The whole ceiling, covered with aspen leaves, flickered on the passing air. Armed slaves descended, glanced through the hold, checked the bodies, and then scurried back up the ladders.

James and the others stepped out from the sacks and stood around Frank. Monmouth walked toward them, grinning.

Penelope looked from the bodies to the rustling grove on the ceiling. “How did you do that? Is the whole ship alive?”

Monmouth laughed and looked around for his clothes. “The beams are strong. It doesn’t take much to liven them.” He picked up his trousers and hopped in, one leg at a time. “It would have been easier if I’d been branded with oak strength, but aspen did well enough. Your cousin would have turned everything into a dandelion patch.”

James picked up the captain’s knife and tossed it to Monmouth. Then he flipped over a soldier’s corpse and fished a long blade from his belt.

Dotty tucked her arm into her husband’s. She kissed his hand. “Your poor wrists.”

Hyacinth and Isa moved farther into the hold. Hyacinth touched Monmouth’s cheek. “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve grown stronger since you first slept beneath our roof.”

“Not much stronger,” Monmouth said. “Not like your son. But cleaner.”

“What do we do now?” Penelope asked. “Will they take us back to Hylfing?”

Frank clicked his tongue. “Now
that
I doubt. I’m hopeful that they’ll let us live, what with Monmouth’s tree beams spitting out their chains, but I doubt they’ll pull oars for us against a wind.”

“Are we safe?” Dotty asked. She needed water. Her face, so easily flushed, was now pale.

“Yes,” Frank said. “Maybe. We can hope.”

James moved to the ladder. “We need to get above-decks. Someone will be settling in as commander.”

He tucked the knife in his teeth, and the others followed him. Monmouth and Frank came last.

When they reached the upper deck and crawled into the sunset and the air, no one so much as looked at them. The big, bearded man stood in the center of the deck, his dark skin glistening with the orange light of the sun. He held a whip in one hand and a long, curving knife in the other. The crowd had cleared a circle around him, and he turned slowly, eyeballing anyone who even approached his stature.

“Who questions me?” he shouted. “I’ve pulled an oar in
this hell for three years, and now it is mine to command. Who doubts it?”

Sails snapped and tugged the ship forward, but the men were silent. And then the crowd parted, and two men, twins, stepped into the circle. They were as pale as Monmouth, but tall and lean. Dirt-colored hair clumped around their shoulders, and scars crisscrossed their backs. Both had narrow faces and noses like axes. Both held short seamen swords.

“We command this ship,” one of them said. “We will serve under no Southerner.” The crowd shifted, muttering, clearly eager for the fight, eager for the taste of more blood, eager to see a big man fall.

James pushed forward.

“What’s he doing?” Isa asked. She covered her mouth. “Oh, no. Mother?”

Hyacinth closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her daughter. Her lips were moving.

“Is he going to fight?” Penelope asked.

Frank nodded. Monmouth tried to move forward, but Frank grabbed him. “Too many, and we’ll have a war.”

James stepped into the ring, flexed his back, and walked slowly over to the side of the big man. Turning, flipping his knife and catching it by the blade’s tip, he nodded at the man beside him. Then he scanned the crowd.

“He commands!” he yelled. “Not a pair of hatchet-faced brothers. This is the man I’ll serve. What’s your name?” he asked suddenly.

“Meroe,” the man said.

“Captain Meroe!” shouted James. He moved in front of his new captain, alone facing the brothers. “And James, sixth son of Mordecai, mate.” He glanced back at the bearded man. The beard nodded, and the brothers moved forward, long legs spread, hands high, and blades point down, like men trained in alleys and harbor brawls. James flipped his knife again and caught it, balanced on his fingertip. Monmouth’s laugh was passed through the crowd.

“I wouldn’t do it,” James told the brothers. “Why survive what you have and die now? For what? Who knows, we might even put you ashore.”

In a flash, the brothers jumped forward. One high, slashing at the head, the other low, sweeping at ankles. James ducked and hopped to the circle’s edge. His knife flicked out of his hand and buried itself in a brother’s neck.

Meroe stepped forward, swinging his bladed fist like a man set to kill a bull. His opponent slid to the side and managed to gouge his hip.

James grabbed his knife and rushed against the second brother. Pressed on two sides, the man jumped into the crowd, but it parted, offering no protection. With a quick slash to the wrist, James disarmed him, and the sword clattered to the deck. The man yelped and pushed all the way back to the galley rail, flung one leg over, and jumped. The crowd sent his brother’s body after him.

Before the ripples died, James grabbed Meroe by the arm and led him across the deck and up the short stairs to the helm. There, he whistled the crowd into silence.

“Right!” he shouted. “Which of you oar-dogs have done any sailing without the heavy bracelets?”

Frank turned to Hyacinth, and she smiled.

“James,” she said. “James has always been James. Part rooster, part lion. He is sweetness to my soul, but I have gladness that he wasn’t the seventh.”

“Why?” Isa asked.

Hyacinth squeezed her daughter. “James needed nothing else.”

Henry had tried to expand the opening the way he’d seen his father do it, but he wasn’t surprised that he couldn’t.

He knew that the way was still open back into Hylfing through his old Cleave cupboard, because he had shoved his arm through. But he didn’t know exactly where he was going to end up. Was the cupboard still in the rubble of the house? Had Coradin taken it someplace?

And the water was a huge distraction. He felt bad for flooding the old farmhouse, but it seemed like a better option than letting all the cupboards burn. The water still streamed out of the little diamond-shaped door high on the wall and tumbled down the stairs and found its way to the main floor and out the doors.

How long until they created a salt marsh? How long until Henry, Kansas, was a lake? He was curious, but there was nothing he could do about it either way. The door just wouldn’t stay shut.

They’d flipped the bed back down in order to reach the
Cleave cupboard, but they were still going to have to get a toehold in another door to crawl through the funneling seam Henry had made. It was holding its shape well, but it wasn’t large.

“I think I should go first,” Henrietta said behind him.

Henry turned around. He was standing on the bed. Coradin’s sword was tied on his back, knotted to his belt and the drawstrings of his hoodie. Zeke and Henrietta stood in the splashing beside him. Beo was panting in the attic, lying down in obedience to Henrietta, not to Henry. “Of course you do,” Henry said. “Why wouldn’t you want to go first?”

“I’m just saying.” She raised her voice to compete with the water. “If you go first, the little invisible thing we’re supposed to be crawling into might disappear. Then we’d be stuck.”

Henry laughed. “Invisible things have already disappeared.”

“Whatever,” Henrietta said. “I just think you should come behind us.”

Henry looked at Zeke. He shrugged.