The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards (31 page)

Henry handed the letter to the faerie. “Take it to the queene. I don’t know where she is, but you have to find her and give her this. Only her. No one else. From your hands to hers, nobody in between. Okay?”

“I, uh … the committee…” The poor faerie’s eyes were crowded with worry and confusion.

“Put your typewriter back in its sack and go right away, as fast as you can. Get it to her. If you don’t, the rules might just go away. All of them.”

Thorn clenched his jaw, but his face was still pale, his eyes terrified. “Right, then,” he said. “To the queene.”

Henry slapped the faerie on a soft arm and smiled, standing up carefully. He moved to the door. He had his own trek ahead.

“Thank you,” he said over his shoulder and the raggant’s nose. Then he climbed up into the morning air and the brush.

After a moment, he shoved his head back down through the doorway. The little faerie was still standing where he’d left him with the letter in his hands.

“Thorn,” he said. “You get this done, and my father will always stand beside you. Always, no matter what a committee or a king or an emperor or a rule might say. Just like he did for Frank Fat-Faerie. And so will I.”

Thorn nodded and tried to smile. He couldn’t quite get his face to work.

Henry pointed at him. “Octopi,” he said, and the faerie grinned.

“Octopi.”

The
ship rocked slowly, climbing the swelling waves, driven by a steady wind. Frank filled his lungs with the sea’s breath and leaned on the rail in front of him, overlooking the lower deck.

Monmouth stood beside him. Behind them both, James discussed charts with Meroe. The view in front of Frank Willis was as unlikely as any he could have imagined.

The deck was covered with sleeping bodies. Despite the chill, despite the lack of clothing, not one slave had set foot belowdecks in the night. Between the bodies and around the big, serpentine guns, slender aspen saplings had shot up, and the planks, where visible, had barked over with silver and seamed their grooves together. It was from the grooves, and any knots in the planks, that the saplings now grew. Every spindle in the galley’s rails sported the heart-shaped, silver-bellied leaves of the aspen tree, and the masts were barked and boughed with slender limbs. The ship creaked as it rose and fell in the water. The sails ruffled and cracked in the wind. These things were normal. But now the ship’s deck rustled in the wind like a forest grove,
and the living leaves danced in the light of the early-morning sun as it rose over a jagged coastline. Meroe’s course had taken them closer to land in the night, but that wasn’t likely to last long, not with their new captain’s plans.

Frank rubbed the thick bandages on his wrists and lifted his eyes from the aspen grove sprouting up between the bodies of freshly freed slaves, to the bow, where his wife and daughter leaned together, watching the ship plow through the sea. Hyacinth stood tall beside them, the wind pushing her dark hair forward over her shoulders, with one arm around Isa, a younger picture of herself.

He sighed. Where were his other daughters? His brothers? Where was his nephew? What, exactly, could he and the others hope to do now?

“I didn’t expect this,” Monmouth said quietly, with his eyes on the flickering leaves. “I wasn’t trying to turn the ship into a grove.”

“Can’t imagine that you were,” Frank said. “Can’t imagine anyone would.”

“Aspen send up saplings from a common root. I only livened a few timbers to push out the chains. The rest just happened.”

Frank smiled. “Don’t go sounding like an apology. By the time we put in someplace, we’ll be a floating forest, not a slave galley. And that’s an improvement to my mind.”

“I will not sail north,” Meroe said behind them. His voice was raised, drumming in his broad chest. Frank and Monmouth turned. James was holding his hands up defensively. The huge, bearded captain leaned toward him,
resting his fists on a chart and table. “I will not send men below to pull oars into the wind. And I could not if I willed. They would have my flesh in stew first, for all of your knife tricks.”

James smiled. He was wearing clothes stripped off a dead soldier, minus the red overshirt. Meroe wore the same, though the sleeves of the dirty white shirt were snug on his forearms and fell several inches short of either wrist. His broad shoulders kept the shirt neck spread wide. Blood from the wound in his side was seeping through its bandage.

“What, then?” James asked. “South to Dumarre and fresh berths on the emperor’s galleys?”

Meroe tugged fingers through his thick beard. “Open sea, out of the eyes of Dumarre, and south beyond.”

James clicked his tongue and then whistled a few bars, staring at the chart between them. He looked up into the big man’s dark eyes. “A foodless voyage. How much stock remains to you?” He pointed at the men sleeping in the young deck-forest. “Every cask tapped, every sack torn. At the least, put in and provision.”

“Even if I had gold for provender,” Meroe said, “I would watch my crew disappear into the hills. We sail south, and we pirate.”

“Your crew,” James said. He raised his eyebrows. “Your crew? Look at them. They are not sailors; they are slaves. The sun rises, and they still sleep with bulging bellies and heads swimming with liquor dreams. Will they obey if it comes to rowing or any other labor? You cannot keep them
on if they want only to be put ashore. Not unless you use the shackles and carry a whip.”

“South,” Meroe said slowly. “South and only south. We will pirate supplies or gold for supplies and put in when Dumarre is no more than a filthy dream over my shoulder and in the past. Any and all will be free to seek their own course then.”

James stood quietly, his jaw clenching.

“Am I captain or no?” Meroe asked. “What says Mordecai’s son?”

James nodded and looked to the sea.

“Not sure it much matters,” Frank said. He picked a handful of leaves off the rail and let the breeze carry them down to the deck. “Monmouth here freed you a crew but gave the ship back to the forest.”

Meroe grunted and looked at Monmouth. “We are free, and it floats. I am grateful.”

“It floats,” Frank said. “But not fast enough for your pirate dreaming.”

Meroe rose to his full height and stretched his back. Frank watched his shirt seams stretch.

“We shall see,” the big man said. “Let us wake the crew. More sail could be spread, and this forest must be cut back.”

Frank and Monmouth watched James and his new captain wade through the bodies and saplings, kicking and shouting and thumping as they went. A few men sat up, and two rose to their feet, staring at the green leaves
around them in groggy confusion. The rest groaned and complained and rolled to their backs and bellies, covering their heads with their arms to protect their dreams.

After a moment, Monmouth spoke.

“I made it all leafy and green.” He looked at Frank. “But I didn’t make the ship slower.”

Frank laughed and slapped Monmouth on the back. “No more of this tone. You embarrassed that you can turn dead oak trees into the strangest aspen grove that’s ever been seen? Don’t be.”

Monmouth laughed. “I’m not embarrassed. It’s just a little strange and unexpected.”

“And slower,” Frank said, grinning. “If I could dive under and check the keel, how many roots you think I would find draggin’ behind us in the sea? You did do the first livening business in the lowest hold.”

Monmouth shut his eyes and grimaced.

“When we’re done with this galley,” Frank said, “I think we should find some elephants, haul it up out of the Hylfing harbor, and plant it between the river and the baseball diamond.”

Two-thirds of the men were now awake and up. All of them were either complaining loudly or examining the growing ship with worried looks.

Three men, led by James, were clambering up rigging onto the central mast. A dozen more stood watching with open mouths until Meroe drove them to the other masts. Someone else was shouting about breakfast.

Under James’s direction, a topsail unfurled and snapped to.

“Monmouth!” James shouted. “Even up here?” He plucked the few leaves that had sprouted that high and dropped them. The wind carried them forward as they fell, all the way to Dotty and Hyacinth and the girls, where they stood watching the bustle.

James hooked his legs on a crossbeam and dangled upside down, smiling at his mother. She smiled but shook her head. Isa covered her mouth. And then the expression on her brother’s face changed.

Frank watched James swing upright, hop onto the crossbeam, and shinny up to the very top of the mast. There was no barrel crow’s nest. He hung with one leg and one arm hooked around the pole and held his free hand out from his temple to block the sun.

The mob below, for the most part, didn’t notice. A few had begun to climb rigging to the other masts. Others were ripping at the deck saplings and throwing them overboard. Meroe was still shouting and bullying men into wakefulness.

A long, sharp whistle from James drew Meroe’s eyes up.

“Sails!” James shouted. “A pair!”

For a moment, the deck calmed, and then a mob of shouting men rushed to the rail to strain their eyes at two shapes on the horizon.

“Empire red!” James’s words carved a silent moment into the crowd below him.

Meroe’s voice ripped through it. “All backs, belowdecks!” He moved through the crowd like a giant, slapping heads as he went. “Pull oars for open sea!”

Men ducked away from him, but no one moved toward the ladders.

“Below!” he roared again.

A tall, slender man jumped onto the leaf-covered rail. He scowled at Meroe and then looked back to the coastline.

“Enough of oars!” he shouted, and dove into the sea. More men followed quickly after, and more after them. The press at the rail grew, and bodies tumbled, dove, and somersaulted off the ship in dozens. All the while, Meroe raged, and as those who had at first held back saw how few their numbers were, they, too, ducked beneath and around the anger of their bearded captain and lunged out into air and then the sea.

It was the closest thing to a stampede that Frank had ever seen, and all of it took no more than a minute. James and Meroe stood together in the center deck, and only slender aspens stood with them. The rail had given way under the rush, and now it leaned, split in places, off the side of the ship. Hundreds of bodies flailed and splashed in the water, struggling toward land that was farther away than it had looked from the deck.

“No more than half will reach it,” Meroe said. “Less.”

“How many would have lived free if they’d stayed?” James asked.

Meroe said nothing. His hope was splashing away.

Frank turned to Monmouth and nodded toward the stairs. Dotty and Hyacinth and the girls were already descending from the bow.

Standing at the rail, with the rustling of leaves and the snapping of sails to fill the silence, the small group looked at each other. Meroe stared at the sea and the distant cliffs.

“This is trouble,” Frank said. He reached out and took Dotty’s hand. “Hot and fresh and that’s for sure.” Meroe looked back at him, and his eyes were empty. He lifted one leg to the rail.

“Hold now,” Frank said, grabbing his arm. “Jump if you like, but you have a head as well as your bulk, and you’re not built for swimming. Where will our wits get us?”

“Chained, like as not,” Meroe said. He flared his nostrils and looked from the water beneath him to the sails on the horizon. He lowered his foot from the leafy rail. “My first craft, and captained for a single night.” He turned to James. “Spread every thread of sail. We run straight at them.”

Henrietta sat up suddenly in her blankets, unsure of where she was. Beo was whining, scratching at the door. The inn. The little room was even dingier in the daylight than it had been the night before. Zeke was already gone. So was Henry. And her backpack. BACK SOON, H was carved into the door.

“No, they didn’t,” she said, and jumped to her feet.
She pulled the door open, and Beo tumbled into the hall, sniffing.

Zeke was walking up the stairs, wiping his hands on a rag.

“Where’s Henry?” Henrietta asked. “What’s going on?”

“Not much now,” Zeke said. “But a lot last night. A galley got burned and sunk, and there was fighting in the streets. Zeb says the townspeople will lay low until tonight and then go for the other galley. Everyone’s hoping Caleb will show up and get the city guard organized. I don’t know where Henry is.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know.” Zeke reached the hall and stood beside her, scratching Beo’s ears. “I saw the note, the same as you.”

“Back soon?” Henrietta sneered. “What kind of note is that? He could be doing anything.”

“Could be,” Zeke said. “Are you going to take the dog out, or should I?”

Henrietta looked down at Beo, her pillow through the night. He seemed frantic. Clearly in need.

“I’ll do it,” she said, and she walked down the stairs, whistling for the dog. Whining, with his nose in the air, Beo thumped down behind her. At the bottom, she stopped. The front door was open, and two men cautiously slipped out, carrying a long shape wrapped in cloth—man-size and bending in the middle. Outside, the men trundled it quickly into the bed of a wagon and tucked it beneath a canvas tarp. More shapes waited in a row beside the door.

Blinking, she hardly noticed that Beo had slipped past her until the black pony-dog shot out the front door and was gone.

“Beo!” Henrietta yelled. “Sorry,” she said to the men loading the wagon, and she ran out of the inn just in time to see Beo galloping across the square.

Slapping bare feet on cold cobbles, Henrietta began to run after him. Henry had said that Beo knew the way. They were supposed to follow him into the hills to the Chestnut King. He couldn’t just run off.

“Beo!” she yelled again, and then slowed, panting. The dog disappeared into an alley mouth. This was her fault. Henry probably wouldn’t say it, but he would think it. Why hadn’t she paid attention? Not that she could have stopped a dog that size anyway, if he really wanted to be somewhere else. But he’d always obeyed her, ever since her long trek with Caleb and his men.