The Sign of the Cat (17 page)

Duncan was sweating. He cleated the rope with two quick turns, gathered up the papers any which way, and crammed them back into the folder. If he moved fast enough, he could be peeling potatoes by the time Cook walked in.

He shoved the folder back on the shelf, but a sheet came loose and fluttered to the deck. Duncan reached for it in one swift motion—and stopped.

He straightened slowly, staring at the paper in his hand.

It was a recipe for Kitten Pie.

 

CHAPTER 13

The Unknown Enemy

K
ITTEN
P
IE.
C
AT
T
AIL
S
TEW.
D
EEP
F
RIED
P
AWS.
Cataroni and Cheese. In one horrified moment, Duncan's eyes swept the contents of the folder. He felt ill.

“What does it say?” asked Fia, on his shoulder. “Kittens can't read all those big words.”

Duncan had just come to the recipe for Kitty Jelly 'n' Jam. He swallowed hard and closed the folder. “It's just some old recipes. Pretty boring.”

Fia blinked at him. “Then why do you smell afraid all of a sudden?”

Duncan shoved the folder back on the shelf with more force than was needed. “I'm afraid Cook will come back and find me in the storeroom. Let's get out of here.”

“But why did they keep kittens down in that room?” Fia's voice was unrelenting in his ear. “And what was that big machine
for
?”

Duncan winced. Fia was just a kitten; she shouldn't have to know these things. He locked the storeroom door behind him and breathed more easily; he had not been caught. He picked up his potato knife and started peeling once more.

Cook must have discovered kitnip when he was hunting for kitchen herbs. As they stopped at different islands, he would go out in the night and use it to entice kittens away from their mothers. Old Tom had picked up the news and tried to pass it on at the cat council, but he had been laughed at. Duncan suspected that the cats on the island of Dulle weren't laughing now.

Fia tapped him on the side of her neck with an insistent paw. “You're not answering my questions.”

Duncan made up an answer that wouldn't give Fia nightmares. “Someone is probably stealing kittens to sell them to pet shops on other islands. They keep the kittens in that room, and naturally the kittens are afraid in the dark without their mothers.”

Fia's eyes grew wide, and her paw trembled. “That's
bad
! What are you going to do about it?” she demanded.

It was a question Duncan asked himself. But he was only the ship's boy. Who would believe him, if he told what he suspected? He had no proof. People would think that the kitten recipes were someone's idea of a joke. They would say that the squisher-grinder was for ordinary food preparation.

“I can't stop it all by myself,” Duncan said to Fia. “But maybe I can prove who the kitten stealers are.” He dropped a potato into the water and reached for another. “Cook is one of them, for sure. And Bertram.”

“And the earl,” said Fia.

Duncan glanced at her, startled. The earl might be a little weird about his bandage, and he might be blind to Bertram's true character, but Duncan doubted he would stoop to harming kittens. “I don't think the earl knows what's happening. He was angry when the crate burst on the deck and he saw what was in it. He even sent Bertram to report it to the island police. Bertram might not have actually reported it,” Duncan added hastily, “but it wasn't the earl's fault that somebody stole kittens and tried to load them onto his ship.”

Fia jumped to the bench and paced back and forth. “Maybe it
was
his fault. He doesn't smell right to me.”

Duncan laughed. Fia's nose wasn't always accurate. “You said you smelled
me
down in that room below the galley, and I'd never seen it in my life.”

Fia's ears went back. Her blue eye was brighter than her green in the dim light of the galley, but both looked accusing. “I did smell you,” she insisted.

“Fine, then,” Duncan said. “If you're so sure the earl's bad, why don't you spy on him? Bring me back some proof. After all, you're the one who told me there are hidden passages all over the ship, for a kitten your size. There's one that goes right to the earl's closet, remember?”

“I've been scared of the earl,” said Fia in a small voice.

“Why? Has he ever done anything to you?”

Fia shook her head.

Duncan shrugged. “Until you have proof, you're just a kitten with—” He stopped and pressed his lips together. He didn't want to actually hurt Fia's feelings.

“With what?” Fia leaped from the bench to the deck and looked up at him with whiskers bristling. “What were you going to say?”

“Nothing.”

“Yes, you were,” said Fia bitterly. “You were going to say I'm just a kitten with eyes that
don't match
. Weren't you?”

“No! I was going to say that you're a kitten with—”

Fia turned her back and disappeared down a rathole.

“An overactive nose,” Duncan said to the empty room.

*   *   *

Duncan stood at the railing amidships, taking deep breaths of clean salt air. The storm had blown itself out, and the misting rain had almost stopped. To his relief, he saw that the jolly boat was still on the beach, beside the earl's gig.

He took off his cap to scratch his head. Maybe now would be a good time to wash his hair. He would have to do it in salt water, with a bucket drawn from the pump, unless Cook would let him have fresh. Somehow he doubted it.

Mr. Corbie, the sailing master, was standing with his legs apart and his hands behind his back. Now and then, he would put a telescope to his eye and scan the shore. His right foot tapped, as if impatient to be pacing.

Duncan moved a little closer. He was impatient, too—eager to get home to his mother, anxious to get Fia off this ship that was so dangerous to cats. “Sir,” he said, “when are we going back to Capital City?”

The master grunted. “I wish I knew, lad. The islands are getting fewer and farther between, and there's nothing at all where we're headed.”

Duncan scratched his head again. The master glanced at him sharply. “Do you have nits in your hair, lad? Come here.”

Duncan ducked his head for Mr. Corbie's inspection. The sailing master gave a surprised grunt. “Whyever did you dye your hair?”

“I didn't!”

“Go look in a mirror, then. It's coming in a fine strong red at the roots.” Mr. Corbie winked at him. “There's nothing to be ashamed of, having hair the color of fire. Time you're getting a bit older, you'll see that the girls like it that way.”

Duncan put on his cap silently.

The sailing master snapped open his telescope and handed it to Duncan. “Here, I need to check some charts. Call me the moment the earl's gig leaves the beach.”

Fishing boats on the sand, screeching gulls, a cat perched on a piling, all sprang closer as Duncan put the spyglass obediently to his eye. He scarcely saw them. He was seeing, instead, the shaving mirror hanging in the small closet sailors used as a lavatory. His hair had always looked dark in that mirror, darker than usual and not at all red—but the light was so dim there, he'd never given it a second thought.

And now he remembered the small empty jar of black shoe polish in the mysterious room, two decks below the galley, and Fia's sensitive nose that had picked up his old scent.

There was a luff tackle there, and a sling with a hook. It would have been easy for someone to have lowered Duncan down, dyed his hair with shoe polish in the deep tub, and brought him back up.

Duncan gripped the brass telescope, his hand clenching. He could imagine easily enough how it had gone. Bertram and the cook would have carried his unconscious body out of the cabin, joking to anyone passing by that the boy had taken too much rum and that they were going to wake him up with hot coffee. Once in the galley, they would have shut the door and done their business. Then they would have dumped him in a hammock to sleep it off.

Bertram had known who he was, all right; he'd had plenty of opportunity to study Duncan's face at the monastery school, in the headmaster's office; but Bertram had made sure that no one on the ship would recognize him. And after that, there had been a surprising number of accidents that could have easily killed Duncan—or anyone else who got in the way.

Duncan swept the telescope slowly across the beach, watching carefully now. Bertram had gone to the island along with the others, so Duncan was safe enough for the moment. Shadows played across the gray cliffs behind the beach, so like the cliffs at home. Perhaps Grizel was on the stone throne now, looking out to sea, watching for him to return. Maybe his mother was there, too.

Bertram was the unknown enemy that his mother had feared so. The earl might have been too noble to threaten a woman and a small boy, but Bertram—Duncan could easily believe that Bertram would. The earl's right-hand man would have been there on the day Duke Charles kidnapped the princess and wounded the earl.… Bertram might have tried to fight the duke himself, and lost, and watched in pain and helpless rage as the earl, his master, had been given a wound that almost killed him. Bertram might have vowed, that day, to take his revenge on any family the duke had left.

And who knows? Maybe he had thought to gain the duke's title for his master. Or maybe he had thought that he could get some kind of money or treasure from the duke's widow. Perhaps that was why Bertram had stolen the sea chest.…

There was a bustle near the ship's boats; Bertram was boarding the jolly boat, followed closely by Cook. The cook tossed one burlap bag to a waiting sailor, but the other one he held carefully closed at the top.

Duncan held the spyglass with hands that shook slightly. Was the bag
moving
?

The glass fogged up. He rubbed the lens with his shirt and put the telescope back to his eye. The oarsmen were rowing with steady strokes. Cook, though, seemed to be struggling with the bag in his lap. He jumped suddenly, as if he had been poked—or clawed—and a moment later, his roar of pain came faintly across the water.

Duncan held his breath. Bertram had taken the bag—he was swinging it around—

He smacked the bag against the thwart.

Duncan's hands gripped the spyglass so tightly that the curved brass edge cut into his palm. He watched, unbelieving, as Bertram sat down on the bag, hard. The jolly boat rocked with the sudden shift of weight and the roar of sailors' laughter.

Something thick and hot rose in Duncan's throat. He struggled to swallow down the sickness. Had there been
kittens
in that bag?

“Hey, boy!” A sailor loomed at Duncan's side. “I thought you were supposed to be watching for the earl. Isn't that his boat shoving off?”

Duncan got a grip on himself and looked through the glass. Yes, there was the gig—he could see the earl's bandaged head as he took his place in the bow. On either side, three men gripped the gunwales and ran the boat out through the surf. As he watched, they leaped aboard and fell to their oars.

“Thanks,” he managed to say, and then ran to knock on the master's door. But after he passed on his news, he found a dark corner of the tween deck and leaned there, trembling. He hoped that Grizel and Fia would never find out that he had watched a whole bag of kittens be squished and had done nothing to stop it.

“ALL HANDS TO WEIGH ANCHOR
!
”
The cry echoed down the hatch. The thunder of feet was followed by a creak and shudder as the capstan was turned and the anchor dragged free from the sea bed.

Duncan climbed the rigging with the others and let out the sails. But he did not go down with them when the supper bell rang. He didn't think he could stomach anything that Cook had made, ever again.

It was breezy in the maintop, and a little chilly, but the sailbags around the edge gave some protection from the wind. Duncan sat huddled with his knees to his chin and gazed at the small island as it sank into the horizon. The storm front was moving off, and the low shelf of cloud had lifted just enough to reveal a bleared sunset, dull orange and sullen purple, like a bruise on the sky.

The maintop was a good place to be alone. When the ship was sailing steadily and no one needed to take sails in or shake them out, the high platform was a spot where Duncan could sit and think. But his thoughts were not happy ones.

He had already tried to warn the earl about Bertram, only the earl wouldn't believe anything bad about the man unless he was presented with proof. The poor kittens were probably all eaten by now. The only real proof Duncan had was the sea chest, and his dyed hair with the thin edge of red at the scalp.

But if the earl looked in the sea chest and at Duncan's hair, he would realize that Duncan was the son of his greatest enemy.