The Sign of the Cat (23 page)

I'm not like my father!
Duncan wanted to shout as she turned her back and walked away. But he didn't want to make things worse. He put his head under the cool, delicious water, taking it in like a sponge. Then he took off his cap, washed the salt from his hair, and rinsed the blood from his knees where he had fallen.

Fia jumped off Brig's back, entranced by the crystal drops. She batted the falling water with her paw, turned her head sideways, and stuck out her small pink tongue.

“There's soap,” Brig offered. He flicked his tail toward a small pot on a ledge. “Mattie makes it from wood ash and duck fat.”

Duncan glared at him. “Oh, so now you're being nice again. Are you sure you don't want to
eat
me?”

Brig looked at him reproachfully. “I have my orders, sir.”

Fia lifted her head and sniffed the air. “Mouse!” She stalked off toward a stand of waving ferns and peered between the fronds.

“Go ahead and catch it,” Duncan said. “No one's going to eat
you
if you leave the path.” He was hungry enough to eat a mouse himself—his stomach was cramping again. He shook the water out of his hair and headed up to the cave.

Mattie turned out to be a very old, half-blind servant, with her lap full of knitted lace and a spindle full of tiger's-hair thread. She sat on a broad stone terrace at the mouth of the cave. Beside her was a hollowed stone laid over a fire; a savory smell of duck stew made Duncan swallow hard.

The princess came out of the cave, holding a wooden bowl and something that looked like flat bread. “This is the stranger,” she said to Mattie.

“Then you must welcome him,” said the old woman. “Do it properly, now, Your Highness. As I taught you.”

The princess flushed. She put down the bowl and bread on a wooden slab near the fire and stood with her shoulders back. “I am the Princess Lydia. This is my trusted companion, Mattie, and my faithful tiger and guard, Brigadier. I bid you welcome to Traitor Island.” She extended her hand with a graceful gesture.

Something moved within Duncan like a knife turning. Traitor Island. And the traitor had been his own father.…

But he must make the correct response. He knew what he should do; he had practiced it with his mother. He bent his knee and kissed the back of Princess Lydia's hand. “Your Royal Highness.”

She snatched her hand back as if she had been burned.

“Well done, except for the last part,” Mattie murmured. “Come closer, lad. Let me see your face. What is your name, and how did you come here?”

The old woman put her soft, wrinkled hands on Duncan's cheeks and pulled his head down. She peered closely at him with filmy eyes.

“My name is Duncan McK—” Duncan choked and didn't finish.

Mattie's gaze seemed to grow suddenly keener. She searched his face; she touched his hair; she straightened his collar. “These stitches are coming out,” she said, almost to herself, and pulled at a thread. “I'll sew it up for you again—”

She stopped with a gasp. “Your Highness!” she breathed, turning the collar to show the initials that were monogrammed there. “Look at his face, his hair—does he remind you of anyone?”

The princess stood up, came closer, touched his collar. Her expression changed. “What is your name?” she whispered. “Your
whole
name?”

Duncan hesitated.

“Tell me,” Princess Lydia said, low and fierce.

Duncan winced; a royal command could not be ignored. “Duncan Charles McKinnon.” He hung his head. He had never said the name out loud before; he wished he didn't have to do it now.

“Oh!” cried the princess. In the next moment, she was hugging him, hard, and then Mattie kissed his cheek, laughing and crying at the same time.

“Er…,” said Duncan.

Princess Lydia touched the cap in his hand. “I thought you were the
earl's
man. You have his badge on your cap.”

Duncan had forgotten about the badge. “But wouldn't you be
happy
to see an earl's man? I mean, everybody said he was the one who tried to rescue you from … from my father, the traitor.…” His words faltered.

“No! No! That's not the way it happened!” cried the princess, stamping her foot. “The
earl
was the one who left us here—he drugged your father so he couldn't fight back, he tied him up and wounded him and left him for dead—”

Old Mattie looked at Duncan with her cloudy eyes, now brighter with moisture, and gripped his arms with her two gnarled hands. “The Earl of Merrick is an evil, treacherous villain,” she said, and gave Duncan a little shake. “Your father was a
hero
.”

“It's true,” rumbled Brig. “And tigers never lie.”

 

CHAPTER 18

Traitor Island

M
ATTIE DISHED UP BOWL AFTER BOWL
of duck stew, until Duncan could hold no more. Then she made him a bed of dried ferns, covered it with a sack, and sent him to rest from his ordeal in the sea.

“There, now,” she said. “You're feeling better, aren't you?”

Duncan thanked her with all his heart. It wasn't just the food he was grateful for. It was the kind words and the way her face wrinkled into a smile, and the small, cloudy eyes that peered at him without a hint of suspicion. She wasn't his mother, but she was motherly, and a lonely, cold corner of his heart grew a little warmer.

Princess Lydia's fear was all gone. She sat beside him and told how his father had helped them survive, and when she had seen him for the last time.

“So my father really is dead,” said Duncan.

Princess Lydia nodded soberly. “We watched him go down in the sea. Three years ago, it was.”

Duncan curled up on his rustling sack, still warm from the day's sun, and shut his eyes. Three years ago, he would have been eight, almost nine. Three years ago, he had still had a father.

“He never really healed from his wound,” the princess said. “At first, he was busy helping us survive. Later on, he worked hard building a boat that could take us away. But he kept falling ill with fever, and each time he recovered, he was a little weaker.” The princess drew a long breath. “We tried to tell him to rest more, but he didn't listen. He said he had to get us off the island and back to the king, or die trying.”

Duncan cleared his throat. “But what
happened
?”

“He died trying,” said the princess simply. “He said it was our best chance if he took the boat and went for help. He made us stay here, because it was safer. And it was,” she finished sadly. “He was trying to catch the Arvidian Current—he said it would take him all the way to Capital City, if he didn't run into another island first—but a black squall came up from the Rift while I was watching through the telescope and hid the boat completely.”

Duncan remembered the sudden violence of a black squall. He closed his eyes.

“The boat must have flipped,” Princess Lydia went on. “When the squall passed, all we could see was the bottom of the boat, and the duke clinging to it. But he was so weak. He struggled three times to get on top of it, and every time, he slipped off. Finally he couldn't even struggle. He turned his face to the island—he knew we would be watching—and he lifted his hand.” The princess paused. “Then he was gone.”

There was a weight on Duncan's chest that felt like the grief of the world.

The princess touched his shoulder. “I'm so sorry. If it weren't for me, he wouldn't have left the island. But he thought he had to save the heir to the throne. Brig went down through the sea cave to try to swim to him, but couldn't get there in time.”

“Not your fault.” Duncan's voice was unsteady. “He probably would have done the same for me.”

“That's true.” Princess Lydia sniffled twice. “He talked about you and your mother all the time, and he kept track of how old you would be—that is, if the earl hadn't killed you. He worried about that. See, he'd thought the earl was his friend.…”

Duncan turned on his bed of dried ferns to the cave wall, so no one could see his face. He felt a sudden bond with the father he didn't remember. Duncan, too, had trusted the earl. Duncan, too, had been betrayed and left to die.

Lydia's voice went on. “And your father had a trusted servant, Tammas, still on the ship. The duke hoped that Tammas might guess at the earl's treachery and warn your mother. But there were times the duke feared the earl had already found and killed you and your mother. Those were bad times,” the princess added quietly.

There was a long silence. Then came a shuffling sound, like feet moving slowly over a stone floor. “Is he asleep?” Mattie whispered.

“Almost,” the princess whispered back.

Duncan was not asleep. He was thinking that he had been given back something precious, something he had thought was lost forever. His father's honor, returned to him now, seemed like a solid thing, something he could hold in his two hands. And he held not only his father's honor but the honor of the McKinnons, going far back into the past.

There would be an estate, lands, a castle. There would be portraits on the walls of his ancestors, grandparents and great-grandparents and beyond.…

Someday he hoped to see them all. But first he had to clear his father's name and see the Earl of Merrick get the punishment he deserved. Most important of all, he had to rescue the heir to the kingdom and bring her back to her father's court.

But to do all that, of course, he needed a boat.

Duncan slept the rest of the afternoon. It was inexpressible luxury to lie flat, and dry, and not be bobbing endlessly in briny water. He woke to the entrancing smell of dinner: roasted seagull eggs, pennycress salad, and flatbread baking on the stone hearth. He lay quietly, watching the fire from beneath half-closed eyelids, feeling lazy and still half asleep.

Mattie said something Duncan didn't quite catch as her knitting needles clicked. Fia, who had found her way to the cave, played with Mattie's ball of yarn, pouncing happily. But the princess looked glum.

“Please, Mattie, not tonight!” Lydia glanced at Duncan, who lay without moving, and lowered her voice. “Can't it wait? I don't want to do—that—in front of a stranger.”

“Nonsense.” Mattie dusted her hands on her skirts and rose creakily. “It's been a long time since we've had princess practice. If you ever get back to the palace, my dear, it will be full of strangers, and you will have to know how to act.”

Princess Lydia pulled at her long dark braid and chewed nervously on the tip. “Please don't make me walk down the path with a basket on my head. It's embarrassing.”

“Someday you'll need to know how to descend a stair with grace,” Mattie said, flipping the flatbread over. “You don't want to enter your father's court looking like some out-islander who doesn't know anything, do you?”

“I don't care,” muttered the princess. “And don't make me do court etiquette again, either. I know it
all
.”

“Then we shall do the dances,” Mattie said firmly. “They're your weak point. Duncan, kindly get up at once. I can tell you're awake by your breathing, and there's no sense lying abed when there's dancing to be done.”

Princess Lydia gave a low moan and hid her face behind her hands.

“Your Royal Highness!” Mattie's voice snapped like a flag in a stiff breeze. “Is this how we act when a gentleman wishes to dance?”

“He doesn't wish to dance—do you, Duncan?” Lydia raised a hopeful face.

“Of course he does,” said Mattie. “Now then, my lady, you have here a partner”—she nodded at Duncan—“and music”—she whistled a few notes—“and I shall clap the beat. If you ever do arrive at court, you must not shame yourself on the dance floor.”

The princess pushed out her lower lip. “Duncan can't be my partner. He doesn't know how to dance.”

Duncan suppressed a chuckle. She wouldn't get out of it that way. “I do know how to dance, actually.”

Lydia glared at him. “Oh, sure, maybe you can do the Island Jig and Jump, but did you learn the
court
dances? The gavotte, the quadrille, the minuet?”

Duncan grinned. His mother had taught him every dance she knew. “And the waltz, the pavane, the contra danse, the lancers—”

“Fine,” said Lydia through her teeth. “Enough.”

“—the gallopade, the reel, the cross-step, the promenade—”

Mattie said, “You do need some work on your promenade, my lady.”

“—and the Arvidian shuffle,” Duncan finished. He felt a sudden surge of affection for his mother, who had borne with his complaining and made him learn anyway. She had been giving him duke practice all along, and he never knew. “Come on,” he said, and held out his hand. “It's actually kind of fun, with a partner.”