The Sign of the Cat (9 page)

“Get out of the way, boy!” a dockworker shouted. Duncan backed into a piling, one of the massive wooden posts wrapped in thick rope that anchored the dock to the seafloor. He wedged his foot in a coil of rope and hoisted himself up until he could see.

Sailors were working, swaggering, shouting. Stevedores swore horrible oaths as they rolled some barrels off the ship and lowered others over the side. A crane swung heavy crates out of the hold and onto the dock, and its machinery made a clanking that drowned out almost everything else. Over all was the constant slap and suck of water against the pier, the creaking of the ship, and the incessant cry of seagulls as they swooped and dove. Duncan ducked as one came too close and snatched at his dangling chin strap.

He held on to his cap, lowering his head, and saw a cat that he recognized. Old Tom was on the boardwalk, pacing back and forth.

Duncan climbed down. “Have you seen Fia anywhere?” he meowed. “The little white kitten with one blue eye and one green?”

The tufts over Tom's eyes rose in alarm. “Another missing kitten?”

“You, boy!” A harsh, grating voice came from the ship.

Duncan whipped up his head and saw two men at the ship's railing. One was big-shouldered, like a bull, and completely bald. The other was tall but thinner, with a long, sharp nose and a bandage showing beneath his wide-brimmed hat. He looked strangely familiar.

The big bald man called again. “Does this island have a daily paper, boy?”

“Yes, sir!” Duncan stood up straight.

“Here's a ten-copper coin. Buy a paper, run it back in five minutes, and you can have another copper for yourself.” The man's shoulder bunched as he tossed the coin across the watery gap.

Duncan's hand shot out to catch it, and in the next moment, he was pelting toward the nearest newspaper stand, almost a block away. As he ran, he peeked at the coin with a furtive joy.

The wharf was where the jobs were. Even the old women came down to the ships to sell the lace they spent hours making with their clicking needles. They didn't sell much, their cats told Duncan, but a little bit was better than nothing.

And there weren't just ships at the wharf. There were horses and donkeys harnessed to carriages and carts. Another day, maybe Duncan could help out the drivers and earn even more coins.

He was standing in line at the newspaper stand, shifting impatiently from one foot to the other, when a sudden thought stilled him.

Could he earn enough to pay his passage to Capital City?

Someone tapped his shoulder. “Are you buying a paper or not?”

Duncan mumbled an apology and paid for the newspaper with an odd flutter in his middle. He ran back to the ship, thinking hard. Two days ago, he wouldn't have even considered leaving his mother. But a lot had happened since then.

The gangplank bounced under his feet as he trotted up with the newspaper. He came to a halt before the two men and bowed.

The bald man had a heavy forehead sloping down to a nose that looked as if it had been broken in a fight. He snapped the newspaper against his thigh, as if shaking dirt off it, and handed it to the tall man in the well-cut coat.

Duncan eyed the thin man curiously. Close up, he could see that the bandage showing under the hat was old and yellowed, with a small brown stain. The man's face was pale and thinly handsome, with brows like ravens' wings and dark eyes beneath. He gazed at Duncan with a faint frown.

“Here's your copper.” The bald man slapped the coin into Duncan's hand. “Run along now. Don't hang about. You've been paid.”

Duncan narrowed his eyes. “I thank you, sir,” he said with cold courtesy. He walked down the gangplank, his back straight as a ship's mast. The bald man with the pulpy nose thought he was just some dirty wharf brat, but the bald man was wrong.

Old Tom was waiting on the boardwalk, rumpled and upset. “I warned them kittens would go missing!” he meowed. “But would they listen to me? Nooooo.”

Duncan didn't want to get Tom started again. “I'm sure Fia will turn up soon. Are you planning to sail on this ship?”

The tufts over Tom's eyes came down toward his nose. “That,” he said, “is not a cat-friendly ship.”

“Really?” Duncan looked up again at the men standing at the railing. The big-shouldered man had turned to watch the unloading, but the tall man with the dark eyes was still looking in Duncan's direction. “How do you know they don't like cats?”

“I've never seen a cat get off that ship,” said Tom, “no matter what port I've seen it in. It's my opinion that the earl hates cats.”

“The earl?” Duncan stared at the tomcat. An earl was a very high noble indeed—higher than a baron, certainly. The only noble higher than an earl was a duke—not including the king or his family, of course. “What earl?”

“The Earl of Merrick, naturally.” Old Tom sniffed. “He sails all over, says he's looking for signs of the lost princess (when everyone but the king knows she must be dead), but he won't ship a cat to keep the rats down. I call it unnatural.”

Duncan took in a breath. Of course! Now he knew why the tall, dark man looked familiar. That face had stared at him from Robert's history book only this morning. That man had been wounded and almost died in his battle with the treacherous duke Charles. And to this day, it was said, the earl wore a bandage over his forehead to remind him of his failure to protect the princess.

Duncan's throat was choked with glory. He held the gaze of the Earl of Merrick—the hero of the
nation
—for a breathless, frozen moment in time. With a rush of blood to his cheeks, he remembered his manners.

He tore off his cap with a sudden sweep of his arm and bowed. The morning sun blazed down and turned his hair to dark red flame. And then, like a spear leaping, Duncan whirled, jamming his cap back on as he ran. He had news to tell at school!

 

CHAPTER 7

A Noble Summons

D
UNCAN DID NOT GET IN MUCH TROUBLE
for being late. When Friar Gregory heard who Duncan had seen at the wharf, he pulled open the large map at the front of the room and launched into a history lesson. The teacher showed the path that Princess Lydia had taken on her royal tour through the Arvidian Islands, and where the ship had battled a terrible storm at the edge of the Great Rift.

Duncan had heard of the Great Rift—a strange, uncharted band of sea with fogs and storms, waterspouts that could destroy a ship, and whirlpools that would suck boats down, never to be seen again. No one had ever crossed it until that great storm of seven years ago. The royal ship had anchored near an unknown island. It was little more than a big rock with high cliffs on every side, the remotest island ever discovered in Arvidia. Suddenly the lookout had pointed to four people in the water, two of them very shaggy, clinging to the remains of a wrecked boat.

Two of them were miners, men who said they came from the land of Fahr, on the other side of the Rift. The other two were not people at all, but their tigers—animals that had scarcely been heard of in Arvidia.

Duncan knew that one of the tigers had been sent to the king, as a royal gift. If Duncan ever got to Capital City, he would visit it at the zoo.…

Friar Gregory walked up and down the aisles. “Now, the ship stayed at anchor for some time. But what happened the day the princess was kidnapped? Can anyone begin?”

Duncan's hand shot up. He had read about it just this morning. “The Bad Duke—”

“Call him by his proper title, please,” said Friar Gregory. “This is a lesson, not a character assassination.”

Duncan shoved his hands in his pockets. Duke Charles
was
a bad duke—the worst that had ever been, and no matter how fair Friar Gregory tried to be, nothing would change that. “Yes, sir. That duke told the princess she should set her foot on the farthest island and give it a name. But there was only one narrow bit, on the opposite side, that she could stand on—all the rest was cliffs that no one could climb. So they decided to go to that spot with a small group from the ship.”

Friar Gregory nodded. “Thank you, Duncan. Gavin, what happened next?”

“When they got to the island—” the boy began, but he was interrupted.

“How did they get to the island?” the friar asked. “Was there a harbor deep enough for the royal ship to dock?”

Gavin looked puzzled for a moment. “There couldn't have been a wharf, sir. The island was uninhabited.”

“Correct.” Friar Gregory stroked his chin. “So, who knows how they got from the ship to the beach? Alison, your hand was up first.”

“They took two ship's boats, sir.”

“And what are ship's boats? I thought the ship
was
a boat.”

“If it's big enough, we don't call it a boat—we call it a ship,” Alison answered gravely. “And a ship always carries at least one boat, and sometimes more small boats, like rowboats or little sailboats. The sailors lower them into the water, and they go back and forth between the ship and the shore, like a sort of water taxi.”

“Excellent. Duncan, can you finish the story?”

Duncan nodded. “They sailed around the island and landed on the other side. Once they were out of sight of the ship, the duke and his men attacked the earl, kidnapped the Princess Lydia, and sailed away into the Rift. The earl's men tried to follow in the second boat, but they were too late. In the distance, they thought they saw a whirlpool take hold of the duke's boat. Afterward they found a broken bit of the boat with its name painted on.”

“A sad tale,” said Friar Gregory. “How can we be sure it is true?”

“Because there were witnesses!” cried Duncan. “The earl's men saw what happened, and the earl himself was wounded, almost to death. He wouldn't have done that to himself.”

“Witnesses can be bribed,” said the friar, “and the earl's men might be loyal to him, no matter what he'd done. Is there any other way we can know the truth of the tale?”

Duncan's ears grew warm, and his fingers did a quick double tap on his thigh. Friar Gregory almost sounded as if he were calling the earl a liar. “There
were
other witnesses, sir,” he said. “A whole shipful of them.”

The teacher inclined his head. “How could people see what happened from the ship, when the fighting was on the far side of the island?”

“May I draw a map, sir?” The book Duncan had read this morning had made it clear. He went up to the board and took a piece of chalk.

“See, here's how the island curved around the flat bit. But here, past the sandy part, the flat ledge extended out into the sea a long way, like a point, barely above water. It stuck out so far into the sea that if you walked to the very end, you could be seen from the ship.”

“Go on.” Friar Gregory clasped his hands, smiling.

“The duke and the earl were there, together with the princess. They were clearly seen, silhouetted against the setting sun. All at once, the duke pulled out his sword, struck the earl a cowardly blow, and pushed him off the ledge. Then Duke Charles threw the princess over his shoulder and ran out of sight, back to the beach and his small boat. By the time the ship managed to raise anchor and work its way around the island, the duke had sailed off into the Rift. The earl's men tried to follow in their small boat, but first they had to pull the earl out of the rocks where he had fallen. They were wounded, too.”

“Excellent,” Friar Gregory said. “Full marks. Now, for extra credit, who can tell me why the duke would do such a thing? He had lands and power already. What good would it do him to kidnap the princess?”

Duncan gazed out the window. Who cared why the duke had done it? He was just plain bad, through and through.

Suddenly there came a clatter of hooves and a snorting of horses. A gleaming black carriage stopped at the monastery gates.

The bell at the gate tinged sharply. The gatekeeper shuffled out with the key. Every student's neck craned as gray trousers emerged from the cab, then muscular shoulders and a bald head. A disappointed sigh moved across the classroom like a breeze over a field of dry stalks. “That's not the earl,” someone said as the man strode toward the monastery office.

Duncan's chair clattered to the floor. He was on his feet, staring. “It's the earl's man! The one who paid me!”

How the cheering started Duncan didn't know, but Friar Gregory was pounding on the desk to restore order when the door to the classroom opened and the headmaster's assistant poked his head in.

“Duncan McKay? You're wanted in the headmaster's office. Now.”

*   *   *

Duncan hesitated at the half-open office door. He didn't want to interrupt when the headmaster was talking.

“… the only son of a widowed mother. Yes, we're very proud of the lad—and although it hasn't yet been announced, I think I can tell you that his score on the national test couldn't possibly be better!”