The Sign of the Cat (15 page)

“Are there any kittens in there now?”

Fia sniffed the air delicately and shook her head. “The scent is old. But there were kittens. And they were scared.”

There was no door in the bulkhead, but the stacked chests and boxes had been lashed in place and made a good stair. Duncan found them easy to climb, even with a lantern in one hand, and when he got to the top, he lay on his stomach and put his eye to the gap.

There were no thick coils of rope stacked high. There was one hanging rope that looked as if it might come from a hatchway above, but the bit Duncan could see was not even as thick as his wrist.

He moved the lantern in an attempt to see more of the room. Now he could see the top part of a machine with a handle that looked like a giant grinder. But if the cook wanted to grind something, wouldn't he do it two decks up, in the galley?

“I can smell your scent in there,” Fia said suddenly.

Duncan rolled his eyes privately. “You're just smelling me right here, you goof.”

“I don't think so.” Fia dug her claws into the wood and poked her head through the gap. “There's an old scent of you down there. Were you ever in that room?”

“Not that I know of.” Duncan stifled a yawn. He was finding it hard to worry about a room where kittens might have been scared long ago. Besides, he was feeling good. He liked thinking of his father with a uniform and a sword and a medal from the king. And he could hardly wait to tell the earl what Bertram had done.

“Where are you going?” demanded Fia. “Let's find out what's in that room!”

“Later,” said Duncan. He climbed backward down the stacked boxes, feeling blindly with his feet, and landed on a heaped sailcloth. He tripped and almost fell on the leather folder that he had dropped.

Fia followed him, still meowing in frustration. As Duncan reached for the leather folder, a newspaper clipping fell out.

He held it to the lantern, reading eagerly at first and then with growing disappointment. It was just some old column about the Capital City Orchestra. They had played a special concert to celebrate the fourth birthday of the Princess Lydia. A lot of nobles were there.… Duncan skipped over the names. There had been a beautiful violin solo, blah blah blah.… Everyone was entranced, blah blah.…

This wasn't any help. Maybe his father had been a music lover, but that didn't explain what Duncan most wanted to know.

He opened the leather folder and saw some papers and a photograph. The photo showed a man and a woman, smiling, holding a baby between them. In the background was part of a stone building that looked familiar somehow. And the woman and the man looked almost like people he knew—or had known once.

Duncan brought the photograph closer to the lantern. With a skip of his heart, he recognized his mother. Younger, happier, with her hair loose on her shoulders and no covering scarf at all.

Then, the baby she was holding must be himself. And the tall man with the strong nose and the military hat had to be—

Hissst!
Fia leaped onto his knee. “Do you hear footsteps?”

Duncan shook his head. He kept his eyes on the photograph. It was hard to see in such dim light, and his vision was blurring.

“Someone's coming!” Fia's meow was urgent. Now heavy footsteps could be heard over the gentle creaking of the ship, and the hatch above was filled with a lantern's swinging light.

Fia tried to close the dark-lantern's slide with her paws. There was a smell of singed hair. “I think I burned a toe,” she said in a faint meow.

“Close your eyes—they shine in the dark,” Duncan whispered. He stuffed the photograph and papers into the folder, threw a corner of sailcloth over the lantern, and closed the sea chest hurriedly. He stifled a yelp as the heavy lid pinched a finger on one hand. He sucked on his sore finger and crouched behind the sea chest in the shadows.

Large feet descended the ladder. The face of the night watchman came into view, peering down into the hold. “Rats again
,
” said the man in a tone of deep disgust, and turned back.

Duncan waited a minute to be sure he was gone, then opened the folder in a small circle of dim lantern light. The papers crackled, their yellowed edges crumbling in his hand. He bent closer, squinting. There were names, dates.… He read them, but it was like trying to read through water. The meaning shimmered and would not come clear.

The air in the hold was fetid; it smelled of rat droppings and old cheese. Duncan felt strangely dizzy. He did not want to look at the papers again. He did not want to try to make sense of them. There was a dread pressing upon his shoulders; there was a truth lurking in the shadows that he did not want to see.

Fia had curled up on his thigh and gone to sleep. Duncan stroked her soft fur, feeling the tiny heartbeat beneath his fingers. There was something wonderfully comforting about a cat, however small. He picked up the papers once more and forced himself to read them carefully.

He had not understood the news clippings and other papers at first. They seemed to have nothing to do with him or his parents. For one thing, the violinist for the royal court, the famous “Sweet Bow of Arvidia,” was called Elizabeth, not Sylvia. The name on the birth certificate was not Duncan McKay, but Duncan McKinnon. McKinnon was an old and noble name, a name storied in the history of Arvidia, nothing to do with him.

Duncan brought the birth certificate closer to his eyes. The birth date was his own. The mother's maiden name was spelled out in full: Elizabeth Sylvia Lachlan. And the father's name was there, too: Charles David McKinnon, with his full title beneath.…

Duncan shut his eyes. Instinctive denial came rushing in—it couldn't be, it
couldn't
be—but it was too late to unread the papers. It was too late to stop the pieces from coming together in his mind.

A slow tide of shame washed over him, a sick, hot flood rising up into his throat and choking him with dismay. His father was not the hero Duncan had imagined. He wasn't even an ordinary, decent man with a family and a job.

His father was hated. His father was despised. His father had betrayed king and country, and to this day, his name was mocked in the streets by chanting schoolchildren.

His father was Charles, Duke of Arvidia.

 

CHAPTER 12

Squisher and Grinder

D
UNCAN LAY AWAKE IN HIS HAMMOCK.
The air smelled of unwashed bodies and foul, fetid breath. The lumpy shapes of sleeping men, swinging gently like bundles tied up in string, were beginning to show in the faint gray light coming through the hatch. It was almost dawn.

He would not go to the earl and tell him that Bertram had stolen the sea chest. Duncan didn't want to draw the earl's attention to the sea chest in any way. The papers, the uniform, the sword—all would only show the earl that Duncan was the son of the man who had tried to kill him seven years ago.

Bertram must know already. Maybe he'd suspected the truth from the moment he first saw Duncan on the wharf or running up the gangplank to hand him a newspaper. Perhaps he'd had a good idea when he talked Duncan into giving up his key. It was certain he would have had no doubts at all once he'd rummaged through the sea chest.

Had Bertram told the earl what he knew? Or was he saving the information to use against Duncan at a future time? There must be some reason Bertram wanted Duncan in his power, or he wouldn't have locked him in the earl's cabin.

Duncan wished he could talk things over with Grizel. He wished he could tell his mother that he understood, now, why she told him not to stand out or get noticed, why she insisted he wear his cap all the time. She had wanted to save him the shame of being known as his father's son. She had not wanted him to get spit on in the streets.

He swung his legs out of his hammock and tiptoed between the sleeping men to his duffel bag, hung on a bulkhead peg. There was something he had to find, and he only hoped he hadn't thrown it away.

The stout canvas bag had been handed to him on the third day he was aboard, and was filled with a pick and mallet for caulking deck seams, a sewing kit for keeping his clothes in repair, and foul-weather gear from the slop chest. But it was not for any of those items that Duncan was looking as he rummaged deep in the bag with increasing haste.

In the shadowed gloom of the tween deck, he dumped out the duffel bag and found it at last—his cap. He jammed it on his head, tucked in every stray lock of hair, and buckled the straps tightly.

Once Duncan had thought it would be wonderful to be a noble—but no more. For one thing, his father the duke's lands and estate had been forfeit to the king when his treachery was discovered, and so Duncan was as penniless as he had always been.

He didn't care. He didn't want anything of his father's—not his lands, not his money, not his uniform or his sword or his name. It was bad enough that Duncan had his father's face and distinctive dark red hair; he couldn't get rid of
them
. The minute he was old enough to grow a beard and disguise himself, he would.

He looked down with disgust at his father's shirt. He would wear it, but only until he could get another shirt that fit him.

The bell rang for breakfast. The sailors thundered up the ladder, but Duncan stayed behind and took off the shirt. Then he folded the collar to cover the monogram, stitched it down, and did the same on the other side so it wouldn't look unequal. Duncan's stitches were not as neat as a real seaman's yet, but they were good enough to keep his father's initials from showing, and that was all he cared about.

“
ALL HANDS
!” roared the master. “
ALL HANDS ON DECK
!”

Duncan stumbled up the ladder after the other sailors. As soon as his head cleared the hatch, he felt the wind like a slap. It was going to storm; the sails had to be furled. He climbed the rigging to his duty station, then glanced downward to see Bertram by the taffrail, looking up. Beside him was the earl.

Duncan frowned. Bertram was a liar, a thief, and a kidnapper—and the earl's most trusted right-hand man. It seemed a dangerous friendship.

The schooner heeled in a sudden gust. Duncan's foot slipped, his fingers lost their grip, and he doubled himself over the foresail yard, hanging on by his armpits. For a moment, he clung there, bewildered, as the wind in the rigging took on the pitch of a scream. He had a sudden image of falling into the storm-tossed waters. No one would ever find him. His mother would not even have a grave to visit.…

His mouth twisted as if he had eaten something bitter. She could always pick some random grave with the right initials and call it his. That's what she had done with his father. All these years, Duncan had been visiting the grave of a total stranger.

Duncan wrenched his mind back to the job at hand. The squall was gusting strongly, land was in sight, and the topsail had to be reefed. He forced his bleeding fingers to wrestle with the reef point until it came free. Then came the order “Haul out to leeward!” and he pulled hard with the other sailors until the foresail was furled in a second bunt.

Rain slipped down the neck of his jersey and trickled along his back. He had forgotten to put on his oilskins when he went aloft—it had not been raining then—and now, miserable and bone-chilled, he knotted his reef point securely and slid down to the deck. But it wasn't until the tacks, sheets, and halyards were coiled away that the starboard watch was finally dismissed and he could go below.

“Hey, lad, run on up to the galley and beg Cook for a pot of coffee!”

Duncan nodded wearily and turned back to the ladder. Wet, cold, tired, it didn't matter—the ship's boy was the one to run errands. He trudged forward through the rain to the galley, tucked under the forecastle. He stood under the overhanging ledge and knocked at the half door.

Hssss!

Duncan looked up, startled.

Fia's blue and green eyes stared down at him accusingly from her perch on a corner brace. “So, are we going to investig—instigavess—I mean, are we going to sniff out that room? You know, where somebody scared kittens?”

Fia's meow was barely loud enough to be heard above the noise of the rain, but it still made Duncan nervous. “Shh!” he said. “Talk to me later!”

Duncan jumped as the galley door opened and Cook's round face peered out. When he saw Duncan, his smile broadened greasily and his teeth gleamed like polished metal. “What do you want?”

“The starboard watch wants a pot of coffee,” said Duncan. “If you please.”

The cook had thick, powerful arms with black hair running down past his wrists to his knuckles. He balanced easily on the sloping deck as he poured a gallon of boiling water into an enamel pot, threw in four handfuls of ground coffee, and stirred it with a long spoon. Then he wiped his hands on his dirty apron and turned around quickly. He caught Duncan gazing at a pan full of ship's biscuit.