The Chestnut King

by N. D. Wilson

  The captain stood motionless, his eyes glassy with terror and confusion. A strong third of the slaves were still in chains, craning and shouting at the others to free them. Pale Monmouth moved slowly down the walkway, bending and stroking the beams as he came. The wood livened and grew leaves. Dowels became limbs. The new life pushed out the iron hooks that anchored the chains, and more slaves leapt from their benches, armed with their own shackles.

  “Go, Roderick,” Frank said. “I can’t save you from this storming. Reach land and take a new path with your life, or make your peace and sink. But get on. It will be worse if you stay.”

  A torrent of slaves rushed by, scrambling up the ladders and up each other, eager for air and the blood of their captors.

  “You can save me.” The captain looked into Frank’s eyes. “Let me row. Chain me to an oar. Hide me. We were boys together. You can’t let them kill me.” He pulled at Frank’s shirt.

  Frank shook his head. “Swim,” he said. “Drown. Both are better than what they’ll be handing out, and better than what you’ve been giving to them.” He turned the captain and pushed him onto the walkway. Monmouth stepped aside. The hold was empty of all but the bodies of the masters and soldiers and the slaves who’d fallen to arrows.

  The captain walked slowly through the hold until he reached the hatch in the stern.

  The struggle above had quieted. Songs and cheers had replaced the clatter of steel.

  “Find him! He’s below!” The voice was big, rumbling down the ladder. “His head on a pike! His skin for our banner!”

  The captain opened the dead man’s hatch and took one look back. He was a boy again, looking at a family that could never be his, at blood that he could never share, at courage he didn’t understand. Feet pounded on the deck above. Muffled shouts reached his ears. Filling his lungs, he clenched his teeth and looked to the sea. Then, like hundreds of men before him, he tumbled out beneath the watching gulls, above the watching beasts. Roderick of Hylfing was never known again.

  Not by that name.

  The hatch banged on the breeze. The whole ceiling, covered with aspen leaves, flickered on the passing air. Armed slaves descended, glanced through the hold, checked the bodies, and then scurried back up the ladders.

  James and the others stepped out from the sacks and stood around Frank. Monmouth walked toward them, grinning.

  Penelope looked from the bodies to the rustling grove on the ceiling. “How did you do that? Is the whole ship alive?”

  Monmouth laughed and looked around for his clothes. “The beams are strong. It doesn’t take much to liven them.” He picked up his trousers and hopped in, one leg at a time. “It would have been easier if I’d been branded with oak strength, but aspen did well enough. Your cousin would have turned everything into a dandelion patch.”

  James picked up the captain’s knife and tossed it to Monmouth. Then he flipped over a soldier’s corpse and fished a long blade from his belt.

  Dotty tucked her arm into her husband’s. She kissed his hand. “Your poor wrists.”

  Hyacinth and Isa moved farther into the hold. Hyacinth touched Monmouth’s cheek. “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve grown stronger since you first slept beneath our roof.”

  “Not much stronger,” Monmouth said. “Not like your son. But cleaner.”

  “What do we do now?” Penelope asked. “Will they take us back to Hylfing?”

  Frank clicked his tongue. “Now that I doubt. I’m hopeful that they’ll let us live, what with Monmouth’s tree beams spitting out their chains, but I doubt they’ll pull oars for us against a wind.”

  “Are we safe?” Dotty asked. She needed water. Her face, so easily flushed, was now pale.

  “Yes,” Frank said. “Maybe. We can hope.”

  James moved to the ladder. “We need to get above-decks. Someone will be settling in as commander.”

  He tucked the knife in his teeth, and the others followed him. Monmouth and Frank came last.

  When they reached the upper deck and crawled into the sunset and the air, no one so much as looked at them. The big, bearded man stood in the center of the deck, his dark skin glistening with the orange light of the sun. He held a whip in one hand and a long, curving knife in the other. The crowd had cleared a circle around him, and he turned slowly, eyeballing anyone who even approached his stature.

  “Who questions me?” he shouted. “I’ve pulled an oar in this hell for three years, and now it is mine to command. Who doubts it?”

  Sails snapped and tugged the ship forward, but the men were silent. And then the crowd parted, and two men, twins, stepped into the circle. They were as pale as Monmouth, but tall and lean. Dirt-colored hair clumped around their shoulders, and scars crisscrossed their backs. Both had narrow faces and noses like axes. Both held short seamen swords.

  “We command this ship,” one of them said. “We will serve under no Southerner.” The crowd shifted, muttering, clearly eager for the fight, eager for the taste of more blood, eager to see a big man fall.

  James pushed forward.

  “What’s he doing?” Isa asked. She covered her mouth. “Oh, no. Mother?”

  Hyacinth closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her daughter. Her lips were moving.

  “Is he going to fight?” Penelope asked.

  Frank nodded. Monmouth tried to move forward, but Frank grabbed him. “Too many, and we’ll have a war.”

  James stepped into the ring, flexed his back, and walked slowly over to the side of the big man. Turning, flipping his knife and catching it by the blade’s tip, he nodded at the man beside him. Then he scanned the crowd.

  “He commands!” he yelled. “Not a pair of hatchet-faced brothers. This is the man I’ll serve. What’s your name?” he asked suddenly.

  “Meroe,” the man said.

  “Captain Meroe!” shouted James. He moved in front of his new captain, alone facing the brothers. “And James, sixth son of Mordecai, mate.” He glanced back at the bearded man. The beard nodded, and the brothers moved forward, long legs spread, hands high, and blades point down, like men trained in alleys and harbor brawls. James flipped his knife again and caught it, balanced on his fingertip. Monmouth’s laugh was passed through the crowd.

  “I wouldn’t do it,” James told the brothers. “Why survive what you have and die now? For what? Who knows, we might even put you ashore.”

  In a flash, the brothers jumped forward. One high, slashing at the head, the other low, sweeping at ankles. James ducked and hopped to the circle’s edge. His knife flicked out of his hand and buried itself in a brother’s neck.

  Meroe stepped forward, swinging his bladed fist like a man set to kill a bull. His opponent slid to the side and managed to gouge his hip.

  James grabbed his knife and rushed against the second brother. Pressed on two sides, the man jumped into the crowd, but it parted, offering no protection. With a quick slash to the wrist, James disarmed him, and the sword clattered to the deck. The man yelped and pushed all the way back to the galley rail, flung one leg over, and jumped. The crowd sent his brother’s body after him.

  Before the ripples died, James grabbed Meroe by the arm and led him across the deck and up the short stairs to the helm. There, he whistled the crowd into silence.

  “Right!” he shouted. “Which of you oar-dogs have done any sailing without the heavy bracelets?”

  Frank turned to Hyacinth, and she smiled.

  “James,” she said. “James has always been James. Part rooster, part lion. He is sweetness to my soul, but I have gladness that he wasn’t the seventh.”

  “Why?” Isa asked.

  Hyacinth squeezed her daughter. “James needed nothing else.”

  Henry had tried to expand the opening the way he’d seen his father do it, but he wasn’t surprised that he couldn’t.

  He knew that the way was still open back into Hylfing through his old Cleave cupboard, because he had shoved his arm through. But he didn’t know exactly where he was go
ing to end up. Was the cupboard still in the rubble of the house? Had Coradin taken it someplace?

  And the water was a huge distraction. He felt bad for flooding the old farmhouse, but it seemed like a better option than letting all the cupboards burn. The water still streamed out of the little diamond-shaped door high on the wall and tumbled down the stairs and found its way to the main floor and out the doors.

  How long until they created a salt marsh? How long until Henry, Kansas, was a lake? He was curious, but there was nothing he could do about it either way. The door just wouldn’t stay shut.

  They’d flipped the bed back down in order to reach the Cleave cupboard, but they were still going to have to get a toehold in another door to crawl through the funneling seam Henry had made. It was holding its shape well, but it wasn’t large.

  “I think I should go first,” Henrietta said behind him.

  Henry turned around. He was standing on the bed. Coradin’s sword was tied on his back, knotted to his belt and the drawstrings of his hoodie. Zeke and Henrietta stood in the splashing beside him. Beo was panting in the attic, lying down in obedience to Henrietta, not to Henry. “Of course you do,” Henry said. “Why wouldn’t you want to go first?”

  “I’m just saying.” She raised her voice to compete with the water. “If you go first, the little invisible thing we’re supposed to be crawling into might disappear. Then we’d be stuck.”

  Henry laughed. “Invisible things have already disappeared.”

  “Whatever,” Henrietta said. “I just think you should come behind us.”

  Henry looked at Zeke. He shrugged.

  “Okay,” Henry said. “Go for it. Climb on in.” He stepped off the bed and gestured for Henrietta to go first. “You know which one.”

  Henrietta hopped onto the sponge bed and tossed her backpack at the cupboards. It disappeared before it reached them. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this,” she said, and she stuck her toe into an ax-shaped door, pushed up, bent, and wormed her way into the wall. Her shins and feet dangled for a moment, and then she kicked forward, and they were gone.

  Henry nodded at Zeke. “Go for it.”

  But a whistle shot back through the wall, and Beo bounded into the room and onto the bed. He turned in a circle, looking for Henrietta, and then barked, confused. The whistle came again, and he faced the wall. The dog sniffed and then jumped. His head and front legs vanished, but his hind end scrabbled and clawed at the wall. Henry and Zeke both jumped onto the bed and shoved the dog up and forward, tail-beaten for their trouble.

  “Okay,” Henry said, panting. “Now you go.”

  Zeke stepped onto the bed, shoved his pack forward, and in one fluid motion, he was up and through the doorway, leaving Henry alone in the flooding house.

  Henry double-checked everything. He had his baseball, a few folded-up pages as samples, and some kind of ancient death-sword strapped to his back.

  He really wanted his baseball glove. He needed it.

  “Oh well,” he said aloud. “I could lose worse things.” Maybe someday he would knock on that cop’s door. Maybe not.

  Henry scurried up the wall and slid into the cupboard, grateful that it wasn’t shrinking on him. His toe slipped, and he dangled, halfway into someplace dark and musty that smelled like fish and wet dog, and halfway in the air of his old bedroom. With a kick and a scooch, he made it in, not so gracefully as Zeke or even Henrietta, but at least better than the dog.

  Coughing, he sat up. A door creaked and let in the last light of a sunset. He was in a small shed. Zeke was on his feet, opening the door. Beo was whining about something, and Henrietta—

  Where was Henrietta?

  “Oh, Henry,” she said in the darkness. “It’s Rags. He’s here. He was trying to find you.”

  After looking carefully, Zeke opened the door all the way and stepped outside. They were down by the harbor, in a wharf shed. Nets hung on the walls. Henrietta was sitting cross-legged, and Beo stood beside her, sniffing and whining. On her lap, there was a tangle of burned feathers.

  Henry slid forward. The raggant was still, his rough skin burned in places, his wings patchy.

  “Oh, Rags,” Henry said. He took the drooping animal carefully from Henrietta and settled it onto his lap. Henry hunched over and pressed his forehead against the animal’s blunt horn. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I should have made you go through the cupboard first, but you know you wouldn’t have. What happened? I wondered where you were.”

  Henrietta cleared her throat. “I think he’s dead, Henry.”

  Zeke leaned back in.

  “No,” Henry said. “No. He can’t be. I would have known. I would have felt something.”

  “You really think so?” Henrietta asked. “With all that’s been going on?”

  Henry stood up, carrying his animal, if it really was his. He was sure that the raggant thought of himself as the owner.

  “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s get to this inn. Go, Henrietta. You know where it is.”

  The three of them walked through the streets of Hylfing, wet and unrecognized, with Henrietta leading. Beo paced beside Henrietta, somehow aware that his city wasn’t as cheerful as when he had left it. Zeke carried the little cupboard crammed into his backpack. The sun was just hidden behind the sea, and most of the townspeople were inside, muttering their anger and sorrow over evening meals. The cobbles hid in shadows, and a cool breeze clipped in from the sea with the tang of winter storms to come, ruffling the feathers in Henry’s arms. Two galleys still squatted in the harbor, and that meant soldiers might be in the streets. Worse, how many fingerlings had been accounted for? One had died in Hylfing and one in Endor. Six more had been in Endor, including Coradin. That left two. Where were they?

  Henry began staring at shadows as they passed and glared angrily at every alley, trying to squelch his nerves. If they could feel him, why couldn’t he feel them? Maybe he could? He’d have to try. It would definitely be useful when walking through cities at twilight.

  “Can we go faster?” Henry asked.

  Henrietta looked back at him, slapping Beo’s neck. “Are you that hungry?”

  “I wouldn’t mind being inside already,” Zeke said. “With lots of light. I’ve had enough dark for a while.”

  “We’re almost in the square,” Henrietta said. “Hold on.”

  They wound their way down a gradual hill, passed three cross streets, and stepped into the square. It was well lit on the other end, in front of the hall. Six fires burned in wire cages around the building, and soldiers were posted beside each of them.

  “This way,” Henrietta said, and sticking close to the edge, she led them across the corner of the square to an old building that had forgotten how to stand straight. Black timbers, angled with age, held up the low-slung inn. The front door was closed. Lanterns on either side of it hung dead and empty.

  Henrietta grabbed the center knob and pulled. It clanked in place. The door was locked.

  “Hey!” she yelled, and knocked on it.

  “Closed!” The muffled voice filtered through the door.

  Henry stepped forward. “No, you’re not!” he shouted, and he kicked the door’s base three times.

  After a moment, a heavy bolt slid, and the door opened a crack, revealing a tiny slice of golden light.

  “Password?” a man whispered.

  “We were told to meet someone here,” Henrietta said.

  “Wrong,” said the man. “Password?”

  “Let us in or we’ll burn it down,” Henry said. “Does that work? Mordecai, my father, told us to wait for him here.”

  “Is that Henry? But you blazed in the house. You’re ash.” The door opened and emptied the inn’s light into the dusk. The big cook hooked them all easily and dragged them in. Beo was forced to his belly on the mat. The door slammed, and the bolt slid.

  Henry looked around the room. It was full of faces: hard sailor faces, leathered by the sea; shepherds and guardsmen wi
th sharpened eyes; even shopkeepers, soft in their middles. He had never been in a room so full of anger, so full of … humans. Women were sprinkled throughout the room, and others moved quickly with trays bending beneath drinks, but most of the eyes on him were male. They were glad to see him. Faces smiled, but not in any way that calmed the fury beneath the surface, and in some cases, the fury on the surface. Forehead veins twitched. Knees bounced. The place was sweltering with breathing, and the windows had all been covered with blankets.

  Henry began to notice weapons.

  The cook yelled, and the wall-to-wall whispering died.

  “This here’s Henry York Maccabee and his dead raggant—you’ll be knowin’ who sired him—and Henrietta Willis, daughter to the mayor, both thought to be burnt to soot.” He glanced back at Zeke. “And their friend,” he added. “And Beo, their uncle’s dog.” He turned to Henry. “I’m Zebudee. Call me Zeb. Knew your father since we were weaned. This is my inn.”

  “I’m really, really hungry,” said Henry. “Is the kitchen open? And I need someone to look at my raggant.”

  “Who will make a trencher space?” the cook yelled. “Give a seat to Mordecai’s blood.”

  Men shoved their way clear of a table, leaving space enough for Henry, Henrietta, and half of Zeke on a bench. The three of them levered themselves in and sat quietly in a silent rainstorm of stares. Henry stroked the raggant on his lap.

  Three bowls of thick stew were dropped in front of them, along with spoons. A hunk of meat, bone in, was thrown to Beo.

  Henry ignored his bowl, and the stares became questions. The rain became a flood.

  “Where’s your father?”

  “You burn up?”

  “Where you been hiding?”

  “Where’s you father?”