The Sign of the Cat

by Lynne Jonell

  Duncan repeated the two words in his head so he would be sure to get them right.

  “And the quarterdeck is just above us,” said the earl, pointing.

  Duncan moved an inch or two away from the earl, who was standing very close. Then he tipped his head back to look at the underside of the deck above. It made a nice canopy of shade on a hot day.

  The gulls screeched. One had caught a fish with its sharp beak and beat its wings strongly as it bore its prize away. Two other gulls mobbed it, attacking with outstretched claws, trying to get the fish for themselves.

  “That’s hardly fair,” said Duncan.

  “The attacking gulls,” said the earl, “think it’s unfair the first gull has the fish.”

  Duncan had never thought of it like that.

  “It’s all in your point of view, you see. Now, your mother’s point of view is different from yours. You want a good education and a future, but she wants you to stay close by her side. Who is right, I wonder? The one who is nervous and fearful, or the one who isn’t afraid to grasp opportunity when it comes knocking?”

  Duncan was silent. He knew his mother was nervous and fearful, but it felt disloyal to say so out loud. “My mother would do anything for me,” he said at last. “She gives me her share of food when we don’t have enough.”

  The earl leaned on the railing, gazing out at the far horizon. “A mother can be very noble, certainly, but if you had a father, he would advise you to strike out, to have ambition. Alas, you have not been so fortunate.”

  Duncan turned his head so sharply that a dangling chin strap hit his neck. “How do you know I don’t have a father?”

  The earl seemed momentarily disconcerted. “Bertram told me. He heard it somewhere. At your school, perhaps?” He stretched out his hands before him on the railing. They were pale, long-fingered, elegant hands, and they moved gracefully as he spoke. “I was poor and fatherless myself.”

  “You?” said Duncan. “But you’re an earl, sir!”

  “Nobility does not necessarily mean wealth. If, for example, a grandfather mismanaged things, and a father gambled away what was left and then inconveniently died, it might be difficult for a mother to scrape together the money to send her son to the Academy. A boy like that might have to scrub in the kitchen and clean up other students’ dirt to pay his fees, when they should have been working for him.”

  The gulls came screaming down once again. A streak of blood showed red on the breast of the one with the fish, and it dropped its prey into the oily water.

  The Earl of Merrick wove his thin fingers together on the railing. “You told me that your mother teaches music lessons. What kind of instrument? The violin?”

  “She teaches piano,” Duncan said quickly.

  “Ah. My mistake.” The earl lowered his voice as if confiding a secret. “I have a very special fondness for the violin. I’m a trustee for the Capital City Orchestra, you know, and I’m always looking for good musicians to recommend.”

  Duncan’s eyes widened. This could be his mother’s chance! If the earl listened to her play and said she was good, she’d have to believe it. She wouldn’t be afraid to audition anymore; then Duncan could go to the Academy after all! Of course, he had promised never to tell, but surely the Earl of Merrick was safe?

  The earl gazed keenly into Duncan’s eyes. “So she does play? I can see it in your face—she does!”

  Duncan was relieved. If the earl had already guessed, it wouldn’t be breaking a promise to tell him more. “My mother is better than anyone I’ve ever heard,” he whispered, “but she won’t play in front of people.”

  “Oh?” The earl tipped his head to one side. “Perhaps you can encourage her to be less timid. You were certainly bold, the way you smashed that crate of kittens. You might make a good ship’s boy.”

  “I would like that,” Duncan said shyly, “but my mother would never let me.”

  The earl chuckled. “A mother wants to keep her baby boy safe. But there comes a time when he must break away and become a man.” He gazed at Duncan thoughtfully. “Of course, most boys are too timid to leave their mothers until they are almost full-grown. But there are a few boys—a very few—who are brave enough to leave home much sooner.”

  Duncan looked past the gallery railing to the sea, bright in the sun’s glare. He raised a hand to shade his eyes, and his fingers brushed the leather of his cap.

  He had forgotten to remove his cap in the presence of the earl! Duncan stammered an apology, reaching up to take it off, but the earl forestalled him with a hand on his wrist.

  “Please, keep your cap on. You should buckle it, too.” The earl glanced aside at the crowded wharf. “We must indulge your mother in her little whims. It’s a very fine cap, you know, leather lined with sheep’s wool. Poor boys generally wear a canvas cap, made of sailcloth.… I wore a canvas cap myself when I was a boy,” he said, his mouth twisting into a smile.

  It was true that Duncan’s cap was a fine one. He slowly buckled it.

  “Does your mother get money from somewhere else, I wonder, to buy such a cap? From someone besides a piano student, perhaps?”

  Duncan took a step back. The earl was asking a lot of personal questions. No matter how trustworthy he was, still there was no need to tell him everything. Last night, the man who had visited his bedroom had seemed to think there was need for secrecy, too. Duncan had almost forgotten that, in the excitement of meeting the nation’s hero.

  “But perhaps I’m being too personal,” the earl said at once. “I do beg your pardon. Please come into the cabin. I see that Cook has brought us his famous cherry punch.”

  The cook was a big man, with hairy arms and thick powerful hands that made the tray he was carrying look like a toy. “Shall I pour, my lord?” He set down the pitcher and goblets, wiped his hands on his stained apron, and stretched his lips in a smile, showing teeth that were strangely gray. “Is the boy sitting here?”

  Duncan watched him, half fascinated, half repelled.

  “Yes, pour a glass for Duncan,” said the earl. “And help me with the deadlights—I want to show the boy. He’ll find them interesting.”

  The cook smiled even more broadly. “They lock up tight!”

  Deadlights were stout wooden panels, like shutters, that covered the windows. Two long bars fit over the deadlights to keep them in place, and were locked with a brass key. The cabin grew dim, but light still filtered in through two small round portholes on the sides.

  “We fit the deadlights when there’s a storm raging,” said the earl. “It keeps water from crashing in when the seas are high.” He began to pour a glass of the cherry punch for himself, then stopped with the pitcher in midair as if struck with a sudden thought. “How is your penmanship?”

  Duncan would have won a prize for penmanship at school if he hadn’t blotted the paper on purpose. “Not bad,” he said.

  The earl reached past a typewriter on his desk, took paper from a drawer, and uncapped a bottle of ink. He handed Duncan a pen with a metal nib. “Sit down and write your name in cursive. Here, at the bottom.” He looked around him. “You don’t mind if the deadlights are up, do you? Often at sea you have to write without much light, you know.”

  Duncan dipped the pen in the ink, tapped it against the bottle so it wouldn’t blot, and signed his name with a flourish. It looked perfect.

  The earl looked admiringly at what Duncan had written. “I’ll have to show this to Bertram,” he said. “He thinks his nephew would be a good ship’s boy, but I need a clever lad. Bertram’s nephew can barely print.” He folded the paper and tucked it in his pocket, smiling. “Now, I wonder…,” he said softly.

  Duncan waited a moment. “You wonder what, sir?”

  The earl lifted a shoulder. “You seem like a fine, adventurous lad, but are you bold enough to take action?”

  Duncan’s heart was beating a rapid patter. “What kind of action, sir?” He moved restlessly and bumped the table.

  The earl reac
hed out to steady Duncan’s glass of cherry punch. “I think I’m going to do a short sail, just to Capital City and back. Two days, no more. I’ve been looking for a good ship’s boy, and I might be willing to try you out. I’d pay, of course. A brass baron a day.”

  Duncan’s mouth opened slightly.

  “I plan to visit the Academy while I’m there,” the earl went on, casually picking at his fingernails. “I don’t see why you couldn’t come along. You could see the place and meet the headmaster. He’ll be impressed at your test scores, I imagine.”

  There was something swelling in Duncan’s throat that made it hard to speak. “You mean,” he said breathlessly, “I could go with you now?”

  “There’s no time to ask permission,” warned the earl. “We’re sailing with the ebb tide as soon as the loading is done.”

  Duncan could not make the decision sitting still. He stood abruptly and paced to the porthole.

  The breeze had freshened, and he could feel the tide tugging at the ship. Judging by the marks on the pilings, high tide was hours past. It was true that there was no time for him to ask permission. Even if he knew where his mother was teaching at the moment—and he didn’t—he would not be able to get there and back before the ship sailed, much less take the time to explain anything to her. There was an hour, no more, before slack water, and then the tide would turn.

  It was an incredible honor to be invited to sail with the Earl of Merrick. The other boys would give almost anything for a chance like this. And it had all happened because he had skipped class and run to the wharf!

  That daring action had brought him a silver coin, and his first ride in a carriage, and a meeting with the nation’s hero. It had given him the tour of a real ship and the offer of a job that would make Robert stare. What wonderful things might happen if Duncan took another daring action?

  It was the sort of chance that might never come again. He had to take it. He would take it. And when he returned, safe and sound, his mother would see she had been wrong to worry. He smiled out the porthole at the island he would soon be leaving.

  The wharf was crowded with an unusual number of cats. There were cats lined up along the boardwalk, cats perched on top of every piling, and more were arriving every moment. What were they all meowing about? It was impossible to understand any one of them when they were all making so much noise. He would have asked Fia if she could make any of it out, except she was still peacefully sleeping inside his shirt.

  Then he heard an anguished meow from the dock, louder and more piercing than any other cat’s. “Fia! Fia! FIIIIIIAAAAAA!”

  It had to be Mabel. The high, dreadful yowling of a mother cat who had lost her kitten went on and on, and Duncan wanted to put his hands over his ears. He knew mothers worried, but he didn’t know they felt like this.

  He leaned his forehead against the brass porthole collar and stared out, unseeing. This was how his mother would feel. For two whole days, she would believe he was dead, or kidnapped, or trapped somewhere, calling for help and needing her. She would not be able to sleep. She would not know what to do. She would never think that her son had left her on purpose, without even a note to say good-bye.…

  Duncan shut his eyes. Suddenly it didn’t seem brave, or bold, or daring to sneak away on the earl’s ship. It seemed dishonorable and mean.

  “I can’t do it, sir. I’m sorry.” Duncan got the words out somehow.

  The earl stood at once. “A pity. I thought you might have been plucky enough to take the risk, but I see I was wrong.”

  Something crumpled in Duncan’s chest. He stared up at the earl, dumbly miserable. There came a tap at the door.

  “Ah, here’s Bertram at last.”

  Duncan started to follow the earl out the door but was waved back.

  “Please,” said the earl, “sit down and drink that punch before you go. Cook made it especially for you—he’ll be insulted if you don’t have at least one glass.”

  Bertram winked from the passageway. “Have two,” he said, and closed the door.

  It was quiet in the dim cabin. Inside Duncan’s shirt, the kitten breathed lightly against his chest. Through the open porthole, the cries of gulls mingled with the stamp of men’s feet and a mechanical clanking. Duncan caught a glimpse of the dock crane; they had fixed its ropes and tied someone’s sea chest—black with brass fittings, like the one at home—to the hook.

  Duncan’s grief was like a stone inside him, cold and heavy. He had come so close to his dream. His mother would never know what he had given up for her sake, and he could never tell her.

  He rubbed the back of his sleeve across his eyes and sniffled. Maybe he would stay on the ship just a few moments longer. He caught sight of a small telescope hanging from a hook, and put it to his eye.

  The cats on the wharf were still raising a ruckus. He caught a few words; he was pretty sure one was “kittens.” The spyglass brought them so close that he could see their individual mouths meowing, but the sounds were too confused to hear clearly.

  Fia stirred inside Duncan’s shirt. Her tiny claws pricked his skin as she stretched. “It’s stuffy in here,” she complained, and Duncan undid the top button.

  “Are you feeling all right?” he asked. “After your fall?”

  Fia’s pointed face peered up at him from inside his shirt. “I’m all right now.”

  “How did you end up in that crate?” Duncan squinted through the spyglass again. There was Old Tom—he had climbed up on a pier. He was meowing something that Duncan couldn’t quite make out.

  “I can’t remember exactly,” Fia said. “There was something—something good—in the street. I smelled it. And then I came out, and it was only this little pile of leaves, but it was wonderful! You could smell it, and taste it, and roll in it.” Fia shut her eyes, purring in remembered ecstasy.

  “And then?” Duncan prompted.

  Fia curled up against his chest. “Next thing I knew, I was stuffed in a smelly bag with a lot of kittens. We were put in a crate and then it crashed and you found me.”

  Suddenly there was a lull in the meowing, and Duncan could hear Old Tom’s yowl clearly above all the rest. “Kitnip! Kitnip found in the streets! Keep your kittens with you at all times!”

  So Old Tom had been right all along.

  Fia’s head lifted sharply, as if she had heard a trumpet call. “Mommy?” she mewed.

  Duncan hung the telescope up, ashamed. It was time to get Fia back to her mother; he had delayed too long.…

  It took a minute before Duncan understood why the cabin door wasn’t opening. Someone had locked him in.

  He banged on the door’s heavy panels, but no one came. All at once there seemed to be a lot more noise on the ship—a thunderous stamping, a metallic clanking, a creaking of timbers. The deck tilted under his feet. He looked out the porthole, where the line of cats grew suddenly smaller.

  They were sailing away.

  CHAPTER 9

  A Glass of Cherry Punch

  “HEY! HEY!” DUNCAN BANGED on the cabin’s low ceiling. Then he yelped out the round porthole, twisting his head so that his voice might be heard on the deck above. “I’m still here! Take me back to the docks!”

  Above him a powerful voice struck up a sea chanty—“From Isle of Dulle we’re bound away”—and a thunder of male voices joined in with “Away, lads, heave away!” Duncan’s cries were drowned out by loud, tuneless singing and the slap of canvas as the sails billowed out to catch the sea breeze.

  If only the deadlights hadn’t been in place! Duncan rattled at the bars, but the pins were locked and the earl had taken the key. He ran to the porthole again and tried to push one shoulder out, with no success.

  Fia wriggled against his chest. “You’re squishing me!”

  “Sorry.” Duncan stared out the porthole. If a fishing boat came by, he would wave and call for help.

  Fia clambered up to his shoulder. “Are we prisoners?”

  In a way they were. But accidental pris
oners? Or had Bertram locked them in on purpose? There was no reason Duncan could think of why anyone would lock him up.

  He blinked at the circle of tossing water and tilting sky. The waves crested and curled and subsided, foaming in hypnotic curving lines that were always changing and yet always the same; he watched them as if the answer were contained somewhere in their endless motion.

  But Fia’s small mews were worried—too worried for a baby cat. Duncan tried to cheer her up despite the hollow feeling at his core. “Maybe you’ll get to stay and be a shipboard cat. You said you wanted to explore, right?”

  Fia sniffed. “Not on a ship where they put kittens in dark crates.”

  Duncan put the telescope to his eye. He could still see the line of cats, but they were tiny specks, for the ship had passed the mouth of the bay.

  All at once he lurched, caught off balance. There was a hesitation in the ship’s forward motion, as if the schooner had paused to catch her breath, and then the deck tilted under him the other way. The ship had come about. A glance out the porthole told him that the ship had cleared the point and was now sailing along the west side of the island.

  He braced his feet for the new slant and looked keenly through the spyglass up at the familiar cliffs. He knew the landmarks from the sea. The narrow entrance to the cove must be coming up, and above it, the stone throne where he loved to sit. This would be his last glimpse of his home for two days, he knew, for even if the earl discovered in the next minute that Duncan had been locked in, there was no way the ship would be turned back for the sake of one stowaway. The earl would have lost his tide; once docked, the ship would not be able to leave for another twelve hours. Duncan wasn’t important enough to cause that sort of delay.

  A small glee unfurled in Duncan’s middle. He was going to be a ship’s boy after all—and with no blame to him, for hadn’t he turned down the earl? His mother would be upset, of course, but there was nothing he could do about it now. In two days, when he returned from Capital City, she would be so happy that it would make up for all the worry.