The Sign of the Cat

by Lynne Jonell

  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.”

  * * *

  In the next few weeks, Duncan found out how the princess and Mattie had survived on the island all this time. They worked—hard. Now that Duncan was here, he worked, too.

  Every day he fetched water from the waterfall, picked greens, and carried whatever Brig caught to the cave to be plucked, gutted, cleaned, skinned, or sewn. He hauled wood, built fires, and climbed among the rocks to collect eggs from birds’ nests.

  But lately he had been getting some ideas of his own. He took Brig to the sea cave at high tide, carrying a flaming torch. Then he wedged the torch in a rock crevice so that it shone on the water.

  “This isn’t the way I fish,” grumbled Brig.

  “Just wait,” said Duncan. Soon, tiny, transparent minnows rose to the light, darting here and there; then larger fish moved among them, five and ten inches in length.

  “Those are barely a mouthful,” Brig muttered, but suddenly his whiskers stiffened. A long, thick shadow passed beneath the surface of the water—over two feet in length—and then another.

  Duncan grinned as Brig tensed, his paw lifted. The folk back on the island of Dulle had talked about fishing with torches, and it worked! Brig clawed the fish, leaped in to finish his kill, and Duncan helped him drag it back onto the ledge.

  The string bag that Mattie had knitted wasn’t sturdy enough for a fish this size. Duncan wrapped the fish in a strong, slender vine to carry it back. He would have to make some good rope. He could do it; he’d helped the fishermen often enough at home. There was plenty of seagrass in the lagoon that he could use.

  The weather had changed while they were in the sea cave. The sky was dark and purple with clouds as one more storm churned up from the Rift. Duncan walked with his head bent against the whirling wind, his eyes nearly shut to keep the grit out. By the time he and Brig crossed the valley and reached the home cave, a driving rain had soaked them through. He was glad he wasn’t on the sea in this storm.

  Brig shook out his fur and lay by the fire next to Fia. Mattie passed her veined hand over the huge fish with delight. “We’ll smoke it, and it will keep for months!”

  The kitten got up and sniffed at the fish. “I can bring food, too,” she meowed, and trotted off to a dark corner of the cave. She returned a few minutes later and laid the limp body of a mouse at Mattie’s feet.

  “Ach, the darling kitty!” Mattie’s face creased into a hundred smiling wrinkles as she rubbed Fia’s small, furry head. “She’s a mighty hunter!”

  Fia purred, her eyes squeezed into contented slits. “Smoked fish is good,” she mewed, “but raw mouse has much more flavor.”

  The smoking cave was just across the path. Lydia didn’t look much like a princess of the realm as she whacked off the head of the grouper, split it down the middle, and expertly gutted it. Duncan watched, impressed, as she sliced the fish into fillets and hung them to dry on a rack made of sticks. Then she arranged small piles of wood chips and twigs, and lit them from the coals she had brought from the home fire, carried in a clod of earth.

  “There,” she said as the smoke spiraled up, enveloping the fish. “Mattie will have to tend the fires for days—they can never go out, but they can never get too hot, either. So we have to bring more wood for her.” She looked worried. “The wood pile is getting low. We’ll have to go scouting for more fallen branches. We used to have an ax, but last winter the head fell off the handle, right into the lagoon, and we could never find it again.”

  “How did you get those chips, then?” Duncan pointed to a pile set aside for smoking.

  Lydia picked up a flattish stone, a little longer than her hand, that had flaked on one end. “Hack at wood with this, and you can get lots of chips.”

  Duncan reached for the stone and turned it over. One side had been flaked so it had a sharp edge, and the other side was rounded to fit in the hand. “It’s a hand ax, like the ancient people used!” He turned the stone over and over in his hand. “But later on, they figured how to attach the stone to a wood handle.”

  “I tried to do it, but we don’t have anything strong enough to tie it on,” said Lydia.

  “It’s safer if you tie it on, but you don’t have to. We can burn a hole right through the head of the handl
e—just big enough for the narrow end of the stone to fit, see? Then we whack the ax against some wood to shove the stone in deeper. Every time we use it, the stone gets seated more firmly in the handle.”

  “But how do we burn the hole without burning the whole handle—oh, wait, I know!” Lydia bounced a little. “We do it slowly, with the burning end of a narrow stick—”

  “Right, and never let it catch flame—”

  “Until it burns all the way through!” The princess clapped her hands. “What a clever idea!”

  “Well, it’s not really mine,” said Duncan, grinning. “We studied ancient history at school. I did a whole unit on tool making. I remember how they made harpoons, too.”

  “I wish I could have gone to school,” Lydia said wistfully. “I mean, for the past seven years.”

  “You’ll go again,” Duncan said, more confidently than he felt.

  “But I don’t want to go now.” The princess chewed on the tip of her braid again. “I won’t know anything I’m supposed to know.”

  “I thought Mattie was teaching you,” Duncan said.

  “She’s just teaching me court manners. And that’s another thing!” the princess blurted out. “I remember court—it was awful. I was supposed to be perfectly polite, keep my dress perfectly clean, and always say the right thing. And now that I’m older, they’ll expect me to know things about government and ruling the kingdom!” She turned to him, her brown eyes anxious. “How am I supposed to rule the kingdom when I don’t know how?”

  Duncan had never thought about the duties of a king or queen—or any noble, for that matter. He had mostly thought about the privileges.

  “You’ll have advisers and things,” he said. “Anyway, your father is still king.…” He trailed off, unsure of his ground. The old king had been sick for a long time. People said that he was just hanging on in the hope of seeing his daughter again.

  Princess Lydia’s face scrunched up in the middle. It was the look of someone trying very hard not to cry. Duncan put a few more wood chips on the smoldering fires; maybe it was more polite to pretend not to notice.

  There was a muted sniffle. “I know I have a duty to be queen someday,” Lydia said, her voice almost steady, “but I don’t know how.”

  Duncan was at a loss for what to say. “You’ll have advisers,” he said again.

  “But I won’t know who to trust,” Lydia said. “The earl taught me that.” She curled her arms around her knees, staring into the smoke. “Anyway, I’ll probably never have the chance, stuck here on this island.”

  Duncan stirred the wood chips with a stick, thinking hard. “I don’t have the skills to build a boat to get you off, like my father did.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to build a boat anyway,” Lydia said at once. “Remember what happened to your father?”

  “I bet I could build a raft, though.” Duncan sat up straight. “I built a little one once, at home.”

  “No,” said Lydia.

  “It wouldn’t be as good as a boat,” Duncan went on. “It would be hard to steer, too, but if I could just get to the Arvidian Current—”

  “No!” said Princess Lydia again. “I forbid you. You’re only going to die!”

  Duncan shrugged. “I’m going to die sometime. I might as well die trying.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Building the Raft

  DUNCAN TOOK A LAST BITE of his turtle steak and chewed it thoughtfully. He glanced at Mattie, who was pulling clumps of loose, shedding fur from the tiger’s chest and belly, aided by Fia. “I’ll show you how to make rope tomorrow,” he said to the old woman.

  Mattie smiled. “That will be lovely, dear.”

  “You’re not making rope for a boat, remember,” the princess said suspiciously. “Or a raft.” She poked at the fire with a long stick and raised its glowing end like a scepter. “That,” she added, “is a royal command.”

  Duncan stared up at the night sky, pricked with thousands of stars. He could steer by the stars—he could steer all the way home. As long as he hit the Arvidian Current, he could drift—and if the wind was against him, that was exactly what he’d do. He’d lower the sail and float straight back to Capital City, or one of the populated islands that surrounded it. Before he got there, of course, he might even be picked up by a ship—farther north and east, the sea routes would be more traveled.

  “I mean it,” said Princess Lydia, poking savagely at the fire. “I watched your father go down in the sea. I’m not going to watch it happen to you.” She picked up Fia and cuddled her as if in need of comfort.

  “You could close your eyes,” Duncan suggested.

  Brig growled, very low. “Her Royal Highness has given you an order, sir.”

  Duncan stood up. “Remember, Brig, no attacking your superior officers. That’s rule number one.”

  Lydia dropped her stick into the fire. “I’ll tell Brig to stop you!” she said. “I will!”

  Duncan gave her his best court bow, with a flourish. “Might I have permission to leave the royal presence?”

  “Granted,” snapped the princess, turning her back.

  “Now, my lady,” Mattie began, but Duncan was already on the path up to the ridge and he didn’t hear any more.

  He sat with his legs dangling, leaning back against a tall, flat stone, still warm from the day’s sun. The sky arched overhead, a deep cobalt blue in the west, and the sea spread before him, dark and inky and wide as the world. He might almost have been on the stone throne on the island of Dulle.

  But this time, there was no Grizel purring contentedly beside him, and no mother waiting just up the cliff road. And this time, instead of longing for adventure, he was dreading the thing he had to do.

  He had not told the princess he was afraid, of course. She was worried enough already. But Duncan had not forgotten what it was like to be adrift on the open sea.

  It would be easy to stay safe on the island. The princess had told him that winters were passable—the lower portion of the island was sheltered from cold winds, and there were caves with hot springs, where the air was heated and warm.

  Furthermore, Princess Lydia had ordered him to stay here, and she had a tiger to enforce her wishes. But all of these things were just excuses. If he didn’t at least try, he would know he was a coward.

  A shuffling sound of feet on stone warned him that someone was climbing the path. With a rustle, the princess sat beside him and settled herself against the rock.

  “I really don’t want you to go,” Lydia said in a low voice.

  “You made that clear when you decided to give me a royal command, Princess.” Duncan picked moodily at a scab on his elbow.

  The princess sighed. “If your father couldn’t do it, what makes you think you can?”

  Duncan drew his legs up and crossed his arms over his knees. “I can’t just stay here without doing something to get us back home.”

  “Yes, you can! That’s what I’ve been telling you! We’re happy enough here, Mattie and I. We have enough to eat, we’re warm and safe, and Brig hunts for us. We keep a lookout every morning and night, and someday we’ll see a ship coming our way.”

  “Someday,” Duncan repeated incredulously. “You haven’t seen a ship in seven years, Lydia. We’re in a section of the sea where nobody goes.” Except the earl, he said to himself.

  “It could happen tomorrow,” the princess said stubbornly.

  Duncan gazed up at the stars. He could see the Huntress and the Crown, and there, just curling over the horizon, was the Cat and Kitten. The constellations moved, but he remembered what the sailing master had shown him: an imaginary line drawn from the Kitten’s tail, crossed with a line from the Cat’s right ear, gave a point due north that never moved. As long as he could see the stars, he could never be completely lost.

  A chill breeze feathered his neck, and Duncan turned. The stars to the southwest were winking out, one by one. A storm was brewing in the Rift once more. Lydia was right; it was dangerous out there.
But he felt uneasy, as if it were dangerous to stay on the island, too. And now, looking at the dark mass rising to cover the stars, Duncan suddenly was able to put his feeling into words. “It’s not just about rescuing you and Mattie; it’s bigger than that. Don’t you see that if you don’t return, the Earl of Merrick will be the next king?”

  A small puff of wind blew Princess Lydia’s hair across her face, and she tossed it back impatiently. “The earl isn’t next in line for the throne. After the king, and then me of course, the ranks are duke, then earl, count, baron—oh.”

  “Right. There’s no duke waiting to step in. So the earl will rule all of Arvidia once your father dies, and no one will try to stop him because the whole country still thinks he’s a hero!”

  “But my father, the king—” the princess began.

  “Your father trusts him, too!” Duncan smacked his hands together. “What do you think it’s going to mean for Arvidia if a traitor is trusted by the king—if a traitor will be the king?”

  The princess did not answer. Far away, a gannet cried, and then another. The sea crashed against the cliffs below with muted thunder, and the air grew cooler still.

  “That’s what the earl’s wanted all along,” Duncan said quietly. “He tried to get rid of everyone who was between him and the throne. First you; you were the heir. Then my father; he was next in line. And then me. Now there’s only your father to get rid of. And your father has been sick a long time.”

  Lydia’s brow was troubled. “What are you saying? Do you think the earl has been poisoning my father?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t think the earl lets anything get in the way of what he wants. One way or another, he intends to be king.”

  Princess Lydia buried her face in her hands.

  “Don’t you see?” Duncan said quietly. “High rank doesn’t mean just dressing up and court manners. It means we’re responsible. We’re supposed to keep Arvidia safe.”