Printer's Devil (9780316167826) Page 6
Beneath it was a tatty strip torn from a newspaper, with a tiny notice in one corner which someone had ringed in blurry pencil.
The EAST INDIA COMPANY vessel the SUN OF CALCUTTA under Capt. Geo. Shakeshere will put in at London at the end of her voyage this coming SUNDAY the 16th day of MAY. Traveling with her, Company employees returning from duty in Calcutta, also Sgt. CORNCRAKE of the Third Welsh, reported severely ill, and Dr. Hamish LOTHIAN of Edinburgh. Cargo principally of SPICES to be released before TUESDAY. Unloading under GUARD.
There was also a square of rather tatty parchment with a grubby little hole in one end, as though it had been nailed to something. On it was the oddest writing I’d ever seen, if it was writing at all. No matter which way up I held it, I couldn’t make head or tail of the funny little shapes.
I sat staring at it for a while, trying to fix the characters in my mind. Eventually I put it aside and picked up the last piece of paper, which was a handwritten document seeming to have something to do with customs duty. The lamplight, glowing through the translucent parchment, picked out a strange watermark with a symbol like a dog curled up asleep. Its head was facing its tail and the tail seemed to stretch forward right into the dog’s mouth, as though it were beginning the slow process of eating itself. I was so intrigued by the watermark it was a while before I read the words. I didn’t fully understand it, but I gathered it was a customs document certifying that someone had paid four pounds for the receipt of certain goods from overseas. It was dated the 17th of May, which was yesterday’s date; and at the very end there was a signature like a firework exploding, and then the name “W. Jiggs” in another, childish hand, like the crude scrawls some of the children in the orphanage used to make when practicing writing their names. Was this the piece of paper Coben and Jiggs had received from the customs man, while I’d been spying on them? The document might be perfectly genuine: it certainly looked official enough, with an ornate seal, and a signature for His Majesty’s Customs: a spidery scrawl which seemed to say “L. W. Ferryfather” or possibly “L. N. Follyfeather,” or some such name.
I yawned, and made a mental note to show the papers to Cramplock, who with his knowledge of paper and printing might be able to tell me more about them: where the paper had been made, for example, and what the watermarks meant. For the moment, I decided, for safekeeping, I’d put them in my treasure box. I gathered them up and closed the lid, and was about to stand up and put the tin back up on the cupboard shelf when I heard a sudden muffled clatter.
I started, and Lash sat straight up in his basket with his ears cocked, and gave a short but anxious woof. It sounded as though it had come from inside the cupboard. Perhaps something had slipped off a shelf inside. I opened the door and peered inside, but everything seemed to be in its place.
Was there someone downstairs? Had I locked the door behind me? I couldn’t remember. I stood still, listening, but could hear no footsteps or voices from below.
But now there it was again! A bump, like something being knocked over; and now, with the cupboard door open, it sounded even more as though it came from the other side of the wall. And yet, it couldn’t have — because behind this wall there was only the big empty burnt-out house next door, where nobody had lived for years.
Lash was whimpering now, and looking up at me quizzically; he definitely thought something was amiss. I was going to have to go down and investigate. I grasped Lash’s collar and, holding up the lantern, I pulled the door open and let the light fall down the steep short stairwell.
There was no sound. I took a deep breath.
“Who’s there?” I called out, as sternly as I could manage. My words disappeared into the dark space below.
I ventured down, holding the lantern out beneath me to light up the printing shop. There was nobody to be seen. I had a walk around downstairs, even a rummage through the cupboards where Cramplock kept his paper and other supplies, but it was quite clear that Lash and I were alone after all.
The noises had stopped too. I climbed the stairs again to prepare for bed, half believing I’d imagined them, and that my exhaustion, and the pain in my head, and the strange adventures I’d been having, were making me hear things which weren’t really there.
In spite of my tiredness I couldn’t rest before I’d spilled some of my turbulent thoughts out onto paper. Written down in black and white, they might make more sense, might be tamed, be less frightening. It was what I always did when things were crowding in on me like this. Lash came and curled up on my feet at the bottom of the bed. I pulled the scratchy old blanket up to my armpits, dug my feet under Lash’s grudging weight to keep them warm, and reached for the treasure box. Taking a pencil, and opening Mog’s Book at the first blank page, I thought for a few seconds and began to write.
Strange things have begun to happen, I wrote.
I stuck the pencil in my mouth and fondled Lash’s ears while I contemplated whether this was quite adequate. On second thought, I decided to add a word at the beginning. There was just room, between the edge of the page and the first word, to squeeze it in.
VERT Strange things have begun to happen, it now read.
It is Tuesday, I continued. This weather is the hottest in my whole life, and things have become a little unreal. A ship, the Sun of Calcutta, has brought great excitement to the worst thieves of London. It has only been in port for two days and already I cannot escape from the talk of its treasures. A strange man has come with it, and I have now met him twice. His presence here seems to have caused a great stir among the thieves, like birds who have caught the scent of a tomcat.
I was in my stride now.
I can’t say what’s happening, but I feel I am caught up in an adventure that seems more important and more interesting than anything that has ever happened. I have seen patterns on a stolen sword which are exactly like the ones on my bangle. Last night I dreamed about my mother, and she was more real than I have ever known her, and I felt —
I paused, chewing the end of the pencil. What had I felt?
— that she was trying to tell me this all matters to her somehow. Also, people I meet keep thinking I am someone else. First a sailor, and then Coben the thief, asked me about my Pa. Why do they think they know my father? It makes me feel very peculiar inside.
I reread what I’d written, and shivered. I was exhausted. I placed the papers I’d brought from the thieves’ hideout between the pages, and closed the book.
Suddenly something occurred to me, and I took out the pieces of paper again to look through them. Quickly I found what I was looking for. The note with the mysterious writing on it. I laid it on the blanket in front of me and copied the strange shapes, a little shakily, into Mog’s Book beneath this evening’s entry.
I looked at the marks I’d made. They made even less sense in my handwriting, if that were possible. I yawned, enormously.
“Can’t stay awake a moment longer,” I said to Lash.
A guttural, rhythmic snore floated up from my feet. Lash was already asleep. I just hope, for his sake, he had nicer dreams that night than I did.
4
THE SUN OF CALCUTTA
I awoke very early with a headache and, after fixing a fresh piece of cloth across my tender forehead to act as a bandage, I slipped quietly out of the house. Lash was surprised but pleased to be up and about so early, and trotted in a kind of zigzag from one side of the street to the other, his muzzle close to the ground, as though the smells of the city were intriguingly different at this time of the day when there were no people milling about to obscure them. A grey light was beginning to spread sluggishly from the marshes to the east, and morning fog was lying in the streets so that buildings seemed suddenly to emerge from thin air as we approached them. Smithfield was still deserted, and the four-pointed tower of St. Sepulchre’s gulped a sombre chime for five o’clock as we ran past the giant cliff-like wall of Newgate Prison. But the fish market was already pungent and alive, and I looked about for someone who might be
able to give me a ride out to the dock. I was determined to have another try at getting aboard the Sun of Calcutta: or at least to hang around and see what I might find out.
On the misty water the pale lights of small boats, patrolling up and down like water-spiders, glided and swung in drifting constellations. Just as the streets had their scavengers, people looking among the rubbish for things they might use, so the river had its little boatmen who hauled out flotsam from the sewage and piled it in their stained prows. And there were thieves too, using their lights to signal to one another, sliding between the merchant ships and reaching above their heads to take the weight of goods handed down to them by accomplices onboard.
In the mist, I became one of them. A little rowing boat moored by the steps near the fish market gave me my chance: after a swift glance around to make sure the owner wasn’t watching, I stepped in, and tried to steady it as Lash leaped in excitedly after me. I fumbled to untie the thin black rope, greasy from years of trailing in the river; then I was off, my heart pounding as I pulled at the unwieldy oars, sticking close to the bank and the sides of ships which were ranged alongside in increasing numbers as I rowed downstream. I wasn’t managing very well: I’d only ever rowed once before, and I hadn’t been very good at it then. Lash was thrilled, and I had to keep growling at him to sit down, because in his eagerness to peer first over one side of the boat, then the other, he was making it rock about rather alarmingly. But, after swinging around in circles a few times, and bumping into one or two hulls, I found a tolerable rhythm; and no one seemed to be taking much notice of me as I pulled my way down past the wharves and warehouses.
But London looked very different from the water, and I had no idea of how far I’d have to go to find the Sun of Calcutta. It had seemed quite a long way in the drayman’s cart yesterday. There were few clues to be had from the endless forest of masts either side of me: I felt much the same as a spider might feel in a cornfield, trying to remember where she’d tied up her latest fly. Aside from all this, I was starting to feel a bit sick: a combination of the foul smell of the river and the fact that I’d had no breakfast.
As the sun was beginning to cast a weak glow through the mist, and long after I’d begun to wish I’d stayed in bed, I drifted through a gap between two tarry, groaning hulls and spotted a lance-like prow with the letters “LCUTTA” emerging from behind the nearest ship, bobbing high above my head. The boats were creaking in a deep-throated medley as though in the throes of waking yawns. Propelling myself toward an iron ladder set in the dockside, I found my little boat wedged between the dock and the planks of the Sun of Calcutta. I’d never be able to get Lash up onto the dockside from here: I’d have to leave him in the boat until I came back. He seemed to understand; and, praying he wouldn’t decide to take a dip in the filthy river while I was gone, I was soon letting myself over the side onto the deserted quarterdeck of the ship.
My feet landed dead in the center of a coil of rope, laid like a sleeping snake guarding an Oriental treasure house. I looked around. The deck was damp and slippery, and a shiny green color in places, especially at the edges. There wasn’t a person to be seen. To my right a huge mast rose, taller than any tree, with its grubby sails tied in clumps along the beams and piles of nets which surrounded it. To my left was the forecastle, where ladders and doorways led into the cabins and spaces in the foremost part of the ship. Ropes sat everywhere, some secured, some trailing over the deck; and as my eyes followed them back along the rails I suddenly noticed a sailor’s boot poking out from a corner near the mast behind me. I was about to dive back over the side when I realized with relief it was nothing more than an empty boot, without a sailor attached.
I was terrified in case I met anyone onboard, and I winced at every creak my weight squeezed from the timbers, despite their being lost amid the orchestra of groans and bumps the massed boats were uttering. As I pushed open the door into the forecastle, my heart was thumping so loudly it seemed to echo around the damp little chamber I was entering. There was a sudden hot stench of sweat and sewage from deep within the ship, so strong it made me instantly dizzy, and I had to grab the doorframe to stop myself swaying and falling into the dark hole below my feet. As the light fell across the boards, the tails of brown rats slithered like rapid worms into ragged little holes in the woodwork. It was a long time before I could pluck up the courage to set foot on the ladder which led down to the ship’s interior.
The first little door I opened revealed a small, dimly lit cabin, with the tiniest of windows covered by a canvas curtain. Now the smell which met my nostrils was a mixture of oak and tobacco. In a dark corner, another curtain hid a narrow bunk in which, I suddenly realized, someone might be sleeping. I listened carefully. I could hear the water beneath the ship and a hollow banging from the timbers; but the only breathing I could detect in the little cabin was my own, bated and apprehensive. I reached over and pulled aside the curtain to let the light in.
Immediately something began to twinkle in the opposite corner. As the room lit up I saw for the first time a large golden lantern hanging there, on a level with my head. It was the most beautiful object I’d ever laid eyes on. Its flame extinguished, it was revolving slowly with the motion of the ship, firing sparkles of golden light back at me as the daylight struck its intricate surface. I couldn’t imagine how any goldsmith could have made this: surely it must have been created, like the sun, by something or someone beyond the scope of our knowledge. It was breathtaking, magnificent, a dense basket of fine, glinting, crisscrossed lacework, made entirely of gold, sending its bright reflections over the furniture and walls of the little cabin. For a moment I stood spellbound, hypnotized by its beauty. A jeweled globe; a ball of bright tears.
So this was the kind of object Coben and Jiggs had been trying to steal! If they’d escaped with anything half as precious as this, they’d be rich men. It was also clear that, with something like this just hanging here for the taking, the place wasn’t going to remain unguarded for long. I’d better not linger.
I glanced around me. There were a few pieces of furniture in here: a couple of ancient chairs covered in worn red leather, and in the center of the room a map table with several charts laid out upon it. Their lines and figures meant little to me as I lifted their corners. But there were also two drawers beneath the table, and, pulling them open, I found a pistol, a small jeweled snuffbox, and a number of documents. With trembling hands I picked up the sheaf of papers and began to shuffle through them. Many of them were very grand-looking, with big elaborate seals in blood-red wax; but as far as I could see they weren’t very interesting. I was about to put them back when a word boldly written near the bottom of one of the sheets caught my eye.
DAMYATA.
Something about it made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Here it was again. The word which wasn’t a word. Was it somebody’s name? One of the other documents held a long list of names, and was headed “Licensed Traders under His Majesty’s United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies.” Beside each name was a date, and a sum of money mentioned. The writing was florid and difficult to decipher; but as far as I could make out, none of the names meant anything to me. I wondered whether I ought to take this list with me; but something about their official appearance and their grand seals persuaded me that, if I got caught with papers stolen from here, I might find myself in real trouble. As I slid them back into the drawer I caught sight of an inscription in gold leaf on the lid of the snuffbox, in the same strange characters I’d seen in the note among Coben and Jiggs’s papers. It looked like writing, except that the letters seemed to hang down from the line instead of sitting above it.
I didn’t have time to take it in properly though, because I suddenly heard a sound from above my head. A regular thud … thud … thud … Someone was walking across the deck, and the footsteps were moving with some determination towards the forecastle and the ladder I’d just come down.
Panic welled up through me. The
forecastle door swung open and the footsteps began clomping down the steps towards me. My innards felt like a column of hot lead, from my groin up to my throat. I was going to be discovered! Diving for the bunk, I rolled behind the curtain just as the cabin door clicked open and the heavy footsteps came in.
I could hear a man breathing heavily, almost grunting. I didn’t dare to move, or breathe myself, simply hoping that whoever it was would go away. He was standing just a couple of feet away from my head, his boots creaking on the floor. My lungs began to crave air as I held my breath, terrified, trapped. I was going to die.
Long seconds went by. They might have been hours. I was frozen, my eyes closed, my brain intoning “Go away! Oh, go away!” as the heavy breathing continued on the other side of the curtain. Still he stood there, listening.
And then suddenly his boots creaked again and I almost breathed a sigh of relief as I supposed he was leaving the cabin. But he wasn’t. In a flash the curtain of my hiding place was pulled aside and I was staring up at a giant sailor with a face like a beam-end. I was too shocked to scream: I simply looked at him, as though if I said nothing he might close the curtain and go away and I might wake up and find all this had been the most hideous nightmare of my vivid young life. For what seemed like ages, nothing happened.
Then, a frenzy of movement. With a convulsion like a man in a fit, he launched his meaty arms forward and yanked me with practiced violence out of the bunk and onto the wooden floor. Then, equally roughly, he yanked me to my feet, so that I thought he’d bring my arms clean out of their sockets. I looked up at him. A smile spread across his flat, weathered face and all the way down his powerful arms, tightening the grip of his hands on my fragile shoulders. He showed me a long, ragged skyline of widely spaced yellow teeth.