DUNCAN’S SABER FLASHED IN THE SUNLIGHT as he advanced. Robert was pretty good—he had a private fencing lesson once a week—but the fencing master came to the monastery school, too, and Duncan had been practicing hard for years.
He felt savage enough for a real battle. He made his salute, he rapped Robert’s sword with a quick beat—he advanced, he feinted, he counterattacked, all with an increasing sense of resentment.
His mother had a skill that could earn them money. They didn’t need to starve or live in a house that was falling down. But she refused to use it. Why?
The cats were on the sidelines, turning their heads from side to side as they watched the back-and-forth.
“I’d bet on your boy with the cap,” Duncan heard the baron’s cat say. “His balance would be better if he had a tail, of course, but he’s really quite good.”
“He’ll lose,” said Grizel morosely. “He always does.”
But Robert was on the retreat, and Duncan followed, attacking without mercy. No one was watching—and just this once, he wanted to win. With reckless abandon, he parried an attack and lunged forward, scoring a touch on Robert’s shoulder. Robert stopped, looking surprised.
Duncan grinned. “Didn’t see it coming, did you?”
“You’re getting better,” said Robert.
A scraping sound came from the manor house as the dining room windows were flung open, and the baron and baroness leaned out to watch the match.
Duncan swept off his cap with one automatic motion. He made the correct bow, his dark red hair glinting in the last rays of the setting sun. As he straightened, his upturned eyes caught sight of his mother, one floor up. Her hand flew to her mouth as if to stifle a cry. Duncan felt a pang like an arrow striking.
“Come on,” said Robert. “One more time? I want some revenge.”
Duncan nodded. But this time, he slipped his guard and gave Robert the opening he needed. Duncan passed backward, faltered, dropped to one knee—as long as he was going to lose, he might as well make it dramatic—and flailed upward in a riposte, a return thrust that went deliberately wild. Robert scored decisively. From the dining room window came the sound of two proud parents clapping.
* * *
Duncan and his mother walked in silence up the bayside road. Duncan had not enjoyed losing to Robert.
When he was younger, it had felt like a game to make sure he never seemed like the smartest in the class, or the fastest in a race, or the best at anything. But he wasn’t small anymore, and he was tired of never coming in first. Sometime soon he would bring it up once more—sometime soon he would demand yet again to know why. But not today. Today he had something else to ask her.
Grizel, trotting at his heels, began to meow. “Why don’t you tell your mother about the sailboat you saw today, the one with the long blue streamer? Your mother would like to hear about that. Tell her about how it didn’t come into the bay, and the long blue flag, why don’t you?”
Duncan cocked an eyebrow at the cat. What was this—some weird cat obsession with flapping cloth?
Grizel meowed again, as insistent as if she were begging for fish, but Duncan did not answer. It was hard to conduct a conversation in Cat with his mother present.
Of course, he could always speak human to Grizel. Cats understood human language; they just couldn’t speak it. Still, it was awkward when someone else was listening. If he meowed, he sounded like a little boy pretending to be a cat. If he spoke human, people around him assumed he was speaking to them—and either way, he ended up sounding strange, like someone who heard voices that weren’t there.
So he had learned to be careful. He switched from human to Cat, depending on the circumstances, and no one was the wiser. Grizel had made him promise to keep his Cat-speaking ability a secret from all humans, and he didn’t mind. He had to keep so many secrets for his mother’s sake that it was nice to have a secret of his own for a change.
Grizel was still meowing about the sailboat with the blue flag, but Duncan was thinking of something else. “My birthday is coming up soon,” he said.
Duncan’s mother smiled. “One of the best days of my life.” She gave his shoulder an affectionate pat.
Duncan plowed ahead. “I was wondering if you’d decided what you were going to tell me about my father this year. In fact, I was thinking that maybe this year you could tell me more than one thing. You always say to wait until I’m older, but I’m going to be twelve, and that’s older than I’ve ever been.”
They turned onto the cliff road, and the mown grass of the bayside hills gave way to straggling weeds. Small insects buzzed and rose, whirring, in the air as Duncan and his mother passed.
“I’ll tell you one new thing,” said Sylvia McKay with a note of false cheer, “just like always. Only, let’s wait until your birthday comes, shall we?”
Duncan didn’t argue. He would bring it up again later, after she was done being upset about the As on his report card. Every year he was getting older; pretty soon she wouldn’t be able to avoid telling him everything he wanted to know.
Sylvia McKay asked him about school, and he told her that Charlie Stewart had gotten sick and thrown up right in the middle of a test. Duncan asked his mother how music lessons had gone, and she said that Annabelle Parker still couldn’t keep the beat to save her life. Just to keep Grizel happy, Duncan told his mother about the sailboat with the blue streamer and how it had sailed close to the island but never docked.
“Oh, really?” His mother’s step hesitated briefly. “With a long blue pennant, you said?” She stopped at the edge of the road to gaze out at the sea. “You didn’t go to the dock, of course.”
“No,” said Duncan.
The sun had fallen below the curving rim of the sea, but an afterglow lit the bottoms of clouds in bright tangerine, lined with gold. The breeze had died down to a whisper. The waters of the bay were flat and still, and far out at sea a ship sat becalmed, her many sails limp.
Duncan’s heart beat a little faster. Two strange sails in one day! He squinted, but he could not see the ship clearly without a telescope. It might be a schooner.
“Because you know you must never go to the wharf when a strange boat comes in,” his mother continued, “no matter how small.”
Duncan frowned. “I thought it was just the big supply ship you were worried about. Don’t you know I can earn money at the wharf? You always used to let me go down and help the fishermen with their nets and things. And sometimes even skippers of small boats need an errand run.”
“Yes, but now you must not go down anymore. I’ve told you that this year is different.”
Duncan could feel his frown deepening. He said nothing.
They were on the monastery road. On cliffside terraces, children were out after supper to play, shooting marbles and jumping rope to a chant Duncan had heard hundreds of times. “Charles, Charles, Duke of Arvidia, went to sea with the Princess Lydia,” the children sang. Duncan’s mother did not like him to sing that song. It was one more of her silly rules.
Duncan pursed his lips and whistled along, loud and cheerfully. She had never said he couldn’t whistle it. She couldn’t stop him from doing everything.
“Son,” said his mother.
Duncan braced himself for a lecture.
But his mother seemed to have something else on her mind. She put a hand on his shoulder and spoke with quiet intensity. “I’ll tell you one thing about your father right now. He was brave and honorable. Never forget that, Duncan.”
“I won’t,” said Duncan, startled.
“And don’t go down to the dock for any reason until I tell you it’s all right. And don’t speak to any strangers, and when you’re outdoors, keep your cap on at all times. Do you hear me, now?”
The look Duncan dreaded most was back on her face, and her eyes were bleak. He glanced away and saw that they were at the monastery already.
The monastery was a collection of ancient stone buildings and curving pathways, edged with gardens and surrounded by a mossy stone wall. The long, low building with a series of arched windows was where Duncan went to school.
“Mrs. McKay!” Friar Gregory, his black robes flapping, came puffing through the monastery gates. “I’m so glad I caught you! Can you come in for a short conference, do you think?”
Sylvia McKay put a hand to her throat. “About Duncan?”
“Don’t look so worried!” Friar Gregory smiled broadly, his cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk’s. “This is good news. Come in! I’ll just run ahead and clear off a chair for you. I’m afraid I stack my papers on every available surface.…”
Duncan avoided his mother’s eye as she passed him, her heels rapping on the flagstone path. This had to be about his report card. Too many As—what a tragedy.
Grizel rubbed against Duncan’s leg to say good-bye. “I don’t much care for the monastery cats—especially Mabel—but I know some cats across the road who are generous with their kitty treats. Don’t wait up,” she added, flipping her tail as she padded away. “I might be late.”
“Mew!” The cry was tiny but fierce, and a small white bit of fluff leaped out from behind the stone wall to pounce on Duncan’s foot.
Duncan glanced down and sighed. “Watch the claws, Fia.”
“It was a good pounce, though, wasn’t it? If you were a mouse, you’d have been scared, right?” Fia looked up at him anxiously with her blue and green gaze.
“Terrified,” Duncan said. He saw a flicker of brown as his mother’s skirts whisked through a stone archway into Friar Gregory’s office.
Fia waved her tail in triumph. “I knew it. I’m going to pass my kitten examinations tonight, no matter what they say.” She gave a flick of her ears in the direction of the courtyard gardens, where three pairs of kitten eyes glimmered in the shadows. “And I was a good messenger cat today, too, wasn’t I?” Then she added grumpily, “Until my mother interrupted.”
“What was the message?” Duncan had forgotten about it until now. He squatted down to speak to the kitten at her level. “Something about my mother, was it?”
Fia gave a little spring of delight. “I get to tell you the whole message now! Just wait—I have to do this right.” She placed her front paws together on the ground in the formal manner, lifted her chin, and stiffened her whiskers. “Your mother,” she intoned, “is going to be so proud of you!”
Duncan waited for more. “That’s it?”
Fia unstiffened. “That’s all,” she admitted. “I heard Friar Gregory say it to the headmaster. He said it twice.”
“But proud of what? Didn’t Friar Gregory say?”
Fia’s kitten shoulders went up in a shrug. “I didn’t understand, exactly … something about a ship, a Skerl ship. But I told you the most important part. If I did something to make my mother proud, I’d want to know!”
Duncan frowned. A Skerl ship? What was that? Fia must have gotten it wrong—this had to be about the report card. Unless it was about his map project. He had done well on that, putting in all the large islands of Arvidia, and all the smaller ones that were known—perhaps a hundred in all. He had drawn little ships on the major supply routes, and he had even drawn ships exploring the uncharted waters to the south and west. Maybe he shouldn’t have worked so hard on it, but once he got started, he kept thinking of ways to make it better.
Still, it didn’t seem like something to have a special conference about.
Fia pranced around his heels. “You’ll find out more if you listen at the door,” she said. “I always do.”
Duncan had been taught not to listen at doors. Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t walk past slowly, just in case he heard something interesting.
Friar Gregory’s voice was loud and exuberant, and it echoed down the stone walkway with a fine and ringing resonance. “I knew there was more to Duncan than his grades showed. He listened in class, he asked good questions, and he seemed to understand the material. But when it came to tests, or handing in work to be graded, he was never much above average.”
Sylvia McKay’s voice was quieter, but it carried beautifully through the open door. “Not everyone can be a straight-A student. I don’t expect it of him.”
“But we should expect it!” There was a crackling sound, as if a paper was being waved in the air. “This proves that we should!”
Duncan edged closer to the office door. With a sinking heart, he recognized the paper clutched in Friar Gregory’s fist. It was his answer sheet from the national test.
“I began grading this afternoon,” boomed the friar, “and when I saw how Duncan had performed on the first section, I set aside everything else to grade his entire test. Do you know how many people in Arvidia have gotten a perfect score on the nationals? Two, that’s how many! Two, in twenty years—and now, with Duncan’s test, three!”
The triumphant word rang out. Duncan felt as if it echoed in some vast and breathless space within him. A perfect score! He was the best! No one in the whole nation could have possibly beaten him!
Friar Gregory paced the room in his excitement. “The Academy at Capital City offers two scholarships a year to the best students in the nation. There’s no question in my mind that your son will get one.”
“See?” mewed Fia at Duncan’s ankles. “I told you it was about a Skerl ship! That’s good, right?”
Friar Gregory turned at the meow and caught sight of Duncan hovering in the hall. “Come in, my boy! How would you like to go to the Academy in Capital City this fall?”
Duncan could not trust himself to speak. He managed a nod.
Friar Gregory had not stopped smiling in his delight, and now he clapped Duncan on the back. “Excellent. You must get serious about school, though; no more slacking. They’ll expect your best at the Academy.”
Sylvia McKay’s fingers gripped the chair arm. “There must be some mistake.”
Friar Gregory’s cheeks flattened, as if the air had leaked out of him. “It’s true this is the first time Duncan has shown this sort of ability on a test,” he admitted. “But never fear”—he was smiling again now—“there is a makeup test in a month’s time, and Duncan’s score on that will prove there was no mistake.”
Sylvia McKay’s hands relaxed. “Another test? He can take another test and get a lower score?”
Friar Gregory nodded. “In cases like this, where a startling result comes out of the blue, it’s usual to require a second test to make sure there was no cheating.” He smiled at Duncan. “But I’ve known you for years, Duncan. I’m quite sure you didn’t cheat.”
* * *
Sylvia McKay set Duncan’s plate before him on the rickety wooden table. He stared at the old bread and cheese, the two wilted carrots, without seeing them. He could not believe what his mother had just said.
“You want me to fail,” Duncan cried. “You want me to lie.”
Sylvia McKay toyed with the shriveled carrot on her plate. “I’m not asking you to lie—”
“You ask me to lie every time you tell me to pretend I’m less than I am. Don’t you understand,” Duncan added bitterly, “that Friar Gregory will think I cheated?”
His mother’s face paled. “You will know that you are honorable,” she said with an effort. “What does it matter what other people think, if you know the truth?”
“It matters,” Duncan said through his teeth. “You know it matters.” He stood up and his chair fell over with a crash. He was trembling.
His mother clasped her hands before her, lacing her fingers together tightly. She gazed up at him, her eyes swimming. “Aren’t you going to eat your supper?”
Duncan looked at his plate. His mother had given him everything in the icebox and kept just one small carrot for herself.
There was an odd sliding sensation in Duncan’s chest, as if something tender within him had hardened, or been encased in stiff leather. “I’m not hungry,” he said, and ran up the stairs.
It was dark, but the moon had not yet shown itself. A small breeze rose with the coming of night, and a smell of the sea wafted through Duncan’s bedroom window along with the monotonous rasping of crickets.
Duncan lay rigid in his bed, his jaw jutting toward the ceiling. He had never been so furious in his life, nor so bewildered. He hardly heard the meowing in the street below or the sound of his mother opening the door to let Grizel in from her wanderings. And when the cat came into his room and jumped onto the bed, he did not speak or move.
“Well?” Grizel said. “Aren’t you going to scratch me behind the ears? Or stroke my fur? Or be polite in any way?”
“No,” said Duncan. He flung an arm over his eyes.
Grizel’s tail flicked slightly. “You know, a little catlike courtesy wouldn’t be amiss, especially if you want to come along to the cat council in the graveyard tonight.”
Duncan turned his head away.
Grizel padded over to his head and brushed his chin with her whiskers. “You seem upset. Did you have an encounter with a dog?”
Duncan spoke into his pillow. “My mother won’t let me go. She says I have to fail the next test.”
“Won’t let you go? Go where?”
Duncan choked out the explanation in a few short sentences. “She says not to worry, that I’ll understand it all someday,” he finished. “But I can’t wait for someday! This is the year everyone enters the Academy, if they’re going. If I don’t go this year, next year she’ll say I’m too old to start.”
Grizel patted his ear softly with her paw. “You won’t be too old to start at the Academy next year. Trust me.”
“Well then, she’ll think of another reason I can’t go. And she won’t even tell me why! Grizel,” he said, sitting up suddenly, “do you think she’s crazy?”
“Shh!” Grizel’s ears pricked to the alert. “She’s coming.”
Duncan pulled the covers to his chin and closed his eyes. He did not want to talk with his mother anymore. And he hoped she would not kiss him good night.
He heard his mother stop in the doorway. After a while he heard her footsteps again, fading away down the hall to her room.
Good. All he had to do now was wait for her to fall asleep. Moonrise wasn’t for another hour yet. He had time before he had to leave for the graveyard.…
He was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming, for he struggled to wake, but the dream held him as it had so many times before. Everything was the same—the damp, slippery rock, the sound of the sea, a cat’s whisker of a moon riding over all. And behind him, a lighted window high in the dark. That was all—the window in the night, and salt spray on his neck, and a sense of longing so powerful that when he woke, he felt dampness on his cheek, like tears.
It was not tears. It was Grizel’s rough, wet tongue, and she was licking his face. “Wake up, if you’re coming.”
Duncan scrambled into his clothes. The stones he had picked up that day were still in his pocket, and they knocked gently against each other as he bent to find his boots.
“Make it snappy.” Grizel switched her tail in irritation. “If you make me late, I’m going to regret waking you up. It’s almost moonrise.”
Boots in hand, Duncan slipped down the passageway, avoiding the creaky floorboard in the middle. He made it to the second-floor landing without a sound and stepped carefully past the sea chest to the window. At sea, the ship that had been becalmed seemed to have found some wind at last. The moon shone upon her filled sails, and Duncan could see that she was a two-masted schooner, moving slowly into the bay.
He squinted. Were those square sails near the top of the mainmast? Square sails were for ships that sailed far, not just between local islands.
Grizel hissed a warning. Duncan heard his mother’s door creak open.
He melted into the shadowed corner behind the sea chest and stood perfectly still. What excuse could he give for being up at this hour, fully dressed, with his boots in hand? Maybe he could convince his mother that he was sleepwalking. Or maybe he could say that he was going to fill the cat’s water bowl and was carrying his boots because … he had a sudden urge to polish them?
No. He would tell his mother he was going to visit his father’s grave because he was so upset about the Academy. With any luck, that would make her feel guilty. And it was even true—the cat council was in the graveyard, after all.
Quiet footsteps approached. Duncan opened his mouth, ready to explain.
But Duncan’s mother never turned her head to look for what might be in the shadowed corner. She walked across the second-floor landing and started down the steps. As she passed, Duncan saw that she carried her shoes in her hand.
Click. Click. Sylvia McKay unlocked the door. She slipped on her shoes, tied a scarf on her head, and stepped outside. Click. Click. She locked it again.
She glanced down the street in both directions and pulled her scarf forward, as if to hide her face. Then, with a swing to her legs that had nothing hesitant about it, she walked briskly over the cobblestones toward the cliffside road. By the time Duncan gathered his wits and ran after her, she had disappeared.