“Concort’s the First Mate,” he confided to Arthur as they climbed the side. “Amiable, but hen-witted. Like most of this lot he was with the Moth when it was a counting house. Chief Clerk. You’d think after several thousand years at sea he’d have learned … but I’m misspeaking meself. Up you go!”
Arthur was pushed up and over the rail. He fell on to the deck, unable to get his bad leg in place in time. Before he could get up himself, Sunscorch gripped him under each elbow and yanked him upright, shouting at the same time.
“Ichabod! Ichabod! Take our passenger to the Captain! And get him a blanket!”
A thin, non-tattooed Denizen neatly dressed in a blue waistcoat and an almost white shirt stepped out of the throng of panicking sailors and bowed slightly to Arthur. He was thinner than most of the other Denizens and moved very precisely, as if he was following some mysterious dance pattern in his head.
“Please step this way,” he said, doing an about-turn that was almost a pirouette and would have looked more in keeping on a stage than on the shifting deck of a ship.
Arthur obediently followed the Denizen, who was presumably Ichabod. Behind him, Sunscorch was yelling and slapping the backs of heads.
“Port watch aloft! Prepare to make sail! Starboard watch to the guns and boarding stations!”
“Very noisy, these sailors,” said Ichabod. “Mind your head.”
The Denizen ducked as he stepped through a narrow doorway. Though Arthur was considerably shorter, he had to bend his head down too. They were in a short, dark, narrow corridor with a very low ceiling.
“Aren’t you a sailor?” asked Arthur.
“I’m the Captain’s Steward,” replied Ichabod severely. “I was his gentleman’s gentleman when we were ashore.”
“His what?”
“What is sometimes called a valet,” replied Ichabod as he opened the door at the other end, only a few yards away. The Denizen stepped through, with Arthur at his heels.
The room beyond the door was not what Arthur expected. It was far too big to be inside the ship, for a start: a huge, whitewashed space at least eighty feet long and sixty feet wide, with a decorated plaster ceiling twenty feet above, complete with a fifty-candle chandelier of cut crystal in the middle.
There was a mahogany desk right in the middle of the room with a green-shaded gas lantern on it, and a long row of glass-topped display cases all along one wall, each illuminated by its own gently hissing gaslight. In the far corner, there was a curtained four-poster bed with a blanket box at its foot, a standing screen painted with a nautical scene, and a large oak-panelled wardrobe with mirrored doors.
It was also absolutely quiet and completely stable. All the noise of the crew and the sea had vanished as soon as the door was shut behind Arthur, as had the constant roll and sway of the deck.
“How—”
Ichabod knew what Arthur was asking before the boy even got the question out.
“This is one of the original rooms. When the Deluge came and we had to turn the counting house into a ship, this room refused to transform to something more useful, like a gun deck. Eventually Dr Scamandros managed to connect it to the aft passageway, but it isn’t really in the ship.”
“Where is it, then?”
“We’re not entirely sure. Probably not where it used to be, since the old counting house site is well submerged. The Captain thinks that this room must have been personally supervised by the Architect and retained some of Her virtue. It lies within the House, that’s for sure, not out in the Realms.”
“You’re not worried that it might get cut off from the ship?” asked Arthur as they walked over to the bed. The curtains were drawn and Arthur could hear snoring behind them. Not horrendous “I can’t bear to hear it” snoring, but occasional drawn-out snorts and wheezes.
“Not at all,” said Ichabod. “The ship is still mostly the counting house, albeit long-transformed and changed. This room is of the counting house, so it will always be connected somehow. If the passageway falls off, some other way will open.”
“Through the wardrobe maybe,” said Arthur.
Ichabod looked at him sternly, his eyebrows contracting to almost meet above his nose.
“I doubt that, young mortal. That is where I keep the Captain’s clothes. It is not a thoroughfare of any kind.”
“Sorry,” said Arthur. “I was only…”
His voice trailed off as Ichabod’s eyebrows did not return to a more friendly position. There was a frosty silence for a few seconds, then the Denizen twitched his nose as if something had irritated his nostrils, and bent down to open the blanket box.
“Here is a blanket,” he said unnecessarily, handing it to Arthur. “I suggest you wrap yourself in it. It may stop that shivering. Unless of course it is merely an affectation.”
“Oh, thanks,” said Arthur. He hadn’t realised he was shivering, but now that Ichabod mentioned it, he realised he was very cold, and little tremors were running up and down his arms and legs. The heavy blanket was very welcome. “I am cold. I might even have a cold.”
“Really?” asked Ichabod, suddenly interested. “We must tell Dr Scamandros. But first I suppose I should wake the Captain.”
“I’m already awake,” said a voice behind the curtain. A quiet, calm voice. “We have a visitor, I see. Anything else to report, Ichabod?”
“Mister Sunscorch is of the opinion that we are being pursued by the awful pirate Feverfew, on account of stealing one of his treasure chests.”
“Ah,” said the voice. “Is Mister Sunscorch doing … um … things with the sails and so on? So we can, ah, flee?”
“Yes, sir,” said Ichabod. “May I present the potential passenger Mister Sunscorch took aboard from Feverfew’s buoy? He is a boy and, I believe I am correct in assuming, a true mortal. Not one of the Piper’s children.”
“Yes,” said Arthur.
“First things first, Ichabod,” came the reply. “Second-best boots, third-best coat and my, ah, sword. The proper one with the, err, sharpened blade.”
“The sharpened blade? Is that wise, sir?”
“Yes, yes. If, ah, Feverfew catches us … now, mortal boy, what is your name?”
“My name is—look ou—!” said Arthur as Ichabod walked straight into the wardrobe mirror. But the Denizen didn’t hit it. He went right through, like a diver into a pool of still water, the silvered glass rippling as he passed.
“Lookow?” asked the Captain.
“Sorry, I got distracted,” said Arthur. “My name is Arth.”
“Lookow sounds better than Arth,” said the Captain. “Pity. Names can be a terrible burden. Take mine, for example. It’s Catapillow. Captain Catapillow, at your service.”
“Caterpillar?” asked Arthur, not sure he’d heard it right through the bed’s curtains.
“No! Cat-ah-pillow. See what I mean? Suitable name for the manager of a counting house, but hardly the stuff of nautical legend.”
“Why don’t you change it?”
“Officers not allowed to,” came the muffled reply. “Name was issued by the Architect. Inscribed in the Register of Precedence. That’s why I’m Captain. Most senior aboard, 38,598th in precedence within the House. Prefer not to be, but no choice in the matter. Mister Sunscorch is, um, the only professional sailor aboard. Boots?”
“Here they are, sir,” said Ichabod, inserting boots, coat and sword between the curtains. Arthur hadn’t seen him come back through the mirrored door of the wardrobe, but there he was.
There was a muffled curse from the bed and the curtains billowed out. Then the boots thrust out under them, half on Captain Catapillow’s feet. Ichabod helped him ease them on all the way, and Catapillow slid out of the bed and stood up and bowed to Arthur.
He was tall, but not as tall as Dame Primus or Monday’s Noon. He was also not particularly handsome, though not exactly ugly either. He didn’t have any tattoos, or at least none visible. He just looked very plain and ordinary, with a rather vacant face under a short white wig with a kind of ponytail at the back tied with a blue ribbon. His blue coat was quite faded and he only had one gold epaulette, on his left shoulder.
