Printer's Devil (9780316167826) (8 page)

This didn’t make any sense to me. If it was the name of a place, it was nowhere I had ever heard of. The writing was faded
and it was hard to be sure of the exact letters: it might possibly have said “Oomyata,” or, in a pinch, “Damyalu.” But whatever
combination of letters I tried, I couldn’t make it mean anything. I folded it up again with a shrug.

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.

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.