A Riddle in Ruby (7 page)

— Marion Coatesworth-Hay,
The Tinker's Dram,
Act II, sc. iii

“
Y
ou and me need to have a sit down, my lord.” Cram huddled under the rail between a staved-in barrel and a pile of tangled rope.

The gentleman kept his eyes on the tugboat below and did not respond.

“Lord Athen, m'lord, if I might have a moment of your time?” Aristocrats cottoned to the grovel. They lapped it up the way cats did milk, and Cram was happy
to lay on the cream when his skin was hung out to dry.

“It will have to wait.” Athen worked his way, frog style, back down the deck. Cram hoped that the boy's greatcoat might tangle his feet and pitch him to the deck. No such luck. For all his pride and distance, the dandy moved like a dancer. Then he vaulted over the railing and landed surefooted on the main deck, ten feet below.

Cram duckwalked after him. He tangled his legs over the rail, though, and flailed into a heap at Lord Athen's feet.

Athen headed for the hallway to the cabins. Cram grunted his way up to standing and called after him, “Oi. Stop.”

Athen turned. “No time for this, Cram. We need to get the girl and create a stratagem.”

“I know what to do. They's Tinkers, ain't they?” He squared his shoulders. “I worked for the Tinkers back in Boston. They're an odd lot, but they take care of their own. I'm one a their own, though low in the pecking order. Driving a coach and driving a tugboat seem savvy. I can talk to 'em.”

Athen's clear gray eyes narrowed. “And what would you talk to 'em about, Cram?”

“Well, their betters are certain lookin' for you, but maybe we can work out an arrangement with them, of the currency variety, if you catch my wind.”

“I catch your wind wherever you stand, Cram.”

That was the straw that broke it. “I just spent the better part of a day cramped and in the terror dark with you,
m'lord
.” Cram took a step forward. “Order me around like the king of Timbuktu when there's a ship of men at your back, but right now I don't see no others, and I outweigh you by two stone. Let's amble down Cram Street, or maybe I just throw you overboard, make my deal, and then yell for 'em to fish ya out.”

Cram did not see the hand darting to the hilt of the sword or the steel flashing from the scabbard. What he did see was the blade just below his chin. The point was pressing a mite too firm against his Adam's apple.

At the other end of the sword, the china of the boy's face had changed to granite. “Two stone won't do you much good if it's dead weight, Cram. Now.
We have business to attend to at speed, and you and I don't know each other very well. We have been thrown together by Providence, and perhaps we should clarify our relationship. For my part, I am heir to a very large fortune and will reward your service well when we find our way to safety. Is that clear?”

“Very clear, milord.”

“If I fall here, however, be assured that my family will seek out anyone involved with inexhaustible zeal, and they are not forgiving souls, as I am. They are suspicious and mean-spirited, and they love me very much. Also clear?”

Cram swallowed, carefully. “Like a mountain lake.”

“I doubt you have spent time in the mountains.”

“There is some truth to what you say.”

“For your part, I must now determine whether you are a scalawag, and need to be dealt with permanently and posthaste, or a coward, whom I have inspired to unswerving loyalty via the avenue of my generosity and merciful behavior.”

There was a pause.

The pressure on the blade increased ever so slightly.

“Coward, sir.” Cram assured him. “Most definitely coward.”

“Capital.” Athen smiled with what might have been relief. “You fold shirts with a rare excellence. I would hate to lose you.” He turned to hurry down the hallway.

“Sir, may I ask—”

“Not at this time.”

“Very good, sir.”

The finest tonic is a letter from home.

—Israel Cestus, captain, Her Majesty's Ship
Disbelief,
1708–1714

R
uby was stumped. Her father had considered this of utmost importance. Otherwise, he would not have sneaked the letter into her dress and given Athen the-devil-knows-what scrap of paper.

Letter of Grocery and Recipe Transfer

His Excellency

Lord Godfrey Boyle, Baron, Sc.D.

Lord High Pieman, in and over His Majesty's Royal
High Society for Improvement of Crusts and Fillings

These are to certify that the bearer of these known as Emory Athen Boyle, Esq., initiate into the arts of bakery and cutlery, acts under my Authority to travel to the New World, specifically the colonies of Bradfordum and Pennswood.

I do by virtue of the Power & Authority to me given conformable to His Majesty's pleasure expressed to me by the Right Honourable and Most Noble His Grace the Duke of P. and by the Right Honourable F. B. Authorize and Empower the said initiate maker of pastries and sundry sweets to command the assistance of any other practitioners of the noble and ancient baking arts that he may encounter in his travels.

Given under my Hand & seal of Arms

at Oven House this 6th day of Sep.

1718 in the 4th Year of His Majesty's Reign

Lord Godfrey Boyle, Sc.D.

A baker? The boy was many things—polite, mysterious, graceful, clever, arrogant—but she doubted he had ever gotten his hands dirty in his life, let alone elbow deep in a bowl of dough. And what debt would her father have to pay to some aristocratic loaf baron? It had to be a code of some sort, but she had no idea how to even begin deciphering it.

Secrets. Athen had too many of them, and he even owned one of hers, though a botched robbery was a far sight from kidnapping and murder. She stopped herself from thinking about that. “Master the Wave in Front of You.” Gwath Maxim Fifteen.

She sat on her ruined bunk and took stock. Whatever beasts and men had been on the ship had torn its insides out. They were looking for something, or someone, with a vengeance. Her room was carpeted with ripped clothing, broken boards, and smashed furniture. Some of the
Thrift'
s
walls had even been broken apart, and there were dark red stains in spots. Time for that later.

Her father's monocle was tucked in a pouch in the secret panel under her bed. Had he known all of her hidey-holes? A new wave of fear washed over her. If he had hidden it there, he had been planning on something that might take him away. Her mother's button was still there as well, looped on the piece of rawhide Skillet had given her. He had put it on hide the fourth time she had broken its delicate chain. Her father would not talk about the button, except to say that it was her mother's. It had a
faint ivory finish, never scratched, and was unbreakable. You could drop a barrel of anvils on it, and it would come out unmarked. There were no paintings of her mother on the ship. She had left when Ruby was very young, and Ruby did not remember her.

She squashed that feeling down, too. No time for woolgathering.

She pulled the loop over her neck and a dress on over the shirt and breeches. She slipped her knives into the hidden sheaths sewn into the lining.

She tucked the letter into the waist of the breeches. She stowed the tinker's lamp and the eyepiece into a carpenter's bag from the mates' cabin across the hall and slung it across her shoulders as she stood.

The door hung on one hinge, but it opened all right, and she stepped out into the hallway. Athen was there, Cram behind him. She didn't want to go back into her room. It would have been going back to something lost. She had left.

Lord Athen spoke first. “War council?”

Cram cringed. “Milord, perhaps the young miss
wishes to wait here while we, er, manage things?”

“She is made of sterner stuff than you might think, Cram, and we will need all of our assets in the coming fracas.”

“Aye, sir.” Cram nodded sagely. “And, um, what is ‘fracas'?”

“A fight,” Ruby put in. “We have to hurry before we come to ground wherever they are taking us. We need to find out where they spirited my father, and whoever is at the wheel of that scow may know.”

“A scow is—”

“The tugboat, Cram.”

“Thank you, miss.”

Cram shuffled his feet.

“Spirited?”

“Kidnapped.”

“Ah.”

Fat Maggie had seen better days. The wooden figurehead at the prow of the vessel was a wide sea wench of the old Portuguese style, and all the crew had loved everything
about her, including her girth. Ruby was sad to see her shoulder and part of her chest sheared clean away. A wayward warning shot or some strange chemystral engine? In any case, Fat Mags easily hid the three of them behind her ample waist as they spied on the small boat at the other end of the gooey gray tow ropes.

It was tiny. In length you could have lined up five front to back and not matched the
Thrift
. It was very wide, though, and had a large, active, and churning paddle wheel at its rear. There was no sail, not even a mast. No colors, though on top of the little freestanding cabin at its prow was an empty flagpole. Whoever was piloting it was brilliant, towing the
Thrift
like this on the open sea.

Athen held out the monocle to Ruby. “Just to the right of the wheelhouse.”

She took it and moved to the rail, focusing on the little boat. The green metal warmed under her fingers, and the chem sloshed around inside it, and the picture cleared. The tug was a length of the
Thrift
away, and everything was big as life.

She was, however, looking at the waterfall rolling from
the paddle wheel. She panned past the windowless wooden planks of the back of the wheelhouse, and indeed, the edge of a foot was sticking out of the doorway. “Bare feet and dingy trousers mean a sailor, not a soldier,” she said.

“From the size of that thing, no more than two or three others.” Athen mused aloud. “We've lost the greater part of the day, and we have one foot and a glimpse of trouser to show for it.”

Ruby nodded. “Time is pressing. Who knows if we strike land tomorrow or if that ship's momma comes back to cuddle?”

Lord Athen ran his hand along the gray hawser. “This rope has good purchase. It might be possible to climb across to get a better look.”

“Begging your pardon, milord, but you'd be plucked like washing on a line if that fella or fellas pokes his head out the door to take a breath of fresh air,” Cram said.

“He's right,” Ruby said, and began winding a piece of twine from the deck into her hair to make a pigtail.

“So what would you have us do?” Athen demanded. “Just sit here and wait until we reach our destination,
whatsoever it may be? If they find us, Cram, I assure you it will not go well.”

“What about the money? Like I said, no disrespect, sir, but a few shillings here, a few pounds there . . .”

“Do I need to remind you of our previous conversation?”

Cram casually brushed the front of his neck. “No, indeed. Just trying to help, sir.”

“If I don't go down that rope, and maybe you two as well, we're prisoners. Is there any other option?”

Ruby finished her other pigtail. “I have one,” she said, and climbed up on the railing, holding on to the blown-off edge of Fat Maggie's shoulder. The churning frenzy of the ocean waited far below.

Athen, eyes wide, looked up at her. “What are you doing?”

“Help!” she screamed over the water as loud as she could. “Heeeeeeeelllp!”

“Ruby, stop!” Athen grabbed at her leg, but she kicked back and caught him a good one in the forehead. Mostly unintentionally.

She heard him sprawl back to the deck, and she muttered in a low voice, “Don't. You'll ruin the sharp. I'm the only one they can see, and I'm a terrified girl in desperate need of saving.”

She yelled again, “Help me!”

Sound carries well over water. A grizzled old sailor stuck his head out of the wheelhouse and looked back at her. His eyes turned into saucers when he saw a young girl in pigtails trapped against the very front of the empty ship that they'd been towing through the empty ocean for the better part of two days. This was what Gwath meant when he said to her once, “You show the target a scene so ridiculous that it must be true.”

The sailor's head ducked back inside the wheelhouse as if his gray hair had been set afire, and then another head popped out: a bigger, younger one. The head had a haystack of blond hair and perched atop the shoulders of a huge cat of a man. He looked up at her across the span of water, and he began to laugh. He laughed for a good long time.

Ruby began to think that perhaps she might have
made a mistake. She threw in another “Heeeelp!” and a little scream for good measure.

He cupped one scarred hand to his mouth. “Ahoy,
Thrift
!” he bellowed. “Bide your time and we'll find a way to get you down.”

And then he waggled his finger at her like a sweet old schoolmaster. “We've been looking for you, Ruby Teach!”