The Curse of Salamander Street Read Online Free Page A

this man, then let her be. Set three men on watch about the Magenta . Tell them to shoot at anything that comes near. Whatever did this is not far away.’ His voice echoed through the eerie silence. It was as if he stood in the middle of some great, empty hall and whispered his words for all to hear. ‘Come and stare, lass. Gawp at the dead and tell me of what palsy this man died to leave him like a dry canvas and every ounce of juice gone from his veins.’
    Kate struggled to cross from the Magenta . The two ships twisted about each other as if in a dance as they slipped in the swell that spun them up the estuary towards the city. With a firm footstep, Kate planted herself upon the deck of the ship and stood beside Crane. She looked for Thomas. Crane saw her glance.
    ‘Thomas is searching the ship,’ he said in a whisper, withoutmoving his lips. ‘Whatever did this could still be aboard.’ He pointed to a bundle of rags that littered the deck just by the forward hatch. ‘If it’s still on the ship, we’ll soon find the beast.’
    Kate glared at what was once a man, lying on the deck empty-eyed and parch dry. He wore a scarlet tunic with gold braid with a large medal pinned to his chest. She could see that the skin of his face hung in jowls as if the fat had been boiled away to leave him like an empty sack.
    ‘What did this?’ she asked without thinking.
    ‘Well, he didn’t die of a broken heart,’ Crane snapped as he looked up to the high rigging, then realised he’d spoken tersely and tried to smile. ‘You’ve seen him now, best be back to the Magenta . I don’t have a good feeling for all this, Kate.’
    ‘Captain,’ came a voice from below, followed by a long groan. ‘There’s one alive.’
    Crane stepped into the hatch and quickly went below the corked and polished deck that looked as if a foot had never sullied its gleaming boards. Kate followed, wanting to stay as near as she could, fearing that something stalked the ship and secretly trusting Crane for her protection. Nothing appeared out of place. A row of fine, neatly trimmed oil lamps lit their way, the like of which she had never seen before. Crane led on as the shouts and the mutter of gathered smugglers came again and again, calling them nearer.
    They pressed on through a glistening corridor of polished wood and shining brass that stank of whale oil and gunpowder. Small cabins, all neatly trimmed and turned, led off to either side, each one lit by a small lamp pinned to the wall on a searocker. Kate looked as she passed by: upon every bed was the body of a man. Each was dressed for sea, each looked as if he had slept the river of death and had never known of his crossing. All looked the same: bodies dried with folds of skin that hung from their bones as if the fat had been boiled from them.
    ‘Here, Jacob,’ came the shout again from the midst of the gathering that filled the captain’s cabin. ‘He’s dying.’
    Crane barged his way down the long corridor that led from the hatch ladder to the cabin at the back of the ship. It opened into a long galley strung with hammock beds, neatly tied and ready for sea.
    ‘Aside, lads,’ Crane shouted as he stepped into the room with Kate on his coat tails.
    The gathering parted. There before Crane was a young man. He was slumped in the captain’s chair near to death, his head propped against a large table covered in rolled charts with a ship’s clock bolted to the wood. Behind him, two of the cabin’s windows had been smashed open. They hung from threads of wire as they gently swung in the night air. Kate could see that he was not much older than herself. He was dressed in the coat of a junior officer. He slowly raised his head from the table and tried to smile at them. The skin hung from one side of his face, but the other side appeared quite normal. To Kate, it looked as if he were two men in one, the first young and fresh, the other old and sagged.
    ‘What became of the ship?’ Crane