A Catch of Imperial Wool

The screeching gulls made a deafening canopy overhead, wheeling low across the mud to feast on the spilled silver bellies of Barnaby’s salted mackerel. Captain Bramblefoot remained on his knees for two humiliating seconds, spitting silt and briny fish oil from his mustache, before scrambling upright with an unconvincing air of dignity.

"An unforeseen maritime disturbance, nothing more!" Bramblefoot announced, clutching the enormous ox-hide volume against his grease-smeared waistcoat. "The channel bed is notoriously treacherous on the flood, my good man. We were merely lending an expert hand with your cargo."

Barnaby did not look persuaded. Broad-shouldered beneath his stiff, oilcloth smock, the fishmonger planted his boots in the gray riverbank mud, his six-foot measuring pole gripped like an executioner’s billhook. "You smashed my tailgate, you river-rat. You knocked thirty prime fish into the soup, and now you’re standing in my channel making speeches."

Behind the captain, Jory struggled to haul his legs out of the clutching muck, keeping one hand clamped securely over the pocket that held the warm, green-glass jar. Beside him, Pip crouched among the withered reeds, eyeing the harbor walls half a furlong off where the bell of the customs house still echoed faintly against the stone. If Sergeant Corin’s watchmen looked over the parapet now, they would see a farce in full daylight.

"The cargo can be tallied! Assessed and repaid!" Bramblefoot insisted, backing toward a slightly firmer hummock of salt-grass. The ox-hide ledger had absorbed half the river and weighed as much as an anchor; dirty brown water dribbled steadily from its swollen boards, dripping across the captain's knuckles. "Jory, hold the spine.Pip, take the flap. If we let the silt dry between the leaves, we’ll never read Master Garrow’s private notes."

"Captain, don't shake it," Jory hissed, lunging forward. "The glue's half eaten by those bloody crabs—"

Bramblefoot gave the massive book an authoritative, brisk snap to clear the binding of ditch water. The rotted stitching, boiled animal glue, and brine-soaked thread failed all at once. With a dull tearing sound, a sodden corner tore clean away, and a loose sheet of heavy calfskin parchment tore free, catching a salt-laden gust from the outer roadstead.

It fluttered, dipped like a wounded gull, and skimbed across the surface of the brackish eddy, drifting straight into the bed of yellowed rushes.

"Catch it!" Bramblefoot yelled, lunging forward and immediately sinking past his ankles into black slime.

"I'm not diving in there," Pip squeaked, clutching his knees. "The big one with the red claws went right into that clump!"

Before Jory could scramble across the hummock, Barnaby moved. With the easy, practiced grace of a man who spent his life probing eel-holes and measuring dockyard drafts, the fishmonger swung his notched ash-wood pole out over the water. The brass-shod tip cut through the surface scum, neatly spearing the floating leaf against a thick bundle of reeds before the current could suck it down into the silt.