Da Vinci's Cat

by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

  “Hi, Mom. I hope your speech is good, everything’s great here. I um—” Should she mention crawling into Miss Bother’s kitchen and calling an ambulance? Hard to sum that up. “Just letting you know I’m okay and I’ll be home soon—I mean, home is great. I’m here now. Bye.” She hung up the phone before she said anything worse. Why did she have to mention the home thing?

  Now she was going to have to call Moo. She sighed, picking up the phone—

  And stepped on the tuna fish sandwich.

  “Eww!” The tuna squished up the sides of her high-top, almost touching the fabric. “That’s so gross!” She glared around the living room but of course the cat was gone. Cats always skipped out on trouble.

  Holding her nose, Bee hopped into the kitchen and jammed her leg into the sink. She hated the smell of tuna fish. “This is my favorite shoe, you dumb cat,” she muttered, scrubbing the violet fabric. Bits of soggy bread stuck to the dishes in the sink. Yuck. She stomped back into the living room. “Dumb cat,” she repeated.

  Her eyes drifted toward the dining room. The peacock painting.

  She needed to call Moo. She should go home and call Moo from there. And she would, right away. But first she needed one more look at the drawing. Her drawing. Her Raphael. Five minutes: that’s all. She deserved it, really, because of the tuna fish.

  She crossed the hall, watching where she stepped just in case, and flicked on the dining room lights. The table had a pile of envelopes with words like URGENT and OPEN IMMEDIATELY. One end of the room had a brown folding screen. The curtains hung heavy with dust.

  Quick as she could, Bee dragged a chair to the fireplace and climbed up, feeling for the latch. The peacock painting swung out. . . .

  And there it was. A sketch more than a drawing, of a girl with dark curls and a face full of sadness.

  Bee leaned in, studying it. She touched the scar on her own cheek. Thanks to the scar, she now knew the Italian word for can opener—l’apriscatole—and for stitches—suture. The girl in the drawing had curly hair the same length as hers. And a mole under her eye, and a small scratch on her neck. . . .

  Wait—Bee had a scratch on her neck?

  Carefully she climbed off the chair, heading for the mirror beside the front door. Yup, there it was: a scratch from climbing the tree. She hadn’t even noticed. It was almost healed, but not quite.

  It was like the drawing had been made of her today.

  She stared at herself in the dim light. Mom had straight hair that always looked like a haircut, but Bee and Moo both had nothing but curls. Everyone thought Bee came from Moo because of the hair. Sometimes Mom found it funny. Sometimes she didn’t.

  Bee marched back to the dining room and onto the chair. The girl’s hair was, like, exactly the same. “What is going on?” she murmured. “Where did he find you?”

  “Mrow.”

  Bee jerked in fright, grabbing the mantel just in time.

  The yellow cat stood in the doorway, tail waving.

  “You almost killed me!”

  The cat wandered to the far end of the dining room, behind the folding screen painted with roses and pigeons brown with age.

  Bee crawled off the chair. “Get out of here!” She stomped after the cat. “Wait, what?”

  Behind the screen was a bed—a narrow little bed with a creased pillow and rumpled sheets. This was where Miss Bother slept? A huge house, and she slept here?

  Oh. Oh, wow. Miss Bother slept in the dining room. She couldn’t climb the stairs. That’s why she fell. Because she hadn’t climbed in so long, and then she tried.

  Bee felt sick. This was really, really wrong. Didn’t Miss Bother have a family? Didn’t she have someone to help her?

  “Mrow,” the cat called from the hall.

  “Hey! You. Juno.” Although it couldn’t be Juno, because that was Miss Bother’s father’s cat from a million years ago. “You shouldn’t be here,” Bee said crossly. “We shouldn’t be here.” Her five minutes were over.

  “Mrow.” The cat trotted up the stairs.

  “Oh no, you don’t. This isn’t your house.” The stairs were so dusty that Bee could see the cat’s paw prints. Footprints, too, on the first couple of steps—hers and Miss Bother’s. Then one step with a handprint and a smudge.

  That’s where Miss Bother had fallen. Bee stared at it, skin prickling. Miss Bother hadn’t used these stairs for years, maybe. And then she’d decided to climb them today. . . .

  “Mrow,” the cat called from the landing.

  Why today? Because the cat was here? Because Bee was? Because of the drawing?

  “Mrow.” Maybe the cat was trying to tell her something. Show her. Maybe—just maybe—it was a sign.

  Bee couldn’t stop. Not now.

  Up she climbed after the cat, to the second floor and a bedroom with a dark wood bed. “Cat?” The dresser had a man’s watch and a pen lying out like a display in a museum. A painting hung above the dresser, an H BOTHER painting of a hospital bed and a girl who looked very sick. But the hospital table held a bouquet of flowers, and the girl’s quilt was full of color.

  “Miss Bother,” Bee breathed.

  “Mrow. . . .”

  Oh, right. The cat. Bee followed the noise through the bedroom into a bathroom with a yellowed claw-foot tub. The cat stood on the edge of the sink, batting the faucet. “Mrow.”

  “What is it? Oh. You’re thirsty.” With effort, Bee turned on the water.

  The cat cocked its head, lapping away. “Mrow,” it mumbled. Possibly Thank you. Possibly.

  A toothbrush lay neatly on the sink next to a rusty white and red can—another museum display. “Colgate Tooth Powder,” Bee read out loud. “How cool is that? People used to brush their teeth with powder.”

  The cat trotted away.

  Bee turned off the faucet. “Hey, wait up.” By the time she made it out of the bedroom, the cat was halfway to the third floor.

  Bee paused. She really didn’t think she should be here. But—

  “Mrow.”

  “Okay.” She flicked on the staircase lights. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  The third floor was seriously creepy—an attic, really, more than a floor. A tarnished chandelier barely lit the sloping ceiling. One wall held a built-in bookcase iced with dust. A low door was tucked under the eaves.

  “Juno?” Bee didn’t like that low dark door. It looked like a little cage.

  But no mrow. No pad of paws. The house stood silent.

  Bee eased her way to the bookcase. It had a whole shelf of Art Bulletin, and another shelf of books with tattered yellow covers.

  “Look at that!” Bee whispered, tickled in spite of herself. “Nancy Drew.” She loved Nancy Drew. Nancy Drew would be a pretty good buddy right now. “Hey, cat, where are you?”

  What would Nancy Drew do? Bee needed to think like a detective.

  She dropped to her hands and knees, peering across the dust. There: a trail of paw prints leading from the stairs to the bookcase . . . and into the bookcase. Like the cat just vanished.

  Bee smacked her forehead. The bookcase must have a secret opening! Nancy Drew would have figured it out right away. In fact, Bee could see a space on the bottom shelf, between two books, with a hole behind it. She could hear an echoing mrow.

  “This is so cool. Thank you, cat.” She poked at the shelves, feeling for a latch. She pulled out the books where a doorknob should be. Nothing.

  There were, like, hundreds of books. Italian poetry. Guidebooks. Titles like A Morning Glory in the Thorns and The Lives of the Artists—

  Huh. The Lives of the Artists. That seemed like the kind of book Moo and Mom would read . . . or Miss Bother’s father.

  Bee eased the book from its shelf.

  A click. The bookcase swung in.

  Chapter 14

  The Office

  Bee peered into the dark space. Two yellow eyes glowed back. . . .

  “Mrow.”

  The cat. “That’s funny,” Bee sa
id, in case anyone thought she’d been scared. She felt the wall for a switch. There had to be a switch, right? And there it was, whew.

  The light revealed a room with just enough space for a desk and a huge wooden crate. Dust and cobwebs covered everything: the desk, an old phone, a calendar pinned to the wall. Bee could barely read the date: June 1942. “This is incredible,” she whispered.

  “Mrow,” the cat agreed, curling around her ankles.

  And the crate: wow. It was covered with weird decorations and even had a door, kind of. But when Bee opened it, there was nothing inside.

  She turned to the desk. A picture hung above it, one of those old engravings of a guy with a puffy coat and a beard. In the center of the desk sat the thickest book Bee had ever seen. Dusty bookmarks poked out of the pages. With trembling hands, she wiped off the dust. “This is it, cat. This is it.” She sounded out the title, doing her best with the fancy lettering: “Enn Sick Lope—no, En Cy Clo. . . . Oh.” Her shoulders dropped. “Encyclopedia.” She’d thought it was a book of magic.

  The cat jumped onto the desk, leaving a trail of paw prints. “Mrow?”

  The cat was right. The book still might be interesting. With effort, Bee opened to a bookmark. The page began with MANTA and ended with MAORI. The entry for MANTUA had been circled.

  “Mrow?”

  “I don’t know Mantua. Do you?” She flipped to another bookmark: MICHELANGELO. “Hey, I know that one.” Everyone knew Michelangelo. She turned to a third: GONZAGA. Whatever.

  “Mrow.” The cat jumped off the desk.

  “You said it.” Bee pushed the book away. “Can you imagine having to use that to look stuff up? It’d take forever.” The internet was so much better.

  She peered at yellowed note cards pinned over the desk, each thumbtack with a halo of rust. NO TIME PASSES, one said. Another asked HOW DOES THE CAT MOVE?

  Bee laughed. “With its legs, duh.” There were drawings, too—arrows bouncing off walls and water, a cube-thing. . . .

  “Mrow.” The cat pawed at the crate, trying to open the door.

  “I already looked. Nothing there.” Bee opened the desk drawer—a squeaky metal drawer to match the old metal desk. It was filled with candy in little wrapped parcels. “Hey, look. ‘Choco-nutties.’” Bee felt like an archeologist. A candy archeologist, finding ancient candy!

  She shook a package. A stream of dead flies fell out. Hastily she slammed the drawer shut, scrubbing her hands on her leggings. “Eww.”

  “Mrow,” the cat insisted.

  “I told you, there’s nothing in there.” She opened the door of the crate: “See? Nothing.”

  “Mrow,” the cat agreed.

  Now that Bee thought about it, the crate was pretty weird. It was taller than she was, for one thing. It looked kind of like an antique, with those symbols and a fancy black latch. The door had balls of glass built right into the wood.

  Again she peered inside. The back wall had eight small mirrors. And inside the door, kind of pinned to the wood, was a larger glass ball, this one with liquid sealed inside it. “Weird.”

  “Mrow.”

  Bee turned back to the note cards. There: mirrors, water, arrows. Wait—those weren’t arrows. They were rays of light. She raced back to check the crate. Light definitely went through the glass balls. “Look at that.”

  The cat stretched, yawning so hard that it squeaked.

  Bee frowned at the crate. Why was it here? With some caution this time, she opened the door. Nothing inside except the mirrors and that weird thing of water.

  The crate didn’t have a rod for hangers. It didn’t even have hooks.

  It didn’t, for example, hold a bunch of fur coats. . . .

  But still, Bee knew. This wasn’t a crate. It was a wardrobe, in the secret room of a crazy old house. “Narnia!” she gasped. “It’s the wardrobe to Narnia.” She stared at it, her mind spinning. All her life she’d dreamed of Narnia. What if she could meet Aslan and Mr. Tumnus? What if she saw Lucy?

  The cat swiped at the spirally phone cord dangling off the desk. “Mrow—tch!”

  “That’s really dusty,” Bee pointed out. “No wonder you’re sneezing.” The phone itself was so covered in dust that she couldn’t read the numbers in the holes.

  The phone. . . .

  Oh, no—Bee hadn’t called Moo! How long had it been? Maybe Moo was still on the train. “Please don’t be mad,” Bee begged. Scrunching up her face, she blew the dust off the phone. “Seven . . . one . . . eight,” she dialed.

  The cat wandered back to the crate-thing, patting the door. “Mrow.”

  Bee paused, her finger in the 6 MNO hole. She glanced at the staircase, visible through the half-open bookcase, and back at the crate. “It’s a wardrobe. It has to be.”

  “Mrow.” It was like the cat was saying Of course it is. You need to try it.

  Bee hung up the phone. “You’re right. I should at least try.” She wiped her hands on her T-shirt. Two seconds. That’s all it would take. It wouldn’t work, but still, she had to try. Then she’d call Moo and tell her the whole story, and they’d make cookies together, and pizza with fresh mozzarella.

  She opened the wardrobe door, making the water slosh in that weird glass globe. The eight mirrors gleamed dimly. “Coming?” she asked the cat.

  The cat settled back on its haunches. “Mrow.”

  “Suit yourself.” With a deep breath, she stepped inside.

  She pulled the door shut.

  She stood, waiting.

  The eight glass balls glowed, just a little bit. Dust motes floated through pale rays of light. The swirling water glimmered ever so slightly. The mirrors glimmered, too.

  The air smelled of dust and dry old wood.

  Something was supposed to happen. Bee just knew it.

  But she felt nothing. Nothing moved.

  Faintly, through the wood: “Mrow?”

  With a deep sigh, she opened the door. What a bummer.

  The cat was sitting on the desk now, tail curled round its paws as it yawned.

  “It didn’t work.” She stared glumly at the cat. “Okay. One more time.” Bee shut the door—more firmly now. She made sure the latch clicked.

  Nothing.

  “Never mind,” she sighed. She lifted the latch—

  And screamed as she fell into darkness.

  Chapter 15

  One Very Sloppy Page

  Federico paced the corridor as the bells of Santo Spirito rang midnight, his lantern sending anxious shapes across the closet door. In his other hand he gripped the key to the Sistine Chapel. He had so much to tell Herbert! How Herbert would laugh at Federico’s tale of stealing the key—

  No, Federico corrected himself with a smile. Not stealing: obtaining. To steal was wicked. He had simply borrowed the key for the sake of art. What better cause could there be? He’d return it, naturally. But only after he and Herbert—and Juno!—had climbed the scaffolding of the Sistine Chapel and admired Michelangelo’s ceiling together.

  Bonngg, went the bells. How many times had they rung? No matter; he’d see Herbert soon enough, with Juno in his arms. The thought of Juno made Federico smile doubly. Perhaps he could sneak her a treat from Master Bramante’s plate—from under the architect’s snoring nose. Obviously, the cat should not have run into the closet like that, particularly after he’d told her to stop. But now he knew better. Next time he’d make sure to keep her safe in his bedroom.

  The last notes of Santo Spirito faded, so softly that the whole world seemed to end. Cautiously Federico opened the closet door. . . .

  Empty.

  Anxiety seeped from his belly to his throat. Where was Herbert?

  Bonngg, went the bells of Santa Rufina. “At last,” Federico whispered, wiping his forehead. Between each echoing toll, he listened. Was that a footstep?

  Unable to wait a moment longer, he ripped open the door.

  A boy fell out. A grimy young page. “Ow!” he howled, tumbling into the stack of tiles.
/>   Federico checked the closet: still empty. “Where is ’Erbert?” he snapped, slipping the Sistine key into his cloak’s secret pocket. One must hide everything of importance from pages.

  The page sat rubbing his shin, muttering words Federico did not understand.

  “Where is ’Erbert?” Federico repeated. “Where is Juno?”

  “You know Italian? Wait—did you say Juno? And who’s Erbert?” The page spoke with a coarse accent that Federico did not care for at all. Worse still was his uniform: old black hose and a shapeless jerkin with a crude crown symbol that Federico did not recognize, and he knew dozens of insignia. And the shoes! Two colors, to be certain, but made from cloth, with dirty edges and shapeless round toes, the laces uglier than ever he’d seen. Worst of all, the page had no cap.

  “’Erbert. Meester Hh-er-bert Bot-ther,” Federico spelled out.

  “You mean Herbert Bother? Herbert Bother came here? Huh.” The page turned to stare at the closet.

  “Yes. Where is he?”

  But now the page was gaping at the corridor with its fine columns, at the marble floor and half-finished roof. “It worked,” he whispered.

  “I said, where is he?”

  The page leaped to his feet. “I’m in Narnia!”

  “What are you talking about?” Federico snapped. “You’re in Rome, you fool. In the year of our Lord 1511.” Herbert had appreciated that detail.

  “I’m in Narnia!” The boy grabbed Federico. “Hey, are you Lucy?”

  Federico snatched his arm away. “I am Sir Federico Gonzaga, heir to the throne of Mantua.”

  The page gawked at Federico’s hose and shoulder-length hair. “Wait—you’re not a girl?”

  That did it. Federico had no choice but to slap him.

  “Ow!” the page cried as if he’d never been struck—impossible, given his stupidity. “You hit me.”

  “I slapped you,” Federico corrected. “And I’ll slap you again if you do not behave. Here—”