The Unseen Guest Read online

  She watched as they carried the last of the kindling to the woodpile, bounding on all fours with sticks in their mouths and looking for all the world like a trio of joyful puppies playing a game of fetch.

  What if they decided they much preferred the muffled sounds of the forest, the soft, springy moss beneath their feet, the scent of a tasty field mouse on the breeze—the howl of the wild, if you will—to the world of books and poetry and socially useful phrases that Penelope had so painstakingly and lovingly introduced them to?

  What if they never wanted to go back to Ashton Place at all?

  THE MORNING HAD BEEN BRIGHT, but now that nightfall was upon them, strange winds were kicking up. One did not have to be a sailor to tell that a storm was brewing. Spending a night or two outdoors in a securely pitched tent was a tolerable idea, but thunder? Lightning? Penelope was fully prepared to fend off a bear with a stick, carve a canoe out of a fallen tree trunk, and teach long division with acorns, but if there should be a violent storm during the night, she did not think she would be able to manage without hiding under the covers of her bedroll, and what would the children think of that?

  The Incorrigibles seemed untroubled by the rapidly changing weather. The campfire was ablaze, a hearty dinner had been cooked and eaten (fashioned from the provisions they had packed and a few fat squab the children had wordlessly produced, although their proud faces and the tiny feathers stuck to their clothes said as much as needed to be said). Alexander had even filled a small, portable tin kettle with water from a nearby stream so Penelope could put it on to boil for tea.

  Despite her worries, she had to admit it was rather pleasant to finally take off her boots and relax with a full tummy in the flickering light, listening to the pop and crackle of the fire. The admiral was in his tent, reviewing the maps of the forest the children had drawn for him so he might plot a course for the morning. And it was not raining yet; perhaps the storm would pass over them without shedding a drop.

  Penelope felt a glimmer of her old optimism coming back. “Who would like a bedtime book?” she asked, and when the children responded with enthusiasm, she smiled. “Very well. Let us tidy up our campsite first, and then I shall read to you. Be quick about your chores, for I have chosen a particularly thrilling tale for the occasion, written by Mr. Daniel Defoe.”

  After the dinner plates had been rinsed, the tea poured, and everything made ready for the morrow, Penelope settled onto a large, flat rock that was somewhat shaped like a stool and close enough to the fire to have light to read by. She waited until the Incorrigibles were gathered ’round attentively, took out her book, turned to the first page, and began: “The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates.”

  “Pirates! I’ll cut them to ribbons, woof!” Cassiopeia slashed back and forth with an imaginary sword.

  “Is that the whole book?” Beowulf asked dubiously. “Not much happens.”

  Penelope squirmed; sitting on a rock was not nearly as comfortable as her cozy armchair in the nursery would be. “No, that is just the title. And look here: Underneath all that it says, ‘Written by himself.’ That is to say, we are meant to believe that Robinson Crusoe himself wrote the book.”

  Alexander looked confused. “Crusoe? No Defoe?”

  Penelope frowned and tried to explain. “The book is fiction; that is to say, a made-up story written by Mr. Defoe, but he wants us to imagine it as a true account, as if it were written down by Robinson Crusoe himself. Who was actually a character made up by Mr. Defoe.”

  “Too complicated.” Beowulf rose and peered out into the darkness. “Listen!”

  They all listened. There was a noise, not too far off. A slow crunch…crunch…crunch, like the approach of footsteps. As if someone were trying, and failing, to walk quietly on the twigs and leaves of the forest floor.

  Cassiopeia jabbed at the shadows with her stick. “Nevermore, pirates!” Before Penelope could stop her, she bounded over to the admiral’s small tent and shouted within:

  “Admiral, wake up wake up wake upahwoo! Pirates off the starboard bow, wow, woof!”

  There was a loud snore from within the tent. At Cassiopeia’s cry, the snore turned to a sputter, the sputter to a crash and then a bellowed “Blast!” The tent shook on its pegs. After a moment the admiral batted his way through the flap.

  “Who’s there, what?” he cried. “Are we under attack?”

  Penelope kept her voice calm. “We heard something, in the woods. Footsteps, possibly.”

  “Footsteps? It might be Bertha. Good news. I’ll go round her up.” He went back into the tent, still talking as he rummaged. “Hmm. I’ll need my Always Waterproof Fashion Ostrich Leash. And my Savory Pickled Ostrich Treats; those will help lure her, if she’s feeling skittish.”

  Crunch…crunch…crunch.

  The sound grew closer. The children sniffed. Alexander closed his eyes in concentration.

  “Not a bird. Not a train,” he concluded after a moment.

  “Not Mrs. Clarke, either,” Beowulf added.

  “And not Bertha,” said Cassiopeia. All three of them nodded.

  “Got my SPOTs!” The admiral emerged from the tent and began to walk into the woods, calling, “Here, Bertha old girl. Come to Fawsy. I have wittle ostrich tweats for you!”

  Penelope blocked his way. “Admiral, wait. The children do not think it is Bertha.”

  “Nonsense. Who else could it be?”

  “Pirates!” Cassiopeia yelled, slashing away with her stick.

  “Bears, perhaps—” Penelope began, but he cut her off.

  “Bears don’t frighten me. And if it is Bertha, I have no intention of letting her get away again. I’ll go investigate. You and the children stay here.” At her look of dismay, he added, “You’ll be safe, as long as you don’t wander off. Keep near the fire. Wild animals are afraid of fire.” He narrowed his eyes at the children. “Most of ’em are, anyway.”

  “Good luck, Captain Admiral, sir.” Alexander saluted, and Beowulf followed suit.

  “Get those pirates!” Cassiopeia handed him the stick she had been using as a sword.

  “Aren’t you a silly cub? Pirates don’t live in the woods.” He snapped the stick over his knee and dropped the pieces into the fire. Armed only with his AWFOL, and with his pockets crammed full of SPOTs, the admiral marched off.

  AS ANYONE WHO HAS EVER taken a camping trip knows, nighttime out-of-doors is far from silent. The crickets and cicadas make a ceaseless, deafening buzz, coyotes cry mournfully in the distance, songbirds cheep and squawk at the first hint of dawn. And then there is the sound of one’s own frightened heart, beating much too loudly as one begins to think one has made a dreadful mistake to ever leave the comforts of home.

  The four of them sat there, listening, waiting. After a few minutes, the admiral’s footsteps could no longer be heard.

  “Ostriches,” said Alexander after some more time had passed, “are not nocturnal.”

  “What an interesting bird-related fact; you must add it to the guidebook when we get home,” Penelope said with false cheer. Much as she distrusted the admiral, his absence made her feel panicky. Why was it taking him so long to come back? The children were restless, too, and their noses twitched in hopes of catching another whiff of whoever their unseen visitor had been.

  Penelope summoned her last reserves of pluck and returned to her stony seat by the fire. “Let us continue the tale of Robinson Crusoe. I will skip the title this time, since you heard it already…. In fact, I will skip the whole beginning. Nothing terribly interesting is likely to happen before the shipwreck, don’t you agree?”

  “Hespawoo,” Cassiopeia agreed, for the poem “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” which a
lso centered on a shipwreck, was a particular favorite of the children’s.

  “Shipwreck…shipwreck…let me see.” Penelope flipped the pages, looking for some passage that both she and the children might find sufficiently distracting to make them forget that the admiral had not yet returned. “Ah! This part seems rather exciting. Robinson Crusoe, having managed to survive on the Island of Despair for some years, one day finds a human footprint in the dirt, and fears there might be cannibals nearby.”

  “What are cannibals?” Beowulf asked.

  “Cannibals are people who hunt other people, in order to eat them,” she replied. “Now, about this footprint…”

  All three children made faces of disgust.

  “Pardon me, Lumawoo: If Defoe is real, and Crusoe is pretend, are cannibals real or pretend?” There was a tremor in Alexander’s voice as he asked.

  Penelope realized her error, but it was too late. “Cannibals are real,” she replied cautiously, “but there are no cannibals in England. Cannibals live in faraway places.”

  “So do ostriches,” Beowulf observed gravely. “But one is here, anyway.”

  “You do have a point, Beowulf.” Now uneasy, Penelope snapped the book shut and slipped it back into her pocket. “Perhaps we ought to read something else. I know. Would any of you like to share your poem written in the style of POE? By which I mean, Poe?”

  Alexander began at once.

  “Once upon a forest creepy, I was feeling sore and sleepy,

  Walking, walking, walking, walking. Still we had so far to go.”

  Then Beowulf chimed in.

  “I took out my pen for drawing. Suddenly there came a clawing

  As if someone started gnawing, gnawing at my pinkie toe.

  ‘’Tis a cannibal,’ I muttered, ‘sawing at my pinkie toe.’”

  With a swashbuckling gesture, Cassiopeia boldly finished:

  “Take that, Edgar Allan Poe! Woof!”

  “That—that was very good, children,” Penelope said weakly. How she wished she had brought Rainbow in Ribbons instead of Poe and Defoe! All of this doom and gloom was just making things worse.

  Cassiopeia held up a hand. “Listen.”

  Crunch…crunch…crunch…

  “Stay calm, everyone. If it is a wild animal, it will not bother us if we stay near the fire.” Penelope did not actually know if this were true, but the admiral had said it was—although it was also true that Miss Charlotte Mortimer kept a lazy calico cat named Shantaloo who would lie so close to the fire her tail would get singed and give off a nasty smell of burning fur—

  “Are cannibals afraid of fire?” Beowulf asked.

  “I do not know. I am not well acquainted with the habits of cannibals; perhaps there is some reference in the Robinson Crusoe book….” Frantically she thumbed through the pages. “Dear me, an index would have come in useful here…cannibals, cannibals…I see there are quite a few mentions, but nothing particularly about fire….”

  As she said the word “fire,” there was an earsplitting crack. Her first panicked thought was that Lord Fredrick was out hunting in the middle of the night with his rifle and had somehow found them. But another booming crack followed, and then a bright streak of lighting. The rain came down in sheets.

  The campfire sputtered; then it was out. The extinguishing of the light made Penelope cry out in alarm. Within moments she and the children were drenched.

  Alexander wiped the water from his eyes. He sniffed, and growled, and uttered a few words in the low, guttural language that he and his siblings sometimes used among themselves. “Lumawoo,” he said after the children had done conferring. “Time to go to the cave.”

  “In this weather?” she cried, although even she realized how silly a remark it was, since they were already out-of-doors.

  “Is not far,” Beowulf added reassuringly.

  Penelope weighed the options: They could stay here, sodden and cold, and wait for the admiral to return. Or they could wander off in search of a cave, in the dark of night, in a wild, soaking storm.

  Lightning flashed again, revealing the soggy pile of ash that was all that remained of the campfire. The tarpaulin she had worked so hard to put up had collapsed into a puddled heap with the first strong gust. Behind every tree Penelope imagined she saw the eyes of bloodthirsty cannibals, glinting hungrily in the dark.

  “The cave it is, then,” she said, trying to sound as if she were still in charge. “But we must all three hold hands and not let go. I do not want us to get separated in this dark wood.” Penelope had taken any number of excursions with the children in which she had warned them not wander off, but this time she knew that she was the one most likely to get lost.

  The children seemed to understand. Beowulf took her by one hand, and Cassiopeia took the other.

  Alexander paused for a moment and carefully put away his sextant; it was of no use without a star to navigate by, and the sky was so thick with storm clouds that not even the light of the full moon could penetrate. But the children knew the way.

  “To the cave,” Alexander said, pointing—at least Penelope thought he pointed; she could scarcely see two feet in front of her. Feeling as helpless and lost as if she had just been named It in a game of pin the tail on the elk, had a kerchief tied across her eyes, and been spun ’round and ’round so she could not tell right from left, Penelope allowed the Incorrigible children to lead her blindly into the dark.

  THE EIGHTH CHAPTER

  The cave holds many surprises.

  AS HAS ALREADY BEEN FIRMLY established, bears certainly do live in the woods. However, human children do not, generally speaking. The question of how the Incorrigibles survived during their early years out-of-doors was one that Penelope had been keen to answer since the day she became their governess. Sandwiches, it seemed, may have played a role. Wolves, too.

  But at the moment it was dark, and the wind was whipping about, and the rain came down in torrents, and all Penelope could think about was clinging tightly to the hands of Beowulf and Cassiopeia as they dragged her through the forest, with Alexander leading the way. The children were not frightened at all; in fact, they seemed quite merry, and by the time the foursome reached the cave, the Incorrigibles were howling and growling a little marching song of their own:

  “Hup, grrr, woof, ahwoo!

  Hup, grrr, woof, ahwoo!”

  Penelope tried to chime in at one point, to keep her spirits up, but it made the Incorrigibles laugh so hard that she stopped. Instead, she turned her full concentration to not slipping on the wet moss of the forest floor and falling into the mud.

  “Here we are. Come inside, Lumawoo,” Alexander finally announced, after what had seemed like many hours but must have been a much shorter interval than that since there was still no hint of dawn in the sky.

  “Well done, children.” Penelope felt in front of her with her outstretched hands, for she could see nothing in this pitch darkness. “How you managed to navigate through the woods in the middle of a moonless night is a mystery to me; I know Mr. Harley-Dickinson will be very impressed when I write him a letter all about it. So this is the cave, then? How does one go in? Is there—whoops, sorry! I hope I did not poke you in the eye, Beowulf—a door of some kind?”

  “This way,” Alexander said, and disappeared into a sliver of shadow that somehow seemed darker than the rest. Beowulf did the same. Cassiopeia tugged gently on her governess’s fingers.

  “Is nice cave,” the girl said. “No rain inside. Come.”

  Penelope squeezed Cassiopeia’s hand and stepped into the shadow. The soggy ground beneath her feet turned to cold stone. Somewhere in the distance and deep belowground, water trickled and plunked onto ancient rock. The darkness enveloped her like a veil of ink.

  Step by step, Cassiopeia led her onward, until Penelope could stand it no longer. “Are we in the cave?” she asked. An echo answered in the affirmative: cave cave cave cave…

  “Be right back, Lumawoo.” Cassiopeia let go of her hand, an
d Penelope did her best not to panic. (Luckily, Swanburne girls were well trained in not panicking, but even so, Penelope had to use every technique she had been taught: taking deep breaths, thinking about cake, whistling happy tunes, and so on.) There was some scrambling about, and the sound of creaking, like a rusty hinge, followed by delighted yelps from the Incorrigibles. Helpless, Penelope stood like a statue, not daring to take a step lest she tumble off some unseen precipice.

  The children, whose nighttime vision was evidently far keener than her own, seemed to be busy arranging something at her feet. “Bedtime now,” Cassiopeia said, guiding Penelope to the ground. But instead of stone, she found herself lying on a thick, soft quilt. Someone—was it Alexander?—tucked a pillow beneath her head.

  “Good night, Lumawoo,” he said. “Time to sleep.”

  “No.” She struggled to rise. “I will stand guard while you sleep. It may not be safe here.”

  “Is very safe. Friends are watching.” This time it was Beowulf who answered.

  “Friends? Which friends?”

  “Ahwoo,” the boys replied, but precisely what this meant Penelope could not tell. Cassiopeia snuggled next to her and yawned. “Sandwiches for breakfast, maybe,” she said. “Yum, yum!” Then she fell asleep.

  What else could Penelope do? She and the children were safe and out of the rain; there was a fluffy pillow beneath her head, and the promise, or at least the possibility, of a tasty meal when she awoke. So she let herself sleep, too, and dreamed only of happy things: chirping songbirds and Black Forest cake, and sweet-tempered ponies with long red ribbons braided through their silky manes.

  “Giddy-yap,” she mumbled, dreaming. “Giddy-yap, Rainbow!”

  PLUNK—PLUNK—PLUNK—

  Penelope slept deeply and much later than her usual hour, for there was no sunlight streaming in the windows to let her know that morning had arrived. She might have slept longer, after the exhausting hike of the previous day, but that plunk—plunk—plunking sound was as insistent as a blacksmith’s hammer.