The Long-Lost Home Page 17

  PENELOPE SOON GREW TO LIKE fishing. In fact, she found that she liked nearly everything about life aboard ship. It was orderly and full of purpose, much like the Swanburne Academy, if Swanburne had been a boat full of Norwegian fishermen instead of a school full of Poor Bright Females. She found comfort in the tidiness of the ship: the casks of salt lined up like obedient dogs, and the empty, scrubbed-out dories that were hoisted aboard at the end of each day’s work and neatly stacked, waiting for the dawn to come.

  Everyone had a task to do and a place to be. Each morning the men set out in the dories to cast their nets into the sea. Near sunset they returned, manfully pulling the oars as the dories rode low in the water, heavy with glistening, still-wriggling fish. The day’s catch was heaved on board and cleaned. Then the headless, gutted herring were shoveled into the ship’s hold and packed between layers of salt, to preserve them.

  There was no spare dory for Penelope, and she would not have been strong enough to row her own little boat through choppy seas in any case. Instead she sat on the deck of the Acorn with her fishing pole and cast her line over the side. Her prey was not herring, but dinner: a nice halibut, a tasty haddock, or even a scrumptious sole would do. Anything to break up the monotony of herring, salt tack, and sauerkraut at every meal.

  After a few false starts and pricked fingers, she learned to bait her hook with scraps left over from the previous night’s cleaning. She failed to catch anything, but she was never bored, for no two days were alike. Some mornings the fog came in low and thick, and swirled ’round the hull like smoke. Other days dawned so clear the air shimmered and played tricks on her eyes. Once she could have sworn she saw figures standing on tiptoe on the glittering surface of the water. “Mermaids!” she cried, but it was only a pod of dolphins, balanced upright on their tails. Their smooth, long-nosed heads nodded in time to the music of the sea, once to the right and once to the left, as if taking a bow. They leaped over the swells with the grace of a corps de ballet and plunged into the depths once more.

  Now and then a great jellyfish floated by, like an open umbrella made of glass, pulsing its way along just beneath the surface. Farther off, whales blew jets of water from their blowholes like smoke from the smokestack of a Bloomer steam locomotive. Only once did a whale come close enough for Penelope to gaze into its unfathomable eye. It was an especially large type of whale called a sperm whale; from nose to tail it was as long as the Acorn itself. (Fans of whales, books, and books about whales may already be familiar with Moby-Dick, by Mr. Herman Melville. This famous story of a sea captain obsessed with a whale is packed with symbolism, suitable for use as a doorstop in a pinch, and well worth reading, too.)

  Penelope learned to scurry up the rope rigging like a squirrel. From there she could sometimes see other boats dotting the horizon, like toys in an enormous bathtub. She learned to stand clear when the boom swung across the deck as the boat changed tack by angling into the wind till the leeward side of the sails became the windward side, or the other way ’round. She learned to clean a fish with a curved knife sharper than any sewing needle and save the fish heads for bait.

  She even learned to navigate, a little. The Acorn tacked a zigzag route through the water, searching for where the fish were plentiful. It was the movement of the sun, arcing from east to west over the course of a long Nordic day, and the whirling of the stars during the brief, dim nights, that kept Penelope knowing her right from her left, so to speak.

  She saw the northern lights, too! Ribbons of pink and green, yellow and purple and blue swirled in the night sky in a miraculous display. Why the sky glows with a whole rainbow of colors near the poles of the earth is a fascinating question, but for once Penelope did not wonder why. She simply stood in awe. The aurora borealis! How she longed for the Incorrigible children to see it! But perhaps they would get the chance someday.

  Breakfast and lunch she ate alone, for the men were out in the dories and Captain Strøm stayed at the helm, poring over the sea charts. At dinner they all gathered at a long wooden table belowdecks. There she learned the fishermen’s way of saying grace before a meal, which Alf translated for her:

  We give thanks for the fish in the sea,

  And more thanks for the fish in the hold.

  Most of all, thanks for the fish on the plate.

  Down the hatch they go!

  They all slapped their bellies at the last line. This was the cue to begin eating. After dinner the men would sing, accompanied by tin whistles and the bittersweet pluck of mandolin strings. The shanties the crew sang during the day were rhythmic work songs, good for keeping time as they hauled rope and shoveled herring into the hold, but the songs sung after dinner were full of longing and woe. Penelope could not understand the words, but she imagined they told tales of lost loves, shipwrecks, and fish that got away.

  Each night she sat in the corner on an upended bucket, eyes closed. The music washed over her and filled her with the kind of sadness that satisfies the heart the way a good meal satisfies the belly. “A touch of melancholy is to be expected aboard ship, as sailors spend most of their lives far from home. It is a hard life and a lonely one, and yet . . .” She thought of Simon, and his great love of the sea, which she had now begun to understand. “. . . it does have its charms.”

  IN THIS WAY THE DAYS passed. Soon Penelope had spent more than a week at sea. From the sun and stars she knew they were heading in the right direction, at least. From the moon she knew she was running out of time.

  One night she awoke with a start. She had dreamed that the man in the moon had Edward Ashton’s face and followed her everywhere she went. It took a few deep calming breaths and some basic astronomy for her to recover, for it happened to be the night of the new moon, when the last sliver of waning crescent is snuffed out and the moon is invisible to the eye.

  “For tonight at least, there is no one watching and nothing to fear,” she told herself. “Yet if tonight is the new moon, it has been two weeks and a day since I left Plinkst. And there are only two weeks left till the first full moon of May, when Lady Constance is due to give birth. How will I ever get back to England in time?” There was no going back to sleep after that. Near dawn she finally dozed off, but by then it was time to get up and get to work.

  Thus preoccupied with worry and hazy minded from lack of sleep, Penelope gathered her fishing pole, bait, and bucket. The dories were still neatly stacked. The sun was above the horizon, and the weather was fair enough, if breezy, but the men had not gone out to fish. Some were doing chores on deck or in the galley, but most were down in the hold, packing the salted herring into empty barrels.

  She might have wondered why this was so, but her mind was still on the moon. Penelope settled in her usual spot, pole in hand, and watched her cork fishing float dance on the water’s surface. If a fish bit the hook, the float would get pulled under. Her job was to wait for this momentous event to occur, after which she would do her best to reel in the fish. That was the idea, at least. So far the float had only gone down when her line tangled in seaweed, or because a sea crab had nibbled at the bait until there was only a thread of gristle left. Then she had to start over by putting a fresh fish head on the hook and casting it out once more.

  Before long Alf appeared at her side. He glanced into the bucket of seawater she kept at her feet, in case she caught anything.

  “Not yet,” she said, in answer to his quizzical look, “but I am beginning to feel quite close to catching a fish. Today might just be the day!”

  “Nope.” Alf jerked his head toward the helm. “Strøm,” he said. All the men referred to the captain as Strøm. Two words would be one word too many for a man so silent.

  Penelope put down her pole and made off at a trot, for by now she knew that walking was no way for a sailor to obey a summons from the captain. Strøm was at the wheel, gazing outward. He stood with ease, as if the ship was in a dead calm, but the seas were choppy from the playful wind.

  “Look,” he said, pointing so
uth.

  She peered. A faint haze blurred the horizon. Land!

  “Is that . . . England?” she asked in hope.

  “Nei.” His crinkled eyes narrowed to icy-blue slits. “Queen of fish? Hah! Good-bye!”

  The breeze gusted and salt spray blew in her face. “I realize my fishing skills are not up to professional standards, but surely I will improve with practice,” she said. It was not easy to talk while trying to keep her balance. But if Strøm could stand there without holding on, so could she.

  He turned his trouser pockets inside out, showing them to be empty. “No pay,” he said, as if to remind her how she got herself into this mess. Then he pantomimed reeling in a fish and finding nothing on the hook. “No fish.” He waved at Penelope. “Bye-bye!” he said.

  “This is . . . an unfortunate misunderstanding,” she said, tottering. The weave and bob of the ship made her stomach churn. Without thinking, she reached out to steady herself, but in doing so she fell upon the wheel with both hands.

  “Whoops!” she cried, but it was too late. Unwittingly she had pulled the ship hard to port. The salt casks toppled and rolled, and the men shouted and cursed as the boom swung wildly across the deck, knocking them over like bowling pins.

  “Alf!” Strøm roared. Seconds later Alf appeared, sporting a fresh bruise on his head.

  The Acorn’s captain let out a rare stream of angry words. He pointed at Penelope and made a gesture with one thumb that seemed to indicate being tossed overboard. Alf nodded, looking grim. He led Penelope back to her bunk and told her to collect her things.

  “I wonder how one says ‘jetsam’ in Norwegian, for I fear that is what I am about to become!” she thought. “Or perhaps they will make me walk the plank, as pirates do. Dear me, I ought to have learned to swim when I had the chance!” Penelope’s few possessions—including her broken tiara, her ruined princess costume, and her papier-mâché seashell—were already in her bag. “If the Count of Monte Cristo could be buried at sea and live to tell the tale, then so can I! Once in the briny deep I shall paddle with all my might, and wait for another ship to come by. Perhaps I will meet some friendly smugglers before too long.”

  Luckily, Strøm was no pirate; in fact, he would have been deeply offended at the idea. While Penelope fretted, the Acorn’s captain set course for the not-so-distant shore, where he planned to sell off some fish and buy provisions, as well as get rid of his accidental passenger. Whether she was a royal relation or not he did not know, or care. But when it came to fishing, the girl had bad luck, and that was something he could not allow, not on his ship, not with a half-empty hold and a crew of men to feed.

  Once the ship was anchored, Alf and Penelope climbed into a dory, and he rowed her to the shore. The rest of the crew was too busy shoveling herring into barrels while singing rhythmic sea chanties to even say good-bye.

  Alf sang under his breath as well, in time to the strokes of his oars. At the dock he lashed the dory to a post with rope. Penelope could not help but admire the quick, expert way he tied his sailor knots. How the Incorrigible children would have enjoyed seeing it!

  He offered a hand to help her climb out, but she had acquired enough sailor’s pride to insist on doing it herself. Once she was on land, the ground under her feet felt weirdly still.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Frankenforde.” Alf hopped back into the dory to get her bag. He was so light-footed the little rowboat hardly moved.

  “Frankenforde,” she repeated, trying to imagine where that might be. “I don’t suppose that is in England, is it?”

  “Nope. Germany.”

  Her heart sank. Germany! It was better than Russia, but still so very far from home!

  Alf held the damp, sea-stained carpetbag at arm’s length. Its fluffy coating of white feathers was flattened with salt spray, making it look—and smell—convincingly like a large white seabird, or the remains of one. “Nope, nope, nope,” he scolded as he handed it to Penelope. Everyone knew that a dead albatross was bad luck aboard ship. No wonder little princess stowaway never caught anything!

  If Penelope had expected Alf to help her get her bearings before leaving her alone in a strange country, she would have been disappointed. Once rid of her and her unlucky charm, he turned and strode off with purpose. The first mate’s next stop would be the fish market, to see what price could be gotten for the Acorn’s herring.

  “Alf, wait!” she called, hurrying after him. His rolling sailor’s gait made her think of Simon, and she felt a pang of despair—would she ever get home to Ashton Place?

  “I am truly sorry for all the trouble I have caused,” she said, breathlessly trying to keep pace. “Is there any way to get Captain Strøm to reconsider bringing me to England? They do eat a great deal of herring there.”

  “Nope,” he said, still walking. And that was the last time she saw Alf.

  THE ELEVENTH CHAPTER

  A tiny bookshop has what Penelope needs.

  UNLIKE MISS PENELOPE LUMLEY, EDWARD Ashton had no need of disguises and trickery to get from one place to the next, for he had money, and plenty of it. He hired expert drivers with carriage horses fleet-footed enough to win the Derby. He paid triple the usual fare to book passage on a ship that was already packed snug as a tin of herring. Privately he paid still more to the captain to make sure they would travel at full sail, no matter the weather.

  Once ashore, he bought a first-class ticket for the sleek new steam engine trains that now crisscrossed Europe (whether this could be considered progress or not was a matter of opinion). He had boarded the train in France, near Calais. Already he had passed into Germany. During the same days Penelope had spent aboard the Acorn, fishing and pondering the vastness of the sea, Edward Ashton too had been on the move, and he had covered a great deal of ground.

  “By now I expect the governess has found a way out of Plinkst,” he thought, gazing out the train window at the scenery flashing by. It was a lush and mysterious landscape, a dense wood of dizzyingly tall fir trees that covered the rolling mountains like a living blanket of green. “She is misguided and naive, but the girl has pluck. She would move the Black Forest itself to reach the wolf children before the first full moon of May.”

  The image of Penelope reunited with the Incorrigibles made his pulse race—how often he had imagined doing them in, and in such a gruesome variety of ways! But in the end it would not matter how they perished.

  What mattered was that they all did. All five of them.

  The wheels slowed, clickety-clack, find the fifth, clickety-clack, find the fifth, as the motorman applied the brake and the train made its way ’round a steep mountain curve. If only he could slow his mind so easily! Too often it spun like a cyclone, the faces of the governess and her three wolfish charges whirling behind his eyes until he could no longer see what was before him.

  He drew his black cloak snugly around, as if making himself into a shadow. “There was no time to deal with the girl in Russia, as I had intended—but she will come home of her own accord, like a well-trained dog. The wolf children are already in hand. The fifth lies elsewhere, with its parents. This time I will not—I cannot!—fail.”

  The guidebook full of clues that had led him to Switzerland had been nothing but a red herring. All that precious time wasted, searching for the Lumleys where they were not! But no matter. Now, thanks to that idiot Gogolev, his luck had changed. A far more valuable book had come into his hands—really, what were the odds?—and the truth had been revealed.

  Imagine, a clue of such magnitude hidden in plain sight, right on the opening pages! Melancholy poems, indeed! He had not felt so—well, optimistic—in years.

  “‘I wander through the meadows green,’” he murmured to himself, and smiled.

  For now he was certain: his long-lost prey was in Germany, in a small coastal village named—but surely you can guess where he was going.

  He had not arrived yet, as the connecting train from Gooden-Baaden had been delayed
. A flock of furious pheasants was blocking the tracks and stubbornly refused to move. This was unexpected, as pheasants are usually quite docile birds, and tasty, too.

  But rest assured: he was on his way.

  Willkommen in Frankenforde!

  It was an attractive sign, as signs go. The words (which Penelope correctly understood to mean “Welcome to Frankenforde!”) were written in graceful looping letters on a panel of wood, with a painted border of green leaves and small white flowers.

  “A town that strives to make such a good first impression must surely be a friendly place,” she thought. “Curious! I thought edelweiss only grew in the mountains. But the pictures are charming, nevertheless.”

  As you see, she was trying to keep her spirits up. It was not easy. Optoomuchstically speaking, she had escaped Russia and now merely needed to hop, skip, and jump to that happy land where Victoria was queen. Yet the hard, pessimax truth of the matter found her stranded and penniless in a midsized European nation where she did not speak the language, wearing boy’s clothes and smelling of fish. She was nearer to her destination than she had been, but oh! England! Home was still so very far away.

  She racked her brains for all she could remember about European geography. What stood between her and Ashton Place? Was it the Alps, the Black Forest, the beautiful blue Danube? “At least there are no scorching-hot deserts in the way, as there might be in Africa,” she thought. “What luck! Not a single deadly cobra lies in my path!” You see how desperate she was to look on the bright side. But it was only a modest stroke of luck not to have to trudge across the burning sands of the Sahara, when she still had half of Europe to get across, and the English Channel, too.

  “Think, Penny! An atlas would come in useful. Some money, too. And food,” she realized, for she was terribly hungry, and the closer she got to town, the more her mouth began to water. Either it was her imagination, or Frankenforde smelled deliciously of cake.

  She hoisted her carpetbag from one hand to the other and resumed walking. She followed the scent just as the Incorrigible children would. Soon she found herself in the village square, in front of a perfectly charming bakery with a large, street-facing window. What glorious desserts lay within, so close and yet so utterly out of reach! It reminded her of the line from Mr. Coleridge’s strange poem about the ancient mariner and the albatross.