The Unseen Guest Page 7

  AFTER THE CHILDREN WERE UP and dressed and fed a breakfast that was halfway to being lunch (for the boys had slept quite a bit later than usual), Penelope set them to work writing poems that had to a) be about some sort of bird, and b) use the same rhyme scheme as Mr. Poe’s “The Raven.” The children took up the assignment with gusto. Once their pencils were scribbling away, Penelope went off in search of the admiral.

  He was behind the barn, just as the boys had said he would be, supervising the construction of a large, high-walled corral made of wooden posts and slats interwoven with lengths of twisted wire. Penelope had to dodge piles of lumber and burly workmen holding jagged-edged saws, but it did not slow her approach. She sported the set jaw and formidably upright posture that every Swanburne graduate learned in a required class called A Swanburne Girl Knows How to Make Her Point.

  “Admiral Faucet, good day. I am sorry to disturb you, but there is an urgent matter that we must discuss.”

  “Good day, governess.” He turned and bowed to her. “Those students of yours are extraordinary. Hats off on a job well done. How do you like my POE?” He gestured at the elaborate construction going on around them.

  Penelope paused. She had planned to be stern and unyielding in her demands, but the admiral’s compliments caught her off guard, as did his reference to poetry. “Thank you, Admiral, that is kind of you to say. And I am a great admirer of Mr. Poe. The children are studying him right now, in fact. ‘Quoth the raven, nevermore.’ It has a jaunty sound to it, don’t you agree?”

  “Not Poe. POE.” He waved a thick roll of blueprints around. “P. O. E. It stands for Permanent Ostrich Enclosure.”

  Penelope gave him a puzzled look. “Why not just lock Bertha in the barn?”

  “Governess, you may be a fine educator, but I can see you have no head for business.” The admiral twirled his cane, obviously in high spirits. “I plan to import the finest racing ostriches from Africa and sell them to the sorts of wealthy society people for whom racing Thoroughbred horses has become passé. Once they have an ostrich, they’ll need ostrich feed, and ostrich harnesses, ostrich trainers, and all the rest. Now, from whom are they going to buy all of that? Given that I will be the sole importer of ostrich equipment in Europe?”

  “From you, I suppose.”

  “Clever girl! I’ll be lucky to break even on the birds. The profit is in what comes after. Now, think, governess. The ostrich needs a place to live. If I say to my customers, ‘Just lock the bird in a barn,’ as you ignorantly suggest, where’s the profit in that? I can’t sell barns; England is full of barns! But I can sell a Permanent Ostrich Enclosure, manufactured on-site to these unique and patented specifications.” He smacked the blueprints against his leg with pride.

  “Still, I am sure a barn would do in a pinch,” Penelope replied curtly. “Admiral, I must speak to you about the children.”

  “Talented lads. Sorry Ashton and I kept them up so late. We were testing their tracking skills. Did you know those two boys can tell the difference between a badger print and a fox print at twenty paces? And they can do animal calls that sound just like the real thing.” He cupped his hands to his mouth and demonstrated. “Caw! Hoo! Ruff! The little one—Beowulf, is it?—sketched maps of the forest that showed nooks and crannies Ashton himself had never heard of. Strange fellow, that Ashton. An odd duck. But he’ll be my son-in-law if all goes well, so live and let live, I say.”

  Penelope frowned. The first rule of making one’s point was “Stick to the subject at hand,” but the admiral was already off on a tangent and she would have to steer the conversation back to port, so to speak. “The children are quite talented, I agree. Unfortunately, your proposed expedition will interfere with their schoolwork. I regret that they will not be able to join you—”

  “Nonsense, governess. They have to come. I need them.”

  “Why?”

  “To find Bertha, of course. Those lads can track, and they know the woods. And don’t tell me to use Ashton’s hunting dogs. I can’t. They’ll frighten Bertha into the hills and we’ll never see her again.” He leaned forward on his cane until his face was at the same level as Penelope’s. “Let me make something clear, Miss Lumley—that bird represents an enormous investment on my part, and I intend to get her back. These Incorrigible children of yours are remarkable! I’m tempted to take them on safari with me. They’re smarter than dogs, easy to train and transport. I need those boys to find my bird, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “But Admiral—their lessons—”

  He waved away her concerns. “Lessons, bah! Exploring is a highly educational business. Flora and fauna, latitude and longitude, points on the compass and all the rest. It builds character, too. Believe me, you don’t know what you’re made of until you’re alone in a canoe and drop your paddle in piranha-infested waters.” He made a fierce, rapid munching sound with his teeth that made Penelope shiver.

  “No doubt it would be a grand adventure,” she interjected, for she had no wish to dream about flesh-eating piranhas that night; the murderous pheasants had been bad enough. “To be blunt, I am worried for the children’s safety. They told me Lord Ashton plans to bring his gun. As you may have noticed, his eyesight is less than keen.” Slyly she added, “He might pose a danger to Bertha as well.”

  The admiral scowled. “At last you have made a valid point, governess. The boys are essential, but Ashton…Ashton is a problem. His mother is nearsighted, but the son is blind as a bat. He might very well shoot Bertha before we have a chance to catch her. Still, it’s his house, and his land, and I want him to think well of me so I can marry his charmingly wealthy mother, so I can’t just tell him to stay home, can I? Unless…” He pulled at his whiskers. “Is this full-moon business true? Does he actually turn loony once a month?”

  “On occasion I have seen Lord Fredrick acting in a most peculiar way at the full moon,” she said warily. She did not fully trust the admiral, and so did not mention that Lord Fredrick’s most prized possession was an almanac with all the full-moon dates circled. Nor did she reveal that the master of Ashton Place had been known to disappear entirely on those nights, even if they coincided with important events, like a lavish holiday ball thrown by his wife, or the West End premiere of an eagerly anticipated new operetta about pirates. Nor did she say anything about the secret room in the attic of Ashton Place, from which a mysterious howling sound had, at least on one occasion, been heard, and that was during a full moon as well. But it did not matter, for the admiral had heard enough.

  “That solves it, then. We’ll go when the moon is full. With any luck, Ashton will be too indisposed to come along. It’s a sneaky maneuver on my part, I know, but in the jungle, one must hunt or be hunted. You’d do well to remember that.” The admiral checked his pocket watch, as if this conversation had just run over its allotted time. “Don’t worry, governess. I’ll bring the lads home safe and sound. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to inspect my POE.”

  The admiral’s sense of adventure was as contagious as a bad pun, and Penelope was starting to feel the effects herself. And if Lord Fredrick stayed home, the danger of a wayward shot was all but eliminated…but this “hunt or be hunted” business made her deeply uneasy. She stepped in front of the admiral, blocking his way. “I must be clear, sir. Alexander and Beowulf are children, not hunting dogs. They cannot travel without an escort. If they are to accompany you into the woods, then I insist on going as well. And I shall have to bring Cassiopeia, as there would be no one to mind her in my absence.” This was not entirely true, of course, since in theory Penelope could have left Cassiopeia in the care of Margaret or one of the other housemaids. But Penelope knew Cassiopeia would never agree to stay behind when there was such a marvelous adventure to be had.

  “Parts Unknown is no place for a young lady.” The admiral gave her an appraising squint. “Or a wee child. But you seem to have pluck, governess, and the girl is as fierce as a hyena, as I recall. Does she track prey as well as her broth
ers do?”

  “I do not know,” Penelope confessed. “However, it is quite possible that she does.”

  “The little growler might come in useful, then. All right. Join us if you must. But there will be no allowances made for teatime and nose powdering and all that rubbish. We will be ‘roughing it,’ as befits a band of brave explorers in the wilderness. Can you manage that?”

  Penelope considered the offer. She was not in the habit of powdering, and she thought she could do without teatime so long as she had eaten a proper lunch. And just think of the fascinating letters she could send Simon, once their expedition was finished and Bertha was locked safely in her Permanent Ostrich Enclosure! He could not fail to be impressed.

  “Very well. I accept your terms, Admiral.” She extended her hand to seal the bargain. The admiral shook it so vigorously it made her wince.

  “Done!” he said. “We leave on the full moon. The hunt is on, governess. I hope neither of us comes to regret it.”

  THE SIXTH CHAPTER

  Penelope leaves her native habitat, while the Incorrigibles prepare to enter theirs.

  AS SHOULD BE CLEAR BY now, Miss Penelope Lumley was a highly curious and intelligent person with a wide range of interests and skills. She had a firm command of the multiplication tables (even those tricky sevens and eights), could conjugate Latin verbs with only the occasional reference to a dictionary, and knew the capital cities of a great many midsized European nations—but the truth is, she had no idea how one went about exploring in the woods.

  Chalk it up to a lack of experience. The Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females was situated in a sleepy farm valley near the village of Heathcote. There was no dense and mysterious forest nearby, only bright orchards of fruit trees arranged in tidy rows, and the spires of Swanburne’s chapel were visible for miles around. Unless you had been blindfolded and spun ’round and ’round until dizzy (as you might do if you were preparing to play pin the tail on the elk, for example), it would be nearly impossible to get lost, even if you had no knack for navigation at all.

  The closest Penelope had ever come to losing her bearings was in the autumn a few years past, when a local farmer mowed his field into a hay maze and charged a ha’penny a head to enter. The girls from Swanburne had been taken there on an outing and set loose in the maze; they raced this way and that, amid much delighted squealing. Penelope adopted a more tactical approach; as a result, she was the first of her group to finish the maze and come face-to-face with a rather bored-looking cow that stood in the center, flicking gnats off its flanks with a long, ropy tail.

  (If you already know the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, in which a brave Athenian hero finds his way through a deadly labyrinth and slays the Minotaur within, you will notice intriguing similarities between Theseus’s adventure and Penelope’s. However, the Minotaur was a bloodthirsty monster that was half man, half bull, not a mild-mannered Hereford cow with droopy ears and a bell tied ’round its neck. Theseus found his way out of the labyrinth by trailing a thread behind him; to Penelope this seemed a waste of good embroidery floss. Instead, she brought a small kit of watercolors with her into the hay maze and painted arrows on the hay stalks at each right or left turn. It would not have been a good strategy for a rainy day, but thanks to fair weather, Penelope prevailed over both maze and cow.)

  But apart from that one time in the hay maze, when it came to wandering out-of-doors (particularly in a dark forest, and most particularly at night), Parts Unknown was very far from being Penelope’s native habitat. She had never hiked up a snow-capped mountain with a bedroll strapped to her back, or pitched a tent in a monsoon, or gathered wood for a campfire over which to prepare her morning tea. The whole prospect of “roughing it” outdoors (as the admiral put it) made her feel vaguely itchy, as if bloodthirsty mosquitoes were already buzzing about her with dinner napkins tied ’round their tiny insect necks.

  “I must remember, ‘New boots never fit as well as the old,’” she told herself, recalling the words of Agatha Swanburne. “By which I suppose she meant all new experiences are bound to pinch a bit, until you break them in. Luckily, there are three days before the next full moon. That should give me plenty of time to master the art of outdoor exploration. How hard could it be?”

  How hard, indeed? It was in that can-do, Swanburnian, and possibly optoomuchstic spirit (which is to say, there may have been an extra spoonful of optimism ladled into the mix) that Penelope returned to the house and began making a list of items she deemed necessary to pack.

  By the bottom of the seventh page, she knew she was in trouble. Nearly every object in the nursery seemed essential to bring along, and she had the children’s comfort to consider as well as her own. She would need cool clothes for them to wear during the day and blankets to keep them warm at night, one large canteen for milk and another for water, a portable tin for biscuits and a kettle in which she could make tea, books to read (of course), and at least a small assortment of games and puzzles, for there would be long hours of nothing to do, she was quite sure, until Bertha was found.

  “I suppose the abacus can stay,” she said to herself, frowning, “for we can work our math problems with acorns for the time being, as Cassiopeia does with Nutsawoo.” And what if it should rain? They would require boots, waterproof coats, a sheet of tarpaulin, rolls of mosquito netting, a ball of twine in case something needed to be tied up, or tied down, or lashed together, or suspended from a tree (twine seemed the sort of thing that was bound to come in useful, one way or another)…. The list grew and grew until it seemed as if Penelope would simply have to bring the whole of Ashton Place along with her.

  “This is impossible!” she exclaimed, much to the children’s surprise. “If only we could move the woods indoors, into the nursery. That would make everything so much easier.”

  Alexander had given up on his Poe poem and was now adding latitude and longitude lines to a large hand-drawn map of the forest. His siblings had also become distracted from their schoolwork and were busy practicing animal calls. Cassiopeia had mastered the deep rumm, rumm of a bullfrog, and Beowulf could produce a perfectly lifelike rabbit noise. It was inaudible to Penelope, but his siblings clapped with approval each time he did it.

  At Penelope’s remark, Alexander stopped his map-making and peeked over her shoulder at the growing list. He shook his head. “Too much to carry, Lumawoo.”

  Penelope slumped in defeat. “I agree, but what choice do we have? Food, clothing, shelter, cultural diversions…it all seems quite necessary to me.”

  Alexander gently took the paper from her. He produced a pencil from behind his ear and began crossing items off the list.

  “No blankets, Lumawoo. We sleep in leaves.”

  She began to object, then stopped. “All right, but leaves do not sound very comfortable, if I may say so.”

  He made another cross-out. “No tent. Cave.”

  “But what if there is no cave?” The itchy, anxious feeling had returned, and Penelope scratched at her arm without even realizing she was doing it.

  “There is cave. We know where the cave is,” Beowulf said, coming over to look.

  “Rumm, rumm,” said Cassiopeia, leapfrogging closer.

  Alexander flipped the page. “No canteen,” he said, striking it out. “Water from the stream.”

  “No books,” suggested Beowulf. “Tell stories instead.”

  Alexander started to cross out “books,” but Penelope looked so tragically disappointed that he stopped.

  “One book. All right, two. No biscuits. Berries and nuts.”

  “And mice and squirrels,” Beowulf added.

  “Rumm! No squirrels!” Cassiopeia’s voice was firm. Beowulf shrugged but made no argument, for he too had grown fond of Nutsawoo.

  “Mice are good, though,” Cassiopeia conceded, rubbing her tummy. “Yum, yum!”

  Alexander nodded. “And sandwiches.”

  “Sandwiches are a splendid idea,” Penelope said, perking up. “W
hat kind shall we bring? I can request that Cook prepare a picnic basket full of them. Of course, a basket will be awkward to carry, and we shall have to take turns, but the good news is, the more sandwiches we eat, the lighter the basket becomes….”

  For some reason the children found this funny. They nudged one another and chuckled among themselves.

  “No picnic basket, Lumawoo,” Cassiopeia finally said, before dissolving into giggles.

  Confused, Penelope looked from one smiling face to the next. “How shall we carry the sandwiches, then?”

  “No carry.” Beowulf tried to explain. “Berries in the woods. Nuts in the woods. Stream in the woods. Cave in the woods. Sandwiches in the woods.”

  Penelope pressed the palm of her hand against her forehead; she wondered if she might have a fever coming on. “There are sandwiches in the woods?”

  The children looked at her with pity. “Yes. In the cave,” Alexander said, kindly and a bit slowly, as if talking to a dimwit. “Water in the stream. Nuts on the trees. Sandwiches in the cave.”

  The other Incorrigibles nodded. “Do you like my rabbit noise?” Beowulf scrunched his face in concentration and made the rabbit noise. Penelope heard nothing, but Alexander and Cassiopeia grinned and clapped him on the back. Then they all went back to preparing for the trip.

  Sandwiches? Caves? Rabbit noises? Penelope did not know what to think. She closed her eyes and breathed in—a Swanburne girl does not panic—and out. In—a Swanburne girl does not panic—and out….

  Later on, Cassiopeia came over to have her hair brushed. When they were done, she grabbed the pencil. “Biscuits would be good, too,” she whispered, scrawling the word onto the list.

  She spelled it “biskit,” but Penelope was still too muddled to correct her. “I suppose that means there are no biscuits in the cave?” she asked, hoping for some explanation.