The Long-Lost Home Read online

  Three days later he returned, the horses lathered and winded as if they had run the Derby. The coachman said not a word as he walked them ’round the drive to cool them off. Mrs. Clarke chased after him.

  “But who’s the baker? Where’s the baker?” she demanded to know, for the villagers were now three days grumpier than they had been before.

  “In the bakehouse, where do you think?” he replied crossly.

  “What’s the baker doing there?”

  “Baking, maybe?” he retorted. “What else would a baker be doing in a bakehouse? Now, out of my way—I’ve business of my own to attend to. This way now, my lovelies. What a good run you had!” He made soft cluck-cluck noises to the horses, turned them gently, and headed for the barn.

  Mrs. Clarke fretted and paced, but within the hour a thin plume of smoke rose from the bakehouse chimney. Before long, the delicious, unmistakable smell of baking bread was carried on the early spring breeze. Drooling mobs formed as the bread-starved villagers caught the scent. When the tempting aroma reached the open windows of the nursery, it brought Master Gogolev to a near breakdown.

  “Bread, bread, bread! I am losing my mind—all I can smell is bread! Ah, why did it have to be a baker?” He babbled in a mix of languages and pounded his fists on the nursery wall until the plaster threatened to crack.

  Alarmed, the Incorrigible children persuaded him to sit down. They tucked him in a chair with a blanket ’round his legs and brought him cups of tea and some paper and a pen, so that he might express his feelings by writing bad poetry rather than by breaking things. But they too had been captivated by the tantalizing smell. They quickly added eat bread to their to-doawoo list and ran downstairs to the kitchen.

  “We volunteer to be bread tasters,” Beowulf announced.

  “Bread tasters, woof!” Alexander interjected, as a reminder that they were supposed to act woofy again.

  “Yes, woof! I mean arf!” Beowulf stepped forward to explain. “We are the Bread-Eating—”

  “And Sweet Treats, grrr!” Cassiopeia added, in case there was any cake involved.

  “Grrr, yes—Incorrigible Evaluation Squad. Yap, yap!”

  “Well, you’re just in time, loves. I mean BEASTIES,” Mrs. Clarke said, after she had puzzled out the acronym and had a good chuckle. “The first basket of samples has arrived from the bakehouse this minute. What’s the verdict? Do we have a baker, or do we not?”

  She opened the basket, and the irresistible smell floated up doubly strong. There they were, still warm from the oven: dozens of flat, round cakes in a fragrant heap, nestled in a colorful, wildly patterned cloth.

  “Gypsy cakes!” Alexander exclaimed, wide-eyed. He was so surprised he almost forgot to say, “Ahwoo!”

  Beowulf grabbed a loaf in each fist. “Mmmf!” he said, jamming them into his mouth. “Mmmf mmf mmf!”

  Cassiopeia wriggled with excitement, for there was only one person this side of the veil who baked in this particular kind of way. “That means the new baker must be the semi-soothless toothsayer—the themi-toothless truthsayer—” It was not easy to speak clearly with a mouth full of Gypsy cake. “I mean it must be Madame Ionesco—”

  “Oh, you must have another!” Alexander interrupted, tucking a piece of his own loaf into his sister’s mouth. “The BEASTIES approve of this baker,” he said to Mrs. Clarke, in an official tone. “Let the bread-baking commence! Grrrr!”

  “Woof!” agreed Beowulf.

  “Yap, yap!” Cassiopeia said, making it unanimous.

  “Judging from the mouthwatering smell, I agree with your decision, BEASTIES! But it couldn’t hurt for me to take a bite, now, could it?” Mrs. Clarke helped herself to one of the little round loaves and nearly swooned. “Ah, now! This is some of the nicest bread I’ve ever had. But you three are surely in a puppyish mood today! I haven’t heard this much yapping and ahwooing in many a month.”

  She patted them on their heads and gave each of them a Gypsy cake to take with them, plus one extra for Nutsawoo. “It’s to be expected, I suppose. Poor Miss Lumley’s been gone too long. No harm in it, though, is there? I ought to try a bit of barking myself!”

  FULL OF WONDER, THE INCORRIGIBLES raced back to the nursery. Master Gogolev sat scribbling his poems and sobbing in a corner, where he could safely be ignored. The children gathered in the back nursery, the small separate room where their beds were, as it was a place where they could close the door and speak in private.

  They arranged themselves in a circle, squatting on their haunches as they used to do. Alexander had some trouble, as his legs had grown so long—how quickly he had become used to sitting in chairs!

  They opened the folded napkins Mrs. Clarke had wrapped their tasty treasures in and put all four cakes in the middle of the circle for closer examination. With eyes closed they inhaled deeply, for a good, concentrated sniff was the most foolproof way of knowing what was what.

  In this case, there was no doubt. “These,” Alexander said, “are Gypsy cakes.”

  “One hundred percent Gypsy cakes,” Beowulf concurred.

  “Mmmf, mmmf!” said Cassiopeia, by which she meant “Yum, yum!” She was already eating hers, for it was too good to resist. When she was done swallowing, she added, “But why would Madame Ionesco pretend to be a baker?”

  “That is the question,” Beowulf agreed, Hamlet-like. All three grew silent and thoughtful.

  “She could be traveling incognito,” Alexander suggested. His siblings had studied enough Latin to know what incognito meant: it was simply in, which means “not,” plus cognitus, which means “to know.” Thus, to travel incognito means to be “not known”; to use a false identity, or to be in disguise. (Interestingly, the word incorrigible is also made from bits of Latin: in plus corrigible, which means “able to be fixed.” Whether the Incorrigible children were fixable or not would depend on whom you asked. Miss Penelope Lumley would say yes, of course they were; like all children, they simply needed patient instruction on how to behave properly. Lady Constance Ashton might say the opposite: they were incorrigible, hopelessly wild and scarcely human, and could never learn to be otherwise. The children never troubled themselves about whether they were fixable or not, as they did not consider themselves broken in the first place. You may decide for yourself what to think about it, but it is worth remembering that often people who are told they need fixing are perfectly fine as they are. It is our own narrow notion of how things ought to be that is truly in need of repair. As Agatha Swanburne once observed, “Narrow minds are like narrow roads: only one idea at a time can pass, and that makes for slow going indeed!”)

  Alexander’s incognito theory made sense, for Madame Ionesco was well known to Lady Constance and Lord Fredrick. In fact, she had visited the estate some months earlier to conduct a séance that did not go precisely as planned. “You can’t boss around the dead,” as the soothsayer tried to explain afterward, but Lady Constance was convinced the fortune-teller was a fraud, and spoke harshly about the incident for weeks afterward.

  Because of this unfortunate misunderstanding, the spooky Madame might not be a welcome visitor at Ashton Place, which gave her good reason to travel in disguise. But why would Old Timothy bring the semitoothless soothsayer back to the house to begin with?

  “If we ask Old Timothy to explain, he will do this,” Beowulf grunted enigmatically, and walked away, in a fine imitation of Old Timothy’s rolling, bowlegged gait.

  “Maybe a crystal ball could tell us,” Cassiopeia said. All three children remembered how the fortune-teller had used a crystal ball to summon spirits from Beyond the Veil. It seemed to be a handy and informative item.

  The problem was they had no crystal ball. Theirs was a well-stocked nursery indeed, thanks to their former governess, but a crystal ball was not an everyday classroom item, even in Miss Lumley’s day.

  “Or crystal globe?” she went on, thinking of the items they did have. “Crystal abacus? Crystal A Child’s History of England, by Mr. Charles Dickens
?

  “Grrrrr.” It was Alexander, growling deep in the back of his throat the way he used to, long ago in the forest, when he was thinking hard and wanted quiet. It had been a long time since Beowulf and Cassiopeia had heard him make this sound. Frankly, it was rather exciting.

  “In the words of Agatha Swanawoo,” Alexander said, when he had their attention, “let’s go to the bakehouse and find out!”

  THE SIXTH CHAPTER

  Traveling incognito has its advantages.

  WHEN ALEXANDER INCORRIGIBLE QUOTED AGATHA Swanawoo as saying, “Let’s go to the bakehouse and find out,” he was using a form of poetic license called paraphrasing. In other words, he used other words than the ones she used, but the meaning of his words and the meaning of her words were essentially the same, and that is what it means to paraphrase: using different words to say more or less the same thing. (Those of you who pay close attention already know the wise founder’s exact words, which appear earlier in this very tale. As for the rest of you: peek if you must, but be quick about it, for the Incorrigibles are eager to get to the bakehouse and discover if their theory about the incognito soothsayer holds water or not, as the saying goes!)

  Paraphrasing is a useful timesaver, as it is not always convenient to stop and look up a quotation when making a point, especially if the situation is urgent, as this one surely was. However, any lawyer, judge, or professional thespian will tell you that there are times when knowing the exact words is essential; for example, when performing the role of Hamlet, or when given the task of ending a wolfish family curse. As Madame Ionesco herself once said, “A curse is like a contract. It’s all in the wording.” That is no paraphrase. Those were her exact words, and it was the exact words of the curse upon the Ashtons that the fortune-teller had to know in order to undo it—or attempt to, at least.

  Through pluck, luck, and a knack for the theatrical, Penelope and Simon had managed to discover those exact words shortly before Penelope was whisked away to Plinkst. Even as they bade each other a heartbroken farewell on that cold January day in Brighton, Simon swore he would return to London, find the soothsayer, and tell her what the two friends—and surely they were more than just friends!—had found out.

  Had Simon succeeded in his mission? If so, had the soothsayer solved the puzzle of how the curséd Ashtons could be uncurséd, once and for all? Was that why she had returned to Ashton Place, traveling incognito as a baker?

  These are all fine questions, and you may well ask them, but the Incorrigible children did not, for they did not know nearly as much as you do about the Ashton curse. All that they knew, they had learned from eavesdropping on adult conversations. Like most children who have had that experience (and what child has not?), they understood only some of what they overheard, and they felt no obligation to remember it all or even make sense of it, for it was not their concern to begin with.

  No; they were much more interested in the Gypsy cakes! Visit the bakehouse was hastily added to the to-doawoo list. If the new baker was indeed Madame Ionesco, it would explain all those dreadful, bad-smelling loaves, for the spooky Madame was not above bending the rules to suit her own purposes. She always charged double to the swankily dressed; at solitaire she cheated like mad. To put a temporary spell on a bakehouse would be well within her capacity for mischief.

  Excited, the children ran to get their coats. If they were lucky, they might arrive in time for the BEASTIES to sample the next batch of those delicious-smelling, yummy-tasting, perfectly scrumptious loaves of—

  “Bread!” Master Gogolev staggered into the back nursery, bellowing like a giant from a fairy tale. “I smell bread! Where are you hiding it?” Then his bluster left him, and he leaned heavily against the wall, too weak to stand. “Bread, O bread, O wonderful, terrible bread! If there were but a single crust left in all the world, I would starve rather than eat it! Slowly I would pass from this world to the next while inhaling its delicate aroma, and spend my last breath dreaming of less miserable times. . . .”

  By now, three of the four Gypsy cakes Mrs. Clarke had given them were in the children’s tummies. Cassiopeia had the last in her coat pocket, in case they spotted Nutsawoo on the way to the bakehouse. The little scamp was still being elusive, but she (or he) never refused a treat and would eagerly perform tricks to get one: juggling one acorn, for example, or flicking that bushy tail in time to the Swanburne school song, like a furry gray metronome.

  Master Gogolev sighed, and sighed again. He seemed desperate, but for what? The children exchanged looks.

  “If there were bread,” Alexander ventured, “we would happily give you some. Arf!”

  Gogolev clenched his fists and tugged at his collar, groaning.

  “Unless you would prefer that there was no bread,” Beowulf added. “In which case, we would make sure there was none. Yap, yap!”

  “To bread, or not to bread?” Cassiopeia said magnificently. “That is the question. Woof!”

  “Yes, bread or no bread . . . bread . . . no bread . . .” Gogolev sniffed again. “But there is bread here! I feel it in my bones!” He came toward the children, who shrank back until the foolish man dropped to his knees. “If you have some, yes, give it to me, I beg you! Writing even a few lines of melancholy poetry has drained every drop of strength from me. Perhaps a nice thick slice of pumpernickel with a smear of caviar would restore my will to live.”

  Reluctantly (for she would have much preferred to share it with Nutsawoo), Cassiopeia gave him the one Gypsy cake they had left. He brightened at once, slipped the round loaf into his pocket, and made a beeline for the kitchen. “It would take a miracle to find decent caviar in this primitive land,” he remarked on his way out, “but a plate of smoked herring would do nicely in a pinch.”

  The children waited to make sure he did not come back.

  “Now,” said Alexander, “once more unto the bakehouse! Hup, hup, hup!”

  “Wait!” Beowulf held up a hand, for this strange interlude with Gogolev had given him time to think. “If the new baker is Madame Gypsy Cake, something spooky must be going on. Spooky and secret! Maybe we should be incognito, too.”

  The other two saw his point, for who does not like to sneak about in disguise? The Incognito Incorrigibles they would be. But what sort of disguise would be best? It would have to be something that came in threes, obviously, and that would allow them to keep acting like little wolf pups, for they had promised Lord Fredrick, and a promise was a promise.

  “Three little pigs?” Alexander suggested.

  Beowulf thought it over. “We would have to oink,” he said, “but woofishly.”

  They tried, but “oinkawoo” failed to convince as either a pig noise or a howl. Anyway, Cassiopeia pointed out, “No one will believe we are pigs.”

  She gestured to show what she meant: two legs instead of four, pert noses, a telltale lack of little curly tails. The difficulty was clear. To be in disguise was different than mere pretending, for a disguise was intended to actually fool people. It had to be convincing. Since they were, in fact, children, they would not be convincing as pigs, cows, chickens, and the like. Nor could they pass as grown-up humans, as they were simply not tall enough.

  “We must travel incognito disguised as children,” Alexander concluded.

  “Three children,” Cassiopeia agreed. “But which ones?”

  It was an interesting question: What trio—if they had known the word “troika,” they might have said, what troika—of children could they possibly pretend to be?

  The troika of Incorrigibles sat with furrowed brows, thinking.

  “I know,” Beowulf said. He jumped to his feet and clicked his heels together, then pretended to punch himself in the eye.

  “Do you mean . . . the Babushkawoos?” Alexander said, aghast.

  “The horrible Babushkawoos?” Cassiopiea sounded intrigued.

  Beowulf shrugged. “Why not? We can be just as horrible as they are.”

  Alexander considered it. “No,” he said. �
�We could be more horrible.”

  “We will be the most horrible there is!” crowed Cassiopeia. “And the woofiest, too.”

  And there you have it: superlatives, in a nutshell. The Woofiest and Most Horrible Incorrigible Babushkawoos they would be.

  SPEAKING OF MASTERS OF DISGUISE, and all things horrible, more horrible, and most horrible: what was Lord Fredrick’s houseguest, the ailing and incognito Edward Ashton, up to during all this?

  The Incorrigibles did not know the villain’s whereabouts, but they rarely thought about it. Nor did Penelope know, but she thought of little else. That is the difference a few years’ span in age can make: one day you see the world as a child does, largely oblivious to its dangers. The next, alas, you do not. Tempus fugit, indeed!

  But if you must know—and for you to know what Edward Ashton is up to, when Penelope and the Incorrigibles do not, is a case of dramatic irony if ever there was one—you may follow Agatha Swanburne’s advice and simply see for yourself, for by now the master of disguise has spent a few days recuperating in the Egyptian room, and is much recovered; in fact, he is well enough to pay a visit to the nursery at Ashton Place.

  The good news is that the Incorrigible children are not there, having just left for the bakehouse in their woofiest and most horrible disguises, but the bad news—woe, and more woe! The bad news may prove to be very bad indeed. . . .

  “HERRING, HERRING, AND MORE HERRING!” Master Gogolev was quite renewed by the prospect of lunch, and the small round loaf he still carried in his pocket made the excitement nearly unbearable. He maneuvered nimbly through the nursery door, with a large covered platter balanced on one hand like a professional waiter.

  “Spin—and spin! Just like the old days,” he crowed as he whirled into the room. In his youth, Gogolev had been a dancer until an injury ended his once-promising career, or so he often claimed. In a grand gesture, he placed the tray on one of the children’s desks and lifted the dome-shaped cover. He was far too preoccupied with himself and his herring to notice that his students were no longer in the nursery.