by Kim Hornsby
“The master will say he was in a brawl on the property,” the young woman said, her gaze at the floor.
I didn’t want to get her in any trouble. “But we know differently. It was Jacqueline and he must be protected from her, mustn’t he?” If I disappeared and a confused Rachel showed up, I wanted at least someone to know the truth.
She didn’t say no or yes but took the bowl of water and left the room.
On the tray she’d brought was broth, a bread of some sort, tea, a bowl of stew I assumed was for me and a hunk of what looked like cheese. I wondered if I should wake Caspian to feed him. I was sure he needed fluids and because there was no IV in his arm or Gatorade to get into him, I took the broth to his bedside and woke him up by gently calling his given name.
His eyes opened and he looked at me as if for the first time and soon I was holding a spoon of broth to those gorgeous lips. He took the broth willingly and as he slurped from the spoon I held to his mouth, I told him that a man with an eye patch had stormed the door hours earlier. I recounted everything I heard and saw.
“Can you see a ship anchored in the bay?” he asked when he’d finished the broth.
I set the bowl and spoon on the tray and crossed to the window. It was a cloudy day at Cove House and although the bedroom faced the coach house outside, I had a slight view of part of the bay. Enough that I saw a ship out there. “I see a tall mast with a flag,” I said. “The part of the sailing vessel in view is pointed and… wait. I think I see the name of the ship written on the side.” I counted the letters which were blurry and not exactly readable. “Eight letters.” I turned back to Caspian to see him smile.
“Isabella,” he said.
A crow flew by the window and I thought of the bird that said, “Hoist the Jib,” in 2019. All crows look alike, I’m sure, but this crow came very close to the window.
Just then the door opened, and Jacqueline entered the room, her face an expression of a sneer of barely masked hatred. “Good morning, Caspian.” She closed the door quietly, looking around the room, no doubt for me.
I wasn’t sure if she was back to attempt to kill my patient again, but I quickly crossed to the bed, my long skirt swishing as I went. “Good morning,” I said. I stood proprietarily over the bed on the far side and watched Jacqueline advance slowly to the bottom of the bed. Caspian didn’t look frightened of her. He didn’t even look concerned. Did he even remember that this was the woman who stabbed him?
It took everything I had to remain silent, but I didn’t want to ruin this moment with my twentieth century jargon and the Primrose temper.
“Are you back to finish the job, Jackie?” Caspian smiled shrewdly at his wife.
Jacqueline looked to me wondering how much to say in front of the stranger.
“I know everything,” I said, fixing her with one of my ‘Bryn isn’t taking any shit’ stares.
Jacqueline turned back to Caspian. “I wish it suited the plan to finish you off but no,” she said, from the foot of the bed. “Stevens believes that you had a drunken brawl on your ship and came to shore for medical help. I told him I found you at the front door.”
Caspian studied her from his bed. “And how does that story suit you? Because I know you well enough to be sure that nothing you do is without a self-serving motive.” He waited.
Jacqueline smoothed her gorgeous green skirt. She reminded me of Scarlett in Gone with the Wind and I was aghast at her beauty. “I don’t want Stevens to know that we quarreled last night.” She seemed nervous, more insecure than moments ago, although she held her chin high in hopes of showing her strength in this exchange. “And now that I’ve lied, I’m beholden to travel that path.”
“You don’t want Stevens to know that I know about his shipping business practices because he’ll think you told me.”
Jacqueline was silent.
“Stevens doesn’t trust you, does he?”
Silence.
“He’s smarter than I thought,” Caspian said, almost chuckling. “Grant me the divorce and I’ll not tell him that you lied about stabbing me. And other things,” he added to sweeten his statement.
My head swiveled from Caspian to Jacqueline, like in a tennis match.
“Nor will you act upon your unfounded suspicions.” Jacqueline looked frightened.
They stared at each other for several charged seconds before Caspian broke the silence. “I’ll have my barrister bring you the divorce papers.”
“On one condition,” Jacqueline said. “No public announcement. I want to continue to be known as Stevens’ cousin and you, my husband.”
Caspian didn’t wait to answer. “Granted,” he said from his prone position in bed.
Jacqueline turned to me and smiled in a way that suggested I might be next to get a dagger in the shoulder. “And you, Rachel, will never speak of this again, to anyone. Just because my husband has shared the sordid details of this situation does not entitle you to gossipmongering.”
I wanted to say, “Back off, Bitch,” or, “You aren’t the boss of me,” but with great restraint I opened my mouth to agree to her request. “Of course,” I said. I actually wasn’t quite sure what had just happened, so it was easy to play dumb.
“Thank you for helping Caspian,” she said on her way to the door. “I didn’t mean to kill you, but you made me so mad.” She looked directly at the man in the bed.
“I don’t believe that for a second,” he said.
Jacqueline left the room and Caspian closed his eyes. I sat back down to think about Caspian asking Jacqueline to sign divorce papers but keep it a secret so she could continue to live in Stevens’ house as his cousin. And what she wanted in return was for Caspian to not tell Stevens he knew about his shipping practices because that would make it look like Jacqueline gave him the information. And would reveal that Jacqueline had stabbed him and then lied about Caspian coming to the front door for medical help.
I was sure if Jacqueline had wanted to finish the job in this bedroom, she’d have done it. The stabbing must’ve been a warning. Then I remembered hearing in 2019 that the ghost of Jacqueline was said to have murdered someone in that room. I wondered who.
To my great surprise, I spent the following days nursing Caspian, hovering over him, bathing him, helping him out of bed and eventually being the firm shoulder to lean on when his crew member came back to the front door to claim him.
I’d been sleeping in my chair for three nights, stuck in a time warp, caring for my beloved and wondering who was feeding Hodor back in the twentieth century when Caspian announced he was well enough to leave Cove House and head back to his ship. The wound appeared to be closing and color had come back to his face. I’d earlier helped him sit up for a meal of pork roast and potatoes and I could honestly say that the ship in the bay was probably safer for him now than this bedroom with his blood stain against the wall.
We’d talked about his life on the seas and I’d artfully avoided telling him much about my life in Portland because I had no idea what that was. On the fourth day, Caspian and I had even shared a laugh when the crow came back to the window.
“It’s Blackbird,” he said from the bed. “Open the window.”
I did and the bird hopped its way to the bed and flew up to Caspian’s lap to pronounce, “Shut the god damn hatch!”
“Did the bird just say to shut the hatch?” I asked from beside the large four poster my patient had been stuck in for days.
“This is Ten Tooth’s bird, my first mate. The bird has many expressions I hope he won’t repeat in the company of a young lady,” Caspian chuckled. “I need paper and pen.”
Caspian wrote a short note to Ten Tooth that he was ready to head back out to the ship if his trusty sidekick would bring the dinghy in to the beach. I secured the small note inside a pouch fastened around the crow’s foot and sent Blackbird out the window.
It was Caspian’s answer to email texting.
Two hours later, I heard Ten Tooth at the door loudly saying he
’d come to collect the Captain. Stevens was gone on a business trip and it was just Jacqueline, the servants, Caspian and I left in the house.
I left the room and called downstairs that I’d get the Captain and went back to the Bloody Bedroom to collect Caspian. I had to keep reminding myself that this version of Caspian did not know me and we hadn’t fallen in love or kissed or shared anything yet besides conversation and me nursing him back to relative health while his body regained lost blood, cleansed the wound and started to heal.
Several times over the last days, Caspian said had I not been attending him, he wasn’t sure Jacqueline would have let him live through this.
“I think it was a warning,” I’d said. “I have to think she would have finished the job right after, if she’d wanted to.”
“Nonetheless,” he said, “your presence has afforded me a shield of protection in that my horrible wife would not want a witness to murdering me, nor would Stevens want the authorities to arrive if anything happened to the belle of Portland society.”
“I’m happy to oblige,” I said wondering if I left the room, would Jackie sneak in and quietly finish killing her husband. Caspian had told me many times that his marriage was a business arrangement that furthered his father’s standing in San Francisco business circles and after several years of the farce of marriage in which Jacqueline announced she would not be having his children, he spent more time at sea and much less time in San Francisco. Then he’d heard through his parents that his estranged wife, Jacqueline, had been reacquainted with a distant cousin who bought a house on the Oregon coastline and needed her to run the household.
“The farce continued,” Caspian said with very little emotion when he recounted the story of their marriage to me. I supposed in those days people didn’t expect to marry for love.
I readied my patient for transport.
Within a few minutes, we were headed out the bedroom door and down the stairs I knew as my Cove House stairs with the same carpet but badly worn. I handed over Caspian to Ten Tooth and several men from the Isabella who’d come for their beloved captain, along with Blackbird on the shoulder of the man with an eye patch. Caspian and I exchanged a long look of goodbye and just before he turned to leave with his crew, he’d pressed his lion ring into my hand. He leaned so close I could smell his scent that belonged only to him.
“We will meet again, Rachel. Your friendship has become dear to me these days and I owe you my life. I won’t forget.”
I shivered at his words and watched the men take him around the corner of the house towards the sea. I followed, watching and didn’t go back in the house until the dinghy reached the Isabella. Standing on the cliff, watching Caspian leave was as romantic as anything I’d ever seen on the big screen. I stood there watching the dinghy row back out to the grand sailing ship in the bay, tears in my eyes.
What was I to do now? Go back inside the house and pretend to be Rachel Primrose? Luckily, I didn’t have long to worry about that because as soon as I got inside the front door and saw Jacqueline waiting for me, an evil grin on her beautiful face, I woke in my bed, Hodor against my legs. I was blind as a bat.
How long had I been gone in this century because I’d been with Caspian in the Bloody Bedroom for at least four days. I checked my phone to find that it was just before eight a.m., on the day that I’d gone back to sleep.
I’d only been gone a few hours.
The next week was spent with two missions. Get back to the 1850’s and find Caspian in this century.
Eve was worried about me and reasonably so. I’d subtly mentioned I was going bonkers and she was going to have to commit me if I didn’t find something else to do besides waiting around to stalk Caspian in the 1850’s. Even Carlos agreed it was worrisome how I’d obsessively focused in on finding Caspian. My mother too, although I rarely listened to anything my mother said, especially these days because she had found a new level of bitterness that made me want to kick her out of Cove House forever.
Ron wasn’t taking her calls and that left my mother livid, not hurt. To top it all off, Mommy Dearest was still belittling me in conversation even though Caspian wasn’t around. My new method of firing an insult back at her was now only working marginally so I’d upped my game recently. My zingers had become downright mean and although I hated to hit her with the bad mom insult, that one shut her up several times over that week she was driving me around the bend. When she told Eve that I was pining away for a man that didn’t love me and was probably staying away purposely I’d told her to go live in Floatville if she couldn’t get along with her fellow roommates. “He’s only using Bryndle to give him a proper burial and instead of finding his bones, she’s just mooning around like a schoolgirl with a crush.”
Eve had laughed out loud at Rachel. “Says the woman who just got dumped by Ron for the second time this month.”
At that moment I loved my cousin so fiercely it hurt. I knew she feared my mother so to get to this point with Eve meant my mother was truly awful. I heard all this from the next room with my excellent hearing and vowed to kick out my mother that day. Rachel was bringing us all down. She had her own car at Cove House and didn’t need us to drive her anywhere so telling her to scram would be relatively easy. I’d say something like “Pack your beauty products and get out of my house.”
Then, she changed that plan when she brought me a cup of tea an hour later and said there was an annoying crow at the window, staring inside the house.
“What?”
“A big crow looking right at you,” she said.
I asked her to open the window, but she wouldn’t. “And let that dirty thing with the bird flu into our house? I don’t think so.”
“It’s not our house. It’s my house and if you don’t do what I just asked, I’m going to reconsider my invitation to let you stay here this summer.” I was becoming a dictator in my own country.
My mother led me to the window and said the cheeky bird had not even flown away. “The vermin is still sitting on the window ledge hopping around like it wants to come in.”
I wasn’t sure this was Blackbird but why would a crow come to the window unless it was tame and knew that the window would open, and it could come inside? I didn’t spend much time thinking about the motivation of the crow, just that it might be Blackbird who also seemed to be a ghost in and around this house. “Hodor stay,” I said. I hoped my dog would heed my command and not frighten the crow. I slid the window open wide. “Blackbird? Is that you?”
Before it could say “shut the god damn door,” or “hoist the jib,” the bird hopped to my arm, its feet gripping the sleeve of my sweatshirt.
“It has something around its leg,” my mother said from twenty feet away.
“With a pouch?” I asked. What if there was a note inside from Caspian? Even though he didn’t sit around in nothingness at a desk with writing utensils when he wasn’t here, my mind went there, hoping for a word from him.
“Yes,” my mother said. “Why doesn’t it surprise me that you might know this bird, Bryndle?”
Eve walked in the room and screamed, causing Blackbird to flutter his wings, ready to take flight.
“It’s OK, Blackbird.” I put my hand up to touch the crow the way I’d seen Caspian scratch its neck. My hand found feathers and my touch seemed to calm him.
“Holy chicken feathers,” Eve said somewhere near my mother.
“This is Blackbird, another ghost. I met him when I was helping Caspian, after being stabbed. He’s from Caspian’s ship and belongs to one of the crew.”
“I can see him very clearly. Hodor can too,” Eve squeaked. She’d seen Blackbird before at Floatville when he sat on my shoulder. She just didn’t know it was the same bird. I mentioned this to her as I checked the little pouch around Blackbird’s foot to see if there was a message. I felt nothing but needed someone with sight to verify.
“Eve, can you come here and see if there’s anything in his pouch?”
Her feet tappe
d across the floor to the carpet and I heard her intake of breath as she got closer. “Nice birdie, it’s just Auntie Eve,” she said, presumably frightened of the thing. “Nada. What was on your wish list, Bryn?”
“A love letter from the afterlife?” my mother laughed until Blackbird cawed and put an end to her amusement.
“I think my friend can sense bad intentions,” I said to my mother. “No more insults until we determine if his claws can rip your face to shreds.”
My mother’s laughter stopped suddenly.
The air from the open window was cool and I thought of walking outside with Blackbird to the beach, just in case he would be able to help me either summon Caspian or travel back in time to find more puzzle pieces of Rachel’s relationship with Caspian. But before I left the room, I had another thought.
“Eve, can you write something on a tiny piece of paper and put it in the bird’s pouch?”
“Roger that. What?”
I wasn’t sure what to say because who was going to read this in the afterlife when Blackbird disappeared? Probably no one, but I had to try. “Say this. ‘I’m waiting. Bryn.’”
It wasn’t much of a note and I held little hope for it reaching anyone, but it was an experiment as much as anything. If someone had told me months ago that the bird that landed on my shoulder was a ghost who knew a sea captain back in the 1850’s who I’d fall in love with, I would’ve laughed as meanly as my mother just did. If I wasn’t experiencing this stuff myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.
With the tiny note in the pouch, Blackbird and I headed down the cliffside trail with Eve and Carlos filming from a safe distance back. It turned out that Carlos was also leery of birds, not like cats, but somewhere on the spectrum and he wanted nothing to do with Blackbird who now sat on my shoulder. I didn’t remind Carlos that I didn’t want to appear blind in videos and just let him film us. The moment we’d hit the trail my feathered friend on my shoulder said, “Hoist the Jib” which I took to mean he was ready to set sail. At the bottom of the trail the bird took flight, pushing off my shoulder.
