Call of the Wraith

by Kevin Sands

  He shook his head and tried to hand the coin back. He pointed at the sky, then at me, then made a cross with his hands. A miracle. Give your thanks to the Lord.

  I certainly would. But I had plenty of gold, and the farm needed it more than I did. “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “If things go well and I return with Emma, you can give that louis back. Otherwise, use it to help the widow Jane. It’ll be hard enough for her without her daughter.”

  That made him pause. Finally, he nodded and pocketed the coin.

  “And if you happen to need anything yourself . . .”

  He waggled his head at me, and I laughed.

  • • •

  The site where I was found made me shiver.

  Wise led me to an inlet on the coast. He stepped carefully along the cliff, the path craggy with rocks, a steep route down to the water. I followed, clinging to the side, certain I would slip and crack my skull.

  I didn’t relax until my boots touched the pebbled beach. The water lapped at the shore, larger waves crashing on the coast, filling the tiny cove with endless thunder. Wise pointed toward the rocks farthest from the ocean, where snow had collected in a lump.

  I had to raise my voice to be heard. “That’s where you found me?”

  He nodded and brushed away the snow. The lump, I saw, was a long, broad, slightly warped plank, splintered at one end, and half encased in ice.

  I knelt beside it. Barnacles crusted in a patch near the splinters, the wood stained by exposure to seawater. This had unquestionably come from the hull of a ship.

  I must have clung to it after my shipwreck. I tried to remember. I caught the faint sense of a storm—and terror—before I backed away. Even that slight attempt left me dizzy. I felt pain, too, and it took a moment to realize my fingers were stinging.

  “Was there anything else?” I said.

  Wise shook his head.

  I sighed. I’d hoped to spot something he’d missed, something that would give me an inkling of who I was, where I’d come from. Again I wondered about all those souls who’d been aboard the ship. My family, my friends . . . all dead?

  Finding no answers left me sad—and afraid. Because, as I left Robert’s farm, I left behind the only people I knew in the whole world.

  • • •

  Even the pigeon abandoned me.

  Wise walked me back to the creek. He saw me off with a clasped hand and a kind smile, then went his own way, upstream. On Robert’s instructions, I followed the flow of the river, keeping a decent distance from the bank so I didn’t slip in and suffer the same fate as poor Emma Lisle.

  Thinking about her left me rattled. I tried to force the terrible image of last night’s dream from my mind, but I kept seeing her bloody fingers scratching at the bottom of the ice. It felt almost like she was me, my memories, screaming to get out, to tell me what was happening.

  There I was, then, already feeling lost and friendless, when I noticed the pigeon was no longer following me. I looked forlornly at the gray of the clouds above, hoping I’d spot her, but she was gone.

  Spirits as low as they could go, I trudged my way downstream, boots sinking deep into the snow. Minutes turned to hours, and woods gave way to rolling hills, and that only made the journey harder. I puffed icy clouds from my lips as I slogged up and down, grateful, at least, for the deerskin breeches that kept me dry.

  And it was here that the pigeon returned. She swooped over the hill and flapped right into my arms. I’d never been so happy to see another living thing in my life.

  I pressed her to my cheek. “Where have you been?” I said.

  Then I heard a scream. “Christopher!”

  I looked up. From atop the hill, a girl sprinted toward me, heels kicking up puffs of snow. She was dressed in a fine sheepskin coat—much nicer than the one I was wearing—and a matching hat. Her face was covered by a thick woolen scarf. All I could see was a shock of auburn curls bouncing behind her as she ran.

  I stood there, not entirely sure what to do. As she came closer, she tore the scarf from her face. She had intensely green eyes, and her nose was lightly dusted with freckles. Her cheeks were reddened from the cold, and she was huffing, and I couldn’t help thinking, Goodness, she’s pretty.

  And she was really barreling toward me. I took a step back, wondering how long it would take her to stop.

  She didn’t stop. She didn’t even try. Instead, when she got close enough, she launched herself at my chest, wrapped her arms around me, and tackled me into the snow.

  CHAPTER

  11

  WE SLID ALL THE WAY down the hill. The girl squealed in delight as she clung to me, riding on top like I was a sled. She held me as we skidded to a stop, arms wrapped around my neck, fiercely, then tenderly, then fiercely once more.

  I lay there, dazed, until she stood and pulled me up. She placed her hands on my chest, my face, cupped my cheeks. All the while, she stared at me in wonder.

  “I thought you were dead,” she said. “I saw you die. I thought you were dead.”

  She flung herself at me once more, head buried in my neck, pressing me close. I could smell her hair, lavender and rose water.

  The girl stepped back, gazing into my eyes. The pigeon flapped at my feet. My mind whirled, and not just because her tackle had rattled my brain.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  She flinched, as if I’d struck her. Then she looked embarrassed.

  And then she got angry.

  She balled her mittens and began thumping my chest. “You—rotten—little—!”

  “Ow! Stop hitting me!”

  “We’ve been searching for you for weeks!” she said. “I just ran”—whap—“three”—whap—“miles”—whap—“to find you! And all you have for me is bad”—whap—“jokes?” WHOMP

  I flopped back into the snow. “It’s not a joke!”

  She stood over me, hands on her hips. “What do you mean, it’s not a joke?”

  “Something happened to me. Something took my—” I stopped.

  “Your what?”

  I was afraid to tell this girl what Robert thought. So instead I said, “My memories. They’re gone.”

  The effect was startling. The anger in her eyes vanished, replaced by a flicker of fear. “Your memories?”

  “Yes.”

  Her breathing quickened. “Did you get hit on the head?”

  “No,” I said, taken aback. “At least, I don’t think so. I was . . . sick. For a long time. And when I woke up . . .” I waved my hands at the hills. “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who I am. I’m lost.”

  She stared at me. “You’re not joking.”

  “I wish I was.”

  “Oh . . . oh no.” She knelt and hugged me again. I didn’t mind, exactly, but it left me even more confused. She sat back, studying my face. “You don’t remember me at all?”

  I shook my head.

  “What about Tom?” she said. “Master Benedict? Surely you remember them?”

  “No. Who are they?”

  “Do you remember anything?”

  “Nothing personal,” I said. “Just facts.”

  “Facts?” she said. “What’s the recipe for gunpowder?”

  It came without thinking. “One part sulfur, one part charcoal, five parts saltpeter. Grind separately. Mix.”

  I blinked. I hadn’t even been aware that I’d known that.

  The girl, however, looked delighted. “Well, you’re still in there somewhere.”

  “If I ask you who you are again,” I said, “will you go back to hitting me?”

  She put a mitten to her cheek. “Oh! I’m sorry about that. I just . . . I mean, I’d just . . .”

  She flushed a little. Then she stood and held out a very formal hand. I took it.

  “I’m Sally,” the girl said. “Sally Deschamps. We’re . . . friends.”

  “And who . . .” My guts churned. “Who am I?”

  “You’re Christopher,” she said. “Christopher Rowe.
”

  Christopher Rowe.

  I rolled the name around in my head, waiting for it to lock into place. To remember, not just the name, but something greater: to remember me. I wished for it. I prayed for it.

  But I felt nothing.

  I hadn’t thought anything would be more frightening than waking and not knowing who I was. I was wrong. Knowing my name, yet not really knowing it . . . I’d never felt so terribly empty.

  I returned to my questions. Anything to fill the void. “Who’s my father?”

  She looked surprised. “Your father?”

  “Yes. Why? Is something wrong?”

  “He died. When you were a baby. You never knew him. You grew up in Cripplegate. That’s where we met.”

  That name brought no more meaning than my own. “Is that my family estate?”

  “Estate? It’s an orphanage.”

  “An orphanage?” That didn’t make any sense. “Aren’t I a lord?”

  “No. Why would you think that?”

  “My clothes. And I have money. A lot of money.”

  It occurred to me then that I probably shouldn’t be wandering around the countryside telling strangers I had a lot of money. But Sally only nodded in understanding. “Oh. Right. I hadn’t thought of that. That’s your disguise.”

  “I’m disguised as a lord? But . . . that’s a crime!”

  “Well, yes. It’s all right, though, because you were on a mission for the king.”

  “What king?”

  “Of England.”

  I blinked. “King Charles?”

  “That’s right!” she said, pleased that I remembered.

  Except not only did I not remember it, I didn’t even believe it. “I work for King Charles?”

  “Not exactly. You did. I mean, we did. But you’re really an apothecary’s apprentice.”

  Like my name, that stirred no feelings inside. But something did finally make sense. “I have this sash,” I began.

  Sally was already nodding. “You wear it around your waist. Under your shirt.”

  Any doubts I’d had about the girl vanished. I threw questions at her, not even waiting for the answers. “Where do I come from? Where do I live? How did I get here?”

  She chewed her thumbnail, thinking. “Maybe I’d better start at the beginning,” she said. And she told me the life story of a stranger.

  I’d grown up in London, in the Cripplegate orphanage. I’d been rescued from that terrible place by a stern but kindly apothecary, Master Benedict Blackthorn.

  “B. B.,” I said.

  “What?”

  “The initials: B. B. They’re on my sash.”

  She nodded. “It was his. He gave it to you, after he died.”

  “My master’s dead?”

  She looked at me sadly before continuing, and though I felt nothing, that look made me understand how much I’d lost when my memories had been stolen. My master had been murdered, Sally told me, and I’d nearly been killed myself. After stopping that conspiracy, I’d found myself in other adventures, the last of which had seen me off to Paris on behalf of Charles II, disguised as Christopher Ashcombe, Baron of Chillingham, grandson to the Marquess Richard Ashcombe.

  “Ashcombe?” I said. “The King’s Warden?”

  “Do you remember him?” Sally said.

  I shook my head. “I just know the name. It’s . . . a fact. Like the recipe for gunpowder. Richard Ashcombe is the King’s Warden. He’s supposed to be scary.”

  “Terrifying. He has only one eye, and three fingers on his right hand, and this terrible scar across his face. He got it fighting the monsters who killed your master.”

  I thought of the scars I’d found on my own body and wondered: Had I got them in those same battles? Had I fought alongside the King’s Warden?

  “But Lord Ashcombe is a good man,” Sally said. “He looks mean, but he’s fiercely loyal to the king—and to you, too.”

  “Me?”

  “He likes you. And he trusts you, or he would never have allowed us to go to Paris on the king’s behalf. Especially using his family name.”

  “So are you in disguise, too?”

  She gave an impish smile and twirled. “I’m the Lady Grace. Can’t you tell?”

  “I . . . All right.”

  She laughed. “Tom and I decided we should keep our disguises while looking for you. People are a lot more helpful to a lady than an orphan girl.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. Sally continued her story, telling me we’d been sent to Paris to stop an assassin. To do that, we’d hunted for the secret treasure of the Knights Templar. And all of this had gained me a terrible enemy.

  “He calls himself the Raven,” she said. And, for the first time, her words evoked a feeling.

  It was terror.

  CHAPTER

  12

  THE DREAM.

  The bird. The

  black bird

  of nothing-feathers and onyx eyes

  stood atop that twisting

  branch.

  YOU

  BELONG

  TO

  ME

  it said.

  “Christopher?”

  The girl—Sally—was holding my arm, looking worried. “Are you all right?”

  The pigeon walked over my boots. “What—” My voice cracked. I tried again. “What do you know about the Raven?”

  “Not much.” She explained how we’d foiled his plans in Paris, and how he’d left me a letter, a promise to return. A promise of revenge.

  The black bird. “Do you have the letter?”

  “It’s at the inn, in Seaton, with the rest of your things. What’s wrong?”

  I was scared to tell her about my dream—about what it meant. “If I was in Paris, how did I get here?”

  Sally confirmed what Robert had suspected: I’d been in a shipwreck. “We were on our way back to England. We’d got halfway to Dover when the storm broke.” She trailed off for a moment, lost in memories I no longer had. “It came out of nowhere. Like it had been conjured. The crew managed to take the sails down before the wind ripped the masts from the deck, but after that, we were helpless. We rocked in that ship for hours, blowing west. I swear, Christopher, I didn’t think it was ever going to end. And then the ship came apart.”

  She shuddered. “It was the hull. A beam snapped, and suddenly we were taking on water. Sailors began throwing things overboard: crates, barrels, anything that might float. The captain told us to get in the yawl—that’s the little rowboat they use for taking people ashore. But before you could climb down, a wave hit.

  “It was like . . . I know this sounds mad, but it was like the wave was alive. I’d swear it came just for you. You went overboard, and . . . and . . .” She was shaking. “You were gone. We called for you, but you were gone.”

  She blinked away tears, remembering. “Tom tried to jump in after you. The captain had to knock him out to stop him.”

  That was the third time she’d mentioned that name. “Who’s Tom?”

  “Tom Bailey,” she said. “He’s your best friend. You’re like brothers. Anyway, we rode out the storm in the yawl. By the time we found land, we’d already passed Southampton.”

  Southampton was one of England’s most important ports on the Channel. I wasn’t certain how far it was—a hundred miles, maybe?—but I knew it was well to the east of Devonshire.

  “When Tom came to,” Sally said softly, “he was furious. I was sure you were dead, but Tom just refused to believe it. He made us start searching. Since then, we’ve been walking the coast, stopping in every town, every hamlet, every farm, to see if anyone had word of you.”

  “You walked all the way here from Southampton?” I said, amazed.

  She nodded. “We got to Seaton Saturday night. As for Tom . . . I don’t think he sleeps anymore. He doesn’t even eat. He just sits in the parlor all night, looking at the door every time it opens, in case it’s you.”

  She flung her arms around me again. “
Oh, he’ll be so happy when he sees you. I doubted it for so long. But then, this morning, I saw Bridget.”

  “Who?”

  She laughed and pointed at my feet. And there, sitting contentedly on the tip of my boot, was the pigeon.

  I picked her up. “Bridget?”

  She cooed and flapped her wings.

  “Tom left the inn early to look for you,” Sally said. “I’d just gone out to find him when Bridget showed up. And I knew. When she wouldn’t stay with me, when she kept flying away, I knew. She led me right to you.”

  I stared at the bird. Could it be possible she’d gone looking for help?

  Sally thought so. “She’s incredibly clever. She has a brilliant sense of direction, and she follows you everywhere.” She stroked the pigeon’s feathers—Bridget, I thought, her name is Bridget—and the bird hopped happily into her hands. “In Paris, she even saved my life.”

  She’d saved mine, too. I found myself barely able to believe it. Then again, a clever pigeon was hardly the strangest thing I’d encountered recently.

  “So where’s this Tom Bailey, then?” I asked.

  She waved her hand at the hills. “Out here, somewhere. But you . . . what happened?” she said. “How on earth did you survive?”

  I told her what Robert had said, and about the ship’s plank I’d found in the cove. I explained how Bridget had led Wise to find me, and how I fell ill, and finally, how I’d woken in the cob house without my memory, in the care of Robert and his family.

  “Oh,” she said. “Is that where you got the girl?”

  “What girl?”

  She pointed back at my tracks. “There’s a little girl hiding behind that hill. She keeps peeking at you over the ridge.”

  Little girl? “It can’t be,” I said.

  I walked back toward the hill. As I did, a tiny sheepskin hat poked above the crest of the snow, then ducked down immediately.

  “It’s the moppet,” I said, amazed.

  “Who?”

  I hurried to the top. The girl had already floundered halfway down the hill. She stopped, watching me.

  “She was at Robert’s farm,” I said to Sally. “She showed up a few days ago, lost in the snow.”

  “Why is she following you?”