Call of the Wraith

by Kevin Sands

  “Careful,” I said. “She’ll run if you try to—”

  And then, to my utter amazement, Moppet finally spoke.

  CHAPTER

  15

  “MONMON,” SHE WHISPERED.

  Then she ran—toward him.

  Tom watched, eyebrows raised, as the little girl sprinted clumsily through the snow. She flung herself at him, landing with a thump against his leg. Less than half his height, she hugged his thigh, eyes closed, holding him like she’d just found her missing father.

  Tom didn’t know whether to be surprised or amused. He planted his blade in the snow and picked the girl up. When he hoisted her to his hip, she wrapped her legs around his waist.

  “What’s your name, then?” Tom said.

  She stared at him in wonder. Slowly, she reached out a little finger and touched the tip of his nose.

  He laughed and poked her right back. “Well, hello to you, too.”

  She giggled.

  I couldn’t believe it. “Do you know this girl?” I said to Tom.

  “No. Why?”

  “Because she’s afraid—terrified, really—of everyone. Except you. And, no offense, but you’re kind of scary.”

  Tom frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “And she spoke to you. Until now, she hasn’t said a single word.”

  Not that it was much of a word. Monmon. It sounded like a name—a pet name, maybe? For someone Moppet loved? Whom Tom reminded her of?

  Whatever “monmon” was, there sat Moppet, perched on Tom’s hip like he was her big brother. He made a funny face at her, and she giggled again. “Where’d she come from?”

  “I don’t know. I told you, she wouldn’t say.”

  “Well, why don’t we ask her?” He swayed, rocking her on his hip. “I’m Tom,” he said. “And you, Your Highness? What’s your name?”

  He waited. She bit her lip but didn’t speak.

  “Don’t want to tell me?” Tom said. “But then what shall I call you?”

  “We’ve been calling her Moppet,” Sally said.

  “Well, she is a moppet.” He rubbed her nose with his own, and her smile returned. “All right, Moppet it is. But when you want to tell me, I’d really like to know your real name.”

  She seemed content not to answer. She just leaned in and held him gently, her head resting in the crook of his neck.

  Tom appeared just as happy to hold her. “If you don’t know who she is, then why is she with you?”

  “Maybe I’d better tell him,” Sally said, and she explained, not only about the girl, but what had happened to me.

  At first, he was confused. Then he turned skeptical. Finally, he ended up unsettled. “You don’t remember me?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  He looked hurt. “Not even a little?”

  “I’m sorry. I wish I did. I can’t remember anyone.”

  “Master Benedict, too?”

  I shrugged.

  He thought about it. “What’s the recipe for gunpowder?”

  “Is that really all I do?” I said. “Blow things up?”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘all.’ ” He paused. “I would say ‘a lot.’ ”

  “Christopher is in there,” Sally said. “I’m sure of it.”

  She said it with such conviction, I almost felt hope. “How can you know?”

  “That pepper you threw at the dog. You went right for it. You didn’t even have to think about what you were doing.”

  “I told you,” I said. “I remember facts. I know what capsicum does.”

  “What it does, yes. But how would you know where it was?”

  That made me pause.

  “Any apothecary’s apprentice might know what capsicum is,” she said. “But that sash, that’s yours. There’s nothing else like it in the world. Yet you went straight to the right vial. Only you could have known where to find it.”

  I shook my head. “I looked through the vials at Robert’s farm. I saw the capsicum. That’s how I knew it was there.”

  “And remembered exactly where it was on the sash? In the middle of a fight? There have to be a hundred vials in there.”

  “Where’s the oil of vitriol?” Tom said suddenly.

  I’d barely begun to answer when Sally pointed in triumph. “There! You see?”

  I looked down. My hand was hovering over my right side, just above my liver. I checked the sash, just to be certain, but I didn’t need to. I already knew what I’d find: The vial of vitriol, sealed with red wax, wrapped in twine.

  Could this mean my soul wasn’t actually stolen? Had it been . . . I don’t know . . . hidden? Was Christopher Rowe really still somewhere inside my head?

  “There’s a woman,” I told them. “Robert said she asked to see me. He thinks she knows what’s happened.”

  “Who’s this?” Sally said.

  “Her name’s Sybil O’Malley. She’s a cunning woman.”

  Tom gasped. “Christopher! No. That’s black magic.”

  “I thought cunning folk used white magic.”

  “It’s all wicked.”

  “How else can I get my memories back?” I said.

  “We can tell you about them.”

  “Sally’s already told me my life story, and I don’t remember a single bit of it. If Sybil can help, I have to find her. Besides, she asked for me.”

  Tom looked troubled.

  “Where is she?” Sally asked.

  “Up north, but she won’t be home until tomorrow. I was heading to Seaton, to see if anyone there knew me.”

  “There’s nothing for you in the village.” Sally looked at the little girl. “Except finding Moppet’s family, I suppose.”

  “I thought you didn’t know where she came from,” Tom said. “Or do you think she’s one of the missing children?”

  I paused. “What missing children?”

  “Isn’t that what she’s talking about? The man at the inn?”

  “What man?” Sally said.

  “What inn?” I said.

  “Where we’re staying,” Tom said. “At the Blue Boar. A man said children have been disappearing.”

  I shivered. My dream. “When did you hear this?”

  “Last night. It was in the parlor, by the fire. Some man was telling a story about missing children.”

  I grabbed his arm. “How many children? How many are gone?”

  Tom looked taken aback. “I don’t know. A few. He said they’d gone with some lady.”

  “The White Lady?”

  “Maybe,” Tom said, flustered. “I wasn’t really listening.”

  I couldn’t stop trembling.

  No, I tried to tell myself. It’s the dogs. The dogs are taking them.

  You know that isn’t true, the Voice said.

  The snow, I protested, but the Voice was right. After the storm, one set of dog tracks might have been missed. But it hadn’t been snowing every day.

  More than one child disappeared? No tracks? No hint of blood? It couldn’t have been the dogs.

  And now I couldn’t keep the dream from my head.

  The bird. The

  (raven)

  black bird, holding the children beneath the ice.

  MY INNOCENT, BLAMELESS PETS. I WILL KEEP THEM FOREVER.

  “Christopher!”

  I returned to the real world, head spinning. Tom held my shoulder. Sally looked worried. Moppet, still on Tom’s hip, looked scared.

  “What’s the matter?” Tom said.

  “We have to go back to your inn,” I said. “I have to read that letter from the Raven. And then we need to find the man who told you about the children. I need to hear exactly what he knows.”

  CHAPTER

  16

  IT WAS STILL LIGHT WHEN we arrived at Seaton.

  Tom led the way, Moppet riding on his shoulders, his legs plowing a path for us through the snow. Every so often, he’d look back at me as we walked. Sometimes he grinned, overjoyed he’d found me alive. Some
times he looked worried, troubled by the lack of recognition in my eyes. Sally glanced at me the same way.

  Traveling with them was strange. On the one hand, I felt heartened. After a day of being terrifyingly alone, to walk with friends—even friends I couldn’t remember—helped quiet some of my darker thoughts. But Tom’s grin also filled me with a sense of loss, even guilt. I should know these people who cared for me so much.

  And underneath it all, fear gnawed at my gut. I tried to shake the images of my dream

  children trapped in the ice fingers clawing broken and bloody

  but they played over and over in my head, a vision I couldn’t release. Emma’s disappearance, Moppet’s arrival, my missing memories—and the black bird that hovered over us all—they couldn’t just be coincidences.

  I hoped Seaton might provide some answers. The village lay nestled on the coast of the Channel, at the foot of rolling hills some few hundred yards west of the mouth of the river. Cliffs rose from the beach, stretching in both directions as far as I could see. The houses, stone and cob, thatched roofs laden with snow, made me think of Robert’s farm, though here they were dwarfed by a sizeable fort on the seafront and a lighthouse raised on a mound of earth.

  Smoke rose from every chimney, the smell of burning wood and peat mixing with the salt-and-fish scent of the ocean. Seaton was by no means a large village—a few hundred souls, maybe—yet I was surprised to see so few people traveling its roads. Those who did were utterly quiet, the soft blanket of white muffling their footsteps, the only sounds the waves lapping at the beach and the constant cry of seagulls.

  The birds hovered, squabbling with each other over what I thought was a mound of bloody rags. It wasn’t until I got closer that I saw they weren’t rags but lumps of filthy, matted fur. Someone had killed a score of cats and dumped their broken bodies in a heap outside the village.

  I stopped. Mass culling of animals was often a marker of disease.

  Plague? I thought.

  It’s not plague, the Voice said, and I agreed almost immediately. Robert would have warned me. But then what purpose would such brutality serve?

  You already know the answer, the Voice said.

  If I did, it was locked away with everything else. We just shuddered at the sight and moved on.

  • • •

  The harbor held fewer boats than I’d expected. Most of what bobbed in the shallows were simple fishing vessels. The only ship of significant size was a sea-stained three-masted galleon with a double-deck of cannon and a figurehead of a manticore, a fabulous beast with the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion. Except for its pennant—a red flag on the jack staff, the cross of Saint George in the upper corner—its pitch-streaked masts were bare, the sails stripped from the rigging.

  With my memories gone, my only knowledge of being tossed overboard came from what Sally had told me. Yet the sight of the galleon left me distinctly uneasy. “Is that the ship you were thinking of?” I asked her.

  Sally nodded, looking somewhat uneasy herself. “Moppet?” she said. “Do you recognize that boat? Have you been in Seaton before?”

  The little girl ignored her. Tom tried the same question, but Moppet just turned away, staring off into the hills. My spirits sank. I’d hoped to solve at least one of our mysteries here. Now we didn’t even have a theory as to where she’d come from.

  That left us heading toward the Blue Boar Inn—and me getting more and more nervous. Before we’d entered the village, Sally had insisted we keep the same disguises we’d worn in Paris. I would be Baron Christopher Ashcombe, grandson of the King’s Warden; she would be the Lady Grace; and Tom would be our guard. By order of rank, that put me squarely in charge of our traveling band.

  With my memories gone, I’d be completely unprepared to answer questions about my life, disguised or otherwise. “Can’t I just be Christopher Rowe?” I said. Whoever he was.

  Sally shook her head. “We’ve already been telling people we’re looking for Baron Ashcombe.”

  I sighed. Sally promised she’d step in any time I became flustered, and both she and Tom worked along the way to fill me with facts I should know. I spent half the time trying to memorize them, and the other half wishing I could throw the whole plan into the harbor. Besides, it seemed more like Moppet was in charge. Sitting on Tom’s shoulders, the girl steered her valiant steed away from the shore and into the streets by treating Tom’s ears as reins.

  When we entered the Blue Boar, the innkeeper, a friendly sort by the name of Willoughby, smiled and bowed his head. “Welcome back, my lady.”

  Sally introduced me. Willoughby was delighted she’d succeeded in her quest. “Come in, my lord, come in,” he said. “You must be freezing. Come sit by the fire—out of there, Smalls, you’re not even paying.”

  He kicked a somewhat resentful older gentleman from the cushions by the hearth and gave us his most comfortable seats. Unprompted, he brought mugs of warm spiced ale for the three of us and heated sheep’s milk for Moppet. She looked at the cup distrustfully until Tom handed it to her himself, whereupon she drank from it greedily.

  Willoughby chuckled at the sound of her gulps. “Seems you found more than you bargained for,” he said to Sally.

  Sally nudged me under the table with her foot. Right—I was supposed to be in charge.

  “I found her,” I said. “She appeared at Robert Dryden’s farm, lost and hungry. I don’t suppose you recognize her?”

  The innkeeper looked at her more closely. “ ’Fraid not, my lord. She’s not from the village, that’s for certain.”

  “My fr—uh . . . my man here says a fellow came in last night, talking of missing children.”

  Willoughby nodded. “That’ll be Rawlin. Always on about some gossip or other.”

  “Could we speak to him?”

  “Certainly. He’ll be here tonight, without fail; he does enjoy his spiced ale. Perhaps you’d like to relax until then? I have a room set aside which I think you’ll find to your liking. Very comfortable, I promise, with its own fire.”

  Willoughby led us up to the rooms farthest from the common entrance. Sally had already taken one of them; the innkeeper installed me in the other, across the hall. It was clean, and the fire warmed it nicely, and all in all I was the most comfortable I’d been since I’d woken.

  “Perhaps we could arrange for a hot bath, too, my lord,” Tom said, nose crinkling. “Moppet could use one.”

  “All of you could use one,” Sally muttered.

  Willoughby hurried downstairs to get a tub. Tom lifted Moppet from his shoulders and nudged her toward Sally. “Go with her,” he said. “She’ll clean you up.”

  Sally held out her hand, waiting. Moppet just stood there.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Tom said. “She won’t hurt you. She’s my friend.”

  Moppet wrapped her arms around Tom’s leg, hugging him close.

  “Well,” Tom said, half-amused, half-resigned. “Looks like that’s settled.”

  So Moppet stayed in our room after all. I soaked in the tub first, the water warmed with heated stones and scented with rose water, and it was like every aching muscle in my body melted away. I stayed there until my skin wrinkled. Pretending to be a lord did have its advantages.

  Tom let Moppet have the tub next, though she seemed less interested in bathing than in splashing Tom and giggling. Tom bore his soaking with great patience, but when she turned her back, he looked haunted. As the dirt rubbed away, her bruises stood in stark and ugly contrast to the paleness of her skin, and her protruding ribs showed how terribly she’d been underfed. I began to understand her silence. Whatever horrible thing had happened to her must have marked her just as badly on the inside.

  As she still wouldn’t speak to us, I worked on a different mystery: me. Sally left a waxed leather sack in our room. In it were the things they’d rescued from the boat before we were shipwrecked—my things. I laid what was inside on the bureau: a half dozen books, five of them ha
ndwritten in an angular scrawl, and a cherrywood box, sealed with a pair of heavy locks.

  I flipped through the books first. Two of them contained journal entries from 1652. Tom told me these were my master’s, written in Paris when he traveled there to help with an outbreak of plague. The other four were about poisons: signs, symptoms, and possible remedies.

  I studied the illustrations, traced my fingers over the words, trying to recall something, anything, about the man who’d loved me like he was my father.

  Nothing. All I felt was empty. I closed the books and moved on to the box.

  “How do I open this?” I asked Tom.

  “Don’t you have the keys?” he said.

  “Why would I have—”

  Then I remembered. My sash. At Robert’s farm, I’d found a pair of iron keys. I pulled them out, slipped them in, turned them.

  Click.

  The box opened, and I stared at the collection inside. It was full of death: poisons of every kind in vials and ampoules, held fast to the velvet lining by leather straps. I was shocked to realize I knew what each one of them was and what misery they could cause.

  The poisons weren’t all I found. Inside was also a small leather bag, its straps knotted tight. I was just about to open it when I spotted the letter, folded and tucked into the lining. My name was written on the back.

  Christopher Rowe

  Maison Chastellain

  Île Notre-Dame, Paris

  This was what I’d come here for. I unfolded it with trembling fingers, and read the words of the Raven.

  My dear Christopher,

  I congratulate you on your victory. You have done the impossible: You found the Templar treasure, where others—including me—could not. Don’t worry, I’ll tell no one the truth of what happened; I like that you and I now share a secret. And, as vexed as I am, I must admit: It was fascinating to watch your mind at work. I see now why Master Benedict chose you as an apprentice.

  Does the mention of your master surprise you? No doubt Benedict never told you about me, so I will: He was a thorn in my side for many years. Now, though he has departed, you come to take his place. And while I try not to begrudge you your success, your discovery has cost me dearly. You owe me, Christopher. And I always collect what I am owed.