The Young Adult Award-Winners Megapack

by Emily Cheney Neville

She repeated the syllables, pausing between them like a child trying a new lesson.

  “That’s right!” he nodded, laughing and excited. “I told you she’d talk some day!” he slyly threw at Abel.

  “Now—her name!” Abel whispered.

  Ferdinand came a step nearer her. “I’m Ferdinand”—he pointed to himself. “And you”—he made a quick gesture—“what’s your name?”

  Instantly they saw her face cloud, as she drew away from him.

  “What’s wrong?” he demanded in surprise.

  “Abel—you try,” whispered Ruth.

  Ferdinand stepped aside, and Abel came close to the Girl. In the sunny stillness he could hear her quickened breathing.

  “See, my child,” he said, “this is Abel, that is Ruth, and that is Ferdinand.” He touched her arm as if he were wheedling a child. “Who are you?… What is your name?”

  She only looked blankly back at him. Could she, he wondered, be feigning? He drew her down on a near-by bench. “What is your name?” he coaxed.

  “She doesn’t understand a word you say!” Ruth’s voice was as crestfallen as her face.

  “But she understands what he means,” Ferdinand declared.

  Abel said nothing, but, secretly, he agreed.

  “She’s like a locked door without a key,” sighed Ruth.

  “There’s always a key, my dear,” Abel thoughtfully replied, while he studied the gently inscrutable face beside him—“if one can only find it.”

  “Well—” Ferdinand burst out laughing, “we have a key, sir! All we have to do is to teach her what she’s begun to teach herself—our language. Then there’ll be no trouble about unlocking the door!”

  “Humph,” Ruth sniffed, “if you think you can get her to open her lips one minute before she’s ready… She’s just what I said she was, a locked door.”

  Ferdinand’s eyes glinted. “I’ll guarantee she’ll unlock, if I teach her,” he teased.

  Abel glanced down at the Girl. Out of the babel of words, of gestures, of varying expressions on the faces around her, what did she gather? Did some inkling of their import reach her? Again the image of a fawn flashed irresistibly before him—that attitude of pitiful vigilance, those wistful eyes that smiled at you, yet seemed never quite to forget a pursuing terror. He put out his arm and drew her to him. Never had she seemed to him so exquisitely piteous.

  “I’ll be here tomorrow,” Ferdinand called back from the gate, “for the first lesson!”

  “Abel,” said Ruth, that evening, when they were alone, “did you send for Ferdinand on purpose?”

  “Send for him?” Abel inquired innocently. “Why, he’s been coming here for years, hasn’t he?”

  “You know perfectly well what I mean, Abel!”

  “Come to think of it, I believe I did do something or other about it.”

  “I knew it!” Ruth with her bright, black eyes and her head cocked to one side, reminded him of an exasperated blackbird.

  “Well, what harm came of it? Seeing a young person—someone of her own age—did for our poor child what you and I couldn’t have done in a hundred years. It started things going in that benumbed brain of hers.”

  “It certainly started something.”

  “What do you mean?” Abel demanded uneasily.

  “Oh, nothing,” was all Ruth could be got to say then, but, as he was dropping off to sleep, she volunteered, out of an apparently clear sky, “I don’t believe Ferdinand will have to be sent for to come here again!”

  And she was right. It had to be a full day at the palace that kept him from giving the Girl a lesson.

  Ruth and Abel began by teaching her familiar, everyday words. Ferdinand went about it differently. As he talked to her, he would illustrate words by action; then, with infinite patience, he would make her re-tell what he had said, while Ruth and Abel sat by, sometimes laughing and always wondering at his ingenuity. And, gradually, almost without realizing what she was doing, the Girl began to piece words together.

  One day, from a window where they could see the two in the court, Abel and Ruth heard him telling the Girl about his home away beyond the mountains; about the great forests, and the wolves he had trapped, and the boar he had hunted. Kindling to his own description, he said, a little regretfully, “I’d probably have stayed up there, if my father hadn’t made me come down here to the King’s court.”

  They saw her look strangely at him, and then, in her halting way, she asked, “Are you sorry, Ferdinand, to be here?”

  “Ruth! Ruth—” Abel clutched her arm in his excitement—“do you see what that young rascal has done? Got her so interested that she forgot herself!”

  They held their breath, while they listened to Ferdinand follow up the cue so unwittingly given him.

  “Of course sometimes I’m homesick,” he was saying. “Everybody is.” Then, quite naturally, “Aren’t you?”

  They saw her eyes widen with fear. For a moment he appeared to wait for her answer. “Don’t you wish sometimes you could go home?” he urged.

  This time the two at the window saw the delicate face quiver.

  “Abel, stop him!” Ruth whispered in a panic.

  “Yes—he’s going too fast.” He strolled into the court and made a pretext of asking Ferdinand when he’d seen Nicolo Conti. Presently, the Girl went into the house.

  “You pushed her too hard, lad!” Abel remonstrated in a low voice.

  “She knew as well as not what I wanted, but she’s downright obstinate!”

  “Not obstinate, Ferdinand, but afraid. I was watching her while you were talking, and I know.”

  When Ruth joined them, she reminded them of her own prediction. “Remember what I told you—not to count too much on her telling you anything even when she knew how!”

  As the days went by, Abel and Ruth found themselves less and less curious about her.

  “I don’t know that I care where she came from,” Ruth would often say, “as long as she stays!”

  “That’s the point, after all, isn’t it? What did we ever do without her?”

  “I’m glad she’s so lovely to look at, aren’t you, Abel? If she were homely, now—”

  “Your big heart would take her in just the same, Ruth! But I’m glad, yes.”

  Once, after one of these conversations, Ruth drily remarked, “Ferdinand doesn’t act as if it were any great hardship to teach her.”

  Abel turned in his chair, and looked at her. “How could he? A hardship to teach that sweet child!”

  “I sometimes think, Abel,” she laughed, “that you’ve fixed your mind on such far things, you can’t see what’s under your nose.”

  Strange, Abel mused, after Ruth left the room, to go along for years and never know what you had been missing. The court, now, how empty it was unless the Girl were somewhere about, learning from him how to prune the grape-vine, or helping Ruth weed and water. Even the workshop, where he had been so content to be alone, seemed to take on a warmer life when she was watching him carpenter.

  She asked him, one day, what he was making.

  “Something,” he told her, as he tested the accuracy of the compass frame, “to help sailors find their way on the sea.”

  He glanced up to find her half-fearfully watching him. What had he said, he puzzled, to bring such a look? And afraid lest he should blunder into worse, he said nothing, and went on with his work. But in his own mind he turned the thing over. Sailors and compasses and the sea—what could they mean to her?

  “Poor lamb!” Ruth said, when he told her and Ferdinand of the incident. “To think of all she’s carrying in her mind and doesn’t dare tell us.”

  “She lives in two worlds,” Abel rejoined, “our own and the one she came from!”

  “At least I’d like to know her name,” declared Ferdinand, “even if she didn’t tell us anything more.”

  The corners of Abel’s mouth twitched. “There’s nothing to prevent our giving her one. What would you suggest?”

&n
bsp; Ferdinand carefully considered. “I can’t think of a name that would suit her,” he came out, at last. “It would have to be something—” he hesitated, flushing a little—“something lovelier than any name we have, and—”

  “Go on!” urged Abel, closely watching him.

  “And different from our language anyhow!”

  “That’s it—different!” Abel’s fist on the table confirmed his agreement. “I tell you, Ferdinand, she doesn’t belong to our race. I’ve made up my mind to that. How about it, Ruth?”

  “I believe you’re right, Abel.”

  “The colour of her skin’s not like any I ever saw,” Ferdinand suggested. “It’s not dark enough for a Moor.”

  “Nor blonde enough for northern Europe,” Abel added, with an image in his mind of a dusky, golden lily.

  “We aren’t any farther along with her,” Ferdinand fumed, “than when we started.”

  “Perhaps we never will be!” teased Ruth.

  “There’s a first time for everything, Aunt Ruth. You wait!”

  CHAPTER 6

  Sofala—The Devil’s Cave

  From where Ruth sat sewing, in the room next to the workshop, she could see and hear Abel and Ferdinand. They had a map spread out on the table, and their voices drifted past her in a jumble of strange names.

  In the pauses of their talk she stopped sewing to watch the Girl as she moved about the court in the soft brilliance of late afternoon. Her eyes drank in, with a fulness of satisfaction, the grace of the figure that now was silhouetted in sunlight or tenderly outlined by leafy shade. That sharply delicate contrast of dark hair and ivory skin against a sweep of vivid bloom! Was there ever anything so lovely?

  This child, Ruth often said to herself, was like some flower of golden grace, half hidden in shadow. And, again, when there was a sliver of moon behind a wisp of cloud, Ruth was as likely to say that she was like it, too. More and more, fear was leaving the soft eyes; some day, Ruth silently exulted, it would be wholly gone.

  The hum of voices in the workshop rose again.

  “It’s the same old knot,” Ferdinand was saying, “that we’ve still to cut: that reach between the Devil’s Cave and Sofala.”

  As he spoke the last words, Ruth saw the slender figure start, and stiffen into tense, listening stillness, her face stark and white. Her impulse was to run out—but already the Girl was stealing toward the workshop. A glance at Abel and Ferdinand, with their backs to the door, told Ruth they were quite unaware of the presence behind them.

  Noiselessly the Girl sank on the threshold, face turned to the court, hands clenched on her knees. Ruth could see the straining knuckles and the rigid shoulders. What had made this ghastly change? Was it something the Girl had overheard Abel or Ferdinand say?

  In vain Ruth tried to recall the conversation, and at last she went into the workroom and dropped into a seat where she could watch.

  “What are you two talking about?” she asked as casually as she could.

  “Oh, nothing new,” Ferdinand answered, without looking up. “I was saying that it was the same old knot that remained to be cut.”

  As he spoke, Ruth saw the head in the doorway turn ever so little. Just as she had suspected! Something connected with the map—and again she cudgelled her memory. Presently, with a yawn, Abel moved back from the table to where he could look at the sunset. She tried to draw him out, but he was no more inclined to talk than Ferdinand. After another pause, the Girl on the doorstep rose and Ruth heard her go to her room.

  In an agony of suspense she debated with herself: should she follow? Should she tell Abel what had happened? Yet, after all, what was there to tell? No, she would delay a little, at least till Ferdinand went.

  When supper was ready, she cautiously approached the Girl. She found her flung on the bed, her face turned to the wall. No, she wasn’t ill—nor hungry. She wanted just to be quiet. Her voice was so natural, that Ruth’s anxiety almost vanished. She went back to Abel, telling herself that her imagination had run away with her. She was glad she had had the sense to say nothing to him. But that night she found herself dropping off to sleep still puzzling over the curious change that had come over the Girl.

  Suddenly, she woke, with an instant consciousness that Abel, too, was awake.

  “Ruth,” she heard him breathe, “someone’s in the workshop.”

  A stealthy sound came to her ears. She recognized it at once: the drawer of the big table sliding on its grooves. The drawer where the maps were kept!

  “There!” Abel was sitting bolt upright. “Don’t you hear?”

  He seized his cloak, and stepped into the court. In another moment she was stealing after him to the workshop. Yet, even before they reached it, Ruth knew who would be there.

  Through its open door a faint ray of light streamed into the dark court. Cautiously they avoided it, and then, from the shadow of a vine, they looked into the room, and saw—as the first sound of the sliding drawer had told Ruth she would see—the Girl.

  Crazed fear in every line of her face, of her trembling body, she stood at the table staring down at something on it: a map! As if she searched for something on its surface, they saw her lean over it, and then reel back with a stifled moan.

  Ruth grasped Abel’s arm. “Shall I go to her? She’s suffering so!”

  He held her back. “Wait a moment.”

  The Girl was now forcing herself to the table, as if to some ordeal. Shuddering, she bent over the map, and this time they saw a trembling finger creep to a definite spot. Slowly it began to trace along the surface. On and on it moved—faltered—stopped short. Suddenly her hands went to her eyes, as though to shut out some horror, and her shoulders were shaking with soundless sobs.

  “Oh, Abel, what can be the matter?” Ruth breathed in his ear.

  Then, in utter bewilderment they were staring at each other, while there smote on their ears a whispered wail: “Sofala—Sofala—”

  In terrified suspense Ruth watched the slender figure within sway back and forth as if abandoned to despair, when, again, came that stifled voice: “Sofala—The Devil’s Cave—”

  “What, in heaven’s name, does she mean?” Abel’s startled face was close to Ruth’s. “Is the child gone mad?”

  The Girl was standing quite still now, gazing before her with wide, blank eyes. Suddenly and unexpectedly, she reached out and snuffed the candle. The next moment Ruth felt her brush past into the court. Breathlessly they watched her pause, and scan the starlit sky, and then—steal toward the gate.

  In a flash Ruth had pushed Abel through the door of the workshop. “Quick—go back to bed!” she whispered, while from the threshold she called, “Trying to get some air, child? Too warm to sleep, is it?”

  She saw the distant figure start—turn back. In a minute her arm was around the trembling form. She was saying, gently, that she couldn’t sleep, either, that a turn around the court would make them drowsy.

  From her manner no one would ever have suspected that Ruth wasn’t in the habit of taking strolls at midnight. She rambled on about nothings; lingered, so they could both smell the dewy jessamine blossoms. Sometimes, in a dazed way, there were low murmured replies. At last Ruth declared she was sleepy, and that she’d spend the rest of the night on a couch near the door for the cooler air.

  On the pretext of laying back the heavier coverings, she delayed in the Girl’s room, and when she came out, she left the door ajar.

  It was just before dawn, when she had made sure of the Girl’s sound sleep, that she slipped back to Abel. He was dressed, and softly pacing back and forth, his head sunk on his breast—his habit when he was thinking out some problem.

  She came close to him, feeling like a guilty child. “Abel—I—I saw her listening yesterday, when you and Ferdinand were studying over that map! I saw her face change—”

  “You did?” Abel asked, in a startled voice. Anyone else would have added, “Why didn’t you say something about it?” But Abel only said, very gently,
“It was wonderful, my dear, just wonderful, the way you managed her in the court. I don’t believe she suspected!”

  A hurt look came into her eyes. “She was running away from us—though we’ve never done anything but love her.”

  “It wasn’t from us,” he comforted, “but from the same fear that drove her when she came to us.”

  “And I’d begun to think she’d forgotten!”

  “That poor child must never know what we saw tonight.”

  “No; and another thing, we mustn’t leave her to herself. I’d better go now and see if she’s awake.”

  “Ruth,”—Abel came close to her, and she saw that his eyes had an awestruck look—“did you notice that she said those words, Sofala, Devil’s Cave, as if—as if, Ruth, they were familiar to her?”

  CHAPTER 7

  The Caged Bird

  Nicolo’s mood, as he watched his shipwrights at work, late one afternoon, matched the sunless day. Strips of sombre sky between the partly placed ribs of his caravel gave her an aspect of desolation that made him shiver. Would he have done better, he wondered, to have taken the advice of the Venezia’s captain, and gone back to Venice? Suppose Manoel should remain indifferent to the Way of the Spices, and Spain or England should find it!

  He recalled that Abel Zakuto had admitted, in so many words, that something was needed to awake Manoel to the situation. As if, Nicolo gloomily mused, anything more splendidly convincing than what Diaz had done were needed! If that couldn’t spur the King into action, what could?

  At this point in his reflections, he saw the men put up their tools and prepare to leave. He nodded to one of them whom he remembered hiring a few weeks ago, a short, wiry chap with a deeply tanned face and small, black eyes that looked like burnt gimlet holes in brown parchment. A rolling gait and an air of cat-like agility made one immediately visualize him as thoroughly at home at all heights and angles. Nicolo had hired him because the fellow had looked so in need, and because there was a haunting familiarity about him.

  “Is she going ahead to suit you, sir?” he inquired, as he stopped at Nicolo’s side to survey the caravel.

  “I’m satisfied,” Nicolo told him, “though I’m not as used to the Portuguese type of craft as I am to the Venetian.”