The Interrupted Tale

by Maryrose Wood

  Simon arranged some hay bales in the shape of a seat for her and tucked loose hay all around her legs, too, so that she might sit near him and listen in warmth and comfort. He spoke quietly, for he did not want to disturb the cows. Even so, Penelope could only marvel at his incredible tale, which started shortly after she had last seen him, when the two friends parted at the Ashton train station. . . .

  “I COULD TELL YOU ABOUT the trip to Brighton, and all the interesting people I met on the train, and what the weather was like, and what we had for lunch,” he began, “but the gist of it is that I got to Brighton on schedule and made my way to the old sailor’s home where Great-Uncle Pudge is spending his golden years. The Home for Ancient Mariners, it’s called. Not a bad place, really. The residents are always swabbing the floors and keeping things shipshape out of habit, so it’s clean as a whistle. On Sundays they serve hardtack and moldy potatoes for dinner, as a bit of a treat.”

  Penelope made a face, and he explained, “It reminds the fellows of their days aboard ship. Anyway, old Pudge was glad to see me, and we passed the time as we usually do: him teaching me to sing old sea chanteys, me emptying his rum bottles into the drain. After lunch I suggested a stroll on the boardwalk. That’s where I planned to ask him about the diary.”

  “Yes, the diary!” Penelope could barely contain herself. “Did you find out what it says?”

  “I’m getting to that part. Well, the boardwalk at Brighton goes on for miles. I pushed Uncle Pudge in a wheeled invalid chair, as it’d be much too far for him to walk, his legs being just as old as the rest of him. Along the way I broach the subject. ‘Pudge,’ I said—I call him Pudge, and he calls me Pip, ever since I was a pipsqueak—‘Pudge, when you were just a boy-o, and first aboard ship, did you ever land on a place called Ahwoo-Ahwoo?’

  “Oh, you should have seen his face! ‘I did, Pip, I did!’ he answers, turning pale as a ghost. ‘I rue the day I set foot on that curséd isle!’ Then he starts to tell me the tale. But just as we reach the end of the boardwalk, we were accosted! A gang of salty hooligans jumped us from behind. Miss Lumley—I mean, Penelope—you’ll never guess. I was kidnapped by pirates!”

  “Pirates! Oh, no!” she cried, for truly, she could think of nothing worse, plus it interrupted the part about the cannibal book, which she was desperate to hear. “How dreadful it must have been!”

  He shrugged. “It was a bit rough in the beginning. There was talk of ransom, until I explained that I was a playwright. Even a bunch of pirates knew the life of a bard is scarcely worth the cost of a half-price ticket to a children’s matinee. But then a storm kicked up, and we were blown off course. We were lost at sea!”

  “Penelope—you’ll never guess. I was kidnapped by pirates!”

  By now Penelope was perched on the edge of her hay bale. What a storyteller he was! Although she did wish he would get back to the cannibal book soon. “Please, go on,” she begged.

  “Well, not to boast, but we Harley-Dickinsons have a knack for navigation. But I was locked in the brig! Night and day I told them, ‘Let me out, and I’ll steer us safe to shore.’ They thought my offer was a trick. The days passed. We grew short of food, then drink. At last they had no choice. They let me out on one condition: that I be sworn into the crew by taking the pirates’ oath, which is as solemn and unbreakable as an oath can be.”

  “You mean you became a pirate?” she said, astonished.

  “I did.” He looked bashful. “I sent you a message in a bottle every day, until we ran out of bottles. You didn’t get them, by any chance?”

  She shook her head. “I am afraid we are rather landlocked at Ashton Place.”

  “Huh. Didn’t think of that.” He frowned. “You must have been worried, not hearing from me for so long. You must have thought I’d forgotten you. Did you?”

  “No,” she said firmly, realizing it was true. “I never truly believed that. Not deep down.” Now it was her turn to feel bashful, and she tried to steer him back to his tale. “Imagine, you being a pirate! I hope they did not force you to be too . . . piratical. Although it would hardly be your fault if they did.”

  “You know the old saying: ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do.’ But a man has to have his principles. I learned more than I’d care to know about being a knave and a rascal and committing roguery of all sorts, but minding our longitude and latitude was enough to keep me busy. Still, what plots I have now! I could write a hundred pirate stories without breaking a sweat. Don’t worry, I’ll finish telling this one first.” He grinned. “After what seemed like an eternity at sea, we sighted a fishing boat bound for Manchester. The Wise Flounder was its name. I took the chance to escape. Oath or no oath, I had a previous engagement on land that I fully intended to keep.”

  “With whom?”

  “Why, with you! I set a course as the crow flies to Ashton Place. When I arrived, I discovered that you and the children had left the day before to visit your alma mater. I was penniless, mind you—I’d left my share of pirate treasure behind when I jumped ship; it seemed only fair. But that curious old coachman, Timothy, gave me cash for a train ticket out of his own pocket, and said to come straight to Swanburne and no delays. ‘But, Old Tim,’ I said, ‘what sort of welcome do you think I’ll get at a girls’ school?’ ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘When you arrive, go see the vet. Tell him I sent you. He’ll know what to do.’

  “Well, I got in late, well after dark, and found Dr. Westminster in the chicken coop, just as Timothy said I would. The good doctor settled me in the hayloft for the night. He said I was just in time for cake, too. You don’t happen to have any, do you? I’m a bit peckish, to be honest.”

  “The CAKE is not until tomorrow—or, later today, if it is past midnight, which I imagine it must be.” Penelope was ready to jump out of her skin. “Simon, I hate to rush you, for your mastery of suspense is beyond compare. But if you could please, please, tell me: What does the cannibal book say? I have reason to think that your great-uncle Pudge’s diary is far more important than any of us realized.”

  “You’re right about that. Do you have it with you?”

  She blanched. “I did have it! But Edward Ashton took it.”

  “You mean Fredrick Ashton, don’t you?”

  “No, I mean Edward. Dead Edward. The one whom everyone thinks drowned in a tar pit. The one who has changed his appearance and now goes by the name of Judge Quinzy.”

  “So Quinzy’s dead Edward, eh? Just as Madame Ionesco foretold.” He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Well, here’s what I learned from old Pudge, before we were so rudely interrupted by pirates. Pudge did write that diary. He says it tells the tale of everything that happened. The storm at sea, the shipwreck on Ahwoo-Ahwoo, and much more. It’s all in there.”

  She gave a shiver of horror. “It must have been awful. Cannibals!”

  “He said they spent the first night on the island sitting around a campfire on the beach, in the light of the full moon, singing old sea chanteys with the admiral. The admiral had a tuneful voice, apparently. Pudge tried to teach me one of the songs. It was too complicated for me! Lots of rhyming words and harmony parts.”

  Penelope was so anxious to hear what happened next that her voice was reduced to a squeak. “And—but—so—what then?”

  Simon shrugged. “He wouldn’t tell. It’s all in the book, he said. ‘Read it for yourself, Simon, lad!’ Bit of a joker, that Pudge.”

  Penelope thought she might scream with frustration. “But why could he not simply tell you the story?”

  “He said he’s sworn to secrecy. The only person he’ll talk to about it is Admiral Ashton himself. That’s who made him swear.”

  “But the admiral is long dead.”

  Simon nodded. “I told you, his brain’s a bit addled. At least it’s all in the diary. Except there’s one problem . . . well, two problems, I suppose. First, you don’t have the book anymore. Second—”

  “It is written in invisible ink!” she blurted.

&n
bsp; Simon whistled admiringly. “Your cleverness never fails to amaze! How on earth did you know?”

  Her face fell. “I wish I were twice as clever. I only realized it after the book had fallen into Edward Ashton’s hands. Is it written in milk?”

  The word “milk” prompted some mournful moos from below. Simon lowered his voice to a whisper. “Milk’s fine for household secrets, but it washes away at sea. This diary is written in pirates’ ink. That’s the best invisible ink there is. It’s foolproof and waterproof. We pirates use it for treasure maps, secret oaths, and other confidential documents.”

  It was odd to hear Simon say “we pirates,” but Penelope supposed she would get used to it in time. “Pirates’ ink,” she mused. “Do you know how to read it?”

  “Harr, matey, I do!” he said, quite convincingly. “My adventure at sea, though unpleasant in some ways, left me with valuable skills. For one thing, my navigational expertise is twice what it was before. For another, I am now an expert brewer of pirates’ ink. It has two parts: the ink itself, and the visibilizer.”

  “The what?”

  “The visibilizer. It’s what you pour on the pages to make the invisible ink visible again. Concocting the ink is easy, but the visibilizer . . . well, that takes talent. And a long list of ingredients, too.”

  “Is there any chance that Edward Ashton knows how to make the visibilizer?”

  “Not unless he’s ever been a sworn member of a pirate’s crew. Both recipes are secrets of the pirates’ brotherhood. I myself have taken an oath not to reveal them, unless it’s to another pirate who’s also under oath.” At Penelope’s dismayed expression, he added, “Don’t worry. I’m allowed to cook up a batch of the visibilizer for personal use, as long as I don’t share the recipe with a landlubber. No offense.”

  Penelope chewed on a piece of hay, concentrating very hard. “So Quinzy has the cannibal book but cannot read it. And we have the visibilizer, or will, once you prepare it—but no book.” She looked up. “Simon, how accurate is your great-uncle Pudge’s memory?”

  He shrugged. “I wouldn’t trust him for the day’s headlines, but the tales of his boyhood seafaring days are clear as a bell.”

  Penelope would have shouted “Eureka!” but she did not want to frighten the cows. “Simon, consider this: If the details of Pudge’s story are accurate, that means that when they arrived at the island, the admiral did not yet suffer from the curse that plagues the Ashton men during the full moon. For if he had, he would have been howling and barking around the campfire, not singing intricately rhymed sea chanteys in complex harmony parts.”

  Simon stroked his chin. “I think I see what you’re driving at, Miss L. Something changed on that island. Something happened.”

  “Indeed—and it was something so shocking that Pudge could only write about it in invisible ink, and was sworn to secrecy by the admiral, too.” Penelope thought of the unanswered questions surrounding Edward Ashton and the Incorrigible children . . . Agatha Swanburne and her auburn-haired portrait . . . Miss Mortimer and the hair poultice . . . Old Timothy and Dr. Westminster . . . and the Long-Lost Lumleys, too. So many mysteries! Somehow they all seemed inextricably linked. But all she said was, “It would explain the curse on the Ashtons—and perhaps much more, as well.”

  The almost-full moon poured its pale, cool light through the window of the hayloft, like fresh milk into a pitcher. It would be light enough to read by, easily. All that would be needed was a book.

  “I wonder what happened on Ahwoo-Ahwoo?” Simon said softly, and they both gazed out at the star-studded sky.

  “There is only one way to find out.” Her voice was quiet and cool as the moonlight itself. “We must steal Pudge’s diary back at once.”

  The Eleventh Chapter

  Something criminal is planned for the CAKE.

  “A SWANBURNE GIRL MAY BORROW with permission, and quote with attribution, but she absolutely, positively does not steal.” No doubt Agatha Swanburne said something along those lines at one point or another. Indeed, under normal circumstances, a rule against stealing would be one that all right-thinking people ought to follow. But these could hardly be considered normal circumstances, could they? For, in addition to all the other shockingly out-of-character things Miss Penelope Lumley had done recently—telling half-truths to a person in a position of authority, for example, or walking out of a library without a single book in hand, not one!—never before, in the whole history of the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, had any Swanburne girl spent the night in a hayloft with a pirate, planning an elaborate theft.

  The novelty of her situation was not lost on the plucky young governess. “Well, I suppose if no one has ever done it before, then it is high time someone did,” she told herself, and stuck another piece of hay in her mouth. She and Simon had already spent hours working out the details of their intended crime, and Penelope had chewed on hay the whole time. It focused her mind wonderfully, and she began to understand why Beowulf found gnawing on hard objects so appealing.

  Plotting the theft of the diary had also proved enjoyable. However, it was her first attempt at burglary, and she had little to compare the experience with, other than a thoroughly depressing book she had once encountered, years before, when she was not much older than Cassiopeia. It was about a man who steals a loaf of bread and ends up in prison for many years. After his release, he is hounded mercilessly by an unhappy policeman. More bad things happen, tragedy ensues, and nothing ends well, for anyone.

  (The literary-minded among you may have already guessed that this dismal tale must have been Les Misérables, by Mr. Victor Hugo. That story also involves a man, a loaf of bread, and an unhappy policeman. But in Miss Penelope Lumley’s day, Mr. Hugo’s masterpiece had not yet been written. The book she was thinking of was actually a children’s picture book called Pierre et la Baguette, which translates loosely as “Peter and the Loaf of French Bread.” Whether a little French boy named Victor Hugo also read Pierre et la Baguette and was inspired to write a similar tale years later, we will never know, but the truth is that grown-up writers cannot help but be influenced by the books they read as children. Someday you, too, may decide to write a novel that touches upon subjects you read about as a young person. Pirates, perhaps. Or dancing chickens. Or even some combination of the two.)

  As for dishonest Pierre, with those telltale crumbs down the front of his chemise: One would think his grim fate would be enough to put anyone off stealing, but alas, Pierre et la Baguette was written in French, and little Penelope could scarcely understand a word. Whatever cautionary value the tale may have had was thus lost, and now here she was, in a hayloft with a pirate, and rather pleased about it, too.

  First they devised a way for Simon to reveal the ingredients for the visibilizer without breaking his pirate oath of secrecy. He did this by making an exceedingly long list that was full of red herrings. (A red herring has nothing to do with fish. Rather, it is a false clue, intended to trick would-be solvers of mysteries into shouting “Eureka! I’ve got it!” when, in fact, they have not.) It was a clever solution, for even if someone found the list, no one but Simon would know which were the real ingredients and which were the fakes, and the recipe would thus remain secret.

  Penelope wrote it all down on the back of an empty feedbag, using a pencil stub she found lying in the barn. Most of the items would be easy enough to obtain. However, Simon did specify a rather large quantity of paprika, much more than the Swanburne kitchens were likely to have on hand (paprika not being the sort of spice an English cook would typically stock in bulk).

  “It’s stretching the bounds of my oath to say so, but the paprika’s essential,” he explained when she hesitated. “The visibilizer won’t work without it. And I should warn you—once I have all the ingredients, visibilizing the book will take some time. There’s a bit of mixing involved, and the book has to simmer for close to an hour. It smells pretty foul, too.”

  “The ‘fowl’ smell can be conceale
d by confining our preparations to the chicken coop.” Penelope was unable to resist the pun. “So, let us estimate a quarter of an hour for mixing, and three-quarters of an hour for simmering. Add another half hour to locate and steal the book in the first place, plus travel time. . . .” She added quickly in her head. “That means I will have to keep Edward Ashton thoroughly occupied for one and three-quarter hours.”

  Simon whistled. “You’ll have your work cut out for you. And how will we find the cannibal book? Edward Ashton might have hidden it anywhere. It’ll be like searching for a needle in a . . . well, you know. Say, look at those stars! It’s a navigator’s dream out there tonight.”

  He sounded almost nostalgic and gazed out the hayloft window for a long minute before turning back to Penelope. “My pirate crew were a ruthless, bowlegged lot, but they taught me all a fellow needs to know about thievery. Let me have a crack at stealing it.”

  “Simon, I have no doubt that you are an excellent thief, and a dreadful knave, and a rascally rogue as well. But you would be far too conspicuous in an all-girls’ school. You could never move about unnoticed.” Especially now, she might have added, after surviving his manly shipboard adventure: He was suntanned and lean muscled, and hummed sea chanteys under his breath in the moonlight. . . .

  She pushed these distracting thoughts from her mind. “Besides, you must prepare the visibilizer, for you are the only one who can.”

  “All right.” He tugged at that poetic forelock and frowned. “But if I’m cooking the visibilizer, and you’re keeping Edward Ashton otherwise engaged, who’s going to find the cannibal book?”

  “The Incorrigible children will find it,” she said, after a moment.

  “How?”

  Penelope chewed upon her hay and smiled. “By following the scent of the sea.”

  THEIR SCHEMING COMPLETE, SIMON OFFERED to walk Penelope back to the school. She refused. Even in the dark she knew the way better than he did, and she thought it essential that Simon’s presence not be discovered, given their unlawful plans for the day to come.