Against the Tide (24 page)

Lars looked at her curiously. “There’s not much to see out there. Just miles and miles of maple trees.”

“No farms? No neighbors?”

“Not for about thirty miles, I’d estimate.”

The magnitude of her isolation felt suffocating. “I’d still like a walk,” she said. “I have insomnia most nights, and nothing helps so much as a good long walk.”

Lars shrugged. “The Professor doesn’t like us to step off the grounds, but I can’t see that it would hurt, especially if you go late at night after everyone is in bed. It will be our secret, right?”

She kept marching toward the gate and turned sideways to push through the rails. “Yes. Our secret,” she said as she turned and walked into the night.

She walked for hours. The moon was bright and a thaw that was setting in made it bearable for her to be out in the cold night air. She looked up. Only a small fragment of the sky was visible to her above the screen of the towering trees, but she was able to see the moon, just a few days shy of being at its fullest. More than anything she wished she could believe Papa’s superstitions about the power of wishing on a full moon.

Snow on the ground muffled her steps, and the eerie, unsettling creaking of the trees filled the dank air. Were all forests this loud? She’d never been in the woods before and had no idea trees could make such sounds . . . popping and groaning as they swayed. Almost like they were in pain.

How badly she wanted a sip of Mrs. Winslow’s. Within a minute
of taking a sip, she would feel the syrup beginning to unravel the tension along her spine. And perhaps she would not be so paranoid as to imagine the trees were in pain.

There was no path she could see through the blanket of snow covering the ground, so she just wandered mindlessly on. In the glow of the moon she noticed buckets hanging off the trunks of the trees. She approached one, noting the steady drip of sap falling into the bucket, landing with a distinct
ping
. Maple sap? She knew people tapped trees for syrup in New England, but had never seen it done. She paid it little mind as she walked through the maple forest, the
ping
ing of the sap now joining the snapping and groaning of the trees.

She closed her hand around the compass in her pocket. Not that she was afraid of getting lost—her trail in the wet snow would guide her home—but she felt closer to Bane by holding the compass. Surely it was just a quirk of fate that it always pointed toward him when he was near.

She glanced at the sky, noting again how close the moon was to being full, and as her fingers curled tighter around the compass, a stunning thought occurred to her.

Bane could always read her thoughts. He knew the way her mind worked and could forecast exactly how she was going to behave before she herself even knew it. She was frustrated to be such an open book where he was concerned, but perhaps this one time it would save her life.

Because if Bane could read her mind, he would know exactly when and where she was going to meet him.

26

J
ack Fontaine lined up a row of peas along the top of the mashed potatoes. They had to be straight, or the carrot sticks would not lie properly on top of them.

“Do you think it would work better with another row of mashed potatoes?” Dennis asked.

Jack looked across the dining room table where Dennis sat armed with a whole plate full of vegetables. They had eaten the roast beef and apple pie, but Mrs. Garfield never cared if they did not finish their vegetables. They could usually put those vegetables to good use building miniature forts.

“Another row of mashed potatoes will be good mortar,” Jack agreed. He held his breath as Dennis layered more potatoes on the vegetable wall. It couldn’t get too high or it would fall over when they began lobbing peas at it from the far side of the table. The goal was to knock it over, but not too quickly.

“Do you think your father loves you?” Dennis asked.

Jack looked up in surprise. “I suppose so,” he said, and reached for another pea. He really didn’t want to think about his father. It
was hard enough living out here in the middle of nowhere without thinking about Papa and Lucy. Sometimes when he thought of them he would start crying, and he was too old to cry.

“It is important that he does,” Dennis said. “Bad things might happen if he doesn’t love you enough.”

Jack was pretty certain his father loved him. At least, he said he did, but Jack wasn’t stupid. It was pretty obvious Papa was disappointed because Jack didn’t like the sea and didn’t want to go into the navy. Every time Jack got on a boat he felt sick to his stomach and he just wanted to get off the boat. And he would never admit it, but the ocean was pretty scary. If he joined the army, he would disappoint Papa, but it was better than nothing.

“I think the more letters you write to your father, the better off you will be,” Dennis said. “The Professor says that letters are just as good as real visits. He said that President Adams almost never saw his wife, but they wrote letters to each other all the time and that was just as good.”

Jack knew all about writing letters. Dennis had shown him the stack he had received from his father over the last three years. There was also a stack of letters addressed to a boy named Tony, but Tony didn’t live here anymore and Dennis wasn’t sure what happened to him. When Jack had asked Mrs. Rokotov what had happened to Tony, she had denied there was ever such a boy here.

But Jack knew she was lying. He knew Tony existed because he had seen the letters from Tony’s father.

Which made Jack think that what happened to Tony was pretty bad.

He didn’t want to think about Tony anymore. He glanced at Dennis and lowered his voice. “I think the Professor has a girlfriend.”

Dennis looked up in surprise. “What?”

“I’ve been spying for the last couple of nights,” he said. “I sometimes see her walking around underneath the trees. I’ve never seen her before.”

Dennis looked skeptical. “I’ve been here for three years, and I’ve never seen the Professor have a girlfriend. I think he is too old.” After a moment he put his fork down. “Is she pretty?”

Jack had to think for a minute about that. “I guess so, but she looks sad. All she does is walk back and forth under the trees, and she twists her hands a lot.”

“I wonder if she is a good person or a bad person,” Dennis said. Ever since Jack came here almost a month ago, Dennis had been warning him about who was good and who was bad. The cook and a guard named Lars were both good, but almost everyone else was bad.

“What about Mr. Hetley, who delivers from the general store? He’s good, isn’t he?”

Dennis shrugged. “I don’t really know. I’m never allowed out when he comes to make the deliveries. But he seems nice, because anytime I ask for something special, he always sends it right away.”

The problem with Dennis was that he was such a rule follower. The last two times Mr. Hetley had made deliveries, Jack had tried to get the man’s attention by waving madly from the third-floor room where they were always locked whenever a visitor came to the house. He was never going to get away from this place if he sat around and followed all the rules like Dennis did.

“Come on, let’s launch the missiles,” Jack said.

Dennis turned the plate so the potato wall was at the correct angle. Both boys went to the far end of the room where they knelt at eye level with the table, lined up a pea, then launched a broadside attack by flicking them with two fingers. The peas did not do much damage, but the wall was no match once they started launching
carrot sticks. When the first carrot struck, it carried a chunk of mashed potatoes flying until it smacked against the wall.

The door slammed, and Jack looked up to see Mrs. Rokotov. The woman looked like a scarecrow draped in a black sheath. “What a mess,” she said in disgust.

Dennis scrambled to his feet. “We’ll clean it up,” he said quickly.

The woman’s mouth got even thinner. “There is no time. You are to go to the third-floor tower room and remain there until you are summoned. Quick, quick,” she said as she snapped her fingers under Jack’s nose.

Both boys rushed to obey. Jack knew what this meant. It meant that sometime within the next hour Mr. Hetley would be arriving with his delivery of groceries from the town.

And that meant it was time to put Jack’s plan for escape into action.

It wasn’t until they were safely locked in the room that he let Dennis in on his plan. “Mr. Hetley will never see us in the window, because it is sunny outside and there is no light in here. What if we start a fire so he could see us?”

“There is nothing to start a fire with,” Dennis said.

Jack pulled out a book he had snatched from the professor’s study, then grabbed the magnifying glass from Dennis’s school supplies. “Yes we do.”

Dennis’s eyes grew wide with fright. “You can’t light a book on fire! The professor will kill us!”

But Jack didn’t waste any time. Bright sunlight streamed in through the window and he opened the book. He tilted the magnifying glass at just the right angle, which caused a warm beam of sunlight to strike the page. “Don’t worry. I picked one of the really old ones, so he won’t mind so much.”

“But those are the kind he likes the most!”

Jack looked at the book with skepticism but did not remove the magnifying glass. “Really? It just looks old and ratty to me.” Besides, the brittle page was dark with age, which meant it would ignite faster. Who wanted a book this old, anyway?

“I can’t believe you are doing this,” Dennis muttered. But that was the type of thing a rule-follower like Dennis would say, so Jack did not take his eyes off the glowing beam of light. And it looked as if the plan was going to work perfectly, because a tiny pinprick finally appeared, and then the spot darkened and a wisp of smoke drifted up from the paper.

Jack kept the magnifying glass in place but tossed his eyeglasses to Dennis. “Here, you can help,” he said.

He didn’t think Dennis would do it, but after a moment the boy angled the eyeglasses and sent another beam of heat toward the tiny pinprick. Jack was frustrated at how long it took for a tiny orange rim to appear around the spot, but when it did, Dennis tossed the eyeglasses down to cup his hands around the tiny flame.

Just as Mr. Hetley’s wagon came rounding the bend onto the drive, the flame developed and the brittle pages of the old book curled and blackened as the fire consumed it. A wave of heat came from the book as the other pages fed a rapidly developing flame. Jack grinned as he grasped the cover of the book to protect his hands, then waved the burning pages in front of the window, shouting and calling for Mr. Hetley’s attention.

27

L
ydia stood at her bedroom window. From this vantage point, she could look west to see the setting sun. Trees prevented her from seeing the exact moment the sun would slip below the horizon, but things darkened quickly once it began to lower.

She needed to escape the prison of this house tonight more than ever. Lydia knew that if she turned her head just a fraction, she would be able to see the bottle of Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup and its deceptively cheerful label. Her nerves were tense. She had slept only in fitful snatches ever since arriving, and she needed the distraction she could find only by walking for miles upon miles in the moonlit forest.

Something bad had happened today. Lydia had been taking her lunch in the servants’ kitchen when a big commotion came from somewhere upstairs. She heard Mrs. Rokotov screaming about a fire, and servants were rushing about, filling buckets and bringing wet blankets to smother flames. Lydia raced to the pump to fill a bucket when Boris, the biggest and most ferocious of the guards, grabbed her elbow. “You are to come with me,” he said.

Boris pulled her up the stairs, shoved her back into her workroom, and warned her to stay put if she wanted her face to keep looking so pretty. Then he slammed the door shut.

She could hardly sit still while there was a
fire
in the house. Moments after Boris left, Lydia cracked the door open to listen to the ongoing tumult as servants raced up and down stairs, water buckets sloshing and people shouting at one another.

“How dare you,”
she heard Mrs. Rokotov roar. “You wicked brat. Wicked, wicked, evil brat!” she screamed.

Lydia bit her lip, fearing one of the boys was in danger. She couldn’t let that happen. She was supposed to know nothing about the existence of those boys, but if Mrs. Rokotov was going to attack one of them, she could not stand aside and let it happen.

“Lock him up,” she heard Mrs. Rokotov order. “Lock him up and destroy that accursed magnifying glass!”

Then Lydia heard something that gave her pause. “The Professor is to know nothing about this,” Mrs. Rokotov ordered an unseen servant. “You will all be terminated if the Professor discovers one of his books came to harm while you should have been watching those children for mischief.”

Then there was a great deal of discussion. Mrs. Rokotov ordered someone to town to acquire a new rug to replace the damaged. Servants opened all the windows to air out the house and mopped up every drop of water that had been spilled on the three flights of stairs. The Professor was due to return home this evening and no one was to mention the fire.

The moment the sun set, Lydia slipped outside and set off at a brisk pace. She was tense and anxious and wished she had never heard of Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. She hadn’t taken a drop in four days, but it was getting harder to maintain her sanity by the hour.

She nodded to Lars as she approached the gate and slipped through the iron bars to walk among the maple groves. The sound of the sap dripping into the buckets seemed unusually loud tonight. The creaking of the trees was even worse. Was the sap loosening in the trees causing the groaning? Or was she simply imagining things? She felt as if she were not alone, as if she were surrounded by the Professor’s spies hidden in the trees.

The disaster today underscored her need to get the boys out of the house. She had eavesdropped enough to surmise that Jack Fontaine had set an old book on fire in an ill-fated attempt to escape. She overheard one of the servants speculating that if it had happened while the Professor was home, he might have snapped and killed the boy.

It had been six days since she had arrived in this house. She had bought herself time by copying the manuscript at a snail’s pace but could not delay much longer. She hoped her plan to rendezvous with Bane tomorrow night would work, because if she did not get the translation book tomorrow, the Professor would know her for a fraud.

The plan to deceive the Professor about the fire had worked. He had returned to the house last night and was going about his business as usual, although Lydia knew the servants were still terrified. If the Professor was going to discover the lingering scent of smoke or notice the missing book, it was probably going to be today.

As Lydia and the rest of the staff gathered around the kitchen table for lunch, Mrs. Garfield served bowls of rich Brunswick stew and kept up an artificially bright chatter about preparing for the maple sugaring season. Mrs. Rokotov and her son Boris ate in
moody silence, but Lars was a good sport and played along, saying that some of the trees were now big enough to add a second tap.

“I do so love the scent during sugaring season,” Mrs. Garfield said. “Why, the whole forest smells like a candy shop!”

Mrs. Rokotov was unimpressed. “Boris, you will be helping Lars tap the trees this year. The Professor will be taking Raymond with him on his trips to Philadelphia and New York this month.”

Boris threw down his spoon. “Again? Why am I always stuck in the middle of nowhere while Raymond gets to go everywhere?” His voice carried a trace of a petulant child’s, if a three-hundred-pound man could be mistaken for a child. Boris continued to grumble about the unfairness of the tasks, while Mrs. Rokotov remained unmoved. It was only when Boris threatened to take his complaints to the Professor that Mrs. Rokotov stiffened.

“Now that is enough!” Mrs. Rokotov said angrily.

Lydia’s eyes widened. Mrs. Rokotov was speaking in
Russian
! Lydia was careful not to lift her head or look at Mrs. Rokotov, remembering Bane’s warning not to let on that she knew more than just English and Greek. She knew those who switched languages in front of others did so because they did not want to be understood. Mrs. Rokotov’s voice turned hard as she continued speaking in Russian to Boris. “The Professor has been very kind in looking after our well-being. You and I are the only servants he will take with him should he need to flee this house. We are the only ones he fully trusts, and he has prepared everything for such an emergency. A new home to go to. Train schedules. New identities for you and me. All of the documents are ready the moment we need them. You should be grateful you are the one he has selected to accompany him. Not Raymond. Not Lars. You!”

Lydia held her breath. The Professor had a plan for leaving? If he was pulling up stakes and getting ready to set up shop somewhere
new, it was
exactly
the sort of thing Bane needed to know. If she could find those documents, Bane would know the location of the Professor’s escape house.

Boris’s tone was yielding. “All right, all right,” he said reluctantly. Then he switched back to English. “I’ll quit complaining. But I still think it is unfair I am always stuck out here.”

There was an awkward pause. Mrs. Garfield finally filled it by asking Lydia if she would like a nice apple pie for dessert tonight.

“That would be lovely,” Lydia said.

“What would be lovely,” Mrs. Rokotov snapped, “is for you to finish that translation for the Professor. It is taking you far too long to finish such a small task. The sooner you are out of this house, the better.”

The Professor appeared to share Mrs. Rokotov’s poor opinion of her progress. When he stopped by that afternoon, his brows lowered in disapproval as he stared at the carefully printed document she had been preparing.

“I had hoped to see progress on the actual text,” he said. “A clerk could have prepared a copy in short order. A day or two at most. I see no reason why you have not completed this after almost a week of work.”

Lydia stood to face him, hoping the sheer terror running through her veins was not apparent to him. “Some of the ink is cracked, and it has bled onto the vellum in other places. All this makes it very hard to interpret,” she said. “Each sentence needs to be analyzed and requires an educated conclusion so errors are not introduced into the copy.”

She held her breath, hoping the excuse would hold. The corners of the Professor’s mouth turned down, but he gave a brusque nod.
“Very well,” he said, skepticism heavy in his tone. “But beginning tomorrow, I am directing you to start the actual translation using the text you have already reproduced. There will be plenty of time to complete the copy once you have made some progress in the translation.”

Lydia’s heart sank. If Bane did not come to her tonight, she would be out of excuses.

Lydia stared at the first line of the manuscript. There were a grand total of four words she could recognize:
Persia, sea, sky,
and
iron
. If she had the transliteration tables, she could decode this sentence within a few minutes. Without it, all she could do was guess. It had been two hours since the Professor had paid her a visit, and she had been tense with anxiety ever since. She tried to concentrate on decoding the beginning of the manuscript, but her mind kept drifting. What would she do if Bane did not meet her tonight? Maybe taking a bit of Mrs. Winslow’s would help focus her mind. She wondered how many miles of forest surrounded the house. Was it really thirty miles, as Lars had said? Even if it wasn’t such a distance, she could not run away. She would be abandoning the children, and that was unthinkable. Admiral Fontaine’s only son was somewhere in this house, and she could not bear the thought of leaving him to the mercy of the Professor.