The Castle on Deadman's Island (4 page)

Crescent must have sensed his unease. “Stick around,” she said. “It's all right, you're my guest.”

“I have to go,” he hedged. “How about tonight?”

“Sure, Neil,” Crescent said. “I'd love to. What time?”

“Around seven?”

She smiled up at him. “Okay. We could go for a walk while you tell me what this mysterious favor is all about.”

“Once around the course, Crescent,” Tom said, coming up behind them. “I'll give you a thirty-second head start.”

Neil walked away quickly, past the clubhouse and out the gate. Swinging shut behind him, the gate gave him a bump in the rear, as if sending him on his way. He almost turned around and kicked it.

Neil and Crescent bicycled to Outlet Park and walked down to the water, but it was crowded with soldiers and their girlfriends, so they climbed a fence and took the path into the woods. Crescent wore a wooly sweater against the evening chill. The beige turtleneck Neil liked, the one she had on the first time he saw her.

“This park was empty before the army camp was built,” he said. “We often came here when I was with the Boy Scouts.” It was only a few years ago. How things change, Neil thought. His scout leader had joined the air force when the war broke out, and the troop had never been the same.

“I know,” Crescent said. “I vaguely remember Dad bringing me here when I was four, or maybe five. There were only a few hoboes here then, trying to avoid the cops and find a place to sleep.”

They came to a stream and crossed it with a leap. “This favor,” Neil began. He stopped and looked at her. “If it's too much to ask, I'll understand.”

Crescent smiled. “Oh, Neil, you'd never make a salesman.”

He blushed. “The thing is, Graham and I really need your help.”

She shrugged. “Well, sure I'll help, if I can. But don't tell me you two are in the detective business again.”

“You guessed it. Not that we want to be. But let me tell you what happened to Graham. Because it's left us no choice.”

Crescent listened attentively while he told her about the major's will. It was familiar to her from the accounts in the paper, but she looked startled when he described Graham's two near “accidents.” “Is Mr. Grimsby that ruthless?” she asked dubiously.

“He sure tried to get rid of Graham. So how far would he go to have his aunt out of the way? And Mr. Snyder's in cahoots with him. They'd take over her share of the castle.”

“But Mr. Grimsby and Mr. Snyder dislike each other as much as they dislike Henrietta Stone,” Crescent
said. “You only have to read about one of the council meetings to know that.”

Neil nodded. “I know, and I don't quite understand why they're working together now. But Graham's convinced they've joined forces against his aunt and I think he's right. We need to warn her, but she's on the island where there's no phone, and we have no way to get there. How far is the castle from your cottage anyway?”

“An hour or two by sailboat, depending on the wind. You go downriver five miles or so, then cross the shipping channel to Deadman's Island.”

Neil waited. It was up to Crescent. He wasn't the type to push her to take them there.

“That boy will never make it in business,” he once overheard his father say to his mother. “Sometimes you gotta be pushy. If I gave in every time someone complained about my bill, I'd never make a dime.” Neil's father's plumbing business had teetered on the brink of bankruptcy during the Great Depression, but was prospering again with the army-camp construction contract.

“Give him time,” his mother had said. “He'll find himself.”

Neil wasn't sure what she meant by that. He was the way he was.

“I'll take you, if you want,” Crescent said. “I'd like to explore that part of the river.”

“Great!” Neil replied. “We'll hitchhike to your place. Whenever you say.”

“We're leaving tomorrow. We'll be there for a few weeks, so come anytime.”

“Would it be okay with your folks? Using the boat, I mean.”

“You know Dad. Easygoing.”

He noticed she didn't say that about her mother. Maggie Savage was more intense, as Neil knew, but she'd always treated him well.

The path veered around a fallen beech tree. It was bench height and practically invited you to stay and enjoy the quiet of the woods. They sat on the fallen tree and he put his arm around her. Crescent laid her head on his shoulder and he inhaled her scent. She lifted her face and nibbled his neck. He was content.

“Neil?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you only …”

“What is it?”

“Why don't you … oh, to heck with talking.” She reached up, pulled his head down, and fastened her lips against his. They stayed that way for a while.

“Umm,
that was nice,” Neil said, which didn't half describe the rush he got from her soft warm lips.

Crescent sighed. “I'll say. Why don't we do it more often? Why do we only kiss when we're saying good night after a date?”

Neil looked away. “I guess I … well, I wasn't sure you would want me to … you know, be after you all the time.”

“Try me,” Crescent said, and snuggled in his arms.

Above them, a pair of gray squirrels chased each other round and round a tree, until it was hard to tell who was chasing whom.

Neil was packing spare socks, underwear, and a toothbrush in his knapsack when his mother came into the room. “This camping trip you're going on,” she said, “where exactly are you staying?”

“Not sure till we get there,” Neil said, wondering if one pair of socks was enough, or whether to bother with socks at all. “There's lots of campsites in the Thousand Islands. There's even one near Crescent's cottage.”

“Maybe Graham's aunt will invite you to stay with her.”

“I doubt it. Graham says she likes her privacy.” Neil had been deliberately vague about the purpose of their expedition, not wanting to worry his mother. “Just a few days camping,” he'd said. “Great weather for it. Crescent's going to show us the Thousand Islands in her boat, and while we're at it, Graham wants to see his aunt's castle.”

“Well, if his aunt does ask you to stay there, you boys make yourselves useful,” his mother instructed. “Don't expect to be waited on. And don't forget to thank her.”

He threw a T-shirt into the knapsack. “No, Mom, we won't.”

“You'd better take a blanket. You can have that old army blanket of your grandfather's. It still gets cold at night. And what are you taking to eat?”

He stuffed his envelope of paper-route money into the pocket of the knapsack. “There's stores there, Mom.”

“Hot dogs and potato chips and chocolate bars, I suppose. Well, I guess it won't kill you for a few days. When will you be back?”

“Depends. If it stays hot, why rush back to town?”

“Is there a phone at the cottage Crescent's family has rented?”

“I doubt it.” Neil zipped up his knapsack. “Don't worry about us, Mom. We'll be okay.”

His mother sighed. “Well, you be careful, Neil.”

“Sure, Mom.” He headed for the door.

“And don't forget the blanket – it's in the spare room.”

“Okay. Bye then. See you when we get back.”

At the window, his mother watched him walk up the street until he disappeared around the corner.

“Kids these days,” she said to her husband at dinner. “Independent as all get out.”

Neil's father wasn't really listening. Not that he wasn't concerned about his son's welfare, but his mind was on the rush job he had at the new army hospital. More and more Canadian war casualties were being repatriated – bombers were over Germany almost every night now, many of them manned by Canadian aircrews, and the Desert War in North Africa was heating up. Neil's father was behind schedule on the work and couldn't find experienced plumbers at any price.

“Half the time, I don't know where he is,” Neil's mother continued. “Now he's off on some camping trip with Graham. George … George, do you hear me?”

Mr. Graves looked up. “It's the war,” he said. “Kids know they could be in the army overseas in a few years.”

Mrs. Graves shuddered. “I just hope the war's over before Neil's old enough. If I know him, he'll sign up on his eighteenth birthday.”

The first half hour was smooth sailing. Crescent handled the tiller and the mainsail while Neil tended the jib, hauling it in or out as she directed. Soon, he began to get the hang of it.

You let the jib out until it starts to flap, he realized, then pull it in until it stops – not too much though, just enough, so that it makes a nice smooth curve, matching the curve of the main. Then the two sails work together, pulling
Discovery
along at a fast clip.

It was downwind all the way – a broad reach, Crescent called it – with the wind on their stern quarter. They barreled along. But then the wind shifted so that it was dead astern, and the jib, now blanketed by the main, sagged like an old sock. The boat slowed.

Crescent showed Neil how to push the jib out to the other side, so the main was on one side and the jib on the other. Wing and wing, she said it was called.
Discovery
immediately picked up speed again.

Graham simply tried to stay out of the way. When the wind freshened and the dinghy heeled sharply in a gust, he grabbed for support.
“Uh-oh,
are we going to tip?”

Crescent assured him that heeling was normal, and she eased the mainsail out to spill some wind and settle the dinghy down.

They were sailing along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, and islands were streaming by. Large islands, small islands, islands dense with tall pines, islands with one lone pine, islands with sprawling mansions, islands with one-room cabins, and islands with nothing but granite rock. There were two tiny islands connected by a little arched wooden bridge, like a miniature of the big suspension bridge connecting Canada and the United States – the Thousand Islands Bridge opened jointly by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Mackenzie King in 1938.

“Interesting rock formations,” Graham said, as he watched the islands pass. “Mostly igneous. Pre-cambrian period. Formed several billion years ago. Much older than the limestone you find around Kingsport – it's only five hundred million years old.”

Only
five hundred million years, Neil thought. “Do you suppose there really are a thousand islands?”

“Actually 1,864,” Graham said. “I looked it up. Some on the Canadian side, some on the American.”

Occasionally, one of the familiar red freighters, long and slim, steamed by in the ship channel, going downriver to Montreal or upriver to Lake Ontario. As long as a football field, they had to be slim to go
through the locks that bypassed the Long Sault Rapids. There was talk of building a seaway that would flood the rapids and allow ocean freighters into Lake Ontario, but all that was put aside in the struggle to win the war.

“We must be getting close,” Crescent said. She bent over her chart. When she straightened up, she pointed across the river to the south.

“Deadman's Island should be right over there,” she said. “We have to cross the ship channel first. Haul in on the jib sheet, Neil.” She changed course to head south, and then they were sailing across the wind, the dinghy bounding over the waves.

Graham had gone unusually quiet. He was looking pale.

“Are you all right, Graham?” Crescent asked.

“Bit queasy,” he said, in a weak voice. “A touch of mal de mer, I'm afraid.”

“Don't look at the scenery,” Crescent said. “That's the worst thing for seasickness. Look straight ahead. Watch the sails.”

Graham kept his eyes on the sails. But being Graham, he didn't just watch them, he studied them. “The way the mainsail curves reminds me of an airplane wing,” he said, pointing to the front edge of the main, where it was attached to the mast. “Same principle, I assume. It's pulling the boat along like an
airplane wing lifts a plane. It's Bernoulli's Principle-you know, air flowing over a venturi creates a vacuum that pulls –”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Crescent said, “but there it is ahead. Deadman's Island.”

“That one?” Neil said. For the island they were approaching had only pine trees and one cottage on it, as far as he could see.

“No, the big island behind it.”

Then, as they rounded the point, the castle leaped out at them, dwarfing its surroundings. It dominated the blue water, the granite rocks, and even the stately pines.

“Great balls of fire!” Graham said, gazing up at it. “A perfect setting for
Macbeth!”

The myriad windows of the castle stared down at the little dinghy scornfully as if daring it to come closer.

“Six chimneys, at least,” Neil said, counting those he could see. “And three or four roof peaks. What a pile!”

Crescent turned the boat into the wind and they glided past a huge boathouse – a smaller version of the castle, like the offspring of a giant.

“‘The rich man in his castle,'” Graham quoted the poet Cecil Frances Alexander, “‘the poor man at his gate.'”

“Not much doubt which we are,” Neil said.

At the dock, a large sign greeted them:
PRIVATE PROPERTY – POSITIVELY NO TRESPASSING
. Underneath the red lettering was a black skull and crossbones. The major had liked his privacy.

When they landed, no one appeared. The gravelly cawing of a raven was the only sound that broke the silence. “At least the castle doesn't have a drawbridge to keep us out,” Graham said. They dropped the sails, tied
Discovery
securely, and headed up the hill to the castle.