The Kneebone Boy (16 page)

The funny thing about possibly finding a mother whom you lost many years ago is that you don’t necessarily fall into each other’s arms with joy. Especially when that possible mother appears to be in no hurry to admit she is your mother.
If
Haddie was their mother, Lucia, for one, would have liked an apology for having run off. A tearful one, preferably.

And another thing, Haddie wasn’t at all like the Empress Amalie of Schwartzenstadt-Russeldorf, whom Lucia had secretly imagined her mother to be like. In Casper’s sketch, the Empress Amalie was tall and willowy with long, silky, flaxen blond hair and a patient, sweet-tempered face. She was perched on a large rock holding a book while birds and rabbits and hedgehogs played around her. By her feet sat a little girl with blond, curly hair and a cranky face, who was dipping a biscuit into a teacup. The empress
looked like the type of person who read books out loud beautifully, which is to say she tapped her
t
’s and hissed her
s
’s and stopped reading at just the right parts.

Haddie, on the other hand, was on the short side, and wiry. She looked like the only girl on the boys’ football team. And she didn’t appear to have a way with birds and rabbits and hedgehogs. She didn’t tap her
t
’s and hiss her
s
’s. In fact she had a raspy voice, like someone who might have spent a large part of her teenage years smoking cigarettes.

Once during dinner, Lucia almost spat out the question: “Well, are you or aren’t you our mum?!” But then she felt a flip-floppy feeling in her stomach and she chickened out.

Max, too, seemed in no hurry to ask Haddie outright if she was their mum. Lucia thinks it was because he was petrified that the answer would be no, but Max insists he was waiting for the right moment.

At one point Lucia said, “Haddie,” her voice going up on the “die” part of her name as though she was about to ask a question. Max was afraid she was going to ask
the
question and tried to kick her under the table but he hit the table leg instead and spilled everyone’s root beer. In the end, all Lucia had wanted to know was if they could use the phone to call Mrs. Carnival, which they had forgotten to do.

They called her after dinner. Lucia did it because Max always told too much when he was nervous. This is how the call went:

Brriiing.

M
RS
. C
ARNIVAL
: Yes?

L
UCIA
: Hello, Mrs. Carnival, this is Lucia Hardscrabble and I’m calling just to let—

M
RS
. C
ARNIVAL
: I’m watching my show. Make it quick.

L
UCIA
: Well, I was just saying that our father sent us to London to—

M
RS
. C
ARNIVAL
: So he’s come to his senses! Good for him! Well, I’ve told him again and again that it was the thing to do, at the very least with that older boy. No use burdening himself with a deranged child. But I see he’s found a new home for all of you at once. It’s for the best, you’ll see after a while—

L
UCIA
: No! We’re not—oh, for heaven’s sake, if our father calls just tell him that we are at Great-aunt Haddie’s in Snoring-by-the-Sea.

Lucia hung up.

Max didn’t ask what Mrs. Carnival had said. It was enough to see Lucia’s face turn an alarming purple and her black eyebrows press together so hard it was as if they were trying to shove each other off her face.

Down in the dungeon, Otto was sitting in the darkest corner. Chester jumped from his lap and ran to them, mewling in a frantic sort of way. That made Lucia feel awful about having left Otto for the entire afternoon, and she hurried to hand him the plate of food that she’d fixed for him upstairs.

“We need to leave,” Otto said, pushing the plate toward
Chester, who after a pause to see if Otto meant it, began to pick at the sausage as daintily as an old lady.

“We will,” Lucia said. “In a few days.”

“I mean
now
,” Otto said.

He was so agitated that it unsettled Lucia. She sat beside him on the floor and said very gently, “It’s too dark out, Otto. We’d never find our way back to the station, and the trains won’t be running to Little Tunks at this time anyway.”

“Tomorrow then,” Otto said. “In the morning.”

“But we don’t have money for train tickets,” Max said, very reasonably.

“We’ll ring Mrs. Carnival. She’ll fetch us.”

“But why?” Max said, his voice rising with agitation because he knew she would come fetch them, pronto. “
Why
do you want to leave?”

“I don’t like her,” Otto said, tugging at his hair.

“Haddie you mean?” Max said. “But she’s perfectly brilliant.”

“Well, I don’t trust her.”

“Why? What on earth has she done to you?” Max asked.

“I don’t like the way she looks at me,” Otto muttered.

Max rolled his eyes.

“She looks at me like she knows something about me,” Otto said. “And it’s none of her business.”

“She looks at all of us that way,” Max said falteringly. He was faltering because it was a lie and he was an awful liar and they all knew he was lying, so he shouted, “I’m
not going back to Little Tunks! She might very well be Mum, and if she is I want to be with her, even if it’s just for a couple of days. And if she’s not, well, I would still rather be with her a million times more than with Mrs. Carnival!”

“Stay then,” Otto said. “But
we
won’t.” He turned to Lucia for confirmation.

Many thoughts flashed through Lucia’s mind just then. She thought about Kneebone Castle and the person in the window. She thought of the wild, churning sea at the bottom of the cliff and the exotic, faraway smell that wafted up from it. And she thought of Haddie, who might be their mother, but even if she wasn’t, she had
known
their mother. Had said that Mum was a peach.

“I want to stay too,” Lucia said. “I’m sorry, Otto.”

Otto looked at her in shocked disbelief. Lucia always stuck by him, with Max on the outside. The pained expression on Otto’s face made Lucia’s heart ache and she wished she could change her mind, she really did, but the thing of it was, life had suddenly become extraordinarily interesting and who knew when that would happen again? It certainly wouldn’t happen back in Little Tunks.

There was nothing left to say to one another, and they were frankly tired out from a very long, eventful day, so they all went to bed early.

Lucia meant to make things up to Otto. She would stay by his side the whole time they were at Haddie’s, even when he was sulky. She meant to do all sorts of nice things
for Otto, but when morning came she saw that she’d never get the chance to. His bed was empty.

“Max!” Lucia jumped out of bed and pushed at Max’s ribs while the rat skittered across the floor. “Get up, get up, Otto’s gone!”

He woke, but slowly, and this was no time for slowness.

“Get up, come on!” Lucia began to yank on her clothes hurriedly. “We’ve got to catch him.”

“Catch him doing what?” Max asked groggily.

“Going back home, of course.” She felt dizzy and sick, but that might have had something to do with flinging herself out of bed so fast.

“He can’t go back home. He won’t be able to talk to Mrs. Carnival on the phone, and he hasn’t got a ticket, has he?” Max said while easing himself out of bed.

“He has enough money to buy one ticket for himself, though. I thought about it last night and he does. But he can’t go home by himself! It’s ridiculous! He won’t be able to manage . . .” She was about to say “without me” but that sounded too conceited, although it was perfectly true. “Hurry, hurry, will you?” She shoved her feet into her trainers.

When Max was dressed, Lucia rushed upstairs and out into the courtyard, with Max running behind her. The fog was so dense that she found her way to the gatehouse only through sheer luck, colliding once, but painfully, with the curtain wall. The thought of Otto wandering by himself in this fog, lost somewhere in the countryside,
made her feel lightheaded with panic. She ran faster, across the drawbridge and out into the meadow through the soppy grass. She turned quickly to check that Max was still behind her.

He wasn’t.

“Max!
Max?!
”

She paused to listen but there was no answer. The world was lost in a smoky white fog. Off to her right she could hear the ocean slapping against the cliffs. She turned her back to it and gazed blindly into the distance. If she squinted, she could just make out a rise of a gauzy green. Remembering the funeral carriage’s speedy descent down the wooded lane and into valley, she guessed that might be the way back to town.

She called for Max a few more times, but when there was no answer, she headed stalwartly for the green hill in the distance.

It wasn’t long before she seriously regretted having rushed off without Max. His sense of direction was far better than hers, and besides, she wanted his company. Every so often she paused to call for him, and once she thought she heard a voice calling back, though it didn’t sound quite like his, and when she called to it again there was only silence.

The going was slow. She pressed through the fog carefully, keeping her eyes fixed on the hill. This must be how it is when you are at sea and aiming for land in the far distance, she thought. That took her mind off the more troubling things. She imagined that she was sailing through
the West Indies in the midst of a sudden squall. The rain was blinding and the wild waves were tossing the ship dangerously. She could smell the tarred ropes and could hear the sailors rushing about, trying to mend a torn mizzen mast. A sudden pitch and she nearly tumbled into the violent sea (she had just stumbled on a rock on the path), but her lieutenant caught her greatcoat just in time and pulled her back in. No, she didn’t like that. She thought she ought to be the one who saved her lieutenant instead. So she did, and by the time he had thanked her profusely for saving his life, and she had managed to steer the ship through the eye of the storm, the fog started to lift.

The thick whiteness grew wispier by the minute as Lucia ascended the hill. The wooded lane looked very similar to the one they travelled through in the funeral carriage, although much less forbidding in the daylight. In fact, it was quite a beautiful lane, flanked by quiet old trees and sprays of wildflowers. It was wonderfully peaceful. But in books the worst things happen to people when they are feeling very relaxed, so Lucia was vigilant as she walked.

Every so often she called out, “Otto!” and sometimes, “Max?”

It was when she was nearly at the top of a particularly steep incline that she heard it. It sounded like fingernail frantically scratching at a mosquito bite under the heel of a cotton sock.

She stopped short, her eyes wide. The scratching sound had ceased. It might be Otto, she thought very reasonably,
though her heart was pounding beneath her ribs. He couldn’t call back, and in any case he was so angry that he wouldn’t come to her.

A snap of a branch made her jump. A more unreasonable thought entered her brain—that someone other than Otto was lurking in the woods; that the person was watching her even now. She listened hard but could hear nothing more than the sound of leaves rustling as birds darted from tree to tree, and the deep silence of the wood. The woods seemed to be listening to her too. She forced herself to keep moving, and then began to listen to herself as well. Her footsteps were heavy and she could hear the rhythm of fear in them. Was it fear for herself or for Otto? Both probably, she thought, but in either case she didn’t like it. It struck her as cowardice. She willed her feet to land more lightly, pressing her heels down firmly with each step and rolling onto her toes. Still she couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t alone. It came from reading too many novels, she told herself. From now on, she vowed, she would read more nonfiction, like Max.

“Max, Max, where are you?” Lucia murmured under her breath. It surprised her how much she wanted him with her now. He would have been quite logical about the whole thing. His perspective would have been friendlier as well. She tried to imagine what he would say: “Why shouldn’t someone else be walking through the woods? They might be on their way to the beach or enjoying the wildflowers. Or maybe it’s just Haddie, out for a stroll.”

That was when she saw it—a human shape standing
between two silver birch trees. As soon as she noticed it, it darted away and then disappeared into the shadows. Lucia froze, her eyes scanning the woods, listening. All was quiet. Even the birdsong had ceased.

Was the figure male or female? Dark haired or light? Lucia couldn’t tell. The person had moved too quickly and stayed in the shadows, as though he or she knew how to conceal him- or herself in the woods.

Every cell in her body urged her to flee. The muscles in her legs were clenched tight, ready to spring off down the footpath. But Lucia’s pride was deep, and she hated to think of someone getting the better of her.

“Who are you?” she called into the woods.

There was no answer. She wondered if someone was trying to frighten her.

“I know you’re there!” she called out again. “You might as well come out and show yourself!”

She paused, listened. There was silence, as though the person was considering what to do next. But after several minutes, when no one emerged and no further sound was made, Lucia wondered if the person was far away by now. She even began to doubt what she had seen. Maybe the figure was only a rogue shadow thrown from the shifting canopy of leaves. She pulled in a long, deep breath to still the quivery feeling in her legs. For good measure, she called out, “You’re not that clever! I can see you perfectly well!”