The Unmapped Sea (6 page)

The children tilted their heads from side to side, trying to make sense of this. “Eureka!” Beowulf cried. “Like a bathtub! Someone goes swimming and the water goes up.” It was a good guess, for Beowulf had personal experience with the way the water in a bathtub rises when, for example, three grubby children climb in to bathe.

Penelope smiled and shook her head. “If swimmers caused the tides, they would be higher in summertime, when many people go sea bathing, than in the winter, when hardly anyone does.”

The children thought some more. “I know! Someone must be pouring water in the sea, and taking it out again.” Cassiopeia spread her arms wide. “Someone very big.”

Again, Penelope shook her head. “According to the tide maps, the water sweeps in toward the coast at high tide, and then sweeps out again, back to some faraway, opposite shore. It is as if a bowl were being tilted, first to one side, then the other.”

Alexander frowned. “Who tilts the bowl?”

Penelope paused, for she was fast approaching the horizon of her own learning. “That is a very good question,” she said. “Scientists believe that it has something to do with the moon.”

The children laughed and clapped as if she had told a hilarious joke. “The moon moves the sea? Funny, Lumawoo!”

“Maybe it uses a big spoon.” Cassiopeia giggled. “Moon, spoon! That is my tide poem.”

Beowulf scoffed. “The sea is too big for spoons. A bucket at least.”

“Two buckets,” his sister agreed.

Alexander scowled; to him, the question of tides was serious business. “Shh! Let Lumawoo tell: How does the moon move the sea?”

Three curious faces turned to her, like sunflowers to the sun. She sat up straight and smoothed her hair. “I do not know exactly, but the moon can do many things, after all. It grows and shrinks. It is a different shape every day.”

The children considered this.

“It moves around the sky,” Alexander agreed after a moment.

“It rises and sets,” Beowulf conceded.

“It makes Lord Fredrick howl,” Cassiopeia offered.

All conversation in the train car stopped. The steady chug of the train wheels was the only sound left; that, and a rhythmic snore that came from Mrs. Clarke, who was now napping in her seat at the far end of the compartment.

Chug-chugga—snore!

Chug-chugga—snore!

“Did you hear what the child said about His Lordship?” one of the servants said at last. “The moon makes him howl! Did you ever?”

“The moon? Fancy that!”

“I thought I heard an odd noise once, during a full moon. Very howling-like, if you ask me. It was coming from the attic. . . .”

Penelope leaned close to her youngest pupil. “Cassiopeia, we do not discuss other people's private business in a crowded train compartment.”

The little girl looked confused. “But I thought we were talking about the moon?”

All around them the gossip buzzed.

“Lord Fredrick—moon—howling—
snore
!”

“Attic—wolves—His Lordship—
snore
!”

Penelope stood and spoke at top volume, as if she could erase the whispers by shouting over them. “Yes, children, we
were
talking about the moon, and spoons, and macaroons! And next we shall talk of hermit crabs, for they are fascinating creatures! Did you know they change houses as they outgrow them?”

But it was too late. The tide of rumor was rising, and there was as little chance of stopping it as there
was of stilling the sea. Oh, the perils of eavesdropping! Penelope felt woozy. She sank back into her seat and imagined herself being run through with a sword while hiding behind a curtain.

The children looked concerned. “Do you have chicken pox, Lumawoo?” asked Alexander gently. “You are white as an egg.”

She counted backward from twenty to calm herself, which was an antipanicking skill she had been taught at Swanburne. “This talk of tides is making me seasick,” she answered when she could speak. “Let us choose another activity.” She reached into her travel bag and removed a knotted mess of yellow wool. It was the skein of yarn that had served as her Lady Constance hair; she had brought it along as a simple project to while away the time while traveling. “I shall need your help to rewind this yarn into a neat, tidy ball. Put out your hands, please.”

The children looked skeptical, for the idea of having their hands tied up with yarn felt rather like being put on a leash. Penelope urged, “I have no intention of wasting a perfectly good skein of wool. Pretend it is a sled-dog harness that lashes you all together as a team. A
quiet
sled-dog team,” she added.

This idea pleased them much better. “Mush, mush!”
they whispered to one another. But they could not race up and down the train aisles with yarn wrapped around their hands, and so the game had to be changed.

“Help!” moaned Beowulf, dramatically but at low volume. “We are caught in a butterfly net!”

Cassiopeia grinned devilishly and whispered, “No, spiderweb!”

“Butterfly net!”

“Spiderweb!”

“Butterfly net!”

“Spiderweb!”

Not to be outdone, Alexander began to thrash about and quietly call for help. “Ahoy, Captain! Drop anchor, I'm stuck in the rigging!” (As the sailors among you know, the rigging of a sailing ship is the complicated web of ropes and timber and sails that allows the ship to be propelled by the wind.)

“The yarn is getting even more tangled than before,” Penelope cautioned. “You must hold your hands steady.”

Cassiopeia raised her yarn-wrapped hands to the top of her head and opened her eyes wide, until they were very round indeed. “
Arrivederci!
” she trilled in a high voice. “That is Italian. It means ‘I want to go shopping!'”

“Now, now,” Penelope said quickly. “It is not polite to pretend to be other people—”

Before she could say another word, the children plopped the whole mess of yarn on Penelope's head. “Look at Lady Constance!” they cried, forgetting to be quiet. “Her hair is pretty and yellow as a daffodil in spring!”

This time their fellow travelers stared openly. Some stood up to get a better look. Once more the whispers began.

“Making fun of Her Ladyship,
tsk, tsk
!”

“Not very respectful, if you ask me.”

“Sets a poor example for the children . . .”

Snore—

Disaster! Penelope wished she might crawl under her seat and hide for the rest of the trip. “If this gossip finds its way back to Lord and Lady Ashton, it would be enough to lose my position over,” she fretted. “What an unfortunate misunderstanding that would be . . . hmm . . . now
there
is an interesting effect. . . .”

Her worried thoughts trailed off, for she had caught sight of her reflection in the train window. The window was scratched and clouded, and with the landscape whooshing by on the other side, the glass offered an imperfect reflection at best—but one that, ironically,
made her look much more like Lady Constance than a mirror ever could.

Curious, she widened her eyes and tried to look silly. With all the blur and motion, the illusion was striking. “It is not that I look exactly like Lady Constance,” she thought. “But I give quite a convincing
impression
of Lady Constance, at a glance.” (Coincidentally, and only a few decades into the future, a group of French painters called the Impressionists invented a style in which landscapes and people were shown precisely as if they were glimpsed through the scratched window of a moving train. At first, no one knew what to make of these blurry paintings, but they soon became popular and now they, too, hang in the galleries of the world's great museums to this very day.)

Fascinated, Penelope turned her head this way and that, and stole quick glimpses of herself. “A professional thespian would hardly be surprised, but truly, it is amazing how a modest use of stagecraft can make one person resemble another. . . .” She swiped the yarn off her head. “Eureka!” she exclaimed. Everyone in the train car but the sleeping Mrs. Clarke was staring at her now, but she no longer cared.

“What did you discover, Lumawoo?” the children begged to know.

Penelope tapped one temple with a fingertip. “The answer to a riddle. The solution to a puzzle. The key to a conundrum.”

“You mean, you discovered . . . synonyms?” Alexander asked, puzzled.

“I shall explain everything to you, later. Right now I must write a letter.” Filled with inspiration, Penelope extracted a sheet of stationery and a matching envelope from her bag. (Along with a supply of clean pocket handkerchiefs, a respectable person of any age should always carry some decent stationery, for one never knows when one will be called upon to write a thank-you note.)

Beowulf could not contain his curiosity. “A letter to whom?”

“To Simon,” she answered, taking out her fountain pen. “To Simon Harley-Dickinson.”

“Simawoo!” the children half howled. Penelope did not scold them, for she too would have howled with delight at the prospect of seeing Simon, had she been in the least bit prone to howling.

“Will we see him in Brighton? He likes the ocean,” asked Cassiopeia.

“And navigation,” said Alexander approvingly.

Beowulf made a swashbuckling gesture that caused both of his siblings to duck. “And pirates.”

“
Sort of
likes pirates,” Cassiopeia corrected. (It was true that Simon had both happy and unhappy memories of his days as a pirate. This is called “having mixed feelings,” and it is a condition we all find ourselves in sooner or later. There is no known cure except to eat a small amount of bittersweet chocolate. The chocolate does nothing to unmix one's feelings, but it does serve as a tasty reminder that bittersweet is a perfectly good flavor and can be enjoyed on its own merits.)

“We will see him soon enough, never fear.” Penelope checked the nib of her pen and paused, for she did not know where in London Simon was staying. However, she knew a great deal about Simon himself, and that, she decided, would have to do.

In a bold hand, she wrote on the envelope:
Mr. Simon Harley-Dickinson, member in good standing of the Bards and Poets Society, the Professional Organization for Scribes, Playwrights, Scribblers, and Devotees of Thespis, care of the Theatrical Firmament, London, England.

Proudly, she showed it to the children. “For an organization as well run and efficient as the London Postal Service, that is more than enough to go on,” she told them, and then turned her attention to the letter.

Dear Simon,

For reasons best explained later, the children and I are on our way to Brighton. (Forgive the shaky penmanship! If you have deduced that this letter must have been written on a moving train, you would not be wrong.)

I believe I have discovered the means to convince G.-U. Pudge to reveal the tale of his secret boyhood adventure (you know the one). I trust you are still on friendly terms with the stage manager of
Pirates on Holiday.
Borrow a costume from that dreadful show and bring it with you to Brighton as soon as you can. A garment in your size and suitable for the rank of admiral would be ideal.

Deepest thanks for your loyal assistance! Reply to P. Lumley, care of the Brighton General Post Office. I will look for your answer there.

She paused, and considered how to end. “Wishing you good luck on your theatrical adventures . . .” “With best wishes, from your friend . . .” “From your faithful partner in crime . . .”

But it all sounded so formal, so familiar, so glib, so forced! It put her in mind of Goldilocks's porridge. “Everything I write is either too warm or too cold,” she
thought. Her pen hovered in the air. She and Simon were friends; why was it so tricky to find the right way to end a letter to him? She never had such trouble signing a letter to Cecily, her old schoolmate.

She took a deep breath to clear her thoughts. “I will use the trick that all the girls are taught at Swanburne. When faced with a difficult problem, imagine you are a person who knows exactly what to do. Then, do exactly as that person would. In this case, how would I say good-bye if I were the sort of person who never gave a second thought about what to say?”

That solved her dilemma at once. With a flourish, she wrote:

Arrivederci!

P.L.

T
HE
F
OURTH
C
HAPTER
A holiday in Brighton gets off on the wrong foot.

M
RS.
C
LARKE SNOOZED THE WHOLE
way to Brighton and had to be awakened upon their arrival. Margaret did the honors; she shook the good woman by the shoulders, first gently, then more forcefully, until the housekeeper began to mumble, “Mind your toes around the hermit crabs, dear Hubert! Wouldn't want you to get a nasty pinch.” Once fully roused, she explained, “I was dreaming of a long-ago beach holiday with dear old Mr. Clarke, rest his soul. How he would have loved a trip to Brighton!”

Brighton! Pudge! Ahwoo-Ahwoo! The letter to Simon was tucked in Penelope's coat pocket. Every few minutes she reached in to make sure it was still there, much the way Lord Fredrick fretted over his almanac. Would the London Postal Service live up to its sterling reputation? Would the adventurous young playwright even be in London to receive her correspondence, or had some fresh adventure whisked him to parts unknown? Simon was as loyal as a friend could be, but he attracted plot twists the way spilled honey attracts ants.

“I will remain optimistic, and wait for his reply,” she decided, and not without cause. Even while kidnapped by pirates, Simon had written to her faithfully. He did this by tossing notes overboard after first slipping them into empty rum bottles, of which his pirate captors had no shortage. The fact that these bottles could hardly have been expected to reach her at Ashton Place was beside the point. Even by modern standards the mail delivery in Miss Lumley's day was swift and reliable, but alas, there was no Pirate Postal Service equipped to deliver letters from the briny deep. Tossing bottle-borne letters into the sea had been the best Simon could do under the circumstances, and truly, our best is all any of us can expect of ourselves, and each other.

“Come, children! Mind your step getting off,” she said, guiding them from the train. Child-sized suitcases in hand, the three Incorrigibles clambered down the metal stairs and stood on the platform. The wind was strong, as it often is near the shore. They looked around, and sniffed.

“I smell seashells,” Alexander said, “by the seashore.” (Interestingly, these very words would become the basis of one of the most famously difficult tongue-twisters ever devised: “She sells seashells by the seashore.” Credit for inventing this hard-to-pronounce phrase is most often given to Anonymous. Rest assured, Alexander Incorrigible was the first person to say it. Moreover, he clearly said, “I smell seashells,” not “She sells seashells,” which only goes to prove how thankless the burden of authorship can be.)

“I smell salt. And sand. And something else . . .” Beowulf closed his eyes and sniffed again. “Are there bears in the sea?”

“There are seahorses, and sea urchins, but I have never heard of sea bears. Perhaps you are thinking of walruses?” Penelope shepherded the children to one side of the platform, for all around them the luggage was piling up. With a sharp whistle that she blew between two fingers, Mrs. Clarke directed the efforts
to carry the trunks curbside, where a line of hansom cabs waited to transport them to the hotel.

“I smell stinky pirates,” Cassiopeia said, with a flash of her teeth. “Or maybe just old sailors. But where is the sea?”

“It cannot be far. Once we have settled in the hotel and put away our things, we will take a walk and get our bearings, and drop this letter in the post as well.” Penelope patted her pocket once more. One would think the letter to Simon was an anchor, the way it weighed upon her! The sooner they found the post office, the better.

Luckily, Mrs. Clarke overheard her. A moment later she pressed a slip of paper into Penelope's hand. “Here's the address of the inn where we're staying. Give Jasper your luggage. You take the children to stretch their legs and get a look at the ocean while the sun's still out. Remember to take nice deep breaths, dearies! The sea air is good for your health. That's one thing Dr. Veltschmerz and I agree on, at least!”

P
ENELOPE INQUIRED AT THE STATION
and discovered that the Brighton post office was directly on their way. She could scarcely hide her excitement as she paid for the postage, affixed the stamp (which bore a charming
portrait of Queen Victoria in her youth), and handed her letter to the postal clerk.

“How long will it take to arrive?” she asked.

The clerk peered at the address through the lower lens of his bifocals. “London takes one day, no more and no less. But ‘Devotees of Thespis, care of the Theatrical Firmament' . . . let me check.” He consulted a chart on the desk, and looked at her apologetically. “I regret to inform you that firmaments require an extra half day. That means your correspondence will arrive in the Friday four o'clock post. Guaranteed!” He tossed the letter in a great bin full of outgoing letters, and went on to help the next customer.

How staunch and unflappable were the employees of the postal service! And how simple yet inspired was Penelope's scheme! Frankly, she was amazed she had not thought of it before. “By means of a bit of stagecraft and costuming, we shall convince Great-Uncle Pudge that Simon
is
the admiral! Simon is a man of the theater, after all; I expect he will relish the chance to give such a performance.” Really, the only flaw in her plan was that she would not be attempting the impersonation herself, “although it would be amusing to try,” she thought. She took a few steps in a swaggering pirate gait to get the feel of it. “But I do not know
how keen Great-Uncle Pudge's eyesight might yet be. Best to be on the safe side. Simon in no way resembles the men of the Ashton line, but between the two of us, he comes far closer.”

That her letter would be delivered in Friday afternoon's post also struck her as encouraging. “The sooner Great-Uncle Pudge reveals the words of the curse, the sooner we can put all this mystery and danger behind us. Once the curse is gone, Edward Ashton will no longer have to scheme and plot against us to be rid of it—although why he thinks the children and I are mixed up in his family curse is anyone's guess.”

Optimistic—or was it optoomuchstic?—as ever, Penelope's step grew so light it nearly turned into a skip. She doubted she and Edward Ashton would ever be friends, of course, but if her plan worked—and why wouldn't it?—at least she would rid herself and the Incorrigible children of an enemy. “And who knows?” she thought. “With the exact words of the curse in hand, Madame Ionesco could make short work of the whole business. With any luck at all, Tuesday's full moon could be the farewell performance of the curse upon the Ashtons!”

Once outside the post office, Alexander consulted his compass, adjusted his sextant, and made careful
note of the speed and direction of the wind. Thus prepared, they were off. The air was cold with an unsteady breeze. Moments of calm were broken by gusts of wind so strong the four travelers could lean into them, arms spread wide like the crossbars of kites, and imagine they were airborne.

The children found the brisk weather energizing (as you might expect, three children who had been raised by wolves were not easily put off by the elements). Penelope wrapped her coat tightly around her, but she did not complain. It was not the Swanburne way to grumble about things that couldn't be helped, and the weather certainly fit into that category—a fact that remains true to this very day.

The houses they passed were modest and tidy. Many had whimsical names displayed on painted signs in their front gardens:
THE HAPPY CLAM
and
THE SALTY SHORES
and so on. There was even a house named
GIDDY-YAP
,
SEAHORSE
, which made Penelope clap her half-frozen hands in delight. At once the children insisted on having a seahorse race. They did this by galloping to the corner while holding their noses as if underwater. They were gasping for air by the time it was over, and Penelope quickly declared all three of them winners, for at least they had managed not to pass out.

In this pleasant way, Penelope and the children found so much entertainment on their walk that it came as a shock when they turned yet another corner to find, not more charming houses and shuttered storefronts, but a wide, wooden-planked promenade, beyond which lay—the sea!

Cassiopeia pointed and yelled. “Look, Lumawoo! The sea is alive!” One can hardly blame her for thinking so, for the sea never stopped moving. The waves rolled with a slow and ceaseless undulation, like an enormous carpet being shaken out by tireless giants. Beyond the breakers, the cresting swells rose and disappeared. The wind scurried gray clouds across a pale blue sky, and the cloud-cast shadows moved across the water. Where the sun broke through, the rolling swells glittered in the light, as if someone had scattered fistfuls of tiny diamonds across the water's surface.

Alexander's mouth fell open. “Behold the vasty deep,” he intoned. “Is there anything more—more . . .
sealike
than the sea?”

“Perhaps the greatest of the earth's mountains would come close,” Penelope said with reverence, for she, too, was awestruck. “Perhaps the Swiss Alps would feel nearly as vast, if one stood at the bottom looking up.”

“It is so beautiful. So mysterious.” Whatever vague
ambitions Alexander might have had to be a navigator were given form and purpose that moment. His destiny was written in the waves, as if the sea's froth were the tea leaves in the bottom of a soothsayer's teacup.

“The sea is nice,” Cassiopeia said, not nearly as impressed. “But the moon is more beautiful and mysterious.”

“I think paintings are the most beautiful and mysterious,” Beowulf said firmly. “Paintings and poems.”

“It is a remarkable world, that has the sea and the moon and art, and spring flowers, new babies, and tasty biscuits, too,” Penelope interjected, to keep peace among them. “We are lucky to live in it! But remember what Mrs. Clarke said: We must take deep breaths. Breathe in as much as you can, children.” She demonstrated, inhaling so deeply that it felt like the salt air filled her to the bottoms of her feet.

(Nowadays, medical science has all kinds of ways to make sick people well, and to prevent well people from getting sick in the first place. But in Miss Penelope Lumley's day, it was widely believed that fresh air itself had medicinal properties. The sick were routinely sent to take deep breaths at seaside resorts, where they might also enjoy mud baths, saunas, natural hot springs, medicinal tar pits, and the like, all of which, it
was hoped, would restore them to good health.)

The children did as they were told, drawing the cold salt air all the way in and then blowing it out again. “How invigorating!” she declared. “Now let us go near the water and gather some shells.” Penelope headed for the stair that led down from the promenade to the pebbly beach below. The children hesitated.

“I still smell bears,” Beowulf insisted. The other two were not as certain, but agreed there was a whiff of something peculiar in the air.

Penelope knew from experience that the children's sense of smell was far keener than her own. There was nothing magical about it; they had simply been trained from an early age to use their noses the way a wolf might. Years of practice had made them good at it, just as years of practicing the violin would give someone the ability to play beautiful music, whereas someone new to the instrument might manage only a tuneless shriek. But sea bears? That was clearly impossible. In any case, Penelope was so eager to gather her first seashell that she could not wait another minute.

“Never fear, my dear Incorrigibles. I shall go in front.” Confidently she marched down the stairs and took her first thrilling steps onto the sand. “Even in January, it is too warm for walruses in Brighton. They
prefer Arctic regions, not English seaside resorts, and I believe they are peaceful creatures in any case. This way, please!”

Warily at first, the children followed. The beach was empty, save for the shrill-voiced gulls wheeling overhead and whatever snails and hermit crabs might have lurked among the rocks. Soon the children forgot their caution. They stood with mittened hands on their hips, gulping in the salt air. They ran in circles, making boot prints in the sand and boasting about how healthy they felt. Cassiopeia insisted she was growing taller with each breath, and her brothers indulged her by lifting her up onto Alexander's shoulders.

“Look,” she said, pointing out to sea. “Someone is swimming.”

Penelope shivered at the mere thought of it. “It must be a trick of the light. It is much too cold for swimming.”

“Not for the fish.” Beowulf lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun across the water. “But Cassawoof is right. That is no fish.”

Penelope squinted toward the horizon. For a moment she thought she glimpsed a massive whiskered head breaching the surface. “It may be a walrus
after all,” she exclaimed. “How remarkable to spot one so far south!”