by Claire Wong
“I don’t understand.” She had black wrappings around her lower arms, like gloves with the hands chopped off. “What are those things you’re wearing?” he asked, pointing, to be clear that he did not mean the dressing gown she had put on over her clothes.
“Wrist supports,” Beth answered, through gritted teeth. “Please, Kit.”
He wanted to ask what was wrong. Her skin was pale and her whole body looked strained, as if the act of merely sitting there took a great deal of exertion. Yet there was nothing obviously changed since yesterday when she had been walking around and spinning on office chairs. Perhaps he should phone a doctor for her. Before he could find the words to form the right question, another voice in the room made him jump.
“What are you doing?” Sean had appeared in the doorway behind him.
“I was just –”
“Does your mother know you’re here?” he asked, and Kit thought he heard a warning note in Sean’s voice. Sean walked past him and placed on the table next to Beth’s chair a mug of tea and a small rattling box from which he took out two white pills.
She frowned. “Sorry – not those ones.”
“Another thing you’re not allowed to take while pregnant?” Sean put the pills back in the box and set it down on the table. “Would you like me to look for some paracetamol instead?”
She nodded, but still looked unhappy.
He wanted to let Beth know about the fossil they had found, which would surely cheer her up, but Sean would probably not approve of his involvement in the map. He didn’t seem to approve of anything Kit did. He needed a secret way to pass on the information. Suddenly struck by inspiration, he slipped the sketch inside Beth’s copy of Odysseus’ Adventures: An Epic Retelling for Young Readers, placed the fossil on top of it like a paperweight, and put them both down on the windowsill.
“Here’s your book back – thanks for letting me borrow it,” he said, hoping she would see the stone and that Sean would not. Standing at the windowsill with its collection of glass jars and paint brushes, he looked out: the fog was so heavy it was impossible to see where the land ended and the sea or sky began. By going to the window he also had an excuse to walk past the map and take a furtive look at it before he left the room. As he did, something caught his eye. Beside the wavering line of the coast was a small picture of a wide-winged bird soaring over the sea, and next to it the faint but legible caption: Albatross? Kit’s dismay turned to hope again as he realized he knew exactly what his next task would be.
“Sorry for bothering you. I hope whatever’s wrong gets better soon,” he said, doing his best to imitate Juliet, who was so much better than he was at winning over disgruntled adults. Inspiration struck a second time, though this was a thought that made him feign casually glancing around to conceal a possible shudder: what was in that box of pills Sean had brought? He had been assuming they were a medicine that would fix whatever was hanging over Beth today. But hadn’t she said herself that this was not the kind of illness you took a pill for and got better?
Ever since the day Juliet challenged him to identify the villain in his quest, Kit had seen more and more signs that Sean was acting suspiciously. He clearly did not want his wife to receive visitors, given how secretive he had been about this room on their first day at Askfeld, and today’s behaviour only supported that theory.
Swapping the pills was exactly the kind of thing Morgan le Fay would do. She sent Arthur gifts that were bewitched, to harm him. She wouldn’t hesitate to put poison in place of a healing potion. But it was a flight of fancy, and Kit knew it. People did not poison one another for no reason in the real world, even if they were suspicious and unfriendly. Juliet had most likely been right to scorn the idea that Sean meant Beth any kind of harm. Still, it would not hurt to make sure. He pretended to be interested in her most recent watercolour sketch, a simple seascape with towering clouds, because it was on the same table as the box. The pills pictured on the side were white and round, which gave nothing away, and the label itself read Nefopam, which told him no more. It was an unfamiliar, chemical-sounding word, and he was no closer to putting his mind at rest.
“Off you go then.” Sean nodded over to the door, as if he thought Kit needed reminding how to find it. He did not like leaving without doing anything more to help Beth, but at least there was another lead for him to follow up now.
He went to the guests’ sitting room and found it was fairly busy. A family he had not seen before were playing a noisy card game. The eldest son, a little older than Kit, was evidently winning, and the others were making a great show of competition against him. In the corner, someone was sitting in an armchair, though they were mostly concealed by the broadsheet newspaper they were reading. Only a pair of legs in mud-marked trousers were visible, and the top of a head covered in grey tufts of hair.
“Bert?” Kit asked. The newspaper folded downwards and the birdwatcher’s face appeared.
“Hello there, Kit. Not stuck indoors again, are we? I think ‘dowly’ is the local term for weather like this. A good, expressive word, isn’t it? Sounds like the sky is doing it all on purpose, just to spite us! Tough being kept indoors though, isn’t it? When I was your age, we spent entire summers outside, catching frogs in jam jars and climbing trees. I do worry for young people today – it isn’t good to have so little fresh air in your lungs. Shouldn’t be at all surprised if it takes its toll on the whole generation’s health one way or another. Not that I’m trying to scare you. I’m sure you’ll be just fine.”
Kit was growing used to Bert’s rambling trains of thought by now. The birdwatcher said whatever was running through his mind, even if it meant circling a topic or swooping off to another idea. It was so unlike the carefully curated fragment of information he was used to gleaning from his family.
“You know you said you wanted to see a really rare bird while you’re here?”
“What’s that?” Bert frowned over the top of his newspaper. “Oh yes. Always makes for a more interesting time if you spot something you wouldn’t normally see. Would be nice to have some good stories to tell when I get back as well. Anecdotes have a way of distracting people from your failings, I find. People can think all kinds of things about you, but tell them a gripping story and they’ll forget it soon enough.”
“Does it matter what kind of bird it is?”
“Well, no. I’m not especially devoted to birds of prey or passeriformes, the way some are.”
A cheer mingled with groans sounded from the other side of the room as somebody won that round of cards and the others lamented their loss. Kit decided not to ask what passeriformes were. It would only distract Bert with tangential trivia, when there was the chance of something far more important here.
“What if it was an albatross?”
“An albatross? Well, that would certainly be beyond remarkable,” Bert chuckled, “but just about impossible in this country. They’re not found in these seas, you know. You have to be near the Pacific or Antarctica to be in with a chance of seeing one. And as I am sure you are aware, being a very bright young spark, neither of those is anywhere near the British Isles.”
“But if there was one here?”
“Well, then I’d say it was extremely lost. Which is usually the case with rare birds, I suppose. But what’s this fixation you’ve got with albatrosses suddenly?”
“I – I saw something that made me think…”
Kit suddenly realized he had not figured out how to tell Bert about the albatross without mentioning Beth’s map, which felt like something that not everyone should know about. It was her collection of memories, and her gift to give to her child one day, not a chart for the whole world to use. Still, this snippet of information might just be the perfect distraction to cheer Bert up and give him something to hope for while he hid away this summer in disgrace.
“Ah, well, if you think you’ve seen an albatross, I’m afraid it’s most likely another large seabird. It can be hard for a beginner to tell them
apart: lots of them have similar shapes with black and white plumage. Perhaps a great black-backed gull. Yes, from a long distance you might be forgiven for mistaking –”
“No, I don’t mean that I think I saw one. It was someone else. They saw an albatross here once and made a note of where it was. On the cliffs. Probably years ago, but maybe it’s still there. Lots of birds come back to the same nesting place each year, don’t they?”
“Kit, I don’t mean to discredit your friend, but I really doubt that they have seen an albatross.”
“But you said yourself, birds get lost sometimes!”
“Well, yes, you do get reports of what we call ‘exiles’ turning up in the North Atlantic, but officially they are extinct there now. And even that would be the other side of the country.”
Bert turned the page of his newspaper as if that were the end of the matter, but Kit was not ready to give up yet, and persisted.
“So there have been albatrosses near the UK before now?” He strained up on tiptoes to catch Bert’s eye over the top of the paper. The birdwatcher sighed and gave an indulgent nod that said he was only humouring this line of argument.
“Yes, I think I remember reading about some sightings off the west coast of Scotland, but that –”
“Then why not here? If a bird gets lost enough to be on the wrong side of the planet, why not a little bit more lost on the British coast?”
“I suppose… it’s not completely impossible, I’ll grant you that. But it’s still not remotely likely.”
“But it couldn’t hurt to go and look. Maybe you’d find it.”
For the shortest of moments, a light flickered in Bert’s eyes at this idea. Then he gave a small shake of his head, as if dislodging the spark of hope before it took hold, and settled for a reluctant “hmm” noise.
“I could show you on a map where it was,” Kit offered.
“Go on then. Can’t do any harm to look, I suppose. And I can see I’m not going to get any more reading done until I hear you out.”
This tentative concession was all the encouragement Kit needed. He ran to the reception desk and brought back the map Sean kept there for giving directions to visitors. It looked very different to Beth’s: it was all road names and labels of the nearby towns rather than a sepia-tinted landscape bursting with stories. But there was enough familiar about it for Kit to be able to point to the part of the coast where the pencil markings had been.
“Here, I’m sure it was just here. That’s not far from Askfeld, is it?”
Bert said nothing for a minute or two. He seemed to look straight through the map Kit was waving in front of him. When he finally spoke, it was in a very different tone, as if the thought had transfixed him.
“You know, it really would be quite something, to find an albatross. I’ve never seen one, in all my years as a birdwatcher. There are dozens of different types – did you know that? And their wingspan can be as much as twelve feet across. Ah, forgive me, that’s a bit less than four metres for a young metric-user like you. Can you picture it?”
Bert stretched out his arms and leaned as far as possible to the left and then the right to try to convey the distance. He was becoming almost animated now. Even the idea of the albatross was enough to spark his imagination. Kit recognized some of the same enthusiasm he had felt at the thought of his own quest. Perhaps Bert too wanted some kind of purpose.
“Shall we go and look for it?” Kit suggested. “Once the mist is gone?”
“I suppose it couldn’t hurt, when the weather clears up, though I don’t know when that will be. This fog that comes in off the North Sea, it can stick around for a long time. Yes, come and talk to me about it again when visibility is better out there.”
With that, Bert resumed reading his paper. Optimistically, Kit went straight to the window on the off-chance that the fog had vanished while they were talking. However, the dewy grass still petered out into white treacherous mist that gave no warning of the steep drop down to the sea it concealed. Instead, he went back upstairs to look for something he could read, now that he was done with Odysseus and King Arthur.
His stack of comic books sat untouched on the bedside table, caped heroes with clenched fists staring out at him from the covers. Beneath them was his red notebook. He took it out to update it with his latest quest. It was another adventure to record, but as he pressed the pen to the page it occurred to him that they were all connected.
Step one: find the albatross. This will make Bert feel better about facing his friends. Step two: tell Beth about the albatross so she can add it to the map. This will mean the map gets finished sooner. Step three: when the map is ready, call Dad and tell him about it so that he will want to come and live with us here instead of in London.
If he looked at it that way, it was really only one quest in several parts. He would be helping a lot of people along the way too. It was pleasingly neat to solve everyone’s problems with one single course of action.
He hid the book under his pillow, because he was not entirely certain Juliet would not come in and start reading it. It was the sort of thing siblings did. And if you complained that they were helping themselves to your belongings, you simply earned a parental lecture on the importance of sharing. Next, he took the top comic book from the pile and went back downstairs. At the foot of the stairs he paused before going into the guests’ sitting room and decided to try visiting Beth one last time, just in case Sean had gone now and he might have a chance to explain about the trace fossil. He crept around the corner and found the corridor deserted. Filled with hope, he was about to try the door to Beth’s room when he heard voices coming from the office next to the kitchen, and when he began to make sense of the words they froze him to the spot.
“She can’t just stay here like this for ever! It’s not good for her, and it’s certainly not good for the rest of us.”
That voice was unmistakeably Sean’s. But he sounded different: exasperated and unguarded.
“Well, I don’t see what we can do about it,” Kit heard the chef Nick answer. “At least, there’s nowt I can do except maybe put summat disgusting in her food. You might be able to do more, of course, if it got bad enough that you needed to take action.”
“I don’t like to be talking like this.”
“I know, course you don’t. But the situation is getting beyond bearable for any of us. And you’re having to shoulder the worst of it.”
“But she does have a point. We can’t really afford to be shot of her, not right now.”
“Give it time then. Do what you have to for Askfeld. But get her out of here somehow before this situation drags you even lower.”
Kit gasped and ran away down the corridor before he was found eavesdropping on this plot. Beth was in trouble. Despite his fears over the medicine earlier that day, he had not really believed Sean would consider getting rid of his wife. He did look overworked and grim, Kit reflected. Perhaps it had all become too much for him: caring for someone unwell and running a business at the same time. Would he send her away to a care home where she would become someone else’s responsibility? Or perhaps it was something more drastic that he had in mind. Kit thought back to the white pills on the table and wondered if Sean’s schemes were already underway.
His first thought was to warn Beth. But he felt certain she would not believe him. Juliet had considered it ridiculous when he first proposed that Sean was not trustworthy, and she barely knew him. How much less likely was it that Beth would believe the worst of her own husband? And even if she did heed his warning, it would not help much, if she could not easily walk most days. She could hardly flee Askfeld at a moment’s notice. Kit needed to find out Sean’s plan and work out a way to stop it. It was another quest and another mystery to add to his growing list.
What would a knight of Camelot or a Greek hero do? They found ways to save their friends and defeat their enemies by being either brave or clever. It seemed easier to be clever than brave, so Kit decided to start there.
He would gather information to uncover Sean Garsdale’s plot and only reveal it when the time was right.
CHAPTER NINE
THE SEARCH FOR THE ALBATROSS
DAY TWELVE
GLOSSARY OF NEW WORDS (PART TWO)
Summat – something
Owt – anything (sounds like “out”, but Beth says they’re spelled differently)
Dowly – miserable – a good word to use about the weather, according to Bert
Gawpin’ – staring at you like you’ve done something wrong when you haven’t
Flayed – scared. Not a word I’ll need to use much, because heroes are never flayed
Gathering evidence was tricky. Kit could do nothing to draw attention to his suspicions if he was to catch Sean unawares. He took to loitering downstairs in the communal spaces, pretending to read, while always listening for footsteps in the corridor or conversations over the reception desk. He even went out to the other buildings, half wondering if Sean might have a secret workshop full of incriminating evidence. But there was only an old tractor shed now used for storage, and a block of stables that looked as though they had been partially converted into more guest rooms before the project was abandoned. Sean and Nick seemed to talk about work far more than they plotted nefarious schemes, and the snatches of dialogue Kit managed to overhear were mundane. He learned a great deal about food suppliers and cleaning schedules, that Sean always drank his coffee without milk, and that Nick went to the trouble of gelling his bright red hair into spikes every day even though it was always covered by his chef’s hat, but nothing more useful than this. In the end, he decided to risk talking to Juliet.
“Do you know what Nefopam is?” he asked, when their mother was out of the room. He did not think she would understand or approve of the question, and as she was still glued to her emails he could not borrow her laptop and look up the word for himself, so asking his sister was his best hope.
“Never heard of it,” she said, not looking up from her book. This lack of response was to signify that she had no interest in the matter, but years of winding one another up meant Kit was sure it would irk his sister not to be able to answer the question. She took pride in her cleverness.