The Long-Lost Home

by Maryrose Wood

  “Scared you, did I?” The admiral chuckled as he lowered himself back into the basket. He had climbed up the rope rigging of the balloon to mend a small hole with a piece of rubber and some spirit gum. “That was easy! Just like patching a bicycle tire. Hans taught me how, but I’ve never done a repair on the fly before.”

  “Admiral Faucet, have you seen my parents’ balloon?” It had just occurred to her that the admiral might have answers to some of the very questions she had in mind.

  “I surely have. It’s a magnificent vessel, much larger than this one. Looks a bit like a gondola! It’s nicely camouflaged, too.” He frowned. “I wonder why it was delayed? I hope nothing tragic happened.” At her stricken face, he changed his tone. “Don’t worry. No news is no news, as they say. I expect you’ll see them soon enough. Unless . . .”

  “Unless?”

  But he caught himself. “Unless nothing. Personally I like to look on the bright side of things, and I recommend you do the same. One thing I’ve learned flying a balloon, governess—when your spirits are lighter than air, it helps keep the ship afloat, if you catch my meaning!”

  ON THE THIRD DAY THEY got caught in a thunderstorm. That was the most frightening part of the trip. No matter how hard Admiral Faucet maneuvered the balloon to rise above the storm, it remained stuck in the thick of it, bullied about by the winds.

  “We’ve got to lighten up!” he yelled. All nonessentials were tossed overboard. They saved one sandwich each, but the rest went over. Penelope held on to the papier-mâché seashell as long as she could. She even considered tucking a note inside, like a letter in a bottle, in case she was never heard from again. But she had already tossed the carpetbag that held her pen and paper, and so the seashell went over empty. (Whether the carpetbag was mistaken for an albatross as it fell we may never know. However, the papier-mâché seashell was carried by the wind quite a long way before landing—improbably, but not impossibly—in the scorching sands of the Sahara. Decades later, it was found by scientists, who marveled at the appearance of this perfectly preserved ocean mollusk in the middle of a desert. It was the cause of much scientific debate, until the small children of one of the scientists pointed out that the shell was made of shredded paper, water, and flour, just like the stuff they played with at school. That sparked an entirely different debate about not poking around Daddy’s office unsupervised, children being seen and not heard, and so on.)

  Penelope and Admiral Faucet survived the storm, but the loss of the sandwiches was a great disappointment. Nevertheless, by minding their altitude and choosing their winds wisely, the two brave balloonists made their way across Europe. It was on the morning of the fifth day that the admiral declared them safely across the North Sea.

  “How do you know?” she asked. The sky and clouds all looked the same to her.

  “Go see for yourself!” Faucet was tall and could easily peer over the basket’s rim. Penelope had to go right to the edge on tiptoes to get a good look. Far below, through the tattered clouds, the chalk cliffs of Dover glowed white as old bone, and the dark water of the English Channel was flecked with whitecaps.

  “Home sweet home! Now we just need to find Ashton Place,” he said. “Do you think you’d recognize it from the air?”

  She tried to imagine a bird’s-eye view of the estate. “It is surrounded by a large forest,” she ventured.

  “So’s half of England. What else?”

  “The house is extremely large. And neoclassical in design,” she added.

  “So’s Buckingham Palace,” he retorted. “Think, governess!”

  She thought hard. What would be an unmistakable feature of the landscape that would be visible from high above? “I know!” she said. “There is a new train line that runs to Ashton Station, pulled by a red Bloomer steam locomotive. If we locate the train from the air, it will lead us to the exact forest and large neoclassical house we are aiming for.”

  He pulled on his muttonchop whiskers. “A red locomotive, moving fast along shiny new tracks. And it blows a trail of smoke behind it? Like a man running after the omnibus while clutching a lit cigar?”

  She nodded.

  “That should be easy to spot. And you’re sure the choo-choo’s red?”

  “As a rose,” she said. Happiness swelled within her. Could they really be that close to home?

  The admiral let some air out of the balloon to get them below the clouds. They followed the snaky line of the River Thames inland from the North Sea, passing directly over London. How incredible to see that marvelous city from above! The people were like so many ants at a picnic, swarming here and there in pursuit of crumbs. Was Simon down there somewhere? Was Madame Ionesco? Penelope could only wonder, for of course she had no way of knowing all that had happened while she was away.

  Farther inland they flew, over the tranquil patchwork of fields and farms that marks the English countryside to this very day (and, one hopes, for many years to come). The meadows were dotted with creamy white sheep. “Like little clouds floating on the grass,” Penelope mused. She might never have thought this had she not spent time among the clouds herself, which is a perfect example of how travel broadens the mind.

  Ashton Place was only a day’s journey by train to London. They must be getting close. Fearlessly she leaned over the edge of the basket, searching the ground below. “There it is!” she yelled. There was no mistaking the curve of iron tracks slicing through the fertile earth. And there was the Bloomer rolling along, a gleam of apple red trailing white smoke behind like the tail of a kite. She listened for the grating chug of the wheels and metal-on-metal screech of the brakes as the train rounded each curve, but it was still too far away.

  It did not matter. The train’s silent, serpentine progress gave them a line to follow. The admiral proved deft at finding the wind he needed to keep the Bloomer in view. Before long a dense and mysterious forest spread beneath them. Then came the many colors of the garden beds, their bright spring bloom like a rainbow along the grand curved driveway Penelope knew so well and had feared she might never see again!

  “I’ll put down in a clearing in the woods, if I can,” the admiral said, frantically letting air out of the balloon until they were skimming the treetops. “This way our arrival will be a real surprise. We’ll come up with a careful plan of attack and take things step by step. Hup, hup, hup! Eh, governess? Governess?” He looked around the tiny basket. “Blast, where did the governess go?”

  THE THIRD-FLOOR NURSERY AT ASHTON Place was open for business. Mrs. Penworthy had volunteered to act as the children’s temporary governess, since they had no other and the baby nurse had time to spare for another day or so, until the baby was born. Great heaps of knitting were folded and stacked all around. There were all the sweaters, mittens, hats, and scarves one might expect, along with some more, well, unusual projects. For example, there was a knitted map of England that used blue yarn for the water and a mix of greens and browns for the land, with the occasional white knot stitch thrown in to represent a sheep. This was Alexander’s doing, as you might have guessed.

  Beowulf had knitted a carrying case with a strap, perfect for those times when one gets the urge to paint en plein air and needs to carry one’s portable easel, paints, and brushes outdoors.

  As for Cassiopeia, she had knitted a collection of eye patches for playing at pirates, and a holster to fit a toy dagger that Beowulf had gnawed for her out of a fallen tree branch. He had painted it to give the impression of a gleaming metal blade, sharp enough to split an eyelash, but it was actually smooth-sanded wood and quite safe to play with.

  At the moment, Cassiopeia and her brothers were merrily swashbuckling ’round the nursery, slashing at imaginary foes. Mrs. Penworthy had declared the day’s lesson to be Making Things Up, Pirate Edition. This was enjoyable for the children and of great practical use for Simon, for he had been struggling to write a play about pirates for some time now. Watching the children pretend was giving him ideas. (The bards among you know
that writing is nine-tenths pretending on paper and one-tenth spelling and punctuation marks. The correct use of apostrophes is important, and choosing the right words is more important, but pretending will always be the most important part of the whole business, and who does not like to pretend?)

  “I like that slicing and dicing, Cassawoof.” Simon took notes with furrowed brow. “But if all the characters are made to walk the plank in the opening scene, the play will be too short. Can’t we kill them closer to the end?”

  In reply came a muffled whump . . . thud! Then a creak, as of a bending tree branch, followed by an “Ouch!” Simon stared at his pages and sighed. “All right. Walk the plank it is. But where do we go from there?”

  “Simawoo,” Beowulf said. Like his siblings, he wore a knitted eye patch. At the moment he was staring at the nursery window, rubbing his free eye as if to get it to work better. But Simon was deep in concentration, his gleam of genius fully engaged.

  “All right, let me think! All the pirates are thrown overboard. Who’s left? Maybe—I know it’s improbable, but it just might work! Maybe the cabin boy can take over the ship and the plot. . . .”

  “Simawoo?” Alexander ripped off his eye patch and turned his spyglass to the nursery window.

  “A cabin boy. Hmm!” Simon frowned and tapped his pencil against his chin. “Cabin boy, cabin boy. I could call it Cabin Boy on Holiday. Say, that’s not bad!”

  Tap-tap-tap-tap! Someone—could it be that missing scamp, Nutsawoo?—was tapping on the glass of the nursery window.

  “Simawoooooo!” the children howled in unison. It was a strange, strangled howl, a mix of joy and confusion and disbelief, and it ended abruptly as all three Incorrigibles hurled themselves at the window and fought to be the first to open it.

  The spring breeze blew the curtains into the room like billowing sails, and the nursery filled with the scent of clouds, and sky, and apple, mustard, and cheddar sandwiches. There was the faintest whiff of herring, too, for it would take more than one washing to get that smell out of a thick knitted sweater.

  “Well,” said Miss Penelope Lumley, who stood, wobbly but secure, on the spreading branch of the elm tree. Her hard landing made the branch sway to and fro, but she had sea legs enough to manage it, after all the traveling she had done. “Isn’t anyone going to say hello?”

  The children stood, frozen. “Excuse me, Lumawoo Bird, as seen from the Nursery Window,” Alexander inquired in a shaky voice. “Are you real? Or pretend?”

  “We have been making things up,” Beowulf explained. “So it is not easy to tell.”

  “For example.” Cassiopeia took out her dagger and recited, in a foot-stomping iambic pentameter, “‘Is THIS a DAGger WHICH I SEE beFORE me?’”

  “Shakespeare!” Penelope cried, full of joy, and clambered inside. (She was correct, of course. The famous line about the dagger is from one of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Alas, the play cannot be named within these pages. To do so is the worst kind of bad luck, for this particular play is thought to have a curse upon it. To learn more you must ask your nearest thespian, but be sure to inquire about the “Scottish play” and under no circumstances say the title even if you do know what it is. To hear that accursèd name would make any professional actor flee in terror, as if being chased by a thousand theater critics!)

  Luckily, Penelope knew not to say the name of the Scottish play, as Simon—oh! Simon Harley-Dickinson! Would she see him soon again, too?—had explained it all to her long ago. “Your dagger is a pretend dagger, Cassiopeia, but it is a real pretend dagger, and very well made from the looks of it. And I too am as real as real can be! Oh, look at you all! It is so good to be home!” Then she noticed Mrs. Penworthy. “Pardon me, ma’am! I am not a burglar, I assure you.”

  The baby nurse had already leaped to his—or her—feet, but did not move toward the intruder. “Hold on, now,” Simon said warily. “Is this a cabin boy I see before me?” He could hardly trust his eyes either, as he had been making things up about cabin boys, and now one seemed to have flown right in the window. With a squirrel aboard, no less! For the long-absent Nutsawoo was there too, chattering and skittering joyously from one of Penelope’s shoulders to the other. The dim-witted creature knew exactly who had dangled from a rope ladder hastily lowered from a balloon and landed in the same spreading elm branches that the fluffy-tailed, beady-eyed menace called home.

  Penelope removed her knitted cap and shook out her shining auburn hair, which matched the Incorrigible children’s hair as perfectly as one sock matches its mate. “I am Miss Penelope Lumley,” she said to the nurse. “I once was—and, I hope, will be again—the children’s governess.”

  The Incorrigible children threw themselves upon her. They barked and howled and yapped with joy. After all, they had promised Lord Fredrick to practice being barky, and the Incorrigibles always kept their promises.

  “Why so wolfish?” Penelope said lovingly, as she hugged all three. “Clearly I have been away too long. But madame, you surely do look familiar. . . .”

  “That’s Mrs. Penworthy!” the children exclaimed, although they could hardly speak for laughing.

  Simon grinned and pulled off his wig. “Well, well, well,” he said, for even a bard can find himself at a loss for words when his heart is full. “I can’t imagine a better plot twist than this!”

  PENELOPE DISENTANGLED HERSELF FROM THE children’s hugs and turned to her friend.

  “Simon, I am overjoyed to see you, and eager to know how you are. I am also curious about that costume you have on! But first things first: Have you located Madame Ionesco? Is she nearby? Does she know how to undo the curse?”

  “Same to you, on all three counts!” Simon scratched his head. “As for your questions: I have, and she is. And yes, I think she might, but I don’t know the details. She told me she wouldn’t say a word about the curse until all four wolf babies had arrived. What’s that about, I wonder?”

  “But we are only three! One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three . . .” The Incorrigibles counted and spun in a circle until they got dizzy and fell down, giggling.

  Penelope looked at their dear little faces. What a surprise they had in store! “There is a great deal to explain,” she said, “but it is a long and complicated story that is best saved until there is time to tell it properly. Four wolf babies, indeed! Well, never mind that. I have reason to think she will reveal herself now.”

  To Simon she added, “Where can we find the good Madame?”

  “The bakehouse. She’s been baking bread like mad.”

  “To the bakehouse!” the children cried with enthusiasm, for surely there would be something good to eat once they arrived. This appealed to Penelope, too, who was by now quite hungry.

  “Yes, we must go at once.” She looked down at her sailor outfit. “I have no other clothes to wear, but perhaps it is just as well to travel incognito. If anyone asks, I am your cousin, Alf, a cabin boy on leave.”

  Simon pulled his wig back on. “Alf it is. And I’ll go back to being Mrs. Penworthy. Now, don’t laugh! At the moment I’m the baby nurse and substitute governess. And I intend to do a good job of it, too, until the real one is ready to return.” He waited until the children were busy putting Nutsawoo back outside, then quietly asked, “But what do you know about Edward Ashton? He’s not here now, though Mrs. Clarke told me he’d spent a few days as a houseguest not two weeks ago. Looked like he’d been through the wars, she said, and seemed to have gone a bit unhinged.”

  “He has been looking for my parents,” she said. “Have no fear. He can search the globe over, but he will not find them.”

  “Your parents? Wait a minute—is there more to this plot twist than meets the eye?”

  Cassiopeia ran back from the window and hurled herself atop Simon’s shoulders. “Giddy-yap, Mrs. Penworthy!” she yelled. “Gallop to the bakehouse, on the double!”

  “Mind the hair, Cassawoof,” he admonished, for she had grabbed the two pigtails as reins and was
yanking them this way and that. To Penelope he said, “It’s plain by the look on your face the answer is yes. To be continued, Alf the cabin boy!”

  “Yes, we shall save the rest for later,” she said, eyes a-twinkle. What a marvelous secret she had, and how much fun it would be to tell it! She took Beowulf by one hand and Alexander by the other. Despite everything that had already happened, and all that was yet to come, at that moment she thought she had never been so happy in her life. “To the bakehouse!”

  AS YOU RECALL, THE SOOTHSAYER kept odd hours. She was not in the bakehouse, but Simon knew where she slept, in a little shed not far off. The path that led to it was flanked by a garden, now planted with strange herbs of the type a spell-casting soothsayer might need, for professional purposes.

  Penelope was eager to hear Madame’s solution to the Ashton/curse problem (for indeed, the curse had divided the Ashtons in two). “It ought not to be difficult for a weird woman of her skill,” she said to Mrs. Penworthy as they walked. “We simply need a way to undo the curse, without committing . . .” She stopped, not wishing to say “murder” in front of the children. “Rhymes with birder,” she said instead, in a low voice.

  “Sheepherder!” the children yelled, for they missed nothing. Children rarely do, especially when older people are trying to slip something past them.

  “What a racket! What are you trying to do, wake the dead?” It was the spooky Madame herself, cackling merrily in the doorway to her shed. “‘Murder’ is the word you’re looking for, cookie. We’ll have none of that creepy talk around here. The dead hate that word, for obvious reasons. Hey, wolf kids!”

  “Madame Ionesco!” The children were thrilled to see her at last, and gave her many hugs.

  “Thank you for the Gypsy cakes,” Alexander said, ever polite.

  “You like the bread, huh? Me too. When the dough rises, it looks like a big balloon.” She gave Penelope a meaningful wink as she ushered them inside. “You just made it, Lumley! I was getting worried.”