ICAP 2 - The Hidden Gallery (17 page)

“This must be the hidden entrance to Gallery Seventeen!”

Simon peered inside. “Bit dark in there. Better check the
Hixby's
for what to do next. I'll sneak behind the shrubbery and see how the diversion is working.”

With a quiet tread born of crossing silently backstage during performances, Simon slipped behind the hedge. Penelope reached for her purse—and nearly panicked. “Who has the
Hixby's Guide
?”

“You have, Lumawoo.”

“No, I am quite sure I gave it to Alexander—”

“I have compass only. Ask Beowoo?”

“Beowulf, check your pockets, please!”

“Pocket has cake crumbs, charcoal pencil, tuppence. No book.”

All eyes turned to Cassiopeia. She shrugged. “Sorry. No
Hixby's
.”

Penelope did a quick inhale-exhale to steady herself. “It must have been dropped in all the excitement. Never mind. We found the door to Gallery Seventeen by following the smell of paintings, but inside the museum it will smell like paintings everywhere. We shall have to devise another way to navigate—a Plan B, as it were—
eek
!”

But the rustle and crunch of breaking twigs was caused by Simon. He reemerged from the hedge, grinning from ear to ear. “The pirates found us, but Madame Ionesco has thrown them completely off course. She's holding a séance right there on the museum steps, and promised to raise the spirit of Richard Burbage, the greatest tragic actor of Shakespeare's day. Acting lessons from beyond the grave! They're all hooked. Speaking as a bard myself, I wouldn't mind hearing what Burbage has to say—”

Penelope glanced at the sky. The parrot circled high above. “I'm afraid there is no time for that. Quick, children—inside!”

The Incorrigibles obediently (and fearlessly) disappeared into the blackness. Simon hesitated. “Awfully dark in there. What does the
Hixby's
say?”

“I wish I knew,” Penelope replied as she lifted her skirts and stepped in after the children.

Simon, who was not only a perfectly nice young man, but a brave and loyal one, too, shrugged and followed, and shut the door behind him.

 

O
NE MIGHT ASSUME THAT ANY
entrance (even a hidden one) to a place as splendid as the British Museum would have to be at least a little bit grand. But
Penelope, Simon, and the children found themselves in a pitch-dark tunnel that seemed more like the way to a dungeon. It was narrow, damp, and silent, except for the occasional
plunk…plunk…plunk
of water dripping. The ceiling was so low they had to crawl on all fours; even so, Penelope could not help bumping her head now and then.

She struggled to think of what advice Agatha Swanburne might have for their current predicament. As far as she knew, the wise old founder had never had to flee actors dressed as pirates by crawling through a dank, dark tunnel into the British Museum after hours.

“But if she had,” Penelope thought, “no doubt she would have done it bravely and without any grumbling.” So, “Be brave, children,” she said aloud. “I know it is dark, but we shall reach the end soon, I am sure of it.”

Of course, the Incorrigibles were not at all afraid of the dark, and were perfectly used to crawling on all fours. In fact, they were having a fine old time worming their way through the tunnel. It was their anxious governess whom Penelope was really telling to be brave. For, you see, people of particular pluck are no different than the rest of us. At times they feel afraid, or lonely, or hopeless, just as the less plucky do; they
simply happen to excel at keeping their spirits up in a pickle. As Agatha Swanburne said, “No panicking, no complaining, no quitting”—six words to the wise that are well worth learning, and following.

Simon must have felt a similar need to buck himself up. “We're almost there, Miss Lumley,” he called encouragingly from somewhere behind. Penelope appreciated the sentiment, of course, but the remark made her rather glad it was too dark to see, for the rear view of her crawling along on hands and knees would have been ungraceful, to say the least.

“Thank you, Mr. Harley-Dickinson. Oh! Mr. Harley-Dickinson!”

“What?”

“Given the perilous circumstances—
ow!
—I think you might call me Penelope, if you like.”

“Right-oh! Well! Call me Simon, then.”

She was just as glad he could not see her blush, and smile.

 

I
F YOU HAVE EVER HAD
the misfortune to be stuck crawling through a pitch-dark tunnel without the option of turning back, with no idea if and when this nerve-racking experience might come to an end, you already know that even five minutes of such an exercise is
bound to feel like a very long time indeed.

Penelope, Simon, and the Incorrigibles crawled heroically along for nearly twice that long, and one can only imagine what an eternity it seemed to them. But there is an old saying (not one of Agatha Swanburne's, as it turns out, although she would have found it perfectly sensible) that insists that most tunnels do eventually have a light at the end of them, even if that end is far, far away.

This particular tunnel did not contradict the notion, for eventually the five explorers emerged into what seemed to be a dense, velvety soft thicket. They were still in the dark, but at least they could stand up. And when they pushed through the thicket (which soon revealed itself to be a tangle of heavy velvet drapes), there was not only light, but art.

Beowulf sniffed deeply. “Oil paints,” he said with satisfaction. On every wall hung Historical Portraits so shameless in their Overuse of Symbolism that any first-year art student could have deduced where they were. Penelope had taken three semesters of art appreciation at the Swanburne Academy, so she had no doubt whatsoever.

“Gallery Seventeen: Overuse of Symbolism in Minor Historical Portraits,” she announced, stomping
the muck from her damp shoes. “We have arrived!”

Truly, it looked as if no one had ever set foot in this gallery before. A layer of dust filmed the floor, and cobwebs drifted in every corner. There seemed to be no way in or out of the gallery other than that horrible tunnel. But someone, at some point, had hung up all these frankly uninspired paintings. Why bother, if no one was ever going to see them?

They moved from portrait to portrait; at each one, Simon read aloud from the accompanying plaque. “The Chief General of Bavaria,” he said. “The Regent of Lichtenstein. The Wazir of Constantinople.” Even through a coat of grime the slapdash quality of the paintings was evident, with their stiff, awkwardly posed figures and dizzying parade of symbols. One could scarcely see past all the crowns, roses, shamrocks, halos, piles of gold, angel wings, laurel leaves, roaring lions—the list went on and on.

“The Goddess Diana,” Simon read, as they gathered in front of the last, and strangest, painting.

“Athens and Sparta?” guessed Alexander.

“In a way. The Greeks called her Artemis, but the Romans called her Diana. See the bow and arrow, the forest in the background, the crescent moon in the sky, the litter of wolf cubs at her feet? It's Diana, all right,”
Simon explained. “Goddess of the hunt, of the forest, and the moon. Protector of children, too.”

“The Wazir of Constantinople.”

“Look,” exclaimed Beowulf. “Ominous!”

“I know it's gloomy, but don't be frightened,” said Simon comfortingly. “It's only a painting, after all.”

“No, Ominous Landscape. In attic! Same Ominous.” Beowulf sounded completely sure of himself, for he did have a keen eye for art.

Penelope looked at the canvas: the colors, the brushstrokes, the composition. A shiver of recognition ran down her spine. Except for the presence of Diana in the place of the bloody-fanged wolf, this painting was remarkably similar to the one at Ashton Place.

“Beowulf is right,” she said, “This is by the same artist who painted a rather disturbing mural in the attic of Ashton Place.”

“Aaaaaaaaaa,”
Cassiopeia moaned.

Penelope laid a soothing hand on her head. “I know it is an important discovery, but this is no time for howling, dear.”

“Aaaaaaaaa. Cursive. Look,” the girl said, pointing at the lower right corner of the canvas, where artists often sign their work. Barely visible beneath the dust was the letter A, in an ornate script.

“Say, that's a funny coincidence! The ticket envelope
my acquaintance at the Drury Lane gave me, the one that had our tickets to the premiere—it had that same sort of fancy A marked on it….”

Penelope only half heard Simon's musings, for her gaze was drawn back to the face of Diana. “I have seen that woman before—but where?” she murmured.

Beowulf firmly shook his head. “Ominous Landscape. Mythic lady. Wrong gallery,” he concluded.

He would have been right, too, if the goddess Diana had simply been plopped in the middle of an Ominous Landscape. Then the painting would have belonged in Gallery Eleven, Use of Mythic Figures in Ominous Landscapes.

Yet this painting was, in fact, a portrait (which is to say, a picture of a real person, not a made-up one). The realization struck Penelope with the strength of an epiphany. True, this “Diana” looked quite a bit younger, but Penelope had gazed so many times at the image that hung in Miss Mortimer's study at school, she knew there could be no mistake.

It was Agatha Swanburne. There she was: the pretty, no-nonsense features, the impish yet wise expression in those wide, sea green eyes, the smooth, distinctively auburn-colored hair—

Penelope gasped.

“What is it, Lumawoo?” Cassiopeia was at her side in an instant.

“See ghost?” asked Beowulf.

“Burbage, maybe?” added Alexander hopefully. Truth be told, he had rather enjoyed his brief moment of speaking on the professional stage.

“No—not a ghost,” Penelope said, after a moment. But the skin on the back of her neck prickled, and her arms were covered with goose bumps.

For receiving a message, of a sort, from a person who is long dead—why, if that did not count as seeing a ghost, then what did?

T
O KNOW WHERE YOU ARE
going is always a great comfort to travelers, which is one reason that skilled navigators were as highly prized in Miss Penelope Lumley's day as those clever, robot-voiced, direction-giving gadgets are today. It also explains the enduring popularity of guidebooks, and the fact that crawling back through that dark, damp tunnel was not nearly as frightening as the first trip had been. This time Penelope, Simon, and the Incorrigibles knew precisely where they would end up.

Soon they were outside the museum once more. Just
as they had hoped, the sword-wielding thespians had scattered; presumably they had returned to the Drury Lane Theater to perform the second act of
Pirates on Holiday
. Madame Ionesco had disappeared as well. Penelope wondered if the pirates' second-act performances would be at all improved by their lesson with Richard Burbage, but alas, she would not be there to see it.

“Ah, well,” she thought to herself, with a twinge of disappointment. “Half of a West End premiere is better than none, I suppose. The important thing is that the Incorrigibles are safe from those silly pirates. And we did manage a trip to the British Museum, finally! The children will have much to write about in their journals tonight.”

The children, indeed. Their russet hair looked almost gray in the color-stealing light of the moon, but each time they passed beneath a street lamp the auburn sheen glowed like an ember. It was same color as her own natural, unpoulticed hair, and of Agatha Swanburne's, too. What could it mean? The whole moonlit walk back to Muffinshire Lane, Penelope looked at the Incorrigible children with fresh eyes.

Alexander, Beowulf, and Cassiopeia. Lost, or perhaps stolen, from their parents. Left in the woods at Ashton Place—but by whom?

Improbably, unexpectedly found by Lord Fredrick Ashton, and taken in as his wards.

Then, of all the governesses in the wide, unfathomable world, Miss Penelope Lumley, of the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, had been chosen to raise them, educate them, and as she now understood better than ever, protect them from harm.

Somehow, it was all connected.
They
were all connected; she and the children, and perhaps even Agatha Swanburne, too. But how? What did Miss Mortimer know that Penelope did not? And how did this inhuman curse that Madame Ionesco spoke of figure into things?

“Moon, moon, moon,” the children chanted expectantly as they marched home. And then, “Where moons?” they wondered. For now that the hour was late, the full moon had risen too high in the sky to be reflected in the windows of the buildings. The glass rectangles were dark as inky pools.

“And now there is this business of the paintings to puzzle over as well,” Penelope mused. She recalled the night she and the children had discovered that strange mural in the attic of Ashton Place. She thought of the mysterious howling sound that they had faintly heard from some hidden place behind the wall.

“What is the connection?” She scrunched her
eyebrows together, to better summon her powers of deduction. “What, what, what?”

“Moon, moon, moon,” the sleepy children mumbled. It had been a very long day; Cassiopeia had run out of pep completely and was now riding on Simon's shoulders.

“Moon?” Penelope realized, with growing excitement. “Moon, moon, moon!” Yes! For it had been a full moon the night of the Christmas ball, and it was a full moon now, on the night of the
Pirates on Holiday
premiere.

Both nights had ended in mayhem, with the children being pursued—or hunted, if you will.

Lord Fredrick had been absent from both occasions: the holiday ball and the premiere.

And, earlier that very night, Penelope had gotten a howlingly good clue as to why.

“Either there were wolves living in the attic,” she thought, recalling Lord Fredrick's bizarre behavior, “or Lord Fredrick was hiding inside, having a peculiar fit of itching, barking, and howling that is in some way related to the full moon!”

“Voilà!” she exclaimed, feeling thoroughly pleased with herself.

Simon and the children looked at her questioningly.

“No French lesson, Lumawoo. Too tired,” Cassiopeia begged.

Penelope smiled. “French can wait until tomorrow. I merely had an epiphany of sorts, about something I have been wondering about for some months. Now, shall we sing that muffin man song as we walk?” Unlike the children, Penelope was feeling quite energetic all at once. “It is a lively little tune, and will keep our spirits up. Look, everyone, we are almost home!”

 

“V
OILÀ
,”
AS YOU MAY ALREADY
know, is a French word that means “there you are.” Like “Eureka” or “By Jove, I've got it,” “voilà” is sometimes exclaimed by people who have figured out the answer to some sort of problem or riddle that has been vexing them to no end.

But why would Penelope use a French word like “voilà” when she was nowhere near France? It is a reasonable question, and the answer is this: There are French words and phrases that only French-speaking people use, and there are French words and phrases that everyone uses. This is because some ideas are so perfectly described
en français
that no other language dares try to top it.

As an example, consider the phrase “joie de vivre.” It means “the joy of living,” and refers to the kind of
cheerful, nonstop zest for life that stops just short of optoomuchism and makes a person a sheer pleasure to be around. “Gauche” means terribly awkward. A “provocateur” is a person who tries to stir up trouble. And then there is “faux pas,” which is an embarrassing blunder or lapse of good manners.

Translated into English, “faux pas” means “false step,” but faux pas are done all the time. Everyone makes mistakes now and then. Simple errors can be fixed with an eraser; more complicated blunders require an apology and a sincere effort to make things right. Either way, most mistakes are soon both forgiven and forgotten; they are a fact of life, and one ought not to lose sleep over them.

Sometimes, however, for no reason that science can yet explain, a perfectly ordinary faux pas is not forgotten at all. It becomes the subject of gossip and soon attracts the attention of the media, after which it escalates into a crisis of vast and humiliating proportions.

Alas, the newspaper that was delivered to Number Twelve Muffinshire Lane the morning after the premiere of
Pirates on Holiday
contained reports of just such a faux pas, one that was already well on its way to causing embarrassment on a global scale.

It was not part of the paper's scathing review of the
show itself (which, despite the enthusiasm of the audience, was deemed “A colossal failure, sure to fold in a week, what were they thinking?” by the
Times
's chief theater critic, who had never been wrong about such things—although, to be fair, the critic also wrote that “some unexpectedly fine acting in the second half was not enough to salvage this barnacle-encrusted wreck of a show”).

No, the
scandale du jour
was reported on the
Times
society page, which, after a few lines speculating about why the King of Belgium was a no-show, devoted the rest of the column to mocking the tasteless garb worn to the premiere by one Lady Constance Ashton.

“What I fail to understand is how the Incorrigible children could behave so abominably, and yet all they care to criticize is
my
outfit!” Lady Constance had read and reread the society page so many times and dropped so many salty tears upon it, she now had black ink smudges all over her hands and face. “Fredrick, listen to this: ‘Clearly unused to London's citified ways, the childlike (or is she just simple?) Lady Ashton attended the theater in the most absurd fancy dress imaginable. A word to the wise: Only the actors wear costumes, dear!'

“And this: ‘Lady Ashton's pirate getup was so gauche as to be illegal; quick, somebody, throw her in the brig!'

“You missed one, dear.” Lord Fredrick shook open the business section of the London
Times
, drew it close enough to see, and read, “‘The London stock market showed modest gains yesterday—and speaking of stock, Lady Constance Ashton was the laughingstock of the West End last night—'”

“Enough!” she shrieked, and buried her head in her hands, weeping.

It got worse. The eleven o'clock post brought floods of mail, as did the next post and the one after that. Letter after letter arrived, all addressed to Lady Ashton, and all withdrawing the social invitations that had so recently been extended. Plans had changed, unexpected houseguests had arrived, hosts had suddenly contracted malaria, dangerous tornadoes were expected—the excuses piled on.

None of the date cancelers was so bold as to pin it on the eye patch, but the message was clear: Because of a single, rhinestone-studded faux pas, overnight Lady Constance had become a “social pariah,” which is to say, the sort of person absolutely no one who cared deeply about being popular would have anything to do with.

“Now, now, dear. It will soon blow over, what?” Lord Fredrick looked a bit worse for wear himself,
with scratches on his hands and face and a lingering tendency to clear his throat in a particularly barky way, but at least the itching and howling seemed to have subsided. “The papers are just having a bit of fun, that's all. Can't take it personally, what?”

 

P
ENELOPE, TOO, WAS IN A
bit of muddle. She and the children had made it home without incident. Simon—she called him Simon now, imagine that!—had parted with fond good-nights and mutual words of admiration for each other's pluck in a tough spot. She had slept like a rock and dreamed only of alpine meadows filled with appealing little songbirds.

But now it was morning, and she had to decide what to say to Lady Constance about the previous evening's mishaps. Rather than wait around to be fired, or for Lady Constance to threaten to ship the children off to an orphanage or dump them back in the forest (as she had quite rudely proposed after the wreckage of the holiday ball), Penelope wanted to take the bull by the horns, matadorlike, as it were, and offer her own side of the story. For, really, who had ever heard of a parrot trained to howl? Some provocateur was behind it all, and the children could hardly be blamed—at least, not entirely.

She sent word through Mrs. Clarke, requesting an audience, but no reply was forthcoming. It seemed Lord Fredrick was spending the day at home for a change; he and Lady Constance had not left their private rooms since the arrival of the morning paper.

“Perhaps he is still in the throes of his moon-induced ‘condition.' If so, at least it is keeping him near his wife,” Penelope thought. “No doubt she will be in a better mood because of this much-overdue attention, and our conversation will not be difficult.” Was she being optoomuchstic? The possibility did not cross her mind.

Finally, well after teatime, Penelope received word that Lord and Lady Ashton would receive her. She smoothed her drab, blackberry-colored hair and proceeded to the dining room. There was a large pile of unopened mail on the table, near Lady Constance. With a maniacal look in her eye, Lady Constance slit open each letter, quickly skimmed its contents, and then proceeded to tear it into bits, which she carelessly let fall to the floor. By this time there was a snowdrift of torn-up paper heaped around her chair.

Lord Fredrick sat at the far end of the table with a hot-water bottle on his head, an ice pack pressed against his eyes, a glass of schnapps in front of him, and a small
pill bottle of headache lozenges next to the schnapps.

Too nervous to wait to be asked to sit, Penelope began to explain and apologize the moment she entered the room. Lady Constance simply opened and ripped, opened and ripped, like a human shredding machine. When Penelope finished speaking, Lady Constance stood. She handed Penelope what was left of the society page of the
Times
, which of course Penelope had not seen, as it had been in Lady Constance's agonized clutches since the moment it arrived.

Lady Constance waited as Penelope digested the awful contents of the page. Then she spoke.

“Miss Lumley. I will be blunt. Last night was the worst night of my life. My humiliation is complete; my friends have cut me off, and my reputation is in a shambles. I am convinced it was no accident. Someone is to blame.” Her eyes narrowed. “And I know exactly who is responsible.”

“You do?” Penelope was amazed to hear it. Were all the many mysteries that had accumulated since their arrival in London about to be solved?

“Yes, I do,” affirmed Lady Constance. “The source of all my troubles, past, present, and future, is those three…Incorrigible…children!”

“The children? But they had nothing to do with…”
Penelope might have said, “your ill-chosen outfit, the rudeness of the gossip columnist, and the faithlessness of your so-called friends,” but she did not, for Lady Constance was clearly in no mood to hear the truth.

“Of
course
it was the children!” the lady declared. “Nothing good happens when they are near. They are unbearable! Intolerable! Incorrigible!” She turned to her husband, who had his feet propped on the table and looked only half conscious. “If only you had been there, Fredrick! You would have seen how wild and uncontrollable they were—why, they actually stormed the stage and attacked the pirates! They disrupted the performance completely.”

Lord Fredrick yawned, then grunted from beneath his ice pack. “If I were a lad and stumbled across a gang of pirates it'd be bad enough, but if the ruffians burst into song—why, I'd be scared out of my wits! I'd probably start shooting just to settle my nerves, what?”

“Hmph!” Lady Constance retorted. Lord Fredrick lifted the corner of the ice pack and looked at Penelope with one eye; she could not help thinking it was rather as if he were wearing an eye patch himself.