The Unmapped Sea (23 page)

Simon knew how to spin a yarn as well as anyone, but even he could no longer stand the suspense. “Don't beat around the bush, Uncle! What was the girl's name?”

Pudge closed his eyes, remembering. “Agatha!” he said. “That was her name. Agatha Ashton.”

A
T THIS MOMENT
M
ISS
P
ENELOPE
Lumley had what is known as an epiphany, which is a way of saying that she understood something extremely complicated all at once, as if a puzzle with many pieces had suddenly flown into the air and assembled itself. The force of it hit her broadside, and she found herself leaning first port, then starboard, until she toppled into Simon's arms.

“Whoa, there!” He put her back on her feet. “That's quite a Sea Sway. Must be a storm brewing.”

“The split in the Ashton family was between Pax Ashton and his twin sister, Agatha,” she said in a rush. “And somehow, Agatha Ashton grew up to be Agatha Swanburne!”

Simon rubbed his chin. “So, on one side of the curse are Pax's descendants—first Edward, then Fredrick, and soon, the wee woofing baby of Ashton Place. But who are Agatha's descendants?”

“Miss Charlotte Mortimer is one. She told me so herself; Agatha Swanburne was her grandmother.” Penelope felt suddenly groundless, as if she were falling headlong through the air, but at the same time it felt like flight, like joy. “I—I am not sure. I think there may be others. In fact . . . I think . . . that is to say, I have come to suspect—”

Dr. Martell sniffed. “Does anyone else smell smoke?”

Lady Constance sneezed. “
Ah-choo!
Fredrick dear, this is no time for a cigar. I fear you have set your pelt on fire.”

But it was not the pelt. Now everyone began to sniff.

“Smoke? Yes!”

“I smell it, too!”

“It's smoke, but from where?”

“Lumawoo,” Cassiopeia said, her voice trembling. “Something spooky. Look.” She pointed at the madcap panorama of ancient Rome. There, in the shadows of Mount Vesuvius and the Colosseum, between the tail of a megalosaurus and the olive trees full of stylish Italian squirrels, stood a man in a toga, his back to them. In one hand he held a violin.

His body shook with laughter, until he threw back his head and howled with it. He raised the violin to his shoulder, and the bow to his violin, and then he began to play.

T
HE
T
HIRTEENTH
C
HAPTER
A Roman holiday goes up in smoke.

T
HE
I
NCORRIGIBLES WERE AMAZED.
H
AD
their panorama achieved such verisimilitude that one of its inhabitants had sprung to life, complete with the knowledge of how to play the fiddle? Yet none of them could remember drawing Emperor Nero, the famously tyrannical Roman emperor who was said to have set fire to the city and fiddled while it burned.

“That is no painted emperor, but I fear it may be Edward Ashton,” Penelope said urgently to Simon.

Lord Fredrick overheard her, for his hearing grew
wolfishly keen during the full moon (alas, his vision remained blurry as ever). At the mention of his father's name, his ears twitched, for of course he believed the man to be dead.
“Woof!”
he exclaimed in disbelief.
“Yap! Ahwoo!”
By now, these were the only sounds he could utter. Whatever else he longed to say about his long-lost father miraculously turning up in Brighton during the off-season, wearing a toga and playing the violin, would have to wait until later.

Dr. Martell took Lady Constance firmly by the arm. “This fire is too realistic for my taste. I suggest we all leave, at once.”

Penelope was of the same mind. As she had sometimes seen Mrs. Clarke do, she held her fingers to her lips and let out a long, piercing whistle, like a Bloomer steam engine pulling into the station. “Attention, please! It seems the tide has turned. To catch the current, we must sail at once. Back to the ship, if you please!”

Simon handed the brass bell to Alexander. “Second Mate Alexander, you and the Incorrigible crew must get everyone out, lickety-split. Can you do it?”

“Aye aye, sir!” Alexander ran around clanging the bell, and took the opportunity to give a pithy but informative lecture. “The Great Fire of Rome burned for six days and six nights!”
Clang!
“Emperor Nero was
rumored to have started the fire.”
Clang!
“But that was only rumor, so until someone invents a time machine, we may never know what truly happened!”
Clang!
“Also, historically speaking, he would have been playing a lyre, not a fiddle, as the violin had not yet been invented.”
Clang! Clang!
“To the ship! To the ship!”

Beowulf and Cassiopeia herded the guests like sheepdogs. The Babushkawoos were terrified and clung to their parents, coughing and complaining. Tendrils of smoke curled from beneath the backdrop. In the confusion, Emperor Nero slipped behind the painted hills and disappeared.

“Edward Ashton!” Penelope cried. “He must not get away.”

“Right you are.” Simon turned to Captain Babushkinov, who was still spoiling for a fight. “There's your Napoleon, sir! Come with me. That fire-setting scoundrel with the fiddle has a lot to answer for.”

The captain stood red-faced, with clenched fists. “Napoleon! In the name of the Tsar and Mother Russia, I come for you!” he roared. The two men took off after the violinist.

T
HE HOTEL WAS NOT THE
only thing that burned. Penelope's mind was ablaze with Pudge's revelation about
Agatha Ashton, and all that it suggested about the Ashton family tree, and perhaps, her own. . . . “But there is no time for that now,” she thought, “for we must get Lady Constance off the premises before the illusion of
bella Italia
goes up in smoke, so to speak.”

Luckily, Lady Constance was preoccupied with her seashell collection, which she insisted on carrying herself. She kept dropping the shells and then squealing with delight at the chance to gather them up again. Once back aboard ship—that is to say, in the lobby of the Left Foot Inn—Penelope quickly fashioned a blindfold of pocket handkerchiefs and offered it to Lady Constance, to wear during the voyage home.

Of course, the “voyage” would be nothing more than several circumnavigations of Brighton in the clarence carriage, with Jasper playing the ocean drum in the backseat and Old Timothy making the occasional screechy gull cry for verisimilitude—
caw, caw!
—but as long as Lady Constance saw none of it, all would be well, Penelope was certain.

“It will shield your eyes against the harsh lights of the aurora borealis,” she explained as she secured the blindfold around the lady's face.

“The northern lights, at the South Pole? How unusual! Well, it is too bad that Italy caught fire so
soon after we arrived,” Lady Constance remarked as Jasper led her to the carriage. “But short holidays are best. Now I see that looking forward to a trip abroad is far more pleasant than the bother of actually taking one. Don't you agree, Fredrick? Fredrick?” She waved her arms until she located her husband, who trotted along beside her on all fours like a well-trained dog. “Silly Fredrick, get up! Your performance is over; there is no need to stay ‘in character.'”

“Yap!”
said Lord Fredrick.
“Woof!”
The curséd heir to the curséd Ashtons was in the grip of his full-moon madness, but for the first time in his life there was nowhere to hide. He jumped into the carriage after his wife and curled himself on the seat.

Lady Constance adjusted her blindfold and patted him on the head. “Very well, if you insist on acting like a precious pet poodle, I shall simply pretend that is what you are! Do you know, Fredrick, as a girl I always secretly wanted a pony, but I knew my brothers would torment it horribly the minute they saw I was fond of it. So I refused to get one. I told everyone ponies frightened me and made me sneeze! Isn't that funny?”

“All ashore that's going ashore. Hey, yah!” Old Timothy called to the horses, and the “ship” began to move. Idly Lady Constance scratched her husband
behind his ears. Once he was over his surprise, Lord Fredrick panted with contentment.

O
NCE BACK AT THE
L
EFT
Foot Inn the seven children refused to be separated (actually it was the Babushkawoos who refused, as they were being rather dramatic about the fire; one would have thought they had barely escaped the eruption of Mount Vesuvius with their lives). They were all put to bed in room fourteen, under the supervision of Master Gogolev.

Everyone tried to convince the princess Popkinova that she, too, ought to retire for the evening, but the old woman swore she would not close her eyes until her son came back from his pursuit of the arsonist.

They waited together, in the lobby. Pudge fell asleep in an armchair next to a grandfather clock, and his snores kept time in a duet with the clockworks. Dr. Martell stayed with them also, “in case any medical attention is needed,” he said to Penelope. “Your friend Simon seems like a level-headed fellow, but the captain has a temper, and a taste for dueling. Who was that strange Emperor Nero, I wonder? I know my oddities, and there was surely something odd about him. I wish we had seen his face.”

“With any luck, we soon shall,” Penelope said. She
was glad the doctor was there, for she felt ill at ease with the others. Madame Babushkinov paced the lobby like a tigress and would not look at her, not even when Penelope offered her a cup of the tea she had ordered, in the hopes that it might settle everyone's nerves.

“And you, Princess? Would you like some tea?” Penelope ventured.

“Nyet!”
Princess Popkinova waggled a bony finger in the air. “First, ice. Then, fire. Someone is trying to kill us! We must go home, to Plinkst. Now!”

Madame Babushkinov stopped and turned. “For once we are in agreement. It is time to go home.” She glanced at Penelope, and quickly looked away. “As soon as Ivan gets back . . . ,” she muttered.

But it was another hour before Simon and Captain Babushkinov returned. Simon's teeth were chattering, and his hat had blown off along the way. “We lost the fiddler, on the roof, I think. He slipped through our fingers, like a shadow into the mist.”

“Like a beet into the borscht,” Captain Babushkinov said, shaking off his cloak.

Simon flopped into one of the lobby chairs and held his half-frozen hands toward the fire. “Beet into borscht! That's not bad, Ivan. Say, is there any more tea?”

Penelope was already up to ring for a fresh pot, for by now the first was cold. Madame Babushkinov strode to her husband. “Ivan Victorovich, this place will be the death of me! I beg you, let us announce our news now, so we may make our arrangements to leave.”

Just as his invalid mother was more fierce than one might expect from a person so ancient and frail, Captain Babushkinov now looked more sheepish than one would have thought possible for a person so large and imposing.

“Natasha, no. Is late. All are tired. Will not go well. Also, the legalities . . .” Uneasily he glanced at Penelope. “Let us wait for morning, as we planned.”

“If you cannot, I will tell her myself—”

“Ahwoo!”

“Ahwoo!”

Boris and Constantin skipped barefoot into the hotel lobby, dressed in their nightshirts and trading little childish howls of victory.

“Papa, look! We caught the emperor!” one of them boasted.

“Papa, look! We caught the emperor!”

“And I gave him a black eye!” said the other. Once again there was no telling them apart, for they had taken off their name signs to go to sleep.

“No,
I
gave him a black eye!” the first twin said.

“Me!”

“No, me!”

Penelope looked past them, amazed. “Alexander . . . Beowulf . . . Cassiopeia—what have you done?”

The Incorrigible children grunted with effort as they pushed a luggage cart into the lobby. Veronika rode in front, dramatically posed like the figurehead of a ship. Upon the cart, his hands bound with toe-shoe ribbon and his ankles tied together with rope in an impressive array of sailor knots, was a man dressed all in black. A pair of thick-lensed eyeglasses lay broken on the cart beside him.

“He snuck in while we were sleeping,” Alexander explained.

“He was very, very quiet,” said Beowulf.

“But not quiet enough!” Cassiopeia added with unmistakable glee.

Simon was on his feet, furious. “Up to no good, I'll wager! Did you mean to set another fire, you rogue? Hanging would be too good for you!”

The prisoner was helpless as a turtle flipped on its back, but even so, Penelope instinctively pulled the Incorrigibles away from him. “But what happened when you caught him in your room?” she asked, her heart aching with concern, though they did not seem harmed.

The Incorrigibles hung their heads. “I pounced, sorry,” said Alexander.

“I growled, so sorry,” Beowulf confessed.

“Very hard biting by Cassawoof! Sorry, I guess.” Cassiopeia did not sound particularly remorseful.

Now, Penelope had sternly reminded the children many times not to pounce, growl, or bite; hence the apologies. But these were hardly ordinary circumstances! Privately she resolved to give each of them an extra biscuit as a reward for their bravery.

“And
we
challenged him to a duel,” one of the twins said. “But he laughed at us!”

The other struck a fierce dueling pose. “No one laughs at a Babushkinov! I lost my temper.”

“No, I lost
my
temper.”

They balled their hands into fists. “And then,” they cried in unison, “we punched him!”

They each took a mighty swing to demonstrate. If not for the swift intervention of their father, who seized them by the backs of their nightshirts and lifted them off the ground, they would have blacked each other's good eyes and ended up looking like twin raccoons.

“Well fought, my sons,” the captain said. “But where was your tutor, Gogolev, during all this?”

Madame Babushkinov wrung her hands; she was
quite beside herself. “Yes, where is Master Gogolev? He was supposed to be minding you all!”

No one could answer this question. Julia began to whimper, until the princess hissed at her to stop.