Currents (9 page)

“No. I've asked my father to teach me when we've gone sailing, but he said ladies don't need to know such things.”

“Well,” Chap said as he winked at her, “Lady
explorers
are a whole different matter. There are six ways to tie a proper knot on a boat. I'll teach you the next time you come. I pride myself that there's no man alive who can tie a finer knot than Chap Harris. And another time I'll show you how to navigate by using only the stars above.”

“Now that would be extremely useful to me,” she said.

“Well,” he went on, “there are a lot of things I can teach you in the weeks ahead. At least while I'm still here on the island.”

“Oh no. Are you thinking of leaving?” Bess asked.

“No. But I'm not planning on staying either,” he said, laughing. “I get up each day and do as my spirit moves me.”

“Where were you born, Chap?”

“In America. New York,” he answered. “But I never want to go back there.”

She wanted to ask him why, but he turned away, clearly signaling he was finished with the conversation.

Bent over his work, Chap filleted the fish he'd caught that morning, tossing them into one of four large red buckets. Bess knew that he toted the fish up the hill to Parkhurst Prison every afternoon and left them in the kitchen where the cook would make a watery stew for the inmates unfortunate enough to find themselves guests of the infamous island prison. Once a month, she saw a large ship arrive at the dock, and a few dozen prisoners, shackled to each other by their wrists and waists, would board. They were shipped to Portsmouth and then to trial in London or thousands of miles away to Australia's penal colony. She'd heard that no one ever came back. It was rumored that hard labor and disease killed at least half of them.

Finished with filling the buckets, Chap hoisted them off the boat.

“I'll help,” Bess said as she picked up the two smaller pails and followed him up the dirt path to the backside of the large, rambling gray prison. The path to the back door was well worn and only about a hundred yards from the dock. There were guards and high wires at the front, but not at the back where the cook and cook's help entered.

“How long have you been doing this, Chap?” Bess asked.

“Too long,” he answered.

“Then why don't you go somewhere else?”

“I don't really know,” he answered. “I don't have any family. Don't own anything except the boat I live on, and she's in need of some repair. Got nothing holding me anywhere, so I might just as well be here.”

He pulled a large key from his belt, slipped it into the rusty hole, and the heavy metal door creaked open. The dark hallway was lit by one flickering gas lantern, and it took a few seconds for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. They winced as a dank, foul stench hit their nostrils.

“Poor souls,” Bess whispered, cringing. “Who could have an appetite for food when the smell is so dreadful in here?”

The kitchen was a short walk down a hallway, and they left the buckets and turned to leave. But the sound of soft crying behind another door at the back of the room stopped them, and they each pressed an ear to the door.

“It's the room where they keep the boys who've been newly incarcerated,” Chap whispered. “Keep them in quarantine from the rest of the population till the guards know they haven't got anything contagious.”

“It's not locked,” Bess noted. There was only a small sliding latch on the kitchen side of the door that prevented it from opening.

“No, but they're not going anywhere,” Chap said. “Must be some poor young fella cryin' for his mum. Come on, we're not supposed to be pokin' around, and I'm sure I'm not supposed to be bringing you in with me.”

He locked the door behind them and reattached the key to his belt.

She picked up her stack of books from his boat and headed back down the lane to Attwood Manor with the sound of the boy's weeping heavy in her heart.

W
ith her books slung over her back, Bess ran most of the way home. When she walked in the front door she heard Mildred, the downstairs maid, muttering to herself in the duke's study. Bess chuckled. She knew exactly what the maid was fretting about. A monstrous stuffed tiger, a full two meters high, was posed rearing on its hind legs glaring hungrily at everyone who entered the study. The beast had had the nerve to try to eat the Duke of Kent when he was on expedition in India. The duke had been gone for months, riding elephants through swamps and jungles, when one day the creature leaped out from the tall grass and ran straight at him. He had taken aim and killed the lunging cat with one shot. He had the tiger stuffed and shipped back to the Isle of Wight. The poor maids who had to dust the striped coat and polish the sharp teeth and fearsome, yellow marble eyes had nightmares ever afterward. It took every bit of willpower Bess possessed not to sneak up behind Mildred and let out a loud, howling roar. The last time she had done that, Mrs. Dow, the housekeeper, had sent her to her room with no dessert. Mildred had just recently begun speaking to her again, and Bess didn't want to jeopardize that. Attwood could be a large, lonely house, and she needed all the company she could get. Even from timid Mildred.

“You do know he won't bite you, Mildred,” Bess announced pleasantly, plunking her books down on her father's desk. “He's quite dead.”

“Oh, yes, my Lady, I know that is so. But at night—in my dreams. That's a different matter.”

“Well, I personally intend to go to India one day,” Bess announced. “I'd like to see one of these beasts for myself.”

Mildred just shook her head. “That's one trip I won't be accompanying you on.”

When she heard Lady Elsie's footsteps coming down the back stairs, the maid bent down to look busy with her chores, lest the lady of the house think she was lolling about and punish her yet again.

There was no end to the chores at Attwood Manor. There were two hundred windows to clean and a stone entrance hall hung with dozens of portraits of the Kent ancestors to dust. The rambling old estate was kept warm by twenty fireplaces that needed to be fed nine months of the year to keep out the dampness that rolled off the English Channel. The great estate sprawled across fifty acres and had been in the Kent family since the 1700s. The beautiful island was so desirable a location that England's reigning monarch, Queen Victoria, and her husband, Prince Albert, had recently built the grand Osborne House as a retreat from the city.

Elsie, the Duchess of Kent, cleared her throat just in case her stepdaughter and the maid hadn't noticed her looming in the doorway. She would have been hard to miss. She was nearly six feet tall in her stocking feet, though she was rarely seen shoeless.

Bess and her younger sister, Sarah, were fond of calling her Elsie the Shrew behind her back. She was scrawny as a nail and she claimed that rich sauces and sweets upset her stomach. Under her orders, the menu at Attwood had become bland and boring.

“Father's longhorn cattle enjoy a more tantalizing menu than we're served,” Sarah often complained. Their father was away in London on business so often that he barely noticed what was placed in front of him when he did dine at home.

“What books have you chosen from the library this week?” Elsie ran a long finger over the string that tied the books together. “My, my, you are ambitious. Five books this week.”

“One is on polar exploration, though I don't intend to go there,” Bess explained.

“Hmmm.” Elsie purred like a sly cat. “Too chilly.”

“And another one is about New Guinea. That looks like it would be a paradise if you could avoid the man-eating tribes. The one I'm most anxious to start is about the River Nile in Africa.”

“Oh, your father and his constant going on about that Nile River!” Elsie rolled her eyes.

“He has the heart of an explorer,” Bess defended. “As do I!”

Bess held up a magazine, saying, “And this is my favorite of all. Last month's issue of
Merry's Museum Magazine
. If you want to learn about the Nile River . . .”

“I do not.” Elsie sniffed.

“Well, if you wish to learn about almost anything in the world,” Bess countered, “it will eventually be written up and explained in
Merry's Museum Magazine
.”

Elsie squinted at the cover. “Is that an old man sitting on a stool?”

“Yes,” Bess said. “Poor Uncle Merry is in bad health due to rheumatism. But he has traveled the entire world, and every month he shares his stories with children. There are puzzles and songs and pictures and poems, as well. It is all very useful to someone like me who intends to explore the world when I'm old enough.”

“Yes, yes, lovely. Well, I might suggest on your next visit to the library you choose a book on keeping house or gardening. Something a lady might be interested in. Goodness, Bess, look at yourself. Your hair is a mess.”

“I've just run all the way home from the library,” Bess explained, trying to pat down her long black hair. “Hmmm,” the duchess murmured. “Your hair always seems to be a mess and you cannot sew or cook and in the garden—well, I'm afraid you don't know a tea rose from a dandelion.”

She picked up Bess's hands in her own and said, “Nails nibbled down to stubby little nubs. Tsk, tsk. You need to start acting and grooming like a lady. You are twelve years old.”

“I'm sorry, but I seem to bite them when I'm excited, and there just seems to be so much to be excited about in the world. Honestly, I don't understand how some girls accomplish it. Getting all prettied up. And to be perfectly truthful, it just doesn't interest me at all. I find it all to be deadly boring.”

“You need to develop an interest in it, Bess.” Her stepmother's brow arched, and she waved a hand at Mildred, who was madly dusting and waxing in front of the drapes. “It's unacceptable when the maid looks more polished than a lady in the house.”

Bess cringed, unable to bring herself to look at Mildred. Now she just wanted the conversation to be over quickly before Elsie inflicted any more verbal damage on the poor maid. She nodded. “I will begin putting my best foot forward.”

“Well, I do hope you will try.” The duchess shook her head slowly back and forth to show her weariness with it all. “Dinner will be ready in an hour, so I'll see you then. And Mildred?”

Elsie pulled aside one of the heavy damask drapes. “Don't forget to dust
behind
the drapes as well as in front, will you?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Mildred replied, although the duchess was already halfway out the door.

T
he day after her weekly visit to Chap's boat, Bess and Sarah finished their lessons with their tutors early. Bess asked Gertrude, the cook, to pack them up a small bag with biscuits and a container of sweet, milky tea so that they could have a snack when they reached Singing Beach. Mrs. Dow looked over the snack and made sure to put extra cookies in the bag.

“Remember to be especially careful around the cliffs,” she instructed. Ida Dow had been hired by their late mother to be Attwood's housekeeper, but she had turned out to be much more. With her kind heart and unrelenting tolerance of Elsie, she had become the closest person to the girls since they lost their mother.

After a light lunch in the kitchen, Bess and Sarah set out with their dog, Sunny Girl, leading the way.

With the stone house behind them, the sisters walked through the rolling fields, past the apple orchards laden with fruit, and along the narrow paths that led down the cliffs to the ocean. Grapevines plump with fruit tangled through the bushes and stone walls, and birds swarmed them hungrily. Their father taught the girls that ripe grapes were a sure sign that summer was ending.

In less than ten minutes the smell of salty ocean air got stronger, and they could hear a squadron of gulls signaling to each other above the waves.