Rook (47 page)

She approached it carefully, a giant chunk of gray, twisted metal, a large tank of some sort, and other parts sticking up and out that were completely unfathomable, all of it showing the warp and stress of intense heat. It was still warm, smoking or maybe even steaming in the cool air, pieces and parts scattered beneath her feet; the grass around burned in a giant ring. She touched the metal gingerly with a finger. This was a satellite, an Ancient machine fallen from the sky, and it was also, she guessed, what had flown over the prison yard when she stood on top of the Razor. What possible use could this thing have been, so high over anyone’s head? And why had it returned to the earth now? She heard the others coming through the unburnt grass, and bent down to pick up a piece of metal near her feet. Just discernable were four small, stamped letters:
NASA
.

“How many people alive right now have ever seen such a thing?” Tom asked from behind her, sitting down carefully in the debris-strewn grass. He was breathing hard, either from excitement or exhaustion. It had taken his strength to walk that field.

“I don’t know. But I’ve been seeing lights in the sky since the night I went to the Holiday,” Sophia replied.

“There were dozens while you were in the prison,” René said. “Many at once. Perhaps the satellite was much bigger, and now it is broken. Coming down in pieces.”

“Cartier,” said Tom. “Can you run back to the landover and see if you can find paper and a pen? See if the driver has anything …”

René sat beside Sophia in the grass, staring at the smoking machine while they waited for Tom to finish his frantic sketching. René said, “What happens in the past does not seem to ever go away, does it?”

“I suppose not. Or not all of it,” she replied. “But we can always make sure that it doesn’t happen again. Or that it does.”

“Ah. But then we just cannot forget that it happened in the first place, can we?”

She thought about this, fingering her piece of scavenged, Ancient metal. “Is that the real reason you steal the plastic?” she asked. “So that we cannot forget?”

“Yes,” he said. “It is.”

“I will not be forgetting Spear.”

“No, my love. I do not think you will.”

When the landover reached the end of the cliff road, Sophia saw two ships anchored beyond the surf, in the deeper part of a natural harbor. Three masts each, their sails down, the occasional wave breaking white against a hull. They were beautiful, and they were real, and they had been here, waiting. How could she have thought otherwise?

By the time they got down the cliff path and a boat rowed out to them, the nethersun was bleak and nearing the end of its time, shining slanting rays on a full and busy deck.

“René,” said Madame, lifting a painted cheek to receive his kiss as he swung his legs over the rail. “You are very late. I have nearly told Andre to sail without you.”

“I am happy to see you, too, Maman,” René said.

“And Miss Bellamy,” Madame added, an afterthought as Sophia clambered up the rope ladder. “You appear to have been rolling in mud.”

“How very pleasant to see you, Madame.”

René sighed, and then helped a sailor lower a rope for Tom. Émile kissed her hand before hurrying on to his own business, Andre gave her a small smile, but Benoit took her by the shoulders and kissed both of her cheeks. “I am happy to see you well and whole, Mademoiselle.”

“And I you, Benoit. Do you know how many we have on board?”

“One hundred and twenty-three refugees between the two ships …,” Benoit began.

“So few?”

“There were eight lost on the way. They have been buried on the cliff side. Others chose not to board, but to make their way to family or friends in other places.”

“I see.” Sophia clutched the rail, still finding her sea legs. René and a sailor were hauling up Tom, his head just cresting the deck. “And is Jennifer Bonnard on this ship?”

“She is in a cabin below. Water and food have been a help, and I have had Peter inject her with penicillin …”

Sophia looked again at Benoit, impressed. Penicillin good enough to inject was expensive. Very expensive. Benoit gave her a self-satisfied shrug. She saw Cartier helping Tom across the deck, to the hatch that led below. Probably he’d just received the same information about Jennifer that she had. “Are we ready to sail?” she asked Benoit.

“We have waited only for you, and now we wait for the destination.”

“Oh, well, Bellamy House, of course. Don’t you think? If we aren’t going to have it much longer, then we might as well put it to good use while we do. Straight west across the Channel, then a half mile sail up the coast.”

Andre, who had been listening to this, nodded once and moved quickly to the helm while Benoit looked at her curiously. “And what will you do when you get there, Mademoiselle?”

Sophia let out a long, slow breath. She didn’t quite know how to answer him. But she had been thinking.

Benoit said, “I see that you are scheming.” She gave him a look of innocent surprise, and Benoit made a little Parisian
pfft
sound. “Of course you are scheming. But may I offer you advice?”

She waited. Benoit’s advice was generally very good.

“Do not try to please her.”

Her gaze jumped to Madame Hasard, lifting her elegant dress to go belowdecks. “And why would you say that, when I am in need of her approval?”

“Because she will not respect it. It has always been her way.”

Now it was her turn to look curiously at this nondescript, enigmatic little man who spoke no Commonwealth and seemed to be in charge of the ships and, to some extent, the Hasards. “How long have you known her?”

Benoit mimicked her look of innocence. “Why, since the day she was born, Mademoiselle.” He smiled. “Perhaps you did not know that Madame is my sister?”

Sophia felt her eyes widen, sure her mouth must be hanging open. “But I thought … you were a …”

Benoit tilted his head at her. “And why would you think that?” He was smiling genuinely now while Sophia’s mind swept the deck, mentally counting uncles. Émile speaking quietly to René, Andre at the helm, Peter, Enzo, and Francois presumably on the other ship. What a prat she’d been. René had told her his mother had six brothers. Why had she never noticed that she’d only been introduced to five? Or even considered that their surname could not be Hasard?

“In any case, what sort of uncle would I be, Mademoiselle, to allow René to run about the Commonwealth, getting engaged on his own? He might get into trouble. Do you not agree?”

Sophia closed her mouth and returned the man’s smile. “Of course I agree. And so, what exactly is your name, Benoit?”

“Benoit is our family name, Mademoiselle.”

“Then what is your first …”

“I prefer Benoit. Just Benoit.”

She wondered what given name could possibly be so bad that Benoit would prefer his own family not to use it. Surely it couldn’t be worse than “Francois Benoit.” Or perhaps it could.

Benoit took her hand and kissed it. “Do not try to please her, Mademoiselle. It is my best advice.”

“Call me Sophia,” she said, before he melted away into the shadows.

The middlesun was hidden behind thick clouds when Sophia’s boots hit the shallow water of the Bellamy beach. She splashed and ran across the pebbly sand, leaving René and Benoit and Tom to get out of the boat. Orla was standing at the end of the cliff path, waiting for her. She must have spotted the ships and come running herself.

“Well, you need a wash, don’t you?” she said in Orla fashion, pulling away from Sophia’s hug. But Sophia had seen the tension leave her shoulders when she recognized Tom getting out of the boat. She dreaded telling her who wouldn’t be getting out of the boat.

“How is Father?”

“Not well,” Orla replied.

Sophia grimaced. “Has the sheriff been here?”

“Yesterday.”

“Will he give us any extra time?”

“I think not.”

“Right. Let’s see what Tom can do, then. And, Orla …”

She saw Orla’s eyes fix beyond her shoulder, where she was certain there must be another ship coming in. “We have the entire Hasard family, including René’s mother, and one hundred and twenty-three extra people coming to stay. And some of them will be sick, and …” she met Orla’s gaze “… they will have prison lice. Most of them. Or all of them.”

Orla’s face remained expressionless. “Well. We’ll see if Nancy can bring in her husband and daughters for a few days, and if she can kill some ducks. I’ll find more coal and get the oil and the combs. How long will they be here?”

Sophia smiled. She was glad to be home. Even if it was just for a little while.

By dusk Sophia had oiled her own hair, tied it in a kerchief, bunked René in with Tom, put the uncles on the ships, Jennifer in her own room, and helped Orla fill the ballroom with pallets for everyone else. By tomorrow, perhaps they could get one or two of the better bedrooms ready. Madame Hasard she had put in the more recently cleaned north wing, though the woman had not been happy about it, making her views clear as they passed in a corridor.

“I would have thought you could make your guests more comfortable, Miss Bellamy.”

Having just left the bedside of a sick child with prison dirt still on his face, Sophia had found it necessary to actually bite her tongue.

“And your father has taken to his bed, I hear,” she continued.

“Stop it, Maman!” René had warned from behind her. He was hauling buckets of water up the stairs. Madame ignored him.

“Isn’t that considered rather … weak in the Commonwealth, Miss Bellamy?” Madame ventured. “I thought you were all for self-sufficiency here.”

Sophia had merely walked down the hall and shut a door behind her, putting a barrier between them, just as she was shutting the door to her father’s room now, attempting to block out what was on the other side. Though there were people all over the house, it was quiet outside Bellamy’s room, mostly because the prisoners were exhausted and in need of rest now that they had been fed; probably that wouldn’t be the case tomorrow. She sank down along the polished paneling until she was seated on the floor, St. Just immediately crawling into her lap.

Her father had been refusing food and he’d drunk very little since she’d left for the Sunken City; now he was as wasted beneath his blankets as Tom. Only Tom would heal, was already healing, while her father was determined not to. He did react to Tom’s voice, however, giving him a slight squeeze of his hand. Sophia had stayed back, fearful of distressing him.