Hawthorn Page 13

  “What do you mean?” Marlin demanded, pulling back from Sam and staring at the others. “Where is she?”

  “That’s just it,” Mr. Bellows said, looking mournfully at Daisy and me. “We don’t know. When we got back to the compartment she was gone. We’ve searched the whole train. We even hoped she was with you—but clearly she’s not. I’m afraid Spring-heeled Jack was the distraction.”

  “For what?” I cried, although I’d already guessed.

  “For the real kidnapping,” Agnes said, squeezing my arm. “Helen is gone.”

  14

  “HE CAN’T HAVE gotten far with her,” Marlin said. “I’ll fly over the countryside—”

  “And we’ll hire a coach and search the surrounding villages,” Agnes said.

  “We’ll go with you,” Daisy said.

  Agnes shook her head. “You two should go to Hawthorn Hall and you should go with them, Rupert. We have to find out what’s happening there and find the vessel. When we’ve found Helen we’ll send word with Marlin and Raven.”

  And if they don’t find her?

  I couldn’t give voice to that fear, and there was no time to argue about who should go where. The train whistle was blowing. I turned to Daisy. “If Helen were here she’d want us to go on to Hawthorn Hall and find out what’s happened to Nathan.”

  I thought I saw Marlin flinch but he stiffened his jaw and spoke firmly. “Exactly. You three go on. I’ll send Raven as soon as we know something.” Then he took off, his wings beating up the dust on the deserted railway platform.

  Sam went back on the train to get their luggage while Agnes made Mr. Bellows promise to look after Daisy and me. “Mrs. Hall wouldn’t like me leaving them,” she fretted.

  “My grandmother would understand you were doing your duty to the Order. Find Helen. . . .” My voice wobbled and I had to bite my lip to keep from crying. “We’ll find the vessel.”

  The conductor blew the warning whistle again and Mr. Bellows ushered Daisy and me back onto the train. We turned and watched Sam and Agnes walking away, Agnes’s yellow feather bobbing in the still dawn.

  “They’ll find her,” Daisy said, squeezing my hand. “Marlin won’t rest until he does.”

  I nodded, my throat too sore to form words. I knew Daisy was right. Marlin wouldn’t rest until he’d found Helen, but I couldn’t help feeling, as I followed Mr. Bellows and Daisy back to our compartment, that the brave crew we’d started out with had been sadly diminished and that that was exactly what van Drood wanted.

  We had to switch trains in Edinburgh for a train to the Borders.

  “You two should get some sleep,” Mr. Bellows commanded when we were settled in our new compartment. “I’ll keep watch.”

  He sat upright across from us, alert and anxious, one hand on the hilt of his dagger, the other gripping his arm rest, braced to spring at any intruder from the corridor or window. I knew he blamed himself for being asleep when Spring-heeled Jack took Daisy. Just as I blamed myself for leaving Helen behind.

  “I can’t sleep knowing that Helen is in van Drood’s hands,” Daisy said. But after a few minutes she slumped against my shoulder and started to snore. I smiled at Mr. Bellows, and his rigid jaw muscles relaxed a millimeter, then tightened again. I sighed and looked out the window, meaning to keep watch this time. I watched the blackened stone buildings and cobblestoned streets of Edinburgh pass by and then we were traveling past hills covered with yellow flowers. I asked Mr. Bellows what they were, hoping to distract him by calling on his botanical knowledge, but he only said “Gorse” and lapsed into a silence as stony as the streets and houses of Edinburgh.

  We passed hillsides covered with yellow gorse and fields dotted with sheep and farms and little villages with cobblestone streets and whitewashed cottages. The morning fog died away for a brief spate of sun, which was extinguished by a violent thunderstorm that came rushing at us across a purple moor like an angry bull and then settled around the train. The rainy afternoon wore at my resolve to stay awake. I must have fallen asleep, because when I opened my eyes again the sky had cleared to a brilliant lavender spread across a rocky mountainous landscape. I glanced across at Mr. Bellows, who was sitting in exactly the same pose of alertness. Only his face had softened a fraction as he looked at the landscape.

  “See that pile of rocks in the distance?” he said, pointing out the window. I craned my neck to look and saw a lonely tower jutting up from a rugged ridge. “That’s Duntuath. It’s a—”

  “Broch,” Daisy murmured. “I remember from your lecture on the Iron Age. Brochs are Iron Age forts. Duntuath means the north fort.”

  “Always my most attentive student,” Mr. Bellows said, smiling for the first time in twelve hours. “We always called it the auld tooth. We knew we were almost there when we saw it. The school’s on the next ridge—there!”

  For a moment all the stress and fatigue fell away from Mr. Bellows’s face and I could picture him as a schoolboy in short pants and braces. I looked past him out the window and made out the silhouette of a castle standing against the purple sky.

  “It looks like Blythewood,” Daisy said, “only . . .”

  “Older and in less repair,” Mr. Bellows finished for her. “Hawthorn Hall was standing before the first knights and ladies of the Order joined. The laird of Hawthorn Hall built Blythewood for the sisters of Merope and formed the first school. The knights continued to live in the old keep, and after Blythewood was removed to the States it was kept as a school for the training of boys.”

  “It looks a bit . . . lonely,” Daisy said, drawing her lap rug up. “And cold.”

  “Oh my, yes!” Mr. Bellows said proudly. “None of your fancy amenities like indoor plumbing or central heating. We bathed in the loch and wore our overcoats to bed. It was wizard!”

  I’d never heard Mr. Bellows sound so happy. “I wonder if any of the old masters are still there. There was Old Cruthers who used to cane you if you got your declensions wrong and Mr. Chippendale—Old Chippie—who would give his crusts to underweight boys . . .”

  Mr. Bellows went on reminiscing as the train descended into a wooded valley. The woods grew darker and denser as we went deeper into the valley, the trees growing so close to the tracks that branches scratched against our windows with a sound that reminded me uncomfortably of Spring-heeled Jack’s metal claws. I caught glimpses of shadowy shapes flitting between the trees—foxes, I supposed from their pointed ears and long tails, only they were bigger than any foxes I had seen before.

  “Are there wolves in Scotland?” I asked, interrupting a story involving someone named Squinty stealing biscuits from the headmaster.

  “Oh no,” Mr. Bellows assured me. “Not for years. Though this is the Hawthorn Wood we’re passing through, and like the Blythe Wood it has some creatures in it that aren’t quite of this world.”

  “Because there’s a door to Faerie here?” Daisy asked.

  “There was, but the Order cleaned out all the fairy creatures a hundred years ago—only, well, there was always talk that some still survived in the deepest part of the woods. One of my mates, Flinty, lost a wager once to the school bully and had to spend the night in the woods, and he said the woods were full of boggles and ha’nts and wisps.”

  “Oh, are wisps like lampsprites? I’d love to meet one.”

  “No, you would not. . . .”

  I kept a wary eye on the woods as Daisy and Mr. Bellows discussed varieties of Scottish fairies. It wasn’t the fairies that I was worried about, it was the tenebrae. This was, after all, where the bell maker’s daughters had been chased by shadow wolves.

  “Duntuath, next station, Duntuath!”

  “That’s us,” Mr. Bellows said, springing to his feet, all the pent-up tension of the long train ride released. He plucked our bags from the overhead compartment, his happy expression fading when he saw Helen’s valise.


  “I’ll take that,” I said, grabbing the bag. “I can carry both hers and mine. Helen will have our heads if we don’t guard her wardrobe.”

  “She’ll be back and demanding where her hats are before we know it,” Daisy said in a strained, chipper voice. “I believe she’s packed six.”

  I laughed and started to explain what the hatboxes really contained—and then had to put down one of the bags to find my handkerchief when I thought of telling Nathan what had happened. If Nathan was still here and if he wasn’t shadow-ridden. Now that we were almost at Hawthorn Hall I felt frightened at the prospect of seeing Nathan. What if he were in van Drood’s thrall? What if I’d lost him as well as Helen? I didn’t think I could bear it.

  “You’re tired,” Daisy said, reading my thoughts, “and that makes everything look bleaker. Even if Nathan is shadow-ridden, the news that Helen has been taken will knock him back to his senses. You wait and see.”

  I nodded and returned Daisy’s brave smile, but as I followed her off the train I thought that it might well have been Helen disappearing last fall that had driven Nathan to the shadows in the first place.

  The village of Duntuath did nothing to revive my spirits. Although the sky had been clear from the train, a light rain was falling in the village, as if it always rained there.

  “Hm, there was always a coach waiting at the station for us, but of course no one knows we’re coming. There’s bound to be a coach for hire at the tavern . . . ah, there it is—the Bells. It looks just the same as in my day. We used to sneak in when the masters were on holiday.” Mr. Bellows chuckled. “I remember one time Buffles had too much ale. . . .” Mr. Bellows told the story of Buffles and the too much ale while we crossed a muddy street to a low half-timbered building from which a wooden sign painted with a faded picture of a bell swung crookedly in the wind. The shutters were drawn—as were, I noticed, all the shutters on all the houses on the street.

  “It looks like everyone’s gone on holiday,” Daisy remarked.

  “Well it is the summer term,” Mr. Bellows said. “There were always a few lads who stayed on at the school because they didn’t, er, have homes to go to or they needed to earn extra money doing chores over the holidays. It was ripping fun, actually, because we had the whole place to ourselves and could go exploring.”

  “You didn’t have anyplace to go on the holidays?” Daisy asked.

  Mr. Bellows turned pink and pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen over his forehead. “Just an aunt in Hartford, and it hardly seemed worth the fare to travel back for the summer. Ah, here we are. Same bells over the door. Good old Bells! I remember once Buffles rigged up a horn to toot when the door opened—gave the locals quite a start, I’ll tell you. They chased Buffles right out of town with pitchforks!”

  The opening of the door set off a jangling that sounded more like rusted tin cans clanking together than bells. It roused the attention of all the occupants of the tavern—three men seated at the bar, two beside a smoking fire, and an aproned innkeeper standing behind the bar. I wouldn’t say they looked startled, though. They turned slowly to regard us with deep suspicion and animosity.

  “I say, good man,” Mr. Bellows addressed the innkeeper loudly in an accent I didn’t recognize. “Would you be so good as to rustle up some tea for the ladies and a pint of your best ale for me? We’ve had a long journey and a cold one.” He ended with a wink for one of the gentlemen at the bar, who shifted on his stool, releasing an odor of peat and sheep manure.

  “Do we look like a tea room?” the innkeeper demanded.

  “Ha ha, no, of course not. I’m familiar with your fine establishment from my schooldays at Hawthorn Hall.”

  “Have ye come from the school then?” the sheep farmer asked.

  “Oh no, I graduated years ago. We’re on our way there now. These two ladies are students at Hawthorn’s sister establishment in America. Perhaps you’ve heard of it—”

  “I wouldna be taking the lasses up Hawthorn way,” the sheep farmer growled. “There’s been strange goings-on up there.”

  “Always were,” one of the men by the fire said. “My mam always said to stay clear of the place, that it was full of ha’nts and boggles.”

  “Aye,” the sheep farmer agreed. “And ’tis worse of late. Even the masters cleared out before term ended this year. Couldn’t get clear of the place fast enough.”

  “Is there no one at the school, then?” Daisy asked. “You see, our friend was there and we haven’t heard from him in a while.”

  “No one’s heard aught from the school since Hogmanay,” the innkeeper said.

  “But that’s New Year’s Eve! Surely there’s been some communication from the school since then,” Mr. Bellows demanded.

  The innkeeper shook his head. “The grocer’s boy won’t make the trip no more on account of the ha’nts. But there are still some lads up there, runnin’ wild like since the masters left. Ian MacGregor says they raided his sheep pen last month. Called the sheriff but he couldna get no one brave enough to go up to the Hall.”

  “I’m sure Nathan wouldn’t steal anyone’s sheep,” Daisy said indignantly.

  “It would be against the Hawthorn Hall code,” Mr. Bellows said, drawing himself up.

  “Can we hire a cart to take us to the school?” I asked, thinking that I wouldn’t put sheep stealing past Nathan if he were hungry enough.

  “If you’re willing to drive it yerselves,” the innkeeper said. “And will pay for it outright. I canna expect to see ye again if you’re bent on gang to Hawthorn Hall.”

  “I can guarantee that you will see us again,” Mr. Bellows said. “I’d hardly take my students there if I couldn’t. But if you insist that I lay out the full amount as a surety . . .”

  The innkeeper named a figure that raised Mr. Bellows’ eyebrows and which I guessed from the snickers by the fireside was far more than the going rate for a horse and cart. Mr. Bellows began to accept the price but Daisy broke in to argue that “in Kansas you could buy two horses and a team of oxen for that price!” She bargained the innkeeper down and got him to throw in a hamper of steak and kidney pies, Scotch eggs, something called bannocks, and a dozen pints of ale.

  “Those boys will be hungry,” she said as we followed the innkeeper around to the stables.

  “Not if they’ve been stealing sheep,” I replied. “But I could murder a steak and kidney pie.”

  “I wonder why the masters would all go off and leave the boys alone,” Mr. Bellows mused while Daisy helped the innkeeper hitch the old gray workhorse—whose name, Daisy learned, was Nessie—to the cart, stopping twice to insist that he replace a frayed bit of tack. “It’s not according to the rules.”

  “I have a feeling that nothing we’re going to find from here on out is according to the rules,” I said.

  Mr. Bellows wanted to drive the cart, but when it became clear that he’d never driven one Daisy took over.

  “We need you to be the shotgun messenger,” Daisy said, smartly snapping the reins and urging Nessie forward.

  “Shotgun messenger?”

  “The guard on a stagecoach who keeps an eye out for bandits. My father was a shotgun messenger for Wells Fargo. He taught me to shoot his twelve-gauge,” she said proudly, then added under her breath, “I wish we had one now.”

  I did, too.

  Within a few minutes of leaving the village of Duntuath the narrow track was engulfed by forest. Oak and beech trees towered over us, their leaves dripping water onto our heads. The ground was thick with underbrush—a thorny bush starred with white flowers—and patches of fog.

  “It doesn’t look like anyone’s used this road in months,” I said.

  “It only goes from town to the hall,” Mr. Bellows replied. “In fact, it’s supposed to be the original track that the bell maker’s daughters took from their father’s foundry to the prince’s castle to deliv
er the seven bells—”

  “And were waylaid by shadow wolves instead,” Daisy said in a hushed whisper.

  “Yes, but as I said before, there haven’t been any wolves in this area since—”

  His words were cut off by a high-pitched howl from the right side of the track. Nessie’s ears twitched and Daisy crooned softly to calm her—or perhaps to calm Mr. Bellows and me. We had both drawn our daggers at the sound.

  “It’s probably just someone’s setter—”

  An answering yip came from the left side of the track and then another yip and howl from the right. I stared into the woods but the fog was too thick to see through. Daisy snapped the reins to urge Nessie forward, which wasn’t really necessary as she was now bolting down the track at a speed I wouldn’t have thought the old nag capable of.

  “How far to the end of the woods?” Daisy cried to Mr. Bellows.

  “Not far now—just past this sharp turn.”

  The turn was indeed a sharp one. Daisy tried to slow Nessie but the horse was too panicked by the howls of the wolves to heed her driver. I didn’t blame her. They were all around us. I could hear them running through the underbrush, slipping in between the trees like wraiths. As we came around the curve I glimpsed a shape springing from the fog toward Daisy. I unfurled my wings and, dagger in hand, sprung from the cart to meet it midair.

  But all I met was air—then hard ground. The shadow wolf had vanished midair, leaving me to crash on the ground.

  I tucked my wings in and rolled but I got tangled in thorns. I heard Nessie’s sharp, high whinny, Daisy’s scream, Mr. Bellows’s swearing, and then the splintering of wood. I tore my wing from the thorn bush and rolled to my feet. The fog was so thick I could barely make out the toppled cart—but then there was Daisy, standing by Nessie’s head, dagger in hand. Mr. Bellows grabbed me and drew me in close.

  “Form a triangle,” he barked. “Close together, facing out, daggers up.”