Oracles of Delphi Keep (17 page)

“No, Ciaran, I believe that the simple explanation is the truth, that the stone barrier was put in place not because of some prophetic knowledge that Ian would face the danger of the beast, but for a more practical reason, which was to seal the cavern off from the corrosive elements of wind and sea, as well as to protect it from would-be looters. And so, I must conclude that it was nothing more than sheer luck that the barricade was in place when Ian found the artifact and a mere coincidence—albeit an extraordinary one—that Ian and the beast would both be there at the same time.”

“So you’re still of the mind that the beast was merely protecting her pups?” asked Perry.

“Yes,” said the earl with a smile. “I cannot see a link between Ian’s discovery of the box and the beast’s attack other than the natural instincts of a wild animal defending her territory from a perceived threat.”

But Ian wasn’t so sure. His mind kept returning to how the beast had dug into the chalky floor ferociously after Ian had recovered the treasure. It also didn’t explain why the beast was so intent on attacking Theo. He felt certain—as she did—that it had marked her as prey. He’d seen it in the beast’s eyes up in the tower room when it had turned away from him to go after her. He wanted to bring that up for discussion, but the men were already off on another topic, so he let it drop.

Finally, when Ian’s eyelids had again begun to droop, the earl suggested that the hunting party retire to the library for
cigars and brandy, and the exhausted boy was excused to go to bed.

Binsford escorted him up two flights of stairs and down a long corridor to a door at the end of the hallway “All the children are staying in this wing so that we can keep track of you,” the earl’s head butler said quietly “We’ve separated everyone into the eight bedrooms on this floor. You will find an empty bed and some nightclothes in there,” he added, halting in front of the last door on the left. “Breakfast will be served in rounds, beginning with the youngest at six-thirty a.m. Your group will be called to the table at eight. Should you need to use the lavatory in the middle of the night, it is the fifth door down from here. We’ve left the light on and the door cracked for your convenience.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Ian, noting the light from down the hall.

When he turned back, he noticed Binsford looking at him with a frown. “Will you need assistance getting into your nightclothes?” he asked, and Ian saw that the butler was looking at his arm still in its sling.

Ian felt his cheeks heat up. “Thank you, sir, but I believe I can manage. However, if you might help me off with this sling?”

The head butler gave a curt nod and carefully lifted the sling over the boy’s head. Ian winced as it came free and he felt the dull throb of his shoulder thrum right down to his fingers, but getting his arm free of its restrictive bandage was still a welcome relief. “Thank you, sir,” he said again.

“Rest well, Master Wigby,” Binsford replied, and he turned abruptly and walked away.

Ian turned the knob on the door and entered his room as quietly as he could. After shutting the door, he leaned against it for a few moments, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He felt a tiny pang of homesickness for the keep as the details of the room slowly came into focus. This room was smaller than his dormitory back at the orphanage. When he could clearly make out shapes, he saw four beds with three sleeping boys. He was relieved to discover that his new friend Carl was one of them, and the twins Ethan and Benjamin were the other two. Ian crossed to the last bed, by the window, smiling as he thought about how the other boys had left that bed for him, as it was common knowledge that Ian liked the coolness of the night air on his face while he slept.

He made his way to the window and pulled back the curtain. The sky was no longer overcast and the moon lit the water of the Strait of Dover in the distance with a silvery glow. He yawned and cracked the window. Then he carefully took off his clothes, noting with relief that he was able to move his arm now without too much trouble. As he laid his trousers over the bed frame, he heard something clink to the ground. Bending over, he realized he’d forgotten about the crystal charm he’d found in Madam Scargill’s room that morning.

He picked up the charm and held it to the window to better see it, but as the crystal shone in the light of the moon, something seemed to spark from within the heart of it. Ian caught his breath and he blinked a few times as he lowered the crystal and eyed it suspiciously. There were no more sparks, but there was something odd about the crystal. It felt hot.

He immediately reasoned that this was because it had been in his pocket all day and had probably been warmed by his body heat. But as he closed his fingers around it, he could tell that the charm was warmer than his own skin. There also seemed to be a pulsing sensation that he could just barely feel in his palm where the crystal rested.

“Odd,” he whispered as he opened his hand again to study the thing. After a moment or two, he set the crystal on the windowsill and moved to hang his shirt and blazer on the side of the bed frame when something else caught his eye. The photograph and the silver box he’d brought with him upstairs were resting on the bed and Ian had the sudden urge to look again at the picture.

He reached for the frame and held it up to the moonlight, squinting at the black-and-white photo, studying it carefully, and he gasped when he suddenly noticed what he hadn’t seen before. There, around Theo’s mother’s neck, tucked near the lace of her collar, was the very charm he’d just set on the windowsill. He now had proof that the necklace belonged to Theo and he resolved to get it to her as soon as possible.

He’d have to warn her, of course, about not letting Madam Scargill catch her with the charm, but even Madam Scargill couldn’t deny the evidence in the photograph. The woman pictured happily with her baby looked so much like Theo that she could be her older sister. Ian set the photo and the box next to the charm on the windowsill. He hung his clothes up and put on the nightshirt that was left for him. It was a bit large but he wasn’t about to complain. He was more
tired than he’d ever been, and he couldn’t be happier that he had something other than his dusty day clothes to wear to sleep.

Right before he turned to get into bed, a small movement called his attention back to the window. He blinked tiredly at the landscape of the large lawn and the rolling hills and his breath caught in his throat. He could swear he saw at the far end of the lawn a man draped in a long billowing cloak that seemed, to his amazement, to be fringed with glowing embers. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end, and he watched as the figure seemed to glide along the lawn in his cloak, which danced and sparked with an unnatural quality. And then, at the bottom of the hill, the figure stopped.

Ian’s heart hammered when he saw the stranger turn and his hooded head seemed to lift, looking along the wall of the castle to where Ian stood staring out the window. Ian gasped; then he quickly ducked behind the curtain, out of view. For a moment it had felt as if the creepy stranger’s eyes had met his own and an icy terror had swept right through him.

He gulped and tried to steady himself; then, ever so slightly, he peeled the curtain back a fraction to peek out at the lawn. But the cloaked figure was gone. Ian stepped close again, using the curtain to shield himself, and he searched for any trace of the man he’d seen only a moment before—yet none remained.

He thought about going downstairs to tell the earl what he’d seen, but to what end? The stranger was gone, and all Ian could say about him was that he thought a man in an
odd cloak had been walking along the lawn at the bottom of the hill. What if it turned out he was a member of the earl’s staff and that his cloak had just been some sort of trick of the light? Ian would be a laughingstock. No, it was best to forget the whole thing and turn in. Still, even as exhausted as he was, sleep was a long time coming.

T
he next morning Ian awoke bleary-eyed and still very tired. Carl was awake and sitting up in bed, staring at him with an excited grin. “Did you kill the beast, then?” he asked when he saw Ian’s eyes blink open.

Ian shook his head. “’Fraid not,” he said glumly. “What’s worse is it looks as if there’s more than one beast to worry about.” He then went on to explain what the hunting party had found in the caves.

“Blimey!” moaned Carl. “That’s blooming awful!”

“Yes, quite,” said Ian. “And we looked all the rest of the day for any sign of the beast and her litter, but we couldn’t find even so much as a paw print.”

“I bet she’s in one of the other caves,” said Carl.

Ian rubbed his tired eyes while his heart weighed heavily with the fact that he’d had a direct hand in bringing the awful beast to them. “We’ve checked most of them. There’s no trace of her. It’s like she’s vanished into thin air.”

“So the earl’s just giving up, then?” Carl asked, a hint of fear in his voice.

“No,” said Ian with a yawn. “The hunting party is heading back out today to search again, and I believe the earl is calling for help from the village.” He hoped silently that these additional men would be enough to chase the beast down once and for all.

“Will you join them again?” Carl asked.

“No,” Ian answered, feeling grateful that he didn’t have to go back out for another long, cold day of searching. “I don’t think the earl has need of my services again, now that he knows that the beast’s first lair has been abandoned.”

“Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it?” said Carl. “Anyway, you’re going to love it here! There’s loads to do. There’s a game room and a bowling alley and a garden maze out back! Theo and I spent quite some time in that yesterday, trying to figure the way out. It’s irritably confusing,” he finished with a grin.

Ian stepped out of bed and shivered. “Sounds fantastic,” he said over his shoulder as he turned to the window and shut it. He knew that Carl was excited about all that Castle Dover had to offer, but his own feelings were more subdued with the beast still on the loose. As he latched the window, he noticed the photograph and the necklace on the sill and was reminded about getting them to Theo. “Where is Theo, by the way? I need to speak to her,” he said.

“I expect she’s downstairs having her breakfast. They’re going to call us next, so you best get ready. Ethan and Benjamin are waiting on the stairs; they wanted to be first in line when our group was called.”

Ian smiled. “Sounds like them; they’re like that at the keep too.”

“Oh! Almost forgot to tell you,” said Carl. “We’ve been instructed to give a list of things we’ll need replaced at the keep to that man Binsford. And we’re allowed to jot down a toy or two as well,” Carl added with a huge grin. “I’ve asked for a new cricket bat, myself. You should ask for a new ball and wicket!”

Ian laughed at Carl’s enthusiasm, then shimmied out of his nightclothes. Carl had to help him get his shirt on, as his shoulder still throbbed. “How’s it feeling?” Carl asked as Ian worked to get his trousers on.

“It’s sore today,” Ian admitted while he faced the window and discreetly tucked Theo’s necklace into the pocket of his trousers. “But I expect it’ll be all right in a few days.”

There was a knock on the door and a moment later Bins-ford came in and announced, “Breakfast is served, gentlemen.”

Carl danced on the balls of his feet excitedly. “Thank you, sir!” he said jovially. “We’ll be right down.”

“I’d wager the food here is also to your liking,” said Ian with a friendly wink at Carl.

“All food is to my liking. At my old orphanage we only got a baked potato and a crust of bread all day.”

Ian’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t fathom anyone surviving on so little.
“All day?”
he asked.

Carl nodded. “Sometimes we’d get a bit more bread at supper, but usually we just got a bit of the stale stuff with watery broth and a cup of tea.”

Ian looked at his friend anew and noticed for the first time how thin Carl’s cheeks were and how his trousers were cinched tight by a rope belt around his bony waist.

Carl turned red under Ian’s scrutiny and said, “Come on, then. Benjamin and Ethan have a head start on us, and you just know they’re going to gobble up more than their fair share!”

Ian shoved his feet into his shoes, grabbed the frame off the windowsill, and turned to follow Carl.

Before the boys left the room, however, Carl glanced over at the silver frame Ian was holding and asked, “What’ve you got there?”

Ian held it up for Carl to see. “It’s a photograph of Theo and her mother. I found it yesterday in our schoolmasters’ cottage. Can you believe the luck?”

Carl examined the picture and nodded. “Blimey, Theo’s really turned out to look like her mum, hasn’t she?”

Ian had just been thinking the same thing. “It’s the eyes and the nose,” he said in agreement.

They reached the stairway and began to walk down when Carl asked, “What was a photo of Theo and her mum doing in our schoolmasters’ house?”

“I’ve no idea,” Ian admitted, “but I believe Theo’s mum might have lived there for a time, and for some reason she ran off and left Theo in the middle of a field one stormy night. A passing stranger found her and brought her to the keep and she’s lived with us ever since.”

Carl’s expression turned shocked as they reached the landing. “Her mum just
left
her out in the rain?”

Ian instantly regretted what he’d just said. He hadn’t meant to reveal what he knew about Theo’s past without first discussing it with her. “I don’t know what the actual circumstances were,” he said quickly. “No one does.”

Carl nodded. “Well, me own mum would never have done that,” he said. “She died of pneumonia, and the whole time she was sick, she still tried to fuss over me.” As Carl said the last words, his voice cracked slightly, and Ian’s heart softened for his new friend.

“Sorry about your mum,” Ian said after a bit of silence passed.

Carl was staring at the ground as they walked into the dining hall. “S’all right,” he mumbled. “Come on, let’s find a place at the table and dig in.”