Ember Island (43 page)

Nell beamed at her. “You do?”

“Absolutely. And I know your father would admire it too.”

“I’m not so sure.” Nell reached across to Tilly’s lap and grabbed her hand. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell him about you and Hettie. I don’t want you to be in trouble. I don’t want him to send you away.”

Tilly stroked Nell’s hand, sadness blooming under her ribs. She was going away anyway and there would be no chance to say good-bye.

•

Tilly arrived the next morning early at the library. She was determined to make the next week or so, before she left, a special time for her and Nell. She would be more patient, spend more time listening to her stories, make time to read
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
together.

But Nell wasn’t there yet. A huge pile of her papers lay spread on the table, and Tilly approached them to tidy them before classes started.

Immediately, she saw that some had a date on the first line, like a letter or a diary.

A diary. Nell kept a diary.

Tilly glanced over her shoulder. No Nell. Just Tilly, her ticking
pulse and the dust motes in the morning sun in the dim room. Nell had not indicated she suspected Tilly was involved in an escape plan with Hettie, but then Nell was very good at dissembling. Tilly flicked the page over, her eyes scanning for anything that might reveal Nell suspected her.

She skimmed. A lot of talk about Papa, about how she felt about her new book, about walking on the beach with Tilly. She flicked a few more pages.

Papa misses Tilly. I can see it clearly. Why can he not see it? Why can he not tell that he needs to ask her to marry him?

Tilly’s attention was arrested. She picked up the page, read on.

Ever since she left for the mainland, Papa is a loose end at night. He wears a faraway look in his eyes. He asks me the same question twice and doesn’t listen to either answer. But when Tilly is here, his face is warm and his eyes are on her. I suspect he loves her. She, of course, loves him. There is nothing so obvious in the world as that. Tilly’s face is an open book.

“Tilly?”

Tilly spun around, shame-faced, Nell’s diary page in her hand.

Nell’s eyebrows were pulled down hard. She strode in and snatched the page out of Tilly’s hands. “
That
,” she said, “is private.”

“I’m sorry. I was looking for your story, so we could read ahead this morning.”

Nell pushed in front of her, arranging the pages, putting some aside and keeping others in a jealously guarded pile in front of her.
Tilly felt the prickle of anxiety; was there something in particular Nell was hiding?

Nell glared up at her. “I would rather you didn’t touch my papers,” she said.

Their eyes were locked like that a few moments. Nell at her desk, Tilly standing before her. Between them, mutual suspicion where there had once been guileless love. Tilly reminded herself that she was the adult here, that her own suspicions—that Nell knew something—were so far unfounded.

She forced her face to soften. “Today, we are going to take
Sir Gawain
down to the beach and read him in the sunshine all morning,” she said.

Nell, sensing she was being manipulated, didn’t smile. “We are?”

“Would you like me to ask the kitchen for a picnic basket?”

“Why are you being so nice to me? Are you not paid to torture me with Latin declensions?”

“I simply want to enjoy our time together. We have been rather at odds since I arrived back.”

“That’s because you arrived back different,” Nell said.

“In what way am I different?”

“It’s been coming on for a while. You’re distant, preoccupied. You don’t have sherry with Papa in the parlor anymore.”

Tilly pulled out a chair and sat close to Nell. “And that troubles you?”

“He was happy. Now he seems . . . not as happy.”

Tilly was tempted to tell Nell to have this conversation with Sterling. It was him, after all, who had put the distance between them. But there was no point now. Their relationship couldn’t be fixed, and soon Sterling and Nell and Ember Island would all be behind her. “I assure you I am the same woman I always was,” Tilly said.

Nell nodded, though she still seemed unconvinced. “Yes to the
picnic,” she said. “And yes to Gawain, but only if you promise to have sherry with Papa tonight.”

Tilly shrugged. “Very well, if that’s what it takes to make you happy.”

“Oh, it would take much more than that,” Nell said, the first glimmer of a real smile for the day on her lips. “But that is a good place to start.”

•

They were halfway to the beach for their picnic when Nell changed her mind.

“I know a better place to go,” she said.

“Where?”

She pointed to the chapel. “It’s a glorious day. We can sit up on the roof and look for ships and nobody will see us.”

“I don’t know about going up there, Nell,” Tilly said, remembering the hot, dusty ceiling.

“Oh, please.”

Tilly relented quickly. She was eager to keep the girl happy. “Very well, then, but we must be careful on that wretched ladder.”

Before long they were up on the chapel roof. Tilly leaned on the bricks and gazed out at the ships in the bay while Nell unpacked the picnic basket and set a place for herself, for Tilly and for Pangur Ban.

“This looks wonderful,” Nell said, reaching into the basket for a banana.

Tilly sat with her. “It’s not all play, you know. We need to read as well.”

“Yes,
Gawain
is at the bottom of the basket.” The sunny breeze moved in Nell’s curls. “We have to eat our way through to him.”

They made their way through fruit and sandwiches and tarts and a bottle of milk, and then cleared away and read for an hour, until the sun became too direct and hot and Tilly feared they would both burn.

Nell grasped her hand on the path on the way home, and Tilly had the feeling something had been mended for now.

Right at the bottom of the path up to Starwater, Nell stopped, gasped.

“What is it?” Tilly asked.

Nell threw the picnic basket on the ground and desperately went through it, pulling out dirty plates and cups and crockery. “Pangur,” she said with a panic. “I think I left him up there.”

“Shall we go back?”

Nell sat back on her haunches, looking wistfully down towards the chapel. “I . . . well, maybe not.”

“No?”

“I am nearly thirteen. Maybe I’m too old for Pangur now.”

Tilly’s heart squeezed. “If you want him, I will happily go and get him for you.”

But Nell was resolute. “Toys are for little children, aren’t they? I’m nearly a woman.”

Tilly touched her hair. “You know where he is. You can always go and find him another day.”

“Yes,” Nell said, picking herself up and repacking the basket. “I know where he is.”

•

As the dinner plates were being cleared away, Nell kicked Tilly under the table.

Tilly remembered her promise and cleared her throat awkwardly.
Sterling, who was half out of his chair, throwing his napkin on the table, looked at her.

Nell gave her an emphatic nod of the head.

“Sterling, I wonder if we might . . . have a sherry tonight?” Tilly asked.

Sterling stood, hands clasped in front of him, then behind him. “You would . . . like that?”

“We haven’t for a while.”

“Then let’s.”

Nell beamed at both of them, then seemed to remember she should be elsewhere and bade them good night.

Tilly stood and Sterling accompanied her, careful not to touch her, to the parlor. The window was open, letting in a breeze almost too cold to bear.

She went to the window to close it while Sterling poured sherry. “It is astonishing to me how quickly I have become accustomed to the heat,” she said. “Now the cooler season is upon us, I’m quite unprepared.” She could see the shape of the stockade through the glass. “It must be very cold in the cells.”

“Our winters are short,” he said. “And nearly always dry.”

Tilly turned away from the window and saw the two sherry glasses on the table. She came to sit on the sofa and he sat across from her. How she longed for his body to be closer to hers, so she could feel his heat, smell his skin. Unexpectedly, she felt tears on the way. She swallowed them back, hid her emotions by taking a large gulp of the sherry.

“So,” he said. “How was your holiday?”

“It was fine. Thank you.”

He waited for a moment, perhaps to see if she’d elaborate, but when she didn’t, he pushed on. “Good, then.”

They sat in silence. The wind rattled the panes. Would it be
cold out there on the water? She didn’t have a coat for Hettie. It occurred to her that she should find out about the boats in the shed, but she wasn’t sure how to raise the issue without it sounding forced or suspicious.

“And was the weather fine over on the mainland?” Sterling continued.

“It was, yes. Sterling, it occurred to me that if ever I was injured or unwell and needed treatment on the mainland, I would have to wait up to two days for the steamer.”

“Are you unwell?” he asked, concern on his brow.

“No, no. I’m just wondering . . .”

“We have several large rowing boats and several smaller ones. We are not completely without means to get off the island.”

“I didn’t know that,” Tilly said. “I have never seen the boats.” It wasn’t a lie. The boat shed had been pitch-black inside.

“They are locked up down at the shed. Barring emergencies—escapes and injuries and so on—we only take them out once a week. One of the guards does a patrol around the island looking for suspicious activity.”

Once a week. Which day? Which day? If she asked, he would grow suspicious.

“Which day?” she said, her voice small.

“What’s that?”

“Is it a weekend job?” she asked.

His eyes told her he was puzzled. Whether that puzzlement would harden to suspicion depended on what happened next. Would he ask her why she wanted to know? What possible interest it had to her? Or would he assume she was simply making awkward small talk, as he had done when he had asked about the weather.

“Fridays,” he said.

She laughed lightly. “I’m sorry. I feel rather awkward and I’m simply trying to make conversation.”

He smiled in return. “I am feeling awkward too. Perhaps we need more sherry.”

He indicated her glass and she looked down and saw it was empty. She couldn’t remember drinking it that fast. On the one hand, she very much wanted more sherry to relax her. On the other hand, if she became too relaxed she might do or say something that aroused his suspicion.

It was too late. He’d taken her silence for affirmation and was filling her glass. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to reveal his forearms. She watched his strong hands stop up the bottle and put it aside.

Fridays. Her plan could not unfold on a Friday. They would see a boat missing and raise the alarm. Early in the week, then. Next Tuesday. One week from today. The decision was made. Heat flashed across her ribs and she told herself she could do it the week after or the week after that. That she didn’t have to do it at all. She could leave the island and never look behind her.

But that wouldn’t work, would it? Because what was behind her still haunted her.

“You look quite pale,” Sterling said. “Are you well?”

She picked up the sherry and gulped it. “I am as well as can be expected,” she said, dreading an evening of light chatter between them, when she had such heavy thoughts on her mind.

F
or the rest of the week and the weekend, Tilly watched and made a note of what time the sea crept up or peeled back from Seven Yard Beach. Sitting on the rocks, shoes off and bare feet in the water, she counted hours and days and decided a hundred times she wouldn’t do this, and as many times that she would. Her life was already blighted by the fire; what comfort and familiarity she hung on to were simply illusions.

By now, she was sleeping only a few hours each night, as her brain ticked over her plans. Her ideas changed from day to day, then solidified. Of one thing she was certain: she did not want to be trying to steal a boat on the afternoon of the escape. That she would have to put into place earlier.

And so, at four in the morning on Monday—the day before the escape—Tilly rose in the dark after a few fitful hours of sleep. The wind from the night before had dropped, and all she could hear was the muted sound of the grandfather clock ticking in the parlor. She pulled on stockings and a dark gray dress, but did not
take the time to pin her hair or lace into underwear. Her sturdiest shoes were under the bed, and she slid her feet into them and wiggled her toes so she could feel the floor, the world beneath her. Then she pinned on her cloak and wrapped a blue ribbon around her right wrist.

Tilly cracked open the door and listened carefully. Not a sound. Not a stirring body or a fluttering eyelid. The whole world held its breath.

She moved like a silent shadow down the hall, opened the door to Sterling’s office and closed it behind her with an almost inaudible click.

Tilly struck a match on the flint on his desk and lit the lantern. She opened the drawer and a moment later had the key to the boat shed in her hand. Taking the lantern with her, Tilly climbed out Sterling’s office window and into the cool morning air.

She hurried away from the house, throwing her cloak around the outside of the lantern so it wouldn’t draw the attention of any early risers. The air was crisp, the sky dark and sprinkled with stars. Dawn was still two hours away, but Tilly felt the pressure of time upon her nonetheless. She had a lot to do before Sterling woke, before the guards and turnkeys started their daily rounds.

Down at the boat shed, she stopped and stilled her heart. The sea was calmly breaking against the shore; the tide was low enough to launch the boat from the beach. She unlocked the door and crept inside, holding the lantern aloft and sending dark shadows into the corners. With her eyes she counted five large rowing boats, and three small ones. She understood that a small one would be all she could manage on her own and set down the lantern. She bent and pulled on the rope attached to the prow of the nearest boat, dragged it with both hands out of the boat shed and
onto the grass. Then she returned for a set of oars. Her skin was alive with anticipation, fearing discovery at every second. Awkwardly, she concealed the lantern under her cloak again and made her first trip to the narrow strip of beach, with the oars curled in her free arm, tight against her body.