The Unmapped Sea (12 page)

“Extempore, hmm? I never was much for Latin. Too many ipsums and whatsits and ex post factos.” Lord Fredrick leaned on the back of a nearby chair, whose curved, wooden-spoked back resembled a ship's wheel. “As for your unplanned plan
—
good thinking, Miss Lumley! What a relief to see Constance happy and rosy-cheeked, with a hearty appetite! She's nearly stopped complaining altogether. Imagine that! But there's one problem with your scheme. Fairly significant. I imagine you've already thought it through.” He paused. “By which I mean, the ship.”

Penelope had been listening carefully, but somewhere along the way she had lost the thread of his meaning. “What ship, my lord?”

“The ship to Italy! The one my wife thinks we're about to board. She keeps dropping hints about her
‘surprise.' I can't stand to disappoint her. Sooner or later we'll have to get her on a ship. Then there's Italy to think of. Hmm.” He stood with his hands in his trouser pockets and rocked back and forth. “I haven't got a ship, mind you. Wondering what you planned to do about that. Since this was all your idea.”

Where on earth was she going to get a ship to Italy? Penelope straightened her spine and forced a smile. Like every Swanburne girl, she knew that good posture and a calm demeanor were the greater part of what people call self-confidence. “I am . . . working on it, my lord.”

“Very good. If not for this blasted affliction of mine, I'd happily take her to Italy myself and be done with it. But imagine me shipboard during a full moon, with no place to hide! It's not an option, I'm afraid.” He gazed out the porthole window with a look of real melancholy, and Penelope could not help but feel sorry for him.

“Sir, if you are concerned about your privacy on Tuesday, there is one other hotel open in Brighton. I happen to know it is completely empty of guests,” she offered.

“That's useful, thank you.” His dark mood lifted as quickly as it had come. “Now I must run. I've convinced
Constance to let me take her for an after-breakfast walk along the esplanade. It's quite pleasant here by the sea, after all, even in winter. Dr. Veltschmerz was right.” He inhaled and pounded himself on the chest. “A few deep breaths, and I expect I'll be feeling better about things myself. Babies aren't all bad, what?”

Penelope thought of little Max. “They come in a range, my lord,” she said diplomatically.

“Ha! A range, yes. Like most things, I suppose.
Arrivederci
, then. Constance is teaching me Italian. Charming language, if a bit heavy on the vowels.” He turned to Penelope, and for once his eyes seemed in perfect focus. “Miss Lumley, you've got to get to the bottom of this curse, quick. From the looks of my wife, the Barking Baby Ashton's growing bigger by the day.”

T
HE
O
DDITIES
M
USEUM WAS A
brisk half hour's walk from the Right Foot Inn. Alexander and Veronika strolled side by side, Veronika talking, Alexander nodding. The twins and the two younger Incorrigibles were behind them, hopping on alternate legs and holding their noses for occasional seahorse races, but generally making forward progress. Over Julia's halfhearted objections, Max's carriage was pushed by
Master Gogolev, hatless and dour as ever. The captain and his wife had remained at the inn; they had some business affairs to attend to, or so they said.

Penelope did not mind walking alone, for it gave her time to think. “Taking dictation from doctors, undoing family curses, and now I am expected to acquire a ship! I know I am well paid as governesses go, but my duties have grown far beyond what was specified in the contract I signed when I was first hired by Lady Constance. Perhaps I ought to take Lord Fredrick at his word, and ask for an increase in salary.”

The bell of a nearby church began to strike the hour, and her scattered thoughts fell naturally into the tune and rhythm of the famous Westminster Quarters: “Pirate costumes . . . Ahwoo-Ahwoo . . . Edward Ashton . . . barking babies. Pudge! Pudge! Pudge! Pudge! But I must have patience,” she told herself as the bell continued to chime all the way to eleven. “There is nothing to be done about the curse upon the Ashtons until Simon arrives with the costume, so that he might impersonate the admiral and persuade old Pudge to tell his tale. Until then, I would be wise to not think of Simon at all—not once!—and simply enjoy our trip to the Oddities Museum.”

Yet her resolve not to think of Simon splintered the
moment they walked by a mailbox. “O glorious postal service!” she thought, giving the mailbox a grateful pat. “Thanks to your brisk efficiency, Simon will receive my letter this very afternoon. If only I might see his face as he opens it and reads it! And how I wish I might hear his reply at once, without having to wait for the post! If only some clever inventor could build a device by which two people could speak to each other even while in distant cities . . . it is an absurd notion, of course. I might as well imagine that omnibuses could be made to fly—but truly, how complicated could it be?”

“Look, Lumawoo, a sign!” Beowulf said. Penelope's gaze flew skyward, as if the delivery of her letter to Simon might reasonably be heralded by the appearance of a celestial comet, but the boy simply meant that they had arrived at the museum. The sign on the door read:

M
ARTELL
'
S
O
DDITIES

W
E
S
PECIALIZE IN
C
URIOSITIES,
A
NTIQUITIES
,

R
ARITIES
,
AND
M
ORE
!

T
HE
I
MPLAUSIBLE AND
U
NBELIEVABLE
!

T
HINGS
I
MPOSSIBLY
O
LD AND
T
HAT
W
HICH
I
S

A
HEAD OF
I
TS
T
IME

If you can see it anywhere else,
you won't find it here.

“Not very humble, is it?” Dr. Martell appeared at the door. “But science costs money, so we must keep the visitors coming. No, Master Gogolev, you are very kind, but put your rubles away. You are all my guests today.”

With a smile he bid them enter. The Oddities Museum was not a grand building with a colonnaded front, like the British Museum in London. It was a rambling, many-roomed house, and in each room the walls were lined with bookshelves and glass-fronted cases. “My collection is organized according to chance, which is to say I put new acquisitions wherever there's a bit of space. But it's more fun that way, don't you think? A surprise at every turn,” Dr. Martell explained. “Let's start with that basket on your left. There's something you've not likely seen before; at least, not at that size.”

Inside the basket, on a nestlike bed of straw, was a smooth, cream-colored orb that looked very like an egg, except for the fact that it was the size of a cantaloupe.

“I'd scramble that giant egg for breakfast and eat the whole thing,” one of the twins boasted.

“No, you wouldn't! Because I'd eat it first,” his brother retorted. Then they pinched each other and argued about whose pinch was harder.

“It's an ostrich egg,” said Dr. Martell.

The Incorrigible children blanched. “Is there a Baby Bertha inside?” Beowulf whispered. He touched one fingertip to the shell, gently, so as not to wake its inhabitant. Dr. Martell looked puzzled.

“At Ashton Place we have an ostrich named Bertha,” Alexander explained. “She is not a pet, exactly. She is more like . . . an athlete.”

“Liar!” the twins shrieked. “No one has an ostrich.”

Master Gogolev glared and cuffed them each on the head, but Penelope felt a more educational response was called for. “It is true that most people do not have an ostrich. We, however, do,” she said firmly. “There are important distinctions to be made between the unlikely and the impossible. Agatha Swanburne had several wise sayings on this topic, and I shall be glad to share them, if you are curious. But there is no need to call people names.” She fixed her gaze on Boris and Constantin until their lower lips began to tremble and they looked shamefacedly at the floor.

“Apologize, savages!” Gogolev ordered. The two boys mumbled incoherent apologies, which Alexander
graciously accepted by offering a handshake to each. Instead the twins wept and threw their arms around him and kissed him on both cheeks. They pinched each other again, hard, to atone for their rudeness, and everyone was friends once more.

“An ostrich! Remarkable!” Dr. Martell shook his head. “Sounds like you ought to have an oddities museum of your own. But this egg is too old for hatching. It's been on exhibit here for years.” Even so, each of the Incorrigibles petted the egg fondly as they followed Dr. Martell to the next glass case.

“Sasha, you are amazing,” Veronika cooed to Alexander. “I wish I could see this ostrich of yours!”

“Why do you call him Sasha?” Cassiopeia asked. She sounded annoyed; it may have been because Alexander had hardly paid attention to anyone but Veronika from the moment they left the hotel.

Veronika rose dreamily to her toes and floated down again. “In Russia, everyone has a nickname. Now we are like sisters, so you must call me Nikki.”

Cassiopeia scowled. She had already learned three names for her new friend; was a fourth truly necessary? “All right,” she conceded. “And you can call me Cassawoof.”

“Woof? Like dog noise? You are too pretty for
dog-noise name.” Veronika put one finger to pursed lips, as if posing for a portrait of someone thinking. “I know! You shall be Cassarina. That is a name for a Russian princess.”

“Princess Cassarina,” Cassiopeia repeated, testing it out. She made a face. “No. I like Cassawoof.” She growled, to make her point, and for once Veronika had no answer.

“Gather 'round, children.” Dr. Martell held up an object. “Can you guess what this is?”

It was a piece of wood, they all agreed. But when Dr. Martell passed the item around, it was shockingly heavy.

“It's petrified wood,” he said. “That means it was wood once, but over time, bit by bit, it's been transformed into rock.”

Cassiopeia pressed her nose to the glass case. “Is that a comb?” she asked.

“That's a plate of baleen. It's what some types of whales have in their mouths instead of teeth,” Dr. Martell explained.

There were many more peculiar and fascinating items in the Oddities Museum. There was a walnut shell whose interior had been carved to resemble two facing rooms, like a teeny-tiny dollhouse (which was,
to put it in a nutshell, impressive). There were ancient Roman coins that bore the likeness of an emperor, although whether it was Julius Caesar or Claudius was unclear. There was an entire display case of fossilized ferns, which delighted Penelope no end.

“Look, a painting on a mirror!” Beowulf was mesmerized by the lifelike depiction of a Parisian street.

“Uncanny, isn't it? But it's not a painting. It's a real picture of a real place. It's called a daguerreotype. It's a new picture-taking method, invented by a Frenchman, Monsieur Louis Daguerre. He also creates what he calls ‘panoramas.' Those are enormous paintings, designed to make you feel like you're inside whatever scene they depict.” Dr. Martell paused at a doorway. “In this room I keep what I consider my greatest treasures. May I present—the bone room!”

Penelope gave the Incorrigibles a warning glance, for bones tended to bring out their urge to gnaw. But this was no ordinary bone.

“So big,” Alexander was the first to observe. Indeed, it was much too big to fit in a case and was displayed openly on a large, felt-topped table.

“So bony,” Cassiopeia said.

“So delicious,” Beowulf muttered. A sheen of drool appeared on his chin.

Luckily, Dr. Martell did not hear that last remark. “That,” he said proudly, “is the thighbone of a megalosaurus.”

The Incorrigibles had not yet studied much Greek, but between them they knew enough to figure out the word's meaning. “Big lizard?” Alexander ventured.

“Precisely, yes! At least, that is the current theory. The fellow who dug up this specimen thought it was the leg of a giant! Now we know better, of course.” Giant or lizard, simply imagining a creature with a thighbone that big made the children shiver.

Dr. Martell circled the table, and his eager listeners crowded close around. “These bones are older than you can imagine. Possibly they're all from the same big lizard, but we can't know for sure. This is the jawbone, and these seem like pieces of the spine. This thing that looks like a horn is from a different beast, an Iguanodon. Imagine a world filled with such creatures!”

“Monsters!” Veronika trilled. “If I saw one, I would scream!”

Dr. Martell smiled. “No need to worry. They're all extinct. Bad luck for them, but good luck for anyone who'd prefer not to cross paths with one of these.” He tapped the enormous jawbone, and everyone took a step back. “We call them dinosaurs.”

“Dinosaurs,” the children repeated in awe. Even in a storybook it would be hard to believe such creatures could exist, but here they were, as real as real could be. It was the sort of discovery that makes the whole world look a little different than it did before.