Chapter Twenty: The Captain

 

Strathclyde looked up from his book. “Must’ve been the wind,” he said to himself. But the wind, if it was wind at all, sounded more like a little girl’s scream than the eerie moan the wind usually made. “Still,” he thought, “better to check.”

Evening was setting in early. Low clouds had begun to roll in, obscuring the brilliant blue of the winter sky and stripping the snow of its sparkle. The old gardener limped to the front door and looked out toward the hills. The sky over the forest was empty except for a few hawks in the distance, racing toward the sea.

“Liiiilyyy!” he called in no particular direction. But his voice was lost in the snow and gathering fog. “That girl,” he muttered as he closed the door. “Back to normal, I see.” He sat down again with his book and pipe, certain that she would be home soon enough. No need to worry.

He tried to settle back into his chapter, but found himself reading the same sentence over and over again, so he got up and decided to feed the fire. He placed a bundle of twigs in the embers that had been smoldering since morning and watched as they crackled to life. Then he carefully constructed a tripod of logs around them just the right size to ensure that the fire would burn merrily all evening. “That’s better,” he said, satisfied with his work.

He was just about to settle back down with his book when he heard an almighty hollering coming from the back garden. It was his crotchety old wife caterwauling loud enough to wake the dead. “Missus! Missus! Oh, Missus!” she screamed as she came tearing through the house, trailing Nan, who looked scared half to death. “It’s happened! It’s finally happened!” she shouted with an almost comical look of glee spread across her chubby face. Her hands were flailing and her face was red as an apple.

“What are you on about, woman?!” Strathclyde howled, hoping to shout her down and end the hysteria.

“Where’s the Missus?” she cried.

“She’s gone to Mrs. May’s for tea,” he said, quizzically. And with that, she tore out the front door, fully intending to race down the lane to Mrs. May’s. But she stopped short and immediately burst into tears. Nan, who had followed her, backed away from the door as well, grinning bashfully as she hurried to the kitchen. And Strathclyde, who had been struck dumb by the women’s bizarre behavior, strode over to the door and stepped onto the front step.

“Well, I’ll be...” he said to himself, followed by a low whistle.

“Strathclyde, Old Boy!” shouted a tall, broad shouldered man as he released Mrs. Watson from a very tight, very personal embrace, leaving her to wipe away her joyful tears in the lane in front of the house.

“Captain Watson! How goes it, Sir?” Strathclyde laughed heartily as he limped forward to meet Lily’s father. They shook hands like the old friends they were and the Captain clapped Strathclyde hard on the back as they walked into the house together, leaving the three women to blubber at will.

Lily’s father looked around his house like a king come home to his castle, and everything seemed to swell with pride around him. The fire crackled more merrily, the lamps seemed to burn more brightly, and old Dot pattered in from the kitchen, her tail wagging so hard she almost lost her footing. Nan bustled around busily, throwing admiring glances at the Captain, while the housekeeper tried to set the table for supper, failing miserably because she kept crying into the soup bowls. Lily’s mother, of course, swept in from the front garden like a princess, light as air. She perched herself at the edge of her long-awaited husband’s chair, content to do nothing but sit by his side all evening long.

An hour of catching up passed quickly and as night began to fall in earnest, Tom and Newton came lurching in from a hard day’s play on the moor. They both ran to hug their father, but checked themselves just before jumping in his lap, instead grasping him firmly by the hand and saying, “Hello, Father. Hello, Sir.” He laughed and pulled them each forward for a very grown-up handshake followed by a quick hug, and then dismissed them to wash themselves for dinner.

“Oh, boys!” he called after them. “Have you left Lily in the garden? Where’s my girl?”

Tom shouted behind him, “She wasn’t with us, Father. Haven’t seen her since tea.”

“Oh!” Lily’s father said, somewhat surprised. “Well, I’m sure she’ll be in before long, eh?” And he settled back into his chair.

But all activity in the drawing room had stopped. Even Dot froze in mid-wag. Strathclyde looked from the Captain to the housekeeper. The housekeeper looked from Strathclyde to Mrs. Watson. Mrs. Watson looked from the housekeeper to Nan, and Nan immediately burst into tears. “Not again!” she cried, and ran out into the night. Strathclyde’s wife and Lily’s mother were close on her heels.

“What the devil is going on?” Lily’s father asked.

“Well, Sir,” Strathclyde said, “Lily has been, a bit, shall we say, difficult lately. Back in the autumn, she started running wild. We couldn’t keep her home. Kept running in at all hours with her dresses and stockings muddied and torn. I suspect she may have been in the forest, but just as I was about to—”

“The forest?” Captain Watson said, his color rising. “Why would she go into the forest alone? She knows she’s not—It’s dangerous!”

“Well yes, Sir, of course. But she has not gone missing for some weeks now. In fact, she’s been worrying us in just the opposite way—rarely leaving her room, never playing with other children. So when she went out this afternoon, well, we were just happy to see her ready to play again. We didn’t suspect that she would go missing.”

“I see, I see,” the Captain said with a steely determination in his eyes. “But we are wasting time talking. If she is in the forest, she could be in danger. We must find her. I must find her.”

He started toward the door, but Strathclyde placed a firm hand on his arm. “Sir,” he said, “I think you need to take just a moment and hear me out before you rush into the forest.” The old man was remarkably calm, considering the fact that he alone suspected the degree of danger Lily could be in.

The Captain spun around impatiently, but with a quick look at Strathclyde, he held his tongue.

“What is it, Strathclyde?” he said.

“Now, Captain Watson, I know that what I’m about to say will sound strange—eccentric even, but...well...you must listen,” Strathclyde began.

“I will listen, but please, for Lily’s sake, speak quickly,” Lily’s father said, his urgency becoming hard to contain.

“Yes, Sir. Well...when I was a boy, you know, I grew up in this very village, just down Poplar Grove Lane...”

“Yes, yes, go on,” Lily’s father said.

“Well, my father used to tell me stories—strange and wonderful stories about the forest. He spoke of the forest creatures as if they were his friends—as if he had met them and spoken to them. Yes, it really is rather unbelievable, but we children found such delight in those stories that we would ask to hear them again and again.”

“Fairy tales have their place,” Captain Watson urged, “but they’re no help to me now, nor will they help Lily if she is in danger!”

“Of course, Sir, but please, just one more moment. You see, one story that I particularly loved as a boy was about the battle between the hawks and the little rooks. My father told me of a mighty battle and the defeat of the hawks and the construction of a refuge in the forest where all the animals, great and small, could run in times of trouble. When the hawks are afoot in the forest, it is said that a representative of the animals would place a spade in the ground on the path to the Rookery. I don’t understand the symbolism—I don’t think anyone does—but by that simple sign, all the animals would know that trouble was brewing. They would know to come to the Rookery.”

“This is just nonsense, old man,” Captain Watson cried.

"I agree, Sir,” he said. “I always thought they were just fairy tales too. But now I’m really not so sure. Lily went missing one night—it was the same night my spade went missing—and when she came home, she was positively alight with excitement about some adventure she had. Next morning she told me she had seen a spade. And a rook. Sir, I’ve never told her my father’s stories, but she seems to know them all perfectly. And, well, I think you should see what she’s been drawing.”

As crazy as Strathclyde sounded, Captain Watson couldn’t deny the gardener’s sincerity, so he followed him dutifully up the stairs and the two men entered Lily’s room together.

“Lily fell ill several weeks ago,” Strathclyde explained, “and she hasn’t been out of sight since, but today she seemed to light up again. We couldn’t have imagined she would go very far. But...”

Strathclyde walked over to Lily’s table near the fireplace to show Captain Watson her book of drawings, but Lily’s father reached it first and found the letter she had written that morning instead. His lip trembled as he saw her childish handwriting and read her sweet words, but he read quickly and with purpose. The tension in the room mounted with each line he read, and as he read of Alistair and the Forest Council, his face grew redder and sterner. His jaw became set, and his eyes fierce.

“Strathclyde!” he roared.

“Yes, Sir!” Strathclyde returned, standing as straight as he could.

“Fetch me a strong branch. I need a torch.”

“Yes, Sir!” Strathclyde shouted behind him as he raced as quickly as he could down the stairs, hoping that he was wrong about everything he had said. For if he was right, Lily could be in very grave danger indeed.

The Captain stood very still for a moment as his eyes scanned his daughter’s room with the thoroughness of a trained soldier. In the window seat lay several sheets of paper, their edges crinkled from wear. Clearly, Lily had held them often and tightly. He picked them up and slowly leafed through them. A portrait of a rook. A portrait of a vole. A portrait of an owl. A jackrabbit. A mouse. She had held this one the most. And she had cried over it—the pencil marks were smudged where her tears had fallen.

“What have you done, my girl?” he said quietly. He laid the drawings back on the window seat and bolted out of the room and down the stairs.

“Back inside, all of you!” he shouted toward the women as he raced down the lane toward the edge of the village, just as Lily had done that afternoon.

They knew that tone, and understood his resolve, and they obeyed without question and without hesitation.

Lily’s father bounded over the village wall with Dot speeding after him, and stalked toward the forest. In his left hand, he held aloft the flaming torch Strathclyde had shoved into his hand as he darted past. In his right, he gripped the trusty blunderbuss pistol that would take care of any man or animal attempting to stand between him and his Lily.