Oracles of Delphi Keep
Ian was shocked right down to his socks. “Pardon me?” he said. “Madam Dimbleby, whatever could you be sorry for?”
“Theo came to me this afternoon and told me the two of you had spotted some sort of wild dog out along the cliffs. I’ll admit, I was attending to supper and I didn’t pay her much heed. If only I’d alerted Landis and maybe someone from Castle Dover …”
“Madam,” Ian said, his insides filling with guilt, “if anyone is sorry, it should be me.” He was about to explain further but in the corner of the room one of the girls began to wail in her sleep.
“Oh, my,” said Madam Dimbleby as she got gingerly to her feet. “Another nightmare. Get some sleep, Ian.” She stood to leave. “We’ll talk more in the morning.” She softly swept his hair and regarded him with kind eyes before hurrying over to calm the crying girl.
Ian knew that eventually he’d have to set the record straight. He wondered with great remorse if, after he told everyone the truth about the beast and the tunnel, Madam Dimbleby would lose that look of motherly gentleness she always had whenever she glanced his way.
The next morning Ian blinked blearily as he awoke. His shoulder throbbed terribly and the rest of his body felt bruised and stiff. Theo was already up and helping with some of the younger children who were also awake. “How are you feeling?” she asked when she noticed that he’d opened his eyes.
“Awful,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a train.”
“The earl has gone to Castle Dover to get more motor-cars. He’s moving us all to the castle!” she said excitedly. “I’ve never stayed at Castle Dover before.”
Ian nodded dully. He felt tired, achy, and out of sorts, and he wasn’t quite sure if he was hungry. “I spent several nights there once,” he said. Although he was a frequent visitor to the castle’s library, overnight visits were rare. “The fourth year I was here, one of the pipes burst upstairs and we all spent Christmas there.”
“What was it like?” Theo asked.
“Big,” Ian said. “And you can’t touch anything.”
Theo gave him a quizzical look, but before she could ask him more questions, they heard the growing rumble of several engines charging toward the keep. The earl’s personal fleet of motorcars came up the drive and pulled to a stop in front of the demolished door.
Most of the children had heard the approaching vehicles and were now rushing to the doorway, chattering with excitement. After a moment the earl waded through the mob of excited children into the front hallway, patting several small heads on his way to the foot of the stairwell.
“Good morning, ladies,” he said to Madams Dimbleby and Scargill, who had emerged from the kitchen at his arrival.
The headmistresses each gave a small curtsy before turning their attention to the children. “Everyone please settle down,” instructed Madam Scargill. “The earl has an announcement.”
By this time, Ian and Theo had joined the rest of the crowd and stood anxiously by the banister of the stairway. Carl, who’d been near the door when the earl had entered, squeezed his way over to stand next to them.
When everyone had settled into silence, the earl began in his booming voice. “Children of Delphi Keep, we will be shuttling you to Castle Dover, where you will be served a warm breakfast this morning and have the opportunity to nap if you were unable to get a good night’s rest last evening. Our plan is to house you at my estate until we can return the keep to an inhabitable state. You will be quite comfortable at Castle Dover, so not to worry.
“I am asking that in the next ten minutes you gather yourselves and whatever small personal articles you’ve managed to recover from this wreckage and proceed into the courtyard, where I’d like you to queue up according to height. We will be chauffeuring the smallest children to the estate first, the older ones next.” The earl finished by smiling winningly When no one moved, he said, “Off you go, then!”
Immediately, the group began to scurry about, grabbing the few possessions they could find. Ian was ready to bolt up-stairs and look through the boys’ dormitory for some article of clothing or other that might have survived when he caught the dejected faces of Carl and Theo. “There’s nothing left of mine,” Theo said sadly.
“I’m wearing the only belongings I have,” said Carl, looking at the ground and shuffling his feet.
Ian’s heart panged with guilt. “I’m sure there’s nothing left in my room either,” he said, thinking that he’d already lost his most valuable possessions—the knife, the compass, and the pocket torch—back in the beast’s tunnel. “I suppose it’s best not to look if I don’t want to be disappointed.”
Theo eyed him skeptically. “You sure?” she asked. “I mean, isn’t there anything you might want to nab while you’ve got the chance?”
Ian realized that Theo was secretly referring to the box hidden in the east tower, but one look at Carl’s sad face told him that if he returned with anything, it would only make the newest orphan feel worse. And what if one of the other children saw him with it? Madam Scargill would likely confiscate it again and he’d be even more hard-pressed the second time to try to retrieve it without her noticing.
He decided that the box was safe for now in its hiding place and he could collect it later, after they’d all returned to the keep. “I’m sure,” he answered. “Come on, then. Let’s go outside and queue up like the earl asked us.”
Ian led the way outside, excited to see the beautiful shiny automobiles lining the front drive. At the front of the queue was the earl’s personal favorite, a beautiful canary yellow Packard Speedster with a black cloth convertible top.
“Blimey,” Carl said when he spotted it. “She’s gorgeous!”
“The earl likes to ride around with the top down in the summer,” said Theo.
“Someday I’ll own one of those,” Ian murmured dreamily.
“Oh yeah?” Carl said, turning to him with interest. “Where do you expect to get the money for something as grand as that, then?”
Ian blushed. He believed firmly that one day he’d be a wealthy explorer, able to afford the finer things in life, but no one except Theo was privy to his daydreams. Luckily, he was saved from further explanation by the appearance of a horde of children on the front steps. “Come now,” said Madam Scargill, clapping her hands to gain their attention. “Queue up according to height so that we might expedite the trip to Castle Dover.”
Ian left Theo in the middle of the quickly forming line of children and walked toward the back with Carl, who found his place two in front of Ian. Behind Ian were only two others: Rachel Albright, a girl who was impossibly tall for her eleven years, and Searle, who made sure to give Ian a poke in his sore shoulder as he passed by.
The earl came outside as the last of the children were taking their places, and gave a nod to the many chauffeurs and helpers standing beside his fleet. The men then began to open car doors.
Meanwhile, Madam Scargill and Madam Dimbleby shuffled up and down the line of children, bending low to whisper in their ears, “You must be on your best behavior at the castle. No roughhousing or carrying on, and remember not to touch anything!”
From the back of the queue, Ian noticed that Perry and Thatcher had also come to assist with the shuttling of children. “Good morning,” Thatcher said warmly to him. “How’s the shoulder?”
“Fine, sir,” Ian lied. “It barely hurts at all.”
Thatcher raised a skeptical eyebrow but flashed Ian a broad smile. “Right,” he said. “Well, even though it feels fine, that sling should stay on for a day or two.”
“Yes, sir,” Ian answered, grateful for the excuse to favor his left side a bit longer.
The earl had walked the queue of children and came to stand with Perry and Thatcher. While the small children were being loaded into the first group of motorcars, the earl and the new schoolmasters spoke in low tones that Ian strained to hear. The men discussed how to go about hunting the beast.
“I’ve sen
t out the word,” the earl was saying. “There is a hunting party forming as we speak. Anyone able to carry and shoot a gun will be meeting us at the castle in an hour. From there we shall attempt to track the beast and kill it once and for all.”
“What if we’re unable to pick up the trail?” Perry asked worriedly. “Those cliffs are heavy with vegetation and caves. Even something as large as that creature could disappear into one of the outlying caves and not be seen again until it kills an unsuspecting passerby.”
“Please, sir,” said Ian, not able to keep his silence even though he knew that this was the moment he would likely get into terrible trouble. “I think I know where the beast may be hiding.”
All adult eyes and a few of the surrounding children’s shifted to Ian, who suddenly felt very self-conscious. “Did I hear you say that you know where the beast is hiding?” asked the earl, stepping close to him.
Ian gulped. “Yes, my lord,” he said bravely. “I believe I know where its lair is. I believe the beast lives in a specific tunnel near the cliffs.”
“And how do you know that, Master Wigby?” asked Madam Scargill from just down the row of children, her hands firmly planted on her hips. Ian jumped at her voice and mentally cursed her sharp hearing.
“Er …,” he said, struggling to come up with an explanation while Searle giggled wickedly behind him.
Madam Scargill marched down the row of remaining children. “Yes, please explain how you know this, Master Wigby, especially as it has been expressly explained to you that you are forbidden to go anywhere near those tunnels.”
Ian gulped again. He knew now that there was no avoiding it—he was in trouble for sure—but as his mind raced, he realized that there was no help for it. Lives were at stake and he’d have to fess up. “Yesterday, Theo and I may have gotten a little closer to the edge of the cliffs than we realized, and we were about to turn back when we discovered a small hole in the ground that opened up to a large cavern and a series of tunnels.”
Out the corner of his eye, he saw Theo glare at him, so he quickly added, “Theo, of course, begged me not to go into the cavern, but I wouldn’t listen, and I dropped through to take a quick look.”
Madam Scargill opened her mouth, obviously prepared to give Ian a thorough tongue-lashing, but the earl put his hand on her arm and said gently, “Let the boy speak, Gertrude. I’d rather find the creature’s lair than worry about the explorations of the lad, just yet.”
Ian cleared his throat, unsure if that meant he was in serious trouble or not. Still, he went on. “The cavern fed into a tunnel that led far underground, and I followed it for a while before I came to a second large cavern. That’s where I got the box, Madam,” he admitted to Madam Scargill. “It was set in the dirt there.” Madam Scargill’s eyes narrowed at him, but the earl’s hand on her shoulder prevented her from telling Ian what she thought of him at that moment.
“What box?” asked Thatcher.
Ian turned to his new schoolmaster. “We found a small silver treasure box, sir.”
“I confiscated the box,” interrupted Madam Scargill. “There was an argument over it on the lawn and I thought it better to hold on to it until the issue was resolved.”
“And where is this treasure box now?” asked the earl.
Ian caught himself before answering. If he told them that he’d hidden it up in the east tower, everyone would know that he’d done the unforgivable and trespassed into Madam Scargill’s room.
Madam Scargill said, “It was in my room. But I daresay the thing must be destroyed by now. The beast made a complete wreckage of everything up there.” She gave a small sniff.
“I could go look for it,” Ian said quickly. “It might still be intact, and I bet I could locate it if I had to.”
The earl regarded him with a wry smile. He was a wise man and he seemed to have caught the way Ian had been quick to offer up hope that the box had survived the beast’s wrath. “Very well, Ian. But first, tell us about this tunnel. How do you know that’s where the beast is?”
Ian knew that he had no choice now but to tell the entire story, start to finish, so he explained. “While we … er, I mean, while I was pulling the box free, I heard a horrible noise behind me. It was like a howl and a growl combined. So I yanked up the box and ran for my life, and with Theo’s help I barely escaped out the hole I’d come through before the beast got to me.”
“But why didn’t the beast just follow you out the hole?” asked Perry.
Ian resisted the urge to shudder as his memory took him back to the image of that giant snout sticking out of the hole he and Theo had barely made it through. “It was too small for the beast to fit through. But I suspect it either found a way to make the hole larger or it found another way out.”
“So it’s your fault?” yelled a voice right behind him. Ian turned to see Searle, who was furious, his hands curled into fists and his chubby cheeks flushed with anger. “You brought that horrible thing directly to us!” he yelled. “You and that wretched box!”
Ian’s eyes grew wide as he glanced around at the faces of the children, who were all looking at him the same way Searle was. Even Madam Dimbleby looked angry with him. “I … I … I …,” Ian mumbled, not knowing how to explain his way out of it.
“We’ll deal with whose fault this is later,” said the earl firmly with a stern look at Searle. “For now we must get you children to safety and hunt down the beast.”
Ian breathed a sigh of relief and looked gratefully at him. “Thank you, my lord,” he said quietly. “I’m terribly sorry,” he added, and the earl smiled kindly at him.
Searle made a vulgar sound behind him, and the earl’s smile faded quickly. “That’s enough out of you,” he warned, and Searle flushed to the top of his ugly brow. Then, turning back to Ian, the earl said, “You shall ride in my personal motor car. While we load the other children, why don’t you go inside and see if you can locate your bit of treasure?”
Anxious to retrieve the box and get away from the accusing glares all around him, Ian dashed into the keep and up the stairs. He headed back up to the tower, taking the steps two at a time. Once at the bench he had to struggle with the plank, because he could use only one hand, but he managed to move it after just a few moments, then dashed back down the steps to the second-story hallway.
He was about to bolt down the main stairs again, but thought it might be too obvious if he showed up with the box so quickly, so he slipped into Madam Scargill’s room and spent some time shuffling through the mess, kicking at the bits of broken furniture and clothing.
Just as he was turning to leave, his toe knocked away a piece of splintered wood, and something caught the light below his shoe. Curious, he bent low to see what it was. He set the silver box on the floor, then he moved one of Madam Scargill’s tattered shawls aside, revealing a necklace of gold and crystal. It looked strangely familiar. He picked it up and held it to the light, examining it.
The gold chain was attached to a charm made of a beautiful frosty crystal with a hint of pink at its center, encased in a rim of gold. The crystal was luminous and didn’t seem to reflect the light as much as it appeared to give off a light of its own.
Ian had a hard time taking his eyes off the charm, it was so lovely. He would have lingered over it longer, but in the hallway he heard approaching footsteps, and he quickly shoved the necklace deep into the pocket of his trousers. It was a good thing too, because just as he finished stuffing it away, Madam Scargill appeared in the doorway, a deep scowl on her face. “Have you located your box, then, Master Wigby?”
Ian fought the urge to flinch at the intensely irritated look she was giving him. “Yes, Madam,” he said, and he bent over to pick it up. “Lucky thing that it’s not broken or damaged.”
Madam Scargill’s scowl deepened. “I’m not sure how lucky you’ll feel once all this is over and we discuss your punishment for going places you know are expressly forbidden to you.”
Ian’s eyes fell to the floor
and his heart sank. He’d been hoping that the earl’s words might have gotten him out of that punishment bit. “Yes, Madam,” he mumbled.
“Go on, then!” she snapped, clearly agitated that he’d disobeyed so many rules. “The earl is holding his motorcar for you and you’d best not keep him waiting any longer.”
Ian bolted out of the room and rushed down the stairs. Once outside, he looked about. All the other children, including Carl and Theo, had apparently been dispatched to Castle Dover. He dashed down the steps to the earl’s beautiful motorcar and got inside without a backward glance. “Did you find your box?” asked Thatcher from the front seat.
Ian smiled happily, holding up the silver treasure, realizing that the ownership of the box was no longer in question, so he would likely be allowed to keep it. “Yes, sir. You may have a look if you’d like.”
Thatcher took the box and turned it over in his hands a few times as he tugged gently at the lid, which held firm, before he closely examined the carvings on the sides of the box. “Incredible,” he murmured after a few moments.
“What’s that?” asked the earl as he circled the drive and aimed the Packard out of the keep’s gate.
“These engravings …,” muttered Thatcher. “I believe they’re a form of ancient Greek.”
“You don’t say?” said the earl, glancing at the box in Thatcher’s hands. “How did a Grecian artifact end up in a cavern within the White Cliffs of Dover?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” said Thatcher. Turning to Ian, he asked, “Master Wigby, once we’ve dealt with this ghastly beast, might I borrow your box and ask an old professor friend of mine to have a look at it?”
“Certainly, sir,” Ian said, although his heart sank a bit. It seemed that keeping the small treasure all to himself was proving harder than he’d expected. Still, he reasoned that perhaps this professor friend of Thatcher’s might be able to tell him how valuable it was. Thoughts of newspaper headlines declaring a priceless artifact found by a young boy explorer floated briefly through his mind.