Annabel Pickering and the Sky Pirates

Chapter 5

Miss Doubtweather had insisted on more tea, of that particular variety and brewed at precisely the specifications of the first batch: no more water and no less, and to be poured the very instant the pot was lifted from the fire. Not a second later. The professor thought this was all a bit beside the point, but he knew from experience that there was little point in arguing with her once she had insisted.

With all the rain, it had been a dark afternoon to begin with. Add to that the strange ways in which time manages to bend itself around traumatic episodes, confounding those in the middle of them, and Annabel had no earthly idea of the hour. She knew only that there was talking, there were gentle reassurances, little cakes on plates at one point, and tea. Always the tea. She vaguely remembered Becky coming into the room once and lighting the fire, but she could not have said whether that had been an hour ago or five. It was very dark outside now, and the rain had not for a moment stopped pelting the windows and sliding down the glass.

The professor was speaking to her. Her attention had faded for the last bit of what he had been saying, but she had already learned that he would always come back to what he had said earlier. If she missed anything, she could be sure to catch it the next time around.

" . . . and so you see," he was saying, as much to himself as to her, "we will find your parents and we will rescue them. But it is going to take a little reconnaissance, and a little time. And that means patience. I know it's probably not what you most want to hear just now, but I'm afraid that's how it has to be."

Annabel wasn't sure it was how it had to be, or really how she felt about what he was saying. She found her eyelids growing heavy and she longed to lie down. Miss Doubtweather had said something about an empty guest bedroom and how she would have to spend the night here—probably several nights, until her parents returned. And there was no question of her returning to school just now. She found herself getting sleepier...

Annabel remembered being led up a long staircase, and then another. She remembered being handed a nightgown and she remembered hearing hushed voices outside of her room. After that she didn't remember very much as she had fallen asleep on top of the bedding, clutching the nightgown to her.

While the professor had been speaking to Annabel, Miss Doubtweather had stood and left the room. She walked up the staircase to the second floor, then continued to a floor that had only one room, at the end of a short hallway. Miss Doubtweather opened the door and turned a dial, illuminating the small gas lamp that sat on the curved oak desk in the middle of the room. The room itself was round, as it was inside one of the turrets that rose out of the mansion's rooftops, and windows filled the walls on all sides, so that on a clear day one could have had the impression of sitting inside the cabin of a flying machine up in the clouds.

Miss Doubtweather sat down at the desk, opened a small drawer and pulled out a very small strip of paper. She pushed on a little rectangle on the side of the desk and a little box popped out, holding an inkwell. She dipped her pen into the inkwell, and pulling over a magnifying glass in a wooden stand on her desk, wrote something in very tiny script on the paper. When she had finished, she quickly grasped the paper and waved it in the air several times until the ink had dried.

She then rolled the paper tightly, opened a small box and pulled from it a tiny metallic pellet. She opened up the pellet, stuck the tiny piece of paper inside and closed it again. She then stepped over to the small fireplace across from the desk, where the remnants of a fire curled at charred logs. She pulled from the fire a long thin implement with a very small clamp at the end. She placed the little pellet on the hearth, grasped it with the hot clamp and pressed. When she released the pellet, its closure was sealed with a very tiny round emblem of a rose.

Miss Doubtweather turned down her lamp and exited the room, locking the door behind her with a long key she wore on a chain around her waist. She then continued up the stairway to a door that opened up onto part of the rooftop. It was a small railed-in porch, with a smaller turret in the middle that extended up one more story. She used another key to open the door to this second turret and stepped inside.

It was dark and dusty, and there was a very soft sound of cooing. The air was especially musty because of the rain; she made a mental note to ask Joseph, the gardener and handyman, to do an extra cleaning this week. She turned a dial and a very dim light illuminated slowly at the top of the turret, revealing the entire space below.

First there were the nesting boxes: 33 of them, each one numbered, each about the size of shoebox and many of them filled with a very sleepy pigeon, just beginning to wobble its head around as if to ask what all the fuss was about. Below the boxes were a number of roosting rails, and below them, ceramic bowls fitted into the walls and filled with food and water for the birds. On the floor, there was warm dry straw and a few pigeons puttering slowly about and pecking at it.

Miss Doubtweather reached to the side and pulled a long ladder to her. The ladder rolled on wheels and ran all the way to the top of the boxes. She looked carefully at the boxes, then pushed the ladder over a few feet and began to climb. She pulled from a box a very disappointed-looking bird and took it back down with her.

"I'm sorry to send you out in this weather," she whispered. She paused, looking into the quiet, alert face of the now partly awake pigeon. "I wouldn't do it if it weren't a genuine emergency."

She pulled on one of the pigeon's legs, found the small leather carrying pouch and popped the metal pellet into a tiny hole and pushed it inside, closing the pouch to secure it. She then carried the bird out to the porch circling the turret, bringing it up to her lips and kissing it, whispering: "Fly safe and dry my friend, unseen by the watchful, unappealing to the hungry, secreted away in the skies," before tossing it into the rain.

As she turned to lock the coop door, she frightened two black crows that had been sheltering under the turret's small overhang. She nearly cried out in fright herself as their heavy black wings whooped up into the wet grey sky.

Miss Doubtweather now returned downstairs to find the professor had put on his great coat and was standing with Maxwell by the front door, waiting to say goodnight.

"Did you send the bird?" he asked her.

"Yes, it's been sent."

He nodded, and tipped his hat. "Well. I'll be off then."

She nodded goodnight and opened the door for him. "We'll speak again in the morning." "Most assuredly," he agreed. Halfway down the steps he paused and turned back to her. "You know, she is handling this very well, much better than I would have expected."

"Yes," she agreed, with a tired smile. "Yes, she is."

After the professor had gone, and Becky had been around the house and turned off all of the lights (all but the one lamp that hung in the entryway "in case of midnight distress," as Miss Doubtweather always said) and retired to her chambers behind the kitchen, Elizabeth ascended the stairs once more, moving quietly into the guest room where Annabel slept. She stepped over to the bed where the girl lay on top of the covers, still clutching the nightgown, and pulled the quilt over her. She stirred the fire before gently closing the door and retreating upstairs again to her office.