“Let me see.” Diana almost snatched the map from her hands.
“Stop that! You’ll tear it. Let’s go into the village and ask where we are. Perhaps we got lost or turned around somehow?”
“How? We’ve been on this path the whole time.” Diana pointed back behind them, at the path that followed the line of the cliffs. Almost all along its length, they had been able to look down to the sea below, crashing against the rocks. “Anyway, I never get lost.”
The village turned out to be Perranuthnoe. When Catherine showed their map to the proprietor of the village pub, he said, “That’s right, Kyllion Keep is almost a mile west of here, halfway to Marazion. I don’t know how you could have missed it. It’s surrounded by the ruins of the old castle—Kyllion Castle, it was called, once, until it was burned down by Cromwell. The cove is named Kyllion too, although no one goes there nowadays, on account of it’s too rocky except at low tide. The Kyllion family used to have a dock there. But none of the family lives there anymore, not since Lord Branok Kyllion was convicted of piracy in the early part of the century and hanged at the assizes. Then it stood empty until a Professor Trelawny bought it. But the keep sticks out of the ground like a thumb above Kyllion Cove. I don’t know how you could have missed it, even in this weather.”
MARY: Always ask at the pub. Sherlock taught me that. The pub always knows.
CATHERINE: And there is always a pub. It’s the one thing you will always find in an English village. Well, apart from the church.
They thanked the proprietor and walked back along the coastal path, but saw nothing that looked remotely like a keep. To their left, there were rocks and crashing waves. To their right rose forests and fields. In one field, Diana chased a rabbit, and Catherine waited impatiently. What was the point of chasing prey if you weren’t going to eat it? While she was waiting and pacing around, she noticed a set of wooden steps going down the cliff face. Below it, in the shelter of the cliff, where it would not immediately be seen from above, was a stone boathouse. She clambered down the steep, narrow steps to take a closer look, but it was just a boathouse, with a small sailboat stored inside. Around it the rocks formed a cove that protected the boathouse from the ocean winds, and there was just enough sand to pull the boat down to the water without damaging the hull. She wondered whom it could belong to—there did not seem to be anyone out here who might want to sail a boat. And then she realized where they must be. On the map, there was only one cove between Marazion and Perranuthnoe. This must be it.
“I still don’t see a keep,” said Diana, who was waiting for her when she had climbed back up to the path again.
“I don’t think you’re going to.” Catherine sat down on a rock. They had walked, what, two miles back and forth in this wretched weather? She felt thoroughly dispirited. “This has to be Kyllion Cove, which means the keep is here, somewhere. We just can’t see it. Alice could make herself invisible, right? With her mesmerical powers. Well, from what we’ve heard, Mrs. Raymond has mesmerical powers as well, and so does Queen Tera—especially strong ones. How hard would it be for them to make a house invisible?”
“You mean it’s just not there?” asked Diana.
“No, it’s there all right. Or here, somewhere around us. Mesmerical powers don’t actually make anything vanish. They just affect your brain so you think you’re a pig, or the Prime Minister, or something. They’re confusing our brains so we can’t see the keep. Which means they probably know we’re here. We’d better get back to Marazion and tell Mary.”
“Can’t we just walk around and see if we bump into it?” asked Diana. “Maybe we’ll fall over a wall, and then we can feel our way. They can’t confuse our sense of feel, right?”
“I don’t know. Probably. They can probably make us believe just about anything they want, and we don’t know the limit of their powers. Anyway, look at all this—” Catherine swept her arms around, indicating the cliff top and the crashing sea below. “Do you really want to walk around this area, hoping we’ll bump into something? What if they make it look as though we’re walking on solid land, and we’re not? What if we walk over a cliff? Without knowing more about what they can make us see, or even feel, it’s too dangerous. Let’s go back—at least we can help the others.”
“Fine,” said Diana, kicking at the stone Catherine was sitting on. “I should have gone with them in the first place.”
“But then you would have missed my scintillating conversation.” Catherine did not mean to sound quite so sarcastic, but she was seriously angry. This had been a complete waste of time, and evidently there was some water on that stone. It had soaked through her skirt, and now her bottom was wet!
Suddenly, Diana looked interested. “What does that mean? Scintillating.” She tried out the word, as though tasting it. “I didn’t learn half the things I should have at the bloody Society of St. Mary Magdalen. Tell me more words I don’t know.”
So they trudged back to Marazion through the mist, while Catherine searched her brain for rare and unusual words so Diana would, while she was trying out each one, leave her alone for just a moment. Malaprop, sesquipedalian, tincture… What else could she think of? It was exhausting being with someone who needed to be amused at every moment.
DIANA: You like teaching me words, and you know it.
CATHERINE: Yes, when I have a dictionary! Not when we’re in the middle of trying to save Alice, and Mr. Holmes, and England!
This was exactly the sort of weather Beatrice liked. The sky was gray and overcast. Mist hung in the air—she could feel the moisture on her skin. For Mary’s sake, for her sense of propriety, she was wearing this silly coat—but why would anyone not want to feel the atmosphere around them? Of course it was chillier than she liked, but that had been true since she had come to England.
“It looks slippery,” said Mary, examining the causeway that connected St. Michael’s Mount to the mainland.
The tide had gone out, but the stones of the causeway were still wet and covered with bright green algae. Here and there, Beatrice could see the slick shells of snails. On either side were sand, some of it covered with sea wrack, and weathered rocks. Behind them, low cliffs rose up to the town of Marazion.
“Perhaps it would be best if we held hands?” she said, holding hers out.
Mary stared at her, surprised.
“It’s all right,” she said, a little wounded by Mary’s expression. “You see? I am wearing gloves.”
“Well, of course you are. I mean, I expected you would be. We are paying a visit, after all. It’s just that you don’t often hold hands with anyone, gloved or otherwise.” Mary took her hand. “Come on.”
Beatrice was used to this sort of reaction—or at least, she should be used to it. It had, after all, been her life since she was a child. Her own father had avoided contact with her. When she was still too young to understand her own toxicity, she had found a stray kitten wandering in the garden. For one golden, never-to-be-forgotten hour, it had played with her, and then it had lain down on the garden path and slowly grown stiff and cold. Butterflies that landed on her shoulder would last a minute, or maybe two, before they ceased to move. The only one who did not avoid her touch, even now, was Clarence. And that was even more difficult, because she must avoid it for him, to make certain he did not burn his hand while holding hers. He was fearless, so she must be fearful. It was sweet to live in the consciousness of being loved—for he had told her that he loved her, as he had bidden her goodbye on the train platform in Budapest. But it also made life more complicated.