Chapter 3
Early the next morning, Mrs. Chrysler knocked smartly on Katherine Winterhaven’s door, and squealed with delight when Katherine opened it wearing her traveling clothes.
“Oh, we’re doing it. We’re really doing it!
” Mrs. Chrysler stamped her feet on the doormat to knock off the mud and then entered, tossing her yarn bag on the floor with its customary thump.
“Oh, Katty, I’m so very excited. I hardly slept a wink after you went home last night.
I had a good proper talk with Pip; he’ll feed your pets while we’re gone.
I’ve given him my spare key to your place. ”
Katherine smiled and took Mrs. Chrysler’s coat.
“I have to admit, I’m a bit excited too.
” She’d hardly slept at all last night either.
She’d had second thoughts, and third thoughts too.
The scene at the bar had replayed in her mind probably a hundred times, interrupted only by visions of Saint Percival’s Sisters and that cheeky interloper who had thwarted them all those years ago.
She’d also imagined Rosalind relaying that Todd’s message had been received, and Todd himself, waiting for them.
At the time of their job, the nuns and residents of the Home for Moribund Old People had seemed positively ancient.
But, well… that was over forty years ago.
She was a lot closer to their age now, and she just couldn’t ignore Todd’s plea.
And as soon as she got back, she told herself, she would go straight to the pirate king to make sure he took care of Ipswich’s pensioners too.
“I didn’t think anything could get me back out there again,” Katherine said. “But this feels… important.”
Stop Shape-Shifting When I’m Talking To You stumped into the room and sniffed at Mrs. Chrysler’s yarn. Smells like sheep, he rumbled.
And how do you know what sheep smell like? Tilly asked, curled up on a high shelf and peering down intently.
Was one… for a while.
It was not difficult to imagine the bushy creature covered in fleece, standing in a field among a cud-chewing herd. Tilly licked herself petulantly. Yes, I’m sure you were.
“Well.” Mrs. Chrysler clapped her hands together. “Shall we get started? Here, let me fetch you your atlas. Saint Percival’s was in the auto-bureau-whatsit of Pim, yes?”
“Now wait just a moment,” Katherine said. “This was my idea, and so I insist we do this properly. And the term you’re thinking of is autocratic bureautocracy. Very different from how our beloved pirate king does things.”
“Ah yes, Pim, ‘where paperwork is king.’ Katty, you always fussed too much over the plans. We’ll just avoid annoying any notaries while we’re there, and we’ll be fine.”
“Nevertheless.” Katherine pulled up a chair at the kitchen table and invited Mrs. Chrysler to sit down with her.
Ember was on the range, helping to heat some scrambled eggs, and the typically rambunctious siblings, Buttons and Mittens, were sprawled on the ceiling in a patch of early-morning sunshine.
“Now, I confess I’m not entirely sure what we’re going to be able to accomplish,” Katherine began.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to get anything back for the nuns by physical force, but I do believe that we should check in with them on the state of things, and maybe we can lift some recompense for them. ”
“Agreed.” Mrs. Chrysler hoisted her yarn bag onto her lap and began unpacking items out of it.
“So,” Katherine continued, “I think we should consider ourselves scouts for the present, and save recreating our livelihood of burglary until we’ve sorted out what we’re facing.” She smoothed a cloth napkin on the table and aligned the cutlery upon it, waiting for Mrs. Chrysler to argue.
“A reasonable course of action. Too right.” Her friend nodded heartily, and kept digging things out of her bag.
“You don’t disagree?”
Mrs. Chrysler looked up from her bag squarely at her friend.
“Katty, I’m as pleased as pudding that you even want to do this at all.
I’m not about to go dictating how we do it…
yet.” She grinned, then threw her hands up in innocence.
“No, really! See? I did what you bade me last night and left Chauncey at home. No brass knuckles, no knives. Nothing sharp at all, except my knitting needles and sewing scissors.” The knitting needles were, as always, in her hair, and she briefly brandished the scissors that she’d taken out of her bag, then slid them back into their leather sheath and tucked it inside her brassiere, or where her brassiere would have been, if she still wore one.
Katherine smiled and heaved a relieved sigh. “All right then,” she said. “Well, if that’s settled.” She rose from the table and began dishing out breakfast.
“Now,” said Mrs. Chrysler, looking over the line of yarn balls she’d laid out in front of her on the table. “If memory serves, this nunnery was in a boggy place, so you’ll need lots of fawn and taupe and mossy green. The atlas, that’s in the bookshelf in the sitting room?”
“No need for the atlas,” Katherine said, with a sly smile, as she downed her helping of eggs. “I kept the map.”
Mrs. Chrysler regarded her, agog. “All these years? You keep that, but not your magic sword?”
“Well, it took up less room.”
Mrs. Chrysler guffawed. She shoveled some eggs in her mouth, apparently to keep from grumbling too loudly.
Katherine caught “magic sword” and “less room” and “destroyed all the other jobs” in the word soup mixed in with Mrs. Chrysler’s breakfast. “You should bring your needles anyway,” Mrs. Chrysler finally said after swallowing.
“I do still have my copy of the map to get back home”—she patted her bag—“but you never know where else we might need to go.”
Mrs. Chrysler’s bag, its canvas patchwork crumpled and stained from long use, nevertheless still bore on one side an immaculate knitted map of their hometown of Ipswich and its environs, sturdily embroidered onto the dense cloth and as colorful and vibrant as the day it was made.
In fact, it had been Katherine’s first enchanted creation after she’d acquired the needles.
At the time, they hadn’t yet known where they wanted to go, but they knew they’d always need a way back.
Since their adventures, Mrs. Chrysler had cherished both the weathered bag and the map as treasured mementos.
“Yes, I think I should bring the needles,” Katherine said thoughtfully. “That’s a good idea.”
Mrs. Chrysler polished off the last of her breakfast and plunked down her fork. “All right. You ready?”
“Well, no. I haven’t finished packing yet.”
“Well, let’s go do that, then,” Mrs. Chrysler prompted. “I’m practically itching to get started, Katty. Come on.” She urged Katherine down the hall.
Katherine led the way into her room, and Mr. Scruffles lifted his head from his napping place on the bed.
It’s true, then! he said, standing and stretching luxuriantly, as only a cat can.
They’re getting it out, the old map. Tilly!
Ember, my dear! Come in here! They’re really getting it! They’re going to use it!
I don’t care! Tilly cried from down the hall.
Oh, Tilly, Ember sighed. She strolled into the bedroom and joined Mr. Scruffles on the foot of the bed to get a better view.
Katherine was kneeling at the base of the dresser now, lifting out a false cedar bottom from the lowermost drawer.
“Here it is,” she said and moved to stand up.
Her knees, however, were rather disinclined to help.
“Oh, for goodness—Imogene, a little assistance, please? I shouldn’t have knelt down like that. ”
“Katty, I gave up on kneeling a long time ago.” Mrs. Chrysler, with some effort, helped her friend to stand. “I suggest you do the same.”
“Yes, that’s probably wise.” Katherine sighed and brushed the dust from her tight woolen stockings and tweed skirt.
“Ah, that’s better. Now…” She was still holding the thin parcel she’d retrieved, and reverently placed it on the vanity, marveling as she unwrapped the faded lilac tissue paper.
“Ah. Will you look at that? I’d forgotten how specially I’d done this one.
A real piece of art. And almost as good as the day I knitted it. ”
“Almost?” Mrs. Chrysler craned to look over her shoulder.
“Well, it looks like the magic’s frayed a bit at the edges, but that’s to be expected, I suppose. Your home map’s held up a bit better. Probably because it was used so often.”
“It’ll still work, though, won’t it?”
“I should think so. And now, my needles… and my brooch…”
“And your lockpicks too, if you still have them. Oh, Katty, it’s just like old times, isn’t it?”
Katherine smiled wistfully in spite of herself.
It rather was. “I do still have the lockpicks,” she said.
“Though I haven’t worn them in ages.” She opened her jewelry box and from nearly the very bottom she withdrew a small clamshell case.
It contained a colorful set of charm bracelets.
“Ah, here they are.” She slipped them on.
Next, she retrieved the amethyst brooch shaped like a compass rose, which had been out the night before.
She affixed it to the tweed vest over her violet cotton blouse.
Mrs. Chrysler regarded herself in the mirror by the vanity as Katherine affixed her jewelry, adjusting her own sunflower-hued tunic. “I feel a bit dull now,” she said. “Do you think I should accessorize more, Katty? You always were so much more fashionable than me.”
“Imogene, don’t be silly.” Katherine selected a pair of earrings that could also help open doors, and put them on. “As I recall, you turned many a head without accessories.”
“Yes. Lopped many off too.”
“Yes, that too.”
Mrs. Chrysler grinned and adjusted her hair in her reflection. “Good times, them.”