Turpined

Your humble narrator was waylaid by roguish highwaymen whilst in London, but has been rescued since and will have a new episode at the usual appointed time this week.

9.6

When Alice awoke once more, she found herself far from the glare of the sunny strand and in a rather close, dark room. For a moment she experienced once more that sense of vertigo that often accompanies those enclosed after long exposure to open air, but it quickly passed. After all, Alice had spent most of her life -- save for supervised excursions to well-cultivated gardens -- within the civilizing presence of carefully tailored walls. The strangeness of the adventurous days that had passed of late slipped away from Alice's well-trained mind -- well-trained as far as the habit of her family to ignore as much as possible anything unusual.

Her mother would certainly have approved. Her father, recent events tell us, might well have disapproved, but one feels he would have been disadvantaged by his position beyond this mortal coil.

Alice yawned and stretched, enjoying the peaceful moment of waking. She took the opportunity to look around the room in which she found herself. It was simply but well appointed, from which even she might draw the conclusion that it was a kind of inn that catered to gentle folk of a pleasingly similar rank. There were signs of a maid's careful attention in the toiletries lined up carefully across the bureau. Alice looked down at herself and was pleased to see that she had been dressed in a fresh linen shift.

There was no immediate sign of her own clothes, nor of the satchel which had been tied to her wrist during the perilous journey. Alice had a momentary pang thinking of her dear Lizzie, but she quelled her discomfort with the thought that somewhere very nearby her cousin was likewise being rescued and they would soon be reunited. It was impossible to imagine otherwise, Alice told herself.

Hopping from the bed, she threw on the pink wrapper she found lying across the chair and pondered what to do next. She could see no way to ring for a servant, which seemed rather odd, but she was saved from further cogitation by the sound of a gentle knock on the door.

"Who is it?" Alice asked with a hopeful tone in her voice.

"Heavens, you're up at last!" came the lively voice of young Constance Forward, soon followed by her animated face peering around the door. Seeing that Alice had dressed herself suitably, Constance sprang into the room. Alice was soon to discover that this was her normal mode of locomotion.

"Such a long time I have been waiting!" Constance continued, hurriedly taking a seat in the chair and motioning Alice into the window seat. "I could hardly contain myself. I simply must hear your adventures! Mama said that I should let you rest and I have been hovering about waiting for any sign of life in here, so I could have a good excuse to come see you. How are you?" she concluded with a frank look up and down Alice, who seemed to meet her expectations of reasonable story-telling health.

Alice, realizing that a break had been left in the torrent of words, finally spoke. "I am feeling much better. I am quite refreshed by the sleep and the care. Where are we, if you don't mind my asking," Alice added with a shy smile.

"Our hotel, the Belle-something or other. I could never get the hang of French too much, you must teach me," Constance charged on, oblivious to Alice's tentative cough indicating that she might not be as advanced in her French studies as the young lady assumed. "Mama thinks my language skills ought to be improving much faster than they are, but there's simply so much to distract one from learning a skill when one is in foreign parts like this. Don't you find it so?"

While a question had been given, Alice found that there was not sufficient pause to make her way into the conversation at this point, and bided her time for the next pause.

"Mama says that I am incorrigible, by which I take her to mean that I am quite extraordinary in a way that seems to often exasperate her -- I used to confuse exaggerate with exasperate, but not any more. My tutor, well, the tutor I had before we came here, the one that was supposed to teach me French, which he didn't at all, he quit after one week and then we only had another two weeks or so before we left so Mama said we didn't have time to hire another tutor and I would have to learn by immersion, which sounds rather like a teapot of some kind, don't you think? Anyway, my tutor explained the difference between the two. So, do tell me all about the pirates!"

Alice lurched forward, feeling as if a carriage had come to an unexpected halt. But Constance looked at her with such glowing admiration that surely she must be expected to speak. She had just opened her mouth to do so when Constance blurted out, "It must be so exciting!"

9.5

Alice quailed before the sudden interrogation and felt a whimper coming on. Yet under the clearly admiring gazes of the young gentlemen, she felt a tad bit more courageous and -- holding the fine example of the pirate queen before her -- Alice worked up the courage to declare, "I have no governess! I have been kidnapped!"

There was a pleasing gasp from all in attendance and Alice could sense a crowd growing about the small gazebo. Why did we not pack any hairbrushes in our little satchels, Alice thought wistfully. Practical Lizzie would never have made it a priority, but she should had thought about it herself. With all the eager eyes upon her, Alice considered how she might make herself somewhat more presentable in her wet clothes, which suddenly struck her as shockingly indecent.

The penguin lady seemed to be coming to the same conclusion, perhaps helped along by this sudden declaration which appeared to suggest her to be a rather more salacious young woman than her genteel demeanour might imply. Alice was quite cheered by the thought.

"Kidnapped?! How very odd," the penguin woman said with some apparent distaste. "Constance, do move away from this alarming child." She took out a very ornate lorngette and peered at Alice through its focusing lens. "Kidnapped, child? By whom? One cannot afford to be purloined by any common folk!"

Alice drew herself up fully as one helpful young gentleman set a mantle about her shoulders, which was extremely kind if a bit stifling. "I was aboard the Bonny Read with the dread pirate Black Ethel."

More gasps met that statement and Alice could feel herself expand with a great deal of satisfaction. The mantle, while well-intentioned made her rather warm with the damp heat of the strand.

"May I have a fan with which to cool myself," Alice asked with admirable meekness, or so it seemed to her. The penguin woman, however, seemed as hard to please as Lizzie with her hard-headed practicality.

"Child, what is your name?"

Alice drew herself up to her full height -- well, full as she could manage in the lounging chair in which she sat. "I am Caroline Alice Mangrove, daughter of Lady Millicent and Lord Grenville Mangrove -- the late Lord Grenville," Alice added with a somber note of remembrance. "My friends call me Alice."

The young gentlemen surrounding her added their immediate hope that they might call her Alice without any unwarranted sense of familiarity. The young woman in question was beginning to feel quite comfortable despite the unaccustomed heat, although a thought was beginning to nag at the back of her mind.

"That sounds reasonably sufficient," the penguin woman admitted, "However, it does not reconcile your singular state upon this deserted strand." She looked rather disapprovingly through the lorngette and Alice contemplated the fact that it was only possible to look quite that disapproving by means of a lorngette.

"My dear cousin," Alice recalled at last, "she too is missing from the storm that threw us from the pirate's ship. Oh, my Lizzie! I am quite lost without her." Alice got herself quite suddenly into a swoon and fainted dead away without another thought. It was a wise move.

9.4

Alice was stirred awake by the arrival of a flock of penguins, some of whom seemed to be in nigh on tropical colors. "How very curious," Alice muttered to her self as their nimble hands lifted her from the waves and into the blinding sun. I shall sleep extra late, Alice thought with a firm resolution, and no one shall make me stir until tea time. I simply won't move.

"Bring her into the shade," the chief penguin ordered with admirable sternness. Alice could tell that this was not a bird with whom one would trifle. The thought was a comforting one and she had vague thoughts of Mrs. Perkins' tough but soothing ways, and her extraordinary blueberry scones.

It seemed odd that Lizzie was not here to remark upon something so odd as penguins. There was a reason she was absent Alice thought as gentle hands carried her drenched form to the welcoming shade of a gazebo. Why, Alice realized suddenly, there was that man. The man who wrote letters to her. Who was he? There had been something nearly revealed… but it was so tiring to think. "Thank you," she murmured to the stork at her left who leaned toward her with a tall beaker of water.

A small voice in her head said no, the water should not be drunk, though her lips and tongue cried out with fervor for a taste of the forbidden nectar. "Is it safe?" Alice inquired of the stork who nodded and urged the glass upon her. Alice hesitated a moment longer, but why should the semi-aquatic bird lie to her? Gratefully she drank the tepid water with relish, tipping the glass upward to drain every drop.

Holding the beaker away from her, Alice was startled to find that there was no stork before her but a very pleasant looking young gentleman smiling at her. Behind him peeped a handful of others including the matronly woman whom she had mistaken for a penguin. Alice could see the woman did not much resemble the avian species (indeed she was much larger) but was indeed looking with interest -- the edges of which had been politely concealed -- at Alice where she lay. She looked wonderingly about to find herself in a beach gazebo surrounded by what could only be English tourists on holiday.

"How very odd," Alice said, then recalling her duties as guest, continued, "Thank you so much for rescuing me."

"Our pleasure!" called one young man, who was immediately suppressed by a second, who undoubtedly thought him a bit too keen. Alice smiled to herself. Surely she was looking anything but her best, yet it was quite agreeable to make young gentlemen forget their manners.

"Please, where are we?" Alice asked, determined to find a polite topic with which to begin acquaintance.

"You are not far from La Teste-du-Buch," the penguin-lady explained, then added with what Alice felt sure was unnecessary severity, "Where is your governess?"

9.3

[Apologies are due from your intrepid author for her tardiness in the latest episode; she begs to explain that she had been unexpectedly delayed in the wilderness of Canada.]

"Mama!" young Constance Forward continued with an unbecoming obstinacy, "I do believe this young woman is in distress. In fact, I might hazard a guess that she is very near to drowning." She heaved an exasperated sigh and tread her way into the shallow waters near the shore. "I say, young person," she said with some bursting curiosity and no little regard for tact, "are you in distress?"

Alice looked up at the stork who seemed to be addressing her. "We do not require cauliflower today," she whispered, her voice a harsh wheeze. "Come back again next Tuesday."

"Mama," Constance repeated with some excitement. "Do come look. I believe this young woman is delirious. How very exciting!" Constance wondered briefly whether she ought not look for stick with which she ought to poke the young woman, in the event that what appeared to be a damsel in distress might in fact be some sort of dangerous fish that only masqueraded in that guise. The natural world, Constance knew, was full of creatures with wiles beyond her ken. Or so her father always said, upon those rare occasions when it came upon him to say anything at all. "Mama!"

With a not inconsiderable sigh of disappointment, Mrs. Forward wrenched herself from the account of Montoni's machinations. "Honestly, Constance, you are worse than an urchin. I do not wish to look at yet another dead fish. I have seen quite enough for a lifetime now and shall turn down the next salmon offered me."

Mrs. Forward stopped short when she saw her daughter poking at a young woman tied to a barrel with a cautious finger. "Constance, come away from that at once." Oh my, the tender-hearted mother thought, shall I have to introduce the always painful subject of death while on holiday in the south of France? It would quite take the joie de vivre out of the afternoon.

"Mama, look!" Constance said eagerly. "Hasn't she got lovely hair?"

"Dear heart," her mother said with some severity. "It is not the thing to do to compliment one when one is not conscious to appreciate it," she reprimanded her headstrong issue while nonetheless feeling relief that the steady rise and fall of the young person's form reassured her that death was not in fact before them.

"What's your name, dear?" Mrs. Forward asked, bending over the limp figure of Alice. "Are you on holiday nearby?"

Alice blinked at the sound of a commanding voice, so like her own mother's in timbre, but saw only a giant penguin before her. We must of course blame her delirious state and the choice of a the very dark grey suit and white crinoline petticoats on the part of Mrs. Forward who thought one really ought not go to pieces just because one had gone to the strand. "No fish, today, please," Alice therefore beseeched her interlocutor. "A drink of water is all I ask." The effort proved too much and Alice sank back down upon her barrel as the gentle waves rolled it back and forth. It was almost as if she were on the Bonny Read once more.

"Yet I am not seasick!" Alice thought proudly as her vision greyed into unconsciousness.

"Call some gentlemen down here," Mrs. Forward said decisively. "We must rescue the girl!"

"How exciting!" Constance said before running up the sandy shore toward the cluster of gentlemen resting in the shade of a gaily striped gazebo tent.

9.2

Alice awoke to the light of dawn -- or so she hoped, for otherwise it was the last light of the day and she did not think she could bear the thought of darkness descending. It's not that it is so disagreeable to be in the dark, Alice thought to herself, fearing to be thought childishly timid, but that creatures might lurk unseen in the water when the sun went down and as we all know, unknown creatures do grow in the murky depths when the sun goes down.

"I should not fear a small tortoise," Alice mumbled barely audible upon the gentle waves, "But I should not like to meet a giant turtle. Not in the dark anyway."

The light began to grow around her and Alice was comforted by the thought of being able to see dangers that might lurk nearby, although she quailed at the necessity of there being possible intruders near to her in the water.

She had forgotten, too, that the brilliant sun soon made her uncomfortably hot and thirsty. Alice had finally given in and rooted around in her bag to find the cheese secreted away, but she had had a great deal of trouble opening the swollen knots of chord and many tears had been shed (making her even more thirsty, alas). As Alice had suspected, the cheese did refresh her somewhat but left her with an even more burning thirst afterward. It is a considerable tribute to the trust her cousin Lizzie inspired that Alice continued to avoid drinking the tempting liquid in which she was immersed.

By midday, however, Alice had become so delirious from thirst and heat that she was beginning to lose hope and the last shreds of discipline. Surely what was wet could slake her overpowering thirst. "You must not drink the water, it will make you sick," Alice repeated through lips so cracked that any one seeing them would feel a stab of empathetic pain. "You must not drink the slaughter," Alice continued speaking to a particularly attentive young fish, "the peas will make it thick." The fish seemed to wink at her and bow politely. Alice thought she should curtsey in turn, but she was unable to lift her head from the barrel to which she clung still.

"Peas," Alice repeated, "Peas are lovely and green." The fish seemed to nod and encourage further thought, but Alice felt she had perhaps run out of wise words. What was it her father had always said? He had a Latin phrase for every occasion, which he would sternly intone from above the breakfast table, cowering all in the room with his erudite learning.

"Sic semper Saint Dennis," Alice recommended to the fish.

"Seed o' Nelly," the fish replied.

"I am far too tired for Latin now," Alice said politely but firmly. "I shall lie down now on this soft golden pillow." Indeed she could feel the warm feather bed beneath her, softly responding to her fingers. "Wake me for tea," Alice told the fish who nodded quickly and silently withdrew. It would not do to miss tea. I am so very thirsty, Alice reminded herself.

"Quelle surprise, maman! There's a young lady in the water," Constance Forward called to her mother.

"Constance, you're supposed to be practicing your French. En français, s'il vous plaît." Mrs. Forward did not look up from the gothic novel in which she was immersed. It was her considered opinion that Mrs. Radcliffe was far more exciting than life could ever be.

9.1

When Alice next awoke it was deep night. She had a moment of confusion waking as she had from a dream. The pull of the bundle tied to her wrist had made her fancy that a large animal had been lashed to her arm and the considerable bulk of it was drawing her along. Alice had a vision of the far north woods as her location -- huge trees leaping across her path as the beast charged along ahead of her.

"Stop, stop!" she cried but the creature did not seem to hear her protestations. Instead it only lunged on, dragging the unwilling young woman behind it. I shall never ask mother for a pet again, Alice woefully scolded herself. It was quite enough to have a pony, let alone this horrid beast that seemed bent on tumbling her into the next shire.

"Alice, you must keep hold of it!" Lizzie's calm voice seemed to cut through the murkiness of the forest, and Alice looked around in vain to find her sweet cousin and beg her assistance. "Alice, the cheese!"

Alice wracked her brains to call to mind the purpose of the cheese. Everything seemed suddenly so confusing. She did seem to recall that the cheese was very important, but for what she was uncertain. Perhaps the animal that pulled her along so forcefully was in fact the cheese! Somehow it seemed right, but Alice found her self doubting the idea almost at once. Could a cheese be a beast? Could a beast be a cheese? The two questions paced back and forth across her head until Alice thought she might rather succumb to the dark shadows of the woods than consider the answers further.

Just as she was ready to give up all hope, a strange beast appeared before her. Was it the brute who had flung her along in its wake? Or was it some other fiend ready to torment her? The whooshing sound of the wind in the trees seemed very much like waves, she realized and as Alice stood looking at the strange creature she could feel them both sway back and forth as if on the seas.

The monster spoke. Monster, Alice thought, was perhaps uncharitable, but she was rather pressed to think of another word for something that appeared so curious in its form. It's head was like a gryphon's yet it had long black locks that seemed somehow familiar. The tiny wings at its back seemed unlikely to bear its weight yet the thing hovered just above the ground with the miniscule flaps. Its large shiny claws, gleaming from its furry paws and scaly feet, suggested a rather fiery temper, but its voice was soothing and kindly, if a bit rough and deep.

"By the bone-white skull and the sad catbird
You seek to find purchase on the sandy shores;
The strangest stories that you ever heard
Will pale next to tales of Alexander's wars."

In the next instant, the peculiar beast flapped its wings with finality and lifted up above the black tree tops.

"Come back, come back! I don't understand!" Alice cried and waked herself to fresh tears on the ink-dark ocean.