CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hepzibah Toogood’s Story

A few days later, I came home from practicing my flying skills to find a visitor in the parlor drinking tea with Cousin Hepzibah, his back to me.

“Oh, there you are, Sukie,” said Cousin Hepzibah. “Your friend’s here.”

My friend?

The guest turned around. It was Cole Farley. “Hi, Sp— Hi, Sukie!” he said, grinning.

“Cole! What are you doing here?”

“I brought your lab book—you left it in class. Your cousin’s been telling me about your family.”

“I’ll just get you a cup of tea, child,” offered Cousin Hepzibah, leaning forward and feeling for her cane.

Cole put a hand on her arm. “No, you sit still, Miss Thorne.” He crossed the room to the china cabinet and took out a third cup and saucer. The cups were tiny white things without handles, as thin as eggshells, painted with little black flowers.

“No need to be so formal, dear. You can call me Hepzibah. I know, it’s a mouthful. They used to call me Eppie when I was a girl.”

“Eppie!” I said. I couldn’t quite picture it.

Cousin Hepzibah nodded. “You never called your sister Hepzibah Eppie?”

“No, just Kitty. Occasionally Happy, but only when she was in a very bad mood.”

“How do you get Kitty from Hepzibah?” asked Cole.

“Hepzibah, Hepcat, Kitty,” I explained.

“What’s a hepcat? Is that like a hellcat?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s so awesome—your cousin was just telling me about how your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was a pirate!” He rattled off the greats like a marble bouncing down stairs.

“Not our many-greats-grandfather, child, just our many-greats-uncle,” said Cousin Hepzibah.

“Oh, right. The many-greats-grandfather was the witch, right?”

Cousin Hepzibah nodded. “Accused. His accuser recanted and died the night before the execution, and the magistrate set our ancestor free. He lived the rest of his life under a shadow.”

I groaned inwardly. A witch! Now Cole would never, ever stop calling me Spooky. “Tell me about the pirate,” I said. “You mentioned him before, but you never really told me the whole story,” I said.

“You don’t know about your pirate uncle? Tell her, Hepzibah!” said Cole.

Cousin Hepzibah took a long swig of tea, put down her cup, and began.

• • •

“It was way back in the eighteenth century. This house had passed into the hands of Obadiah Thorne, a wealthy ship owner. Obadiah had no sons, only two daughters, Hepzibah and Obedience—Windy and Beedie, they were called.”

“Obedience? That’s a weird name,” said Cole.

“Not really, not back then. Lots of babies had names like that—Prudence and Experience and Preserved. Their mother was Patience. If Beedie had been a son, they would have called her Obadiah Junior, and Obedience sounds pretty close.”

“I guess so,” said Cole.

“Patience was a pretty, pale, delicate little thing,” Cousin Hepzibah went on. “Giving birth to Obedience almost killed her. Obadiah didn’t think she would have any more children, so Obedience was the closest he would come to having a son named after him.”

“Did she?” I asked. “Their mother. Have any more children.”

“Sadly, no. She died of a fever when Windy was twelve and Beedie only five. An elderly cousin, Annabel Thorne, came to look after the little girls. When the weather was good, they used to sit on the widow’s walk under an awning, sewing their samplers and watching the sails come up over the horizon. There’s Beedie’s sampler, hanging over the card table.”

I crossed the parlor to examine it more closely. A border of faded red yarn roses twined around a background of plain brownish linen. In the center stood a house with one gigantic black wool crow perched on the left chimney and another about to land on the right one. The chimneys didn’t look big enough to hold them. Above the crows flew a fleet of ships with tiny white sails. The ships were the same size as the birds, and the left-hand crow glared at them with his cross-stitched eye, as if warning them to stay off his roof.

Under the house stood a man in a yellow coat, a white-haired old lady, two little girls with pointy shoes showing under their dresses, and a little dog, who was sniffing at a capital A. The rest of the alphabet followed in tidy rows of capital and lowercase letters, each a different color. It looked as though a family of gardeners was getting ready to weed its letter patch.

In an oval frame at the bottom, I read the verse. “Obedience Thorne is my name & with my Needle I wrought the same.” Apparently Beedie had embroidered the frame first and run out of space; the me of same spilled out.

“Is this a real house?” asked Cole, pointing.

“Of course! That’s this house, before they built most of the additions,” said Cousin Hepzibah.

“Wow, that’s so cool!” I wondered whether the crows on the roof were the ancestors of the ones that cawed outside my window.

“What about Windy’s sampler?” I asked. “Do you have that one, too?”

“She never finished it. She had no discipline, that aunt of ours. That’s how she got her nickname—she was always gusting off in different directions. Until she met Phineas Toogood, that is.”

“The pirate?”

“Not at first. He was an honest sailor when they met—second mate on one of Obadiah’s ships, the Sandpiper. Obadiah sent the girls and Miss Annabel on the Sandpiper to visit cousins in Portland the summer Windy was seventeen. When Windy’s little dog, Tiber, was swept off deck in a swell, Phinny Toogood dived in and rescued him. That was how it began.

“Whenever the Sandpiper docked in North Harbor, Phinny would find a way to see Windy. He brought her gifts—a Chinese comb, a South Sea shell, a thimble he carved from the tip of a walrus tusk, with “Sandpiper” scribed in black and their initials twined together. She gave him a silk handkerchief that she’d embroidered with a dolphin. That was the first sewing project she managed to finish, so you can imagine how she must have loved him.

“Phinny and Windy agreed to marry as soon as Phinny had saved up enough to build a little house in Newport. But Obadiah had other plans for his daughter. He wanted his property to stay in the hands of the Thornes. A second cousin of Obadiah’s, Japhet Thorne, had inherited the adjoining parcel—that’s the land between the carriage house and the bottom of the hill where your school bus stops. Obadiah ordered Windy to marry Japhet and forget Phinny.

“Japhet was considered an excellent catch. He was tall and handsome, with good manners, if a little stiff. He had plenty of money. But Windy didn’t like him, and she loved Phinny. She told her father she would rather stay single her whole life long. He threatened to cut her off without a shilling, but she told him she didn’t care.

“Then one Sunday Phinny had a friend slip a note into Windy’s prayer book at church, telling her the little house was ready and he was waiting for her in the village. That night she climbed out her window. They were married in the little white church on Oak Street, the one next to that new yoga place. They exchanged silver rings engraved with the motto ‘Your Heart is my Home.’

“When her father heard the news, he fell back into his chair, twitching and clutching at his throat. Miss Annabel sent for the doctor, who bled Obadiah and put him to bed. With careful nursing, he recovered somewhat, but his right side was paralyzed and he never spoke again.”

“Was it a stroke?” Cole asked.

“Yes, an apoplectic fit, the doctor said. That’s what they called strokes back then. Beedie wrote to her sister begging her to come home, but Windy responded that if the news of her marriage had half killed her father, the sight of her wedding ring would likely finish him off.

“A few months later, though, Beedie wrote again and this time Windy came. Phinny had shipped out as first mate on the schooner Oracle, and Windy was lonely in the little house without him. Besides, by then she was expecting a child. She wanted to be near her family.

“When her father saw her so round and rosy, the left side of his mouth lifted in half a smile and he reached out his left hand, the tears streaming down his face. Windy threw herself into his arms, weeping. But she had been right to worry: The joy of the reconciliation was too much for the old man. He didn’t live long enough to hold his grandson.

“They say little Jack was a fat, smiling baby, with his mother’s blue eyes and his father’s black hair. His aunt Beedie, who had only recently put away her dolls and started wearing long skirts like a lady, couldn’t get enough of him. She sewed him bonnets and dresses and fed him his porridge with her own little spoon.

“Although Obadiah had threatened to change his will, his apoplexy had robbed him of speech before he’d had time to call for his lawyer. Except for Beedie’s dowry and a handful of bequests to servants, Windy inherited everything: the Thorne Mansion, the land it stood on, everything in it, the ships, and the money.

“Japhet Thorne was beside himself with rage when he heard. From his bedroom window, he could look up the hill to the grand house that he’d believed would be his. Now not only had his promised bride married someone else, but the Thorne Mansion would pass out of Thorne hands.

“So Japhet sought out the infamous Captain Tempest of the Pretty Polly, the most notorious pirate on the coast, and offered him a hundred pounds in gold to kill Windy’s husband, Phineas, and bring his head back as proof.

“Red Tom Tempest readily agreed. ‘A proposition worthy of the Polly,’ laughed Red Tom, showing off his three gold teeth. They sealed their bargain with rum.”

I objected. “Wait, hang on! What’s this Red Tom Tempest person doing in the story? I thought Phinny was supposed to be the pirate!”

Cousin Hepzibah patted my hand. “I’m getting there, dear.”

“There can be more than one pirate, silly,” said Cole. “Me hearties,” he added as an afterthought.

Cousin Hepzibah continued, “The storms were strong that year, and many a fortune was smashed into driftwood up and down the coast. News came that the Oracle had gone down with all hands. Phineas Toogood was no more.

“Japhet went to his cousin and asked her again to marry him. ‘A widow needs a protector and a boy needs a father,’ he said. But Windy refused to believe her husband was really dead. ‘My boy has a father,’ she told Japhet.

“Then word came—from a trader who had heard a story in a tavern on Jamaica—that what had sunk the Oracle was not a storm, but pirates.

“Windy maintained that no pirates would kill such a fine sailor. They must have taken him prisoner to help sail their ship, she insisted. Phinny would escape and come home to her.

“When Japhet heard this he waited eagerly for Red Tom Tempest to deliver on his promise and bring him Phinny’s head. But when the pirate captain finally came, he brought bad news. Though wounded, Phineas had escaped on the Oracle’s lifeboat. ‘But I did bring you this,’ said Red Tom, handing Japhet a small brandy cask.”

“What was in it?” asked Cole, bouncing in his chair and spilling a little tea into his saucer.

“I’m just getting to that,” said Cousin Hepzibah. “Japhet brought the cask to Windy. He told her, ‘I’m afraid I have some painful news. A sailor of my acquaintance has a brother who is cook aboard the Pretty Polly. He saw your husband fall in the fight, mortally wounded. It grieves me to tell you that the pirates threw him overboard and the cook saw a pair of sharks fighting over his body. Nothing remains of him but this.’ He handed Windy the cask. ‘I deeply regret the pain this must be causing you, but I know that unless you see it with your own eyes, you will persist in your unfortunate refusal to accept your husband’s demise.’

“Windy opened the cask, shrieked, and fell back in a swoon. Inside the cask was Phinny’s left hand, pickled in brandy. She couldn’t mistake it—it was wearing the wedding ring that she had given him.”

Cole and I spoke at once.

“Cool!” he said.

“Eww!” I said.

“What did Windy do then?” I asked.

“At last she believed Japhet that Phinny was dead. She buried his hand in the little graveyard at the top of the hill—you can still see the gravestone, the one with the rose climbing on it. She fell into a decline. The only thing that would bring her out of herself was little Jack, who had grown into a fine, strong child.

“Now that Phinny was out of the way, Japhet hoped she would be persuaded to marry him. It was what her father had wanted, after all. But little Jack still stood between him and the Thorne property. So he waited until one day, when old Cousin Annabel, who was watching the little boy, had nodded into a doze. The little boy was never seen again after that day. Japhet told Windy little Jack had wandered off and fallen from the cliff into the sea. ‘I saw him at the edge, and then I saw him slip. I ran, but I was too late to catch him,’ he told Windy.

“That’s horrible!” I said.

“Then what happened?” Cole asked.

“Beedie tried to comfort her sister, but it was no use. Windy spent her days and nights on the widow’s walk, pale as a ghost, staring at the sea, as if she hoped to see her husband’s sails come up over the horizon. Then, one morning, they found her body under the widow’s walk, her neck broken.”

“Did she throw herself off? Did Japhet push her?” I asked.

“Nobody knows how she fell. They called it an accident and buried her in the little graveyard beside her husband’s hand. After Beedie had mourned for three years, Japhet convinced her to marry him. So he got the Thorne property after all.”

“Wait! What are you saying?” I asked, horrified. “You mean Japhet is our great-great-whatever-great-grandfather? That murderer?”

“That’s right,” said Cousin Hepzibah. “And that’s when our family started losing children. Japhet’s son, Japhet Junior, was the first to die of the Thorne blood disease. They say it’s a punishment for his crimes.”

“But that’s not fair!” I said. “Why should my sister die because of him? Kitty didn’t murder anyone!”

Cousin Hepzibah squeezed my hand. “I know. It isn’t fair,” she said.

After an awkward pause, Cole asked, “But what happened to Phineas? You said he was a pirate?”

Cousin Hepzibah sighed. “He and his shipmates washed up on an island, where they were taken in by a colony of Africans who had survived the wreck of a slave ship.”

“This story is getting very complicated,” I said. It reminded me of one of those long, winding Laetitia Flint ghost stories I’d been reading on the bus. Cousin Hepzibah liked those books too—and it crossed my mind that maybe some of the details had found their way into her story. Or maybe she was right, and our family had inspired old writers.

“Of course. Nothing about our family is ever simple,” said Cousin Hepzibah. She continued, “After Phinny’s arm had healed, he determined to return home to Windy. But when sailors brought word of her death, he decided to avenge himself on Red Tom Tempest. With the help of his old shipmates and his new friends, he captured the Pretty Polly, made Captain Tempest walk the plank, and turned his hand to piracy himself. He and his friends were picky about which ships they stopped, though—they preyed only on slavers. They would pocket the valuables and set the cargo free.”

“How did he capture the Polly? And how do you know all this?” I asked.

“Family lore,” said Cousin Hepzibah. “And there’s a lot written about it in the family papers.”

“But if Phinny was still alive, why didn’t he inherit the Thorne Mansion?” I asked. “Why did it go to Beedie and Japhet?”

“Japhet had connections. He got his magistrate friend to declare Phinny dead on the strength of the hand and Tom Tempest’s account. Besides, Phinny was a pirate, an outlaw. If he ever did come home, he never showed his face.”

“What happened to his treasure?” asked Cole.

“Nobody knows anything for sure,” said my cousin. “Just rumors.”

“What’s the treasure supposed to be? Jewels? Pieces of eight?”

She shrugged. “All I know is the story: There’s supposed to be hidden treasure,” said my cousin. “Maybe even a map. Nobody’s ever found either one, though.”

“Can we look?” Cole flashed his magic smile at Cousin Hepzibah.

“Please do—I hope you find it. Sukie, dear, why don’t you show Cole around?”

“Right now? It’s almost dinnertime, and I have a lot of homework,” I said.

“Next time, then,” said my cousin, holding out her hand to Cole. “It was lovely to meet you, child. Come again soon.”

“Thanks, I will. I can’t wait to see more of this house. I always knew it would be cool in here, but I had no idea how cool.”

“I’ll show you out,” I said.

• • •

“What are you doing here really, Cole?” I asked as soon as we were out of the room. “Are you after Cousin Hepzibah’s treasure?”

“Depends what you mean by after. You said your family needed money. If we find it, you could get a phone and we could text each other like normal people. Maybe you could even buy back your old house.”

The thought made me ache with longing, as if someone was squeezing formaldehyde through my own heart. “Except it’s Cousin Hepzibah’s treasure, if it even exists.”

“I bet she would use it to help you, though. She seems really nice. You sure we don’t have time for a little look around before I go?”

“Sorry.”

“All right, see you in the morning, then. Oh, wait.” He dug in his book bag and pulled out my lab notebook. “Better take care of this. Ms. Pitch would kill us if we lose all that data—we only get one heart.”

• • •

“I like your friend,” said Cousin Hepzibah when I came back. “What a thoughtful young man. Handsome, too, and so fond of you.”

“Fond of me?”

“Of course. Didn’t he come out of his way to return your notebook? He says he’s been making better grades in science since you became his lab partner.”

“He told you that? I don’t know, Cousin Hepzibah. I’m not sure I trust him. He and his friends used to call me names and throw food at me in the cafeteria. They didn’t stop until Kitty gave them food poisoning. She really doesn’t like him.”

Cousin Hepzibah shrugged. “Well, that’s ghosts. They can’t change, so they don’t understand when the living do.”