· 6 June 1939 ·
AT THE GREYBEARD LIGHT
Hit the deck, Katie!” Nick cried.
He poked his head inside his favorite room in the old lighthouse. It had been his room once, now the paneled marvel of varnished mahogany wood, rounded to follow the lighthouse walls like the hull of a ship, belonged to his sister. It even had brass portholes that opened to the sky. A master ship’s carpenter had fashioned it a century earlier, duplicating a McIver ancestor’s quarters aboard a frigate in the Royal Navy.
To this day, there were no electric lights in the room, only candles and oil lanterns hung from the walls. Even the bed was a ship’s bunk, enclosed with heavy velvet drapery. Only Kate’s obvious joy in the magical room made Nick glad he’d relinquished it to her. He climbed the three steps of the little ladder up to the bed and pulled back the dark green velvet.
“Ahoy, there, matey!” Nick laughed, and bent to whisper in his sister’s ear. “Today’s a day for secrets, secret plans, and secret secrets!”
He saw Kate’s eyes pop open wide from sleep, and a big smile start to form on her sleepy little face. If there was anything she liked more than raggedy dolls and sugary crumpets, it was any plan chockablock with secrets!
“Secrets?” she asked, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “What kind of secrets? The chest? You mean we can’t even tell Mummy about the sea chest and those mean old pirates, Nicky?”
“Never!” Nick said, plopping down on his old bed, testing to see if the goosedown filling still had its old bounce. “Don’t you see? This is our adventure, Kate! And if we tell them, it will become their adventure! Or, even worse, it won’t even be an adventure anymore. It’ll be just one more thing we let grown-ups figure out for us!”
“Well,” Kate whispered, “can we tell Gunner, then?”
“Of course, we can!” Nick said, laughing as he jumped down from the bed. “We can tell Gunner anything. Just because he’s old doesn’t mean he’s a grown-up! Now, come along!”
Down and down, around and around, they flew, from the top to the bottom of the winding narrow staircase, fairly tumbling into the big sunlit kitchen at the bottom of the stairs. A large bay window to one side of the kitchen hearth overlooked the headland and the sea far below. Nick and Kate found seats on the cozy cushioned banquette that curved inside the window. It was strewn with needlepoint pillows Mrs. McIver had made during the long winter nights. Each pillow had a saying, but Nick’s favorite was the one that carried Nelson’s dying words: Thank God that I have done my duty.
Nick saw his father out on the headland, staring out to sea, leaning on his favorite walking stick, his ancient briar pipe stuck fast in the corner of his mouth, puffing thoughtfully. Nick had seen him strike such a pose countless times and yet it was certainly odd to see him there at this time of morning.
Pure morning sunlight, slanting through the kitchen window, struck fire in Nick’s mother’s golden yellow hair. Nick was thinking how beautiful she looked, cutting her roses at the sink, when it occurred to him that something was wrong, terribly wrong.
Although no sound came from her, just the set of her head and the trembling of her shoulders told him she might be weeping. It occurred to the boy that he had never seen his mother crying before except for the night Kate’s fever was so high she’d almost died.
Nick went instantly to her side and saw the crushed and broken roses at her feet.
“Mother? What is it, Mother?” Nick asked, his hand on her shoulder. She was staring out at her husband, her eyes flooded with tears she wouldn’t let fall.
“Your poor father got a letter this morning, Nick,” she said, her eyes on the window. “I think you’re old enough to read it.” She reached into her apron pocket and withdrew a thick cream vellum envelope embossed with a gold ministerial seal and a London Whitehall address. Nick took it, and a nameless dread rolled into his mind like a fog.
Whatever was inside, it wasn’t good.
“Oh, and this, too, Nick,” she said, pulling still another envelope from her pocket. “It’s addressed to you. I don’t know who on earth it’s from, a friend from school, I suppose, some kind of prank. It didn’t come in the mail.”
She reached into her apron and pulled something bright and shiny from the pocket. “I found the letter stuck to our kitchen door with this charming implement.” With a sigh of disgust, she flung a wicked-looking knife clattering to the countertop.
It was a dagger, the boy saw to his amazement. A large, bone-handled dagger! Two words went off in Nick’s mind like a pair of bombs.
Billy.
Blood.
“Get rid of that horrid weapon, Nick! I’ll not have it in my house!”
Nick shoved the dagger deep in his jacket pocket, out of her sight. He then examined this second envelope addressed to him, which was made of thin blue paper, and turned it over in his hands. It was addressed on the front in a very ornate hand to “Master Nicholas McIver, Greybeard Light, Greybeard Island,” and on the back sure enough the initials W.B. were stamped in a red wax seal.
His heart tripped a beat. William Blood, he knew, and he quickly stuffed Blood’s letter inside his trouser pocket.
“Read the Ministry letter to your father, Nick,” his mother said. “And then go to him. I’ve done all I can. He knows that I love him with all my heart and that we’ll all get through this dreadful time together. He’s most worried about you and Katie. Show him what a strong boy you are, Nicky. He needs you.”
Nick tore into the letter from the Ministry of Coastal Navigation. It was the department in government that maintained and controlled all the lighthouses of Great Britain, on her coasts and her many islands. It was from the Minister himself, Nick saw, and he scanned the letter quickly, his eye going to the very bottom.
It has come to the attention of the Ministry that certain ser vice personnel, manning both coastal and Channel Island stations, have been engaging in certain activities outside the scope of their duties. Such activities, which could be construed as hostile acts toward friendly nations, are in direct violation of His Majesty’s statutes of international diplomacy and are expressly forbidden by Ministry charter. Therefore, we regret to inform you that you are, upon receipt of this document, relieved of your duties. Service personnel who have been found in violation, and their families, will be relocated to the mainland at the expense of the Ministry. However, their obligations to the Ministry will formally cease at midnight, 31December. Stations in this directive include:
THE SPIRES.
HOGSHEAD LIGHT.
GREYBEARD LIGHT.
How could anyone write such a cold and terrible letter? Especially to someone like his father, who’d dedicated his entire life to the Ministry? It was too horrible, and not just for Nick’s family, either. Didn’t they realize how important every lighthouse in the country was going to be and, because of its location, especially Greybeard Light? Did Uncle Godfrey know about this? Did Mr. Churchill? They couldn’t, Nick realized, because neither would have allowed this letter to be sent.
Service personnel and their families will be
relocated to the mainland.
Nick looked up, his eyes finally finding those of his mother. “Relocated? Mother, does this mean that—”
“Go to your father, Nicky,” she said, the sadness gone from her eyes, replaced by a look of angry resolve. “Tell him Mother’s gone down to the Greybeard Inn to make the necessary arrangements with Gunner. Tell him how much we all love him, no matter what. He needs you, Nicholas.”
His mother kissed his forehead, then cupped his face and turned it up toward hers. “Now is the time for my brave boy,” she said, and rushed through the kitchen door, her eyes clouded once more with angry, bitter tears.
Nick’s life, only moments before so full of blood-stirring excitement, came crashing down around him. He felt his own hot tears rising and choked them back, as all that he was losing appeared as a horrible rush of rapidly fading photographs. His home, the glorious rose-covered Greybeard Light, his room, his window on the sea. His sailing boat, and Gunner and the inn, and the end of the day when the sky in the west was shot with red—he stopped himself. He could feel his eyes brimming and so, crumpling the horrid letter in his hand, he raced from the table to the door and out to his father.
He stumbled once on the rocky ground but somehow kept his feet beneath him until his reached his father, and clutched at his worn khaki shirt, the only one he ever wore, with the tiny holes in the collar where his silver RAF wings had been.
“We’re to be relocated? What about our secret work for Mr. Churchill, Father?” Nick cried. “Surely Mr. Churchill won’t let them do this to us, will he? Who’s going to keep an eye on all the Nazi ships for him?” But Nick knew as soon as he said it that this was a stupid thing to say. Their work was secret. His father could never involve Churchill or ask for his help. This was the government’s doing, and Mr. Churchill was at war with the government! What were they going to do? What ever could they do?
His father said nothing, nor did he look away from the sea. Nick took his father’s hand, and pressed it to his face. And still his father took no notice of him, or was so absorbed in his thoughts that he simply was unaware of his son’s presence.
“What shall we do, Father? Are they going to take the Light from us? Are we going to have to leave the island?” He fought to keep the sobs from his voice. “We’ve nowhere to go, Father. This is our home, our only home. I was born in this house. So was Katie. We don’t know anything else, do we?” He wanted to be strong, as Mother had asked, but he just wasn’t brave enough for this.
He was sobbing quietly now, he just couldn’t hold it back. “They can’t take our home from us, Dad, they can’t! I won’t let them! I’ll fight them, you’ll see! I’ll never leave this house no matter what they do to me, they’ll have to kill me first, they’ll have to—”
Now is the time for my brave boy.
His father squeezed him tight, his strong hands helping Nick to find his own strength.
“Nick, this is going to be hard for all of us,” he said quietly. “You have to take care of Kate for a few days. Mother and I are leaving for London on the noon packet boat. We’re going to stay for a while with Uncle Godfrey in Cadogan Square. We’re going to ask Gunner to take care of you while we’re away. He’ll board the two of you at the inn until we’re home, and you’ll have a jolly time. You’ll be fine, boy.”
“Mother’s gone to see Gunner now, Father. She said to tell you she’d gone to make the arrangements. I—I didn’t know what she meant.”
“Good. She wanted to stay here with you but I need her in London, Nick. I’m going to pay a personal visit to Mr. Churchill down at Chartwell. Your mother is going to see if there isn’t some way Uncle Godfrey can help us. Bring some kind of pressure to bear at Number Ten Downing. With war coming, these closures are a dreadful mistake. Our secret work here for Mr. Churchill is vitally important to the country. We’ll find a way. But it may take some time. Maybe a week, maybe two.”
His father turned and put both his hands on Nick’s shoulders, looking directly into his eyes, ignoring the tears streaming down his son’s face.
“I’ve known all along I might get a letter like this one day. But I’ve always done what I’ve had to do. You’re a brave boy, Nick. I’m counting on you, son.” His father pulled Nick to him for a brief embrace. Then he smiled and said, “And so is Mr. Churchill. He needs to know everything we can tell him about those U-boats, Nick. Everything.”
“Yes, Father. Of course.”
“And I need those two strong eyes out on the water, don’t I, Nick? Today and every day, until I can straighten out this terrible business and come back home. No matter what happens, we must always do what is best for the country.”
Then his father left his side and went back into the house. Nick remained there, his mind desperately searching for a way, any way, to help his family avert this disaster, but his mind was little help to him now because this was real trouble and his ideas, he knew, were only the ideas of a small boy. How could his own country do this to his father? Especially someone working so hard to protect it in the coming war? He felt the threat of more hot tears and wiped them away with a furious swipe of his sleeve.
It was then that he remembered the other letter residing in his trouser pocket. When he had first seen the dagger and Billy Blood’s seal, he’d been filled with terror, but how could this other letter contain anything like the frightful contents of his father’s letter? He pulled the blue envelope quickly from his pocket and ripped it open with an anger and violence he hardly recognized as his own. Billy Blood was fortunate that the letter and not he himself was the object of Nick’s fury.
Unseen by Nick, a solitary red feather slipped from the torn envelope and seesawed to the ground at his feet.
He read the letter quickly, fiercely crumpled it into his fist, and ran into the house. He was screaming, then, for his dog.
This is what the letter said:
Dear Master Nicholas,
You are in possession of an object of extreme value to me. I will do anything to get it. Anything. You know what it is, and you cannot hide it from me. I will have it.
I am also in possession of an object, one of extreme value to yourself.
That would be your flea-ridden dog, who will not eat or drink until we meet and you give me what I want.
Would it be possible for us to discuss this matter? I suggest we meet at the deserted shanty down by Old North Wharf at six o’clock this evening.
Fond Adieu,
WILLIAM BLOOD, ESQ.
P.S. DO NOT WORRY ABOUT YOUR DOG. I LIKE DOGS. ESPECIALLY THE HEARTS AND GIZZARDS. DELICIOUS!
Blood
Nick took the stairs up to his room three at a time. When he looked under his bed, Jip was gone, just as Nick knew he would be. From the instant he’d locked eyes with Blood he’d known the man to be a fiend. Capable of anything. Anything.
Nick collapsed on his bed, sobbing.
His dog was gone and there was no use looking for him, not in the cellar or chasing seagulls out on the headlands or anywhere, for that matter. Jip was gone and Billy Blood had him. What was it Gunner had said last night? Was the man a wizard or even a ghost? Did he possess some kind of magical powers? Nick didn’t much credit such stuff and nonsense, but seeing, or rather not seeing was believing. What had Gunner said?
They come from out of thin air, is where they come from!
Six o’clock at Old North Wharf.
He had just nine hours to find a way to get his dog back from Billy Blood. He sat up and wiped his eyes, done with tears for good.
It was no time for good men to be lying about, after all. Not with black retrievers to retrieve and black-hearted Nazis and evil pirates lurking about!