Page 101 of The Nature of a Lady
Still, the voices sang. “Look to the birds,” they chanted over and again. “Look to the birds, Lizza.” The princess tilted back her head and watched an eagle soar overhead. But no help came for her from his widespread wings.
The story was linked to this as much as the poems had been, she was certain. Her current guess was that it included the items from the manifests that she’d been tasked with finding. “Trees with fragrant bark peeling in fairy-wing curls”—that could be cinnamon, a popular spice to be imported. The others could be saffron and turmeric. Saffron came from crocuses. And turmeric was gotten from the root of a plant that was topped with a spiky purple flower.
But parts of it she still hadn’t been able to decipher. And there was no time like the present to clear up the mystery. “Beth? The notes you had inTreasure Island...”
Beth’s cheeks went pink as she darted a glance at her brother. “Yes?”
“What was the fairy tale?”
Sheridan spun, eyes gleaming. “Oh, are the fairies involved too? Piping from the cave, perhaps? Yes?”
Beth tried turning the map upside down. “It was just a story I made up to catalogue my findings. A princess—me—who lived on an island of rock and bones. The rocks of Tresco—and the bones of the Jolly Roger. Mucknell.”
As she’d imagined. “So, the journey in the story was the treasure hunt. The piping and songs represent Piper’s Hole. And each of the things the princess finds are symbols of what you were searching for. But what was the bit at the end? The song about looking toward the birds?”
“Oh.” Beth frowned. “That was just something from those letters. Didn’t you notice? He’d concluded them all with ‘Look to the birds, Lizza.’”
Nowonderthe fairy tale had been haunting her! How had she not made the connection immediately? “Look to the birds.” Libby met Oliver’s gaze, brows up. And then, together, they turned to the east. Toward St. Martin’s and the birds that flocked there. Hadalwaysflocked there, most likely. Because two hundred fifty years wasn’t enough to change the migratory and nesting patterns, not on an island that hadn’t otherwise changed, where the few residents still lived now as they had then. “This is your north.”
Beth didn’t seem to follow their reasoning, given the question in her eyes, but she turned too, and held up the map again. She made an interested-sounding hum. “You know, that squiggle almostlookslike a bird. It doesn’t align north to the top of the paper though.”
“Don’t put it past a pirate to write sideways on his map.” Sheridan grinned and turned with the rest of them. “Let’s say itisa bird. So it’s the way to hold the map. How do we know? What we should be facing with it, I mean?”
“St. Martin’s! Ofcourse.” Beth laughed and shoved the map atSheridan, who took it eagerly. “We’ll assume that square shape at the base is the window that most directly faces St. Martin’s. Here.” She ran to the remains of a window and patted the stone.
“To your right next then.”
Libby trailed behind as Beth led them along the east-facing wall, along what might have once been a rampart before the top levels had fallen in. They turned at the corner, scurried over a low bit of wall, and struck off down the hill. Libby, Oliver, and Bram hurried to catch up.
“Are you ever going to tell us where you found the map, Beth?” Oliver called after his sister.
She made no answer.
“If the key to knowing how to use it was in a letter to his wife, as was the message about treasure from theCanary, with that songbird reference,” Libby mused as she jumped down from the wall with the aid of Oliver’s hand, “then it has to have been somewhere Mrs. Mucknell would have known to find it. Probably not, for instance, in a cave.”
Bram snorted a laugh. “You mean most ladies don’t go climbing about in caves? What a novel concept.”
“You do have a point, Libby,” Oliver said. “Perhaps not in her care exactly, since she never hunted it up herself. But a place she’d have easy access to, if she knew to look for it. The church, maybe. The garrison.”
She came to a halt. “Their house.”
Oliver stopped too, staring at her for a moment with anotherof courselook on his face. And then burst into a run. “Beth! Tas-gwyn’s? So you fetched the letters while we were there!”
His sister wasn’t paying him any heed though. She and Sheridan had arrived at another outcropping of stones whose original purpose Libby couldn’t discern, and they’d fallen to their knees behind it. “Shovel!” she shouted.
Oliver delivered it into Beth’s hands—she certainly didn’t look inclined to move out of the way and let him do the digging for her.
Bram heaved a long breath and leaned against a different piece ofwall. “You might as well make yourselves comfortable.” As if to prove it, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a bag of chocolate drops, and held it out to them. “Don’t let their initial excitement fool you. Sheridan can dig for hours—days—not find anything, and still be convinced he’s in the right place, or just afewinches off.”
“Inches make all the difference, you know.” A clod of earth flew up from where Sheridan’s voice came. “Off by one and you find nothing.”
Hours? Days? Libby reached into the sack and pulled out a chocolate. “We don’t have that long.”
“We’ll have as long as we need.” Oliver accepted a chocolate, too, and turned to the sea. “The Lord didn’t bring us all together just so that we’d fail.”
Bram lifted a sardonic brow. “Does he always speak so?”
Libby smiled. “Yes.”
