“So go ahead. Take it. Take it all, you bloody coward, and give me what I want!”

I gave up then. I could have tried one last time to change Martin’s mind. I could have tried to drag him out of that room. I could have tried to take his place, or to fight a god, but I didn’t. I was afraid, and I fled. I ran through the empty halls of the night palace and didn’t stop till I was lying on my face in the cold mud on the edge of the Northern Marsh. I never saw my brother again.

—

Martin’s disappearance made headlines all over England, pushing even news of the war below the fold. The English love a good tragedy, especially when it involves a child, and this one was a nine-days’ wonder. Detectives were dispatched to Fowey from Penzance and London and farther away. Dockery House was turned upside down, from attic to basement, and Plover’s house was too. Notices were circulated. Dogs were loosed. Gardens were dug up. Ponds and fountains were dragged. Men with slight builds were lowered into abandoned wells.

An amazing number of lost things were recovered: bicycles, pets, keys, odd items of silver, one or two petty criminals, in one case a rogue bassoon which had been stolen and then apparently abandoned in a ha-ha when it proved impossible to sell. The bassoonist having by that time pined for it and then passed away, the instrument was lodged temporarily and then eventually permanently by the police at Dockery House, as if by way of an apology—a sort of replacement for the child they never managed to find. Jane, in her inscrutable way, learned to play it passably well.

A cloud of suspicion settled on Christopher Plover, but over time it dispersed, as clouds will, pausing on its way to shadow a few of the less savory locals in turn, but always inconclusively. Truth to tell Plover was a little heartbroken when Martin disappeared. There was no evidence, and no arrests were ever made. We children knew where Martin had gone, of course, more or less, though I never told the others everything I knew. I never told them it was Umber who’d taken Martin’s offer. I didn’t have the heart to do it.

I think the adults knew we were keeping something to ourselves, but they could never put their big, clumsy, groping fingers on what it was. It was our shared secret.