Chapter 1

Until Owen was twelve years old, he was a ward of an orphan’s home—the Our Lady of Unending Sorrows and Most Holy Melancholia Home for Poor Orphaned Tots. As might be guessed by the name, celebrating birthdays, or much of anything else, was not encouraged; the nuns preferred a day spent in silence and mournful contemplation. Owen didn’t really mind this. He had been raised from infancy in the threadbare little orphanage, and he was comfortable in its atmosphere of gentle gloom.

This peaceful and uneventful life was not destined to continue, however. Just after his twelfth birthday, Owen's uncles came to claim him.

It was a chill October day. Owen and a group of the other orphans were tidying up the nuns’ garden for winter, when a long, dusty black car drove up to the gate. The children stared, for the orphanage did not often see visitors. But from the garden, the walkway from the drive up to the front doors could not be seen, so they gave up on watching and went back to their work.

Soon, however, one of the sisters came hurrying out to the garden and breathlessly made her way across the rows of withered plants to Owen’s side.

“You may leave off your work, child,” she murmured, and took his elbow. “You’re wanted inside.”

The children stared and nudged each other as Owen was led away. Owen wiped his clammy palms on his jacket over and over again. He couldn’t imagine what this might mean, and he did so hate to have attention drawn to him in any way...

Owen followed Sister Mary Dolorous hesitantly across the brown grass to the orphans’ wing of the rambling old convent, through the narrow door, and down the hall to the boys’ dormitory. There she quickly scrubbed his face and ears raw and slicked down his thin pale hair with cold water from the pitcher. She didn’t say a word, and Owen knew better than to ask anything. When he was presentable, she took his arm again and hurried him through the corridors to the Mother Superior’s office.

“There’s a dear boy, Owen,” she whispered in a choked voice. “Now make us proud of you — or at least, make us humbly and penitently pleased, since pride is a sin—you understand, my dear...Go on, then.” With these tearful and rather confusing words, she pushed him gently through the door.

Owen found the abbess seated behind her desk in her hard wooden chair, and two gentlemen seated before her with their backs to the door and to Owen. Awkwardly, Owen shuffled his feet and waited to be spoken to, and tried not to stare at the strangers.

“Well, Owen,” sighed Mother Superior, “I am not quite certain how to tell you this. These two gentlemen have just given me some startling news. This is to be a very happy day for you, my dear. It seems that you have some living family members after all—these are your uncles, Mortemius and Orphadel Stark."

Owen turned to look for the first time at the two men, and nearly gave a shout of fright. An instant later, his eyes seemed to focus properly, and he realized he was merely looking at two stooped and smiling old men. For one stricken moment—due no doubt to the shock of the news, and the exceedingly wrinkled faces of the gentlemen—he had seemed to see two withered, grinning corpses sitting there before him...

But now the old gentlemen had gotten to their feet and were holding out their arms to him.

“Owen, dear boy! At last!” cried the taller of the two. The shorter and pudgier one, seeming overcome with emotion, dabbed at his eyes with a hankie.

“I am your Uncle Mortemius,” said the tall one, “and this is my brother, your Uncle Orphadel. We’ve been searching for you for so very long! Come, give your old nuncles a hug! How we have dreamed of this day.”

Owen stepped forward and was enfolded in a musty embrace by each uncle in turn. Despite a peculiar odor which seemed to permeate the elderly gentlemen’s rather old-fashioned frock coats, Owen was immensely happy to be hugged and tousled and squeezed by his new-found relations.

At last, the uncles resumed their seats, still clutching Owen’s hands as he stood between them.

“Mr. and Mr. Stark have been trying to locate you for ten years,” said Mother Superior when the greetings were done. “They learned your whereabouts only last week.”

“We hired a car and set out for the orphanage the moment we were certain it was you,” Uncle Mortemius said. “It is two full days’ drive from here to our home, you see. So now, Reverend Mother, I trust you will understand that we are in a great hurry to be off home with the lad? Everything is in order, is it not?”

The abbess looked taken aback, but nodded reluctantly. “We do hate to have Owen taken from us so suddenly, you know, but I can understand your haste—”

“Lovely!” cried Orphadel.

“Excellent!” agreed Mortemius, leaping up. He was very spry, Owen noted. “Then we shall be off at once. Pack your things, Owen lad, right-o?”

Mortemius took Owen by the arm, bowing gallantly to Mother Superior while backing toward the door. Orphadel, leaning on a walking stick, shuffled quickly after.

Head spinning, Owen hastily packed his few belongings. It seemed only moments before he was standing beside the black car, saying goodbye to the nuns and the orphans. The orphanage was the only home he had known in his life, the nuns the only family he’d had, and now it was all to be left behind...

The uncles, however, allowed little time for sentiment. After a hasty goodbye to all, Owen found himself in the car, jolting away down the drive. The orphanage dwindled away behind, and soon disappeared completely, as the car rattled and chugged its way through the gates and on down the road.        

*                    *                    *

The uncles plied Owen with tea-cakes, cookies, jam tarts, cocoa, tea, sandwiches, and other snacks they had packed in a basket and brought along. They brought out decks of cards, puzzle books, and travel Parcheesi. They gave him paper and crayons for drawing; told him stories and jokes; and patted him on the head at every opportunity. Owen had never had so much attention, or food, in his life. It was lovely. Content and full, he leaned back and closed his eyes, the rocking of the car lulling him to sleep.

Just as he drifted off, he heard his uncle Mortemius murmur, “He’s the very picture of his father, isn’t he?”

Orphadel gave a happy sigh. “Exactly! It warms my heart.”

With a smile, Owen fell asleep.

They stopped for the night at a somewhat run-down hotel in a small town. Over dinner in the hotel dining room, Owen’s uncles told him what they could about his parents and how he came to be in the orphanage.

“You see, nephew,” Uncle Mortemius said, his thin figure hunched over the table, “Orphadel and I are actually your great-uncles; your father was our dear departed sister’s son. When she and her husband passed away, we became little Jeremiah’s guardians. We raised him, and gave him the best home two old bachelors could.”

“He grew up to be such a dashing young man,” Orphadel added proudly, “quite the gay blade! My, didn’t we love that rascal.” He began to sniffle and brought out his hankie again.

Mortemius cleared his throat. “At any rate, when he was grown, he fell in love with a girl from the village. Alas, Brother and I—mistakenly, I see now—forbade him to marry her. We wanted him to continue his education first. But the scholar’s life could not hold a candle to the love he had for the girl, Cordelia, and one night the two eloped. They went abroad, and we had no word from them for two years. At last we heard, through mutual acquaintances, that they had fallen ill with some cursed foreign pestilence, and had sought help from the same friends who were now contacting us.” Mortemius paused here and stared into the fire burning brightly on the hearth.

After a moment, he collected himself and spoke again. “These friends took them to the nearest hospital, a clinic run by missionaries. We had no further news then for a time, but just when we had decided to journey to that distant country ourselves, we received another letter. This one told us that your parents... had succumbed. The disease had claimed them.”

He paused again, and Orphadel broke in.

“Oh!” he gasped, “don’t! Don’t linger there, Brother! Tell Owen the rest, the part that gave us hope.”

“Yes, yes indeed, I do apologize...The letter also told us there was a child, just two years old, who had escaped the illness, but of whom the clinic had lost track.”

“So you see, Owen dear, we have been searching for you ever since. It has taken ten years, and we nearly lost hope many a time; but at last we found our dear Jeremiah’s son.” Orphadel disappeared behind his hankie with a muffled sob.