I Capture the Castle (29 page)

So I said: “All right—that’ll be lovely,” and began to unpack the basket.

He watched with much interest: “Rose never told me about the packet of cooking herbs. What are they for?”

“We burn them—they’re a charm against witchcraft.

Of course they oughtn’t to be shop herbs—they should have been gathered by moonlight. But I don’t know where to find any that smell nice.”

He said I must get them from the Scoatney herb-garden in future:

“It’ll be grateful to be used, after being a dead failure in salads.

What’s the white stuff?”

“That’s salt-it wards off bad luck. And turns the flames a lovely blue.”

“And the cake?”

“Well, we show that to the fire before we eat it. Then we drink wine and throw a few drops into the flames.”

“And then you dance round the fire?”

I told him I was much too old for that.

“Not on your life, you’re not,” said Simon.

“I’ll dance with you.”

I didn’t tell him about the verses I usually say, because I made them up when I was nine and they are too foolish for words.

The high flames were dying down; I could see we should need more kindling if we were to keep the fire spectacular.

I had noticed some old wood in the tower—a relic of the days when we often had picnics on the mound. I asked Simon to help me get it.

As we came to the tower he stood still for a moment, looking up at its height against the sky.

“How tall is it?”

he asked.

“It must be seventy or eighty feet, surely.”

“Sixty,” I told him.

“It looks taller because it’s so solitary.”

“It reminds me of a picture I once saw called “The Sorcerer’s Tower.” Can you get to the top?” “Thomas did, a few years ago, but it was very dangerous; and the upper part of the staircase has crumbled a lot more since then. Anyway, there’s no place to get out on, if you do get to the top—the roof went hundreds of years ago. Come in and see.”

We went up the long outside flight of stone steps that leads to the entrance and climbed down the ladder inside. When we looked up at the circle of sky far above us it was still pale blue, yet filled with stars—it seemed strange to see them there when scarcely any had been visible outside.

Enough light came down through the open door for Simon to look around. I showed him the beginning of the spiral staircase, which is stowed away in a sort of bulge. (it is up there that I hide this journal.) He asked what was through the archway that leads to the opposite bulge.

“Nothing, now,” I told him.

“It’s where the garde robes used to be.” They should really be called privy chambers or latrines, but garde robes are more mentionable.

“How many floors were there originally?”

“Three—you can see the staircase outlets to them.

There was an entrance floor, a chamber above it and a dungeon below —here, where we are.”

“I bet they enjoyed sitting feasting while the prisoners clanked in chains below.”

I told him they probably feasted somewhere else-there must have been much more of Belmotte Castle once, though no other traces remain: “Most likely this was mainly a watch tower. Mind you don’t bump into the bedstead.”

The bedstead was there when we first came—a double one, rather fancy, now a mass of rusty iron. Father meant to have it moved but when he saw it with the cow-parsley growing through it, stretching up to the light, he took a fancy to it. Rose and I found it useful to sit on—Mother was always complaining because our white knickers got marked with rust rings from its spirals.

“It’s pure Surrealist,” said Simon, laughing.

“I can never understand why there are so many derelict iron bedsteads lying about in the country.”

I said it was probably because they last so long, while other rubbish just molders away.

“What a logical girl you are—I could never have worked that out.” He was silent for a moment, staring up into the dim heights of the tower. A late bird flew across the circle of stars and fluttered down to its nest in a high arrow-slit.

“Can you get it—the feeling of people actually having lived here?” he said at last.

I knew just what he meant.

“I used to try to, but they always seemed like figures in tapestry, not human men and women. It’s so far back. But it must mean something to you that one of your ancestors built the tower. It’s a pity the de Godys name died out.”

“I’d call my eldest son “Etienne de Godys Cotton,” if I thought he could get by with it in England—would you say he could his It’d certainly slay any American child.”

I said I feared it would slay any child in any country. Then Heloise appeared above us in the doorway, which reminded us to go on with our job of getting wood.

I dragged it out from under the rustic table and handed each branch to Simon, who stood half-way up the ladder-the technique Rose and I always used came back to me. When I climbed the ladder at last, Simon helped me out and said: “Look-there’s magic for you.”

The mist from the moat was rolling right up Belmotte; already the lower slopes were veiled.

I said: “It’s like the night when we saw the Shape.”

“The what?”

I told him about it as we carried the branches to the fire: “It happened the third year we held the rites, after a very hot, windless day like today. As the mist came towards us, it suddenly formed into a giant shape as high as—oh, higher than—the tower. It hung there between us and the castle; it seemed to be falling forward over us—I never felt such terror in my life.

And the queer thing was that neither of us tried to run away; we screamed and flung our selves face downwards before it. It was an elemental, of course-I’d been saying a spell to raise one.”

He laughed and said it must have been some freak of the mist:

“You poor kids! What happened then?”

“I prayed to God to take it away and He very obligingly did-Rose was brave enough to look up after a minute or two and it had vanished. I felt rather sorry for it afterwards; I daresay no one had summoned it since the Ancient Britons.”

Simon laughed again, then looked at me curiously: “You don’t, by any chance, still believe it was an elemental?”

Do I his I only know that just then I happened to look down towards the oncoming mist-its first rolling rush was over and it was creeping thinly—and suddenly the memory of that colossal shape came back so terrifyingly that I very nearly screamed. I managed a feeble laugh instead and began to throw wood on the fire so that I could let the subject drop.

Rose believed it was an elemental, too—and she was nearly fourteen then and far from fanciful.

When the fire was blazing high again I felt we had better get the rites over. My selfconsciousness about them had come back a little so I was as matter-of-fact as possible; I must say leaving out the verses made things rather dull. We burnt the salt and the herbs (in America it is correct to drop the h in herbs-it does sound odd) and shared the cake with Heloise; Simon only had a very small piece because he was full of dinner. Then we drank the Vicar’s port—there was only one wineglass so Simon had his out of the medicine bottle, which he said added very interesting overtones; and then we made our libations, with an extra one for Rose. I hoped we could leave things at that, but Simon firmly reminded me about dancing round the fire. In the end, we just ran round seven times, with Heloise after us, barking madly. It was the smallest bit as if Simon were playing with the children, but I know he didn’t mean it, and he was so very kind that I felt I had to pretend I was enjoying myself—I even managed a few wild leaps.

Topaz is the girl for leaping; last year she nearly shook the mound.

“What now?” asked Simon when we flopped down at last.

“Don’t we sacrifice Heloise?” At the moment, she was trying to give us tremendous washings, delighted to have caught us after her long chase. I said:

“If we drove her across the embers it would cure her of murrain, but she doesn’t happen to have it. There’s nothing more, except that I usually sit still while the flames die down and try to think myself back into the past.”

Of course that was very much in Simon’s line, but we didn’t get very far into the past because we kept talking. One thing he said was that he would never get used to the miracle of the long English twilight. It had never before struck me that we have long twilights Americans do seem to say things which make the English notice England.

A carpet of mist had crept to within a few feet of us, then crept no further-Simon said I must be putting a spell on it. Down by the moat it had mounted so high that only the castle towers rose clear of it. The fire died quickly, soon there was nothing but gray smoke drifting in the gray dusk. I asked Simon if we were seeing by the last of the daylight or the first of the moonlight-and really it was hard to tell. Then gradually the moonlight won and the mist shrouding the castle turned silver.

“Could anyone paint that?” said Simon.

“Debussy could have done it in music. Are you fond of him?”

I had to admit that I’d never heard a note of Debussy.

“Oh, surely you must have. Not on records or the radio?”

When I told him we had neither a gramophone nor a wireless he looked staggered-I suppose Americans find it hard to believe there is anyone in the world without such things.

He told me they had a new machine at Scoatney that changed its own records-I thought he was joking till he began to explain how it worked. He finished by saying: “But why don’t I drive you over to hear it now his We’ll have some supper.”

“But you said you were full of dinner,” I reminded him.

“Well, I’ll talk to you while you eat. And Heloise can have a bone in the kitchen. Look at her trying to rub the dew off her nose with her paws! Come on, this grass is getting very damp.” He pulled me to my feet.

I was glad to accept because I was fabulously hungry. Simon stamped out the dying embers while I went up to close the door of the tower. I stood at the top of the steps for a moment, trying to capture the feelings I usually have on Midsummer Eve—for I had been too occupied in entertaining Simon to think about them before. And suddenly I knew that I had been right in fearing this might be my last year for the rites—that if I ever held them again I should be “playing with the children:” I only felt the smallest pang of sadness, because the glory of supper at Scoatney was stretching ahead of me; but I said to myself that, Simon or no Simon, I was going to give the farewell calla farewell for ever this time, not just for a year. The call is a queer wordless cry made up of all the vowel sounds—it was thrilling when Rose and I used to make it together, but I do it fairly well by myself.

“Ayieou!” I called-and it echoed back from the castle walls as I knew it would. Then Heloise raised her head and howled-and that echoed, too. Simon was fascinated; he said it was the best moment of the rites.

Walking down Belmotte was the oddest sensation—every step took us deeper into the mist until at last it closed over our heads. It was like being drowned in the ghost of water.

“You’d better get a coat,” said Simon as we crossed the bridge to the courtyard, “because the car’s open. I’ll wait for you in it.”

I ran upstairs to wash my hands; they were dirty from handling the wood. And I put some of the “Midsummer Eve” scent on my dress and handkerchief—it seemed just right for a supper party.

My garland was still fresh so I wore it outside my coat, but as I hurried downstairs I decided it might look affected and it would certainly be longing for a drink; so I dropped it into the moat as I crossed the drawbridge.

It wasn’t the usual Scoatney car but a new one, very long and low—so low that one feels one is going to bump one’s behind on the road.

“I think it’s a bit too spectacular,” said Simon, “but Rose lost her heart to it.”

The night was beautifully clear once we were well away from the castle-we looked back at it from the high part of the Godsend road and could only see a little hill of mist rising from the moonlit wheat fields.

“If you ask me, it’s bewitched,” said Simon.

“Maybe when I bring you back we shall find it’s gone for keeps.” The new car was fascinating to drive in. Our eyes were on a level with the steep banks below the hedges and every spear of grass stood out brilliantly green in the headlights, seeming more alive than even in the brightest sunshine. We had to go very slowly because of rabbits-Heloise kept trying to go headfirst through the windscreen after them. One poor creature ran in front of us for such a long time that Simon finally stopped the car and turned the headlights off, so that it could summon up the strength of mind to dive into a ditch. While we waited he lit a cigarette, and then we leaned back looking up at the stars and talking about astronomy, and space going on for ever and ever and how very worrying that is.

“And of course there’s eternity,” I began-then Godsend church struck ten and Simon said we must make up for lost time.

There were very few lights on at Scoatney — I suddenly wondered if all the servants would be in bed; but the butler came out to meet us. How extraordinary it must be to be able to tell a large, imposing man “Just bring a tray of supper for Miss Mortmain to the pavilion, will you??”-without even apologizing for giving trouble so late at night-I apologized myself, and the butler said:

“Not at all, miss,” but rather distantly. As he stalked away after Heloise (she knows her way to the kitchen now) it struck me that he would soon be Rose’s butler. I wondered if she would ever get used to him.

We crossed the dim hall and went out at the back of the house.

“Here are your herbs by moonlight,” said Simon, “and did you notice how carefully I put my aitch in?”

He led the way through the rather dull little herb-garden- the idea of herbs is so much more exciting than the look of them—into the water-garden, and turned on the fountains in the middle of the big oval pool.

We sat on a stone bench watching them for a few minutes, then went into the pavilion. Simon only lit one candle-I’ll put it out when I start the phonograph,” he said.

“Then you can still see the fountains while you listen to Debussy—they go well together.”