Keeping the Castle (3 page)

“How delightful,” said my mother, and, once Clara had been guided to the safest chair (much of our furniture was apt to collapse without warning), we settled down to an amicable discussion of the young men’s fortunes, manners, and characters. True, Charity once expressed her pique at Clara’s comment that I would be the “reigning beauty of the ball,” by a mean little pinch disguised as a sisterly pat on my arm, and Prudence twice talked over my mother’s remarks and thrice flatly contradicted her, but as our little chats went, it was tolerably pleasant.

In their place, to be honest, I would find it irritating to have a much younger stepsister forever thrown up to me as the beauty of the family. However, since they each possessed a good dowry, while I had nothing but a pretty face to offer a husband, beyond an ancient name, one hundred a year, and a tumbledown pretend castle belonging to my four-year-old brother, I did not pity them overly much. And while pinches and barbed comments aimed at myself might be pardoned, I found it difficult to forgive rudeness towards my gentle mama.

Greengages brought in tea. (I had made the cakes myself, tho’ this was a carefully kept secret—we could not afford a pastry chef or even a cook with a passing acquaintance with the art.) The tea itself was rather insipid, as it was our household habit to dry and reuse the leaves for a fortnight before replenishing them, and the liquid inevitably lost color and flavor. However, it was steaming hot, which was the great thing on a chilly April day like the present one, so we were quite snug. If the fire was perhaps a bit small to warm us, it was no matter; the thought of Lord Boring’s upcoming festivities provided animation and cheer.

Prudence, Charity, and Clara were deep in conference over not their own dresses for the ball, as this subject had long since been canvassed, but rather the probable attire of every other young lady of the neighborhood, when Greengages reentered the room.

“Sir Quentin and Lady Throstletwist,” he quavered, and cast an apprehensive look at the tea tray, no doubt wondering how long the cakes would hold out at this rate. The knight and his lady, frequent visitors to our home, looked around the room in search of the seating least likely to tip over or poke them in awkward portions of their anatomy.

“Believe this one will hold your weight, m’dear,” said Sir Quentin, gallantly offering his wife the best of the available chairs.

“No, my love, you take that one. Think of your lumbago. I shall be quite comfortable here.” And she sank down onto a rather rickety specimen at my left elbow. We paused, holding our collective breath as the chair creaked, swayed, and then steadied.

Satisfied that all was secure for the moment, my mother offered tea and cake to Lady Throstletwist.

“Demmed cold in here,” complained Sir Quentin, chafing his hands together.

“Quentin!” scolded his wife.

“Oh, do bring your chair up closer to the fire,” urged my mother.

“What fire?” he demanded, peering into the cavernous fireplace, which was so large it had in fact been used in days gone by to roast whole oxen. He squinted at the small blaze far at the back of the firebox. “Hmm, hmm, I see. Yes, I suppose there is one in there.” He held his hands out hopefully towards it.

“Now, Quentin, I
told
you to dress warmly.
I
always do when we visit Crooked Castle, even in August. You know how the winds go rushing up and down these halls, whatever the season. One might as well be living in a perpetual cyclone,” said Lady Throstletwist, complacently stroking her cashmere shawl down around her plump form. She and her husband owned Yellering Hall, a cheerful modern house with a great many fireplaces, all blasting out prodigious amounts of heat. “Why your grandfather chose to build this place in such an exposed situation, hanging out over a cliff on the North Sea,” she said to my mother, “I will never know. You haven’t even an ocean view from inside this great, dark barn.”

“Some tea will warm you, Sir Quentin,” Mother said, handing him a cup.

“Thank you, m’dear,” said Sir Quentin, looking with sad eyes down into the cup of pale brown water.

“One lump or two?” she asked, her hand hovering over the lid of the elaborate silver sugar caddy. I awaited his answer with some trepidation.

Sir Quentin brightened. “Oh, is there sugar? I’ll have—”

“None.” Lady Throstletwist finished his sentence. “Sir Quentin is watching his waistline.”

This was manifestly untrue. Sir Quentin was as slender as a blade of wheat. It was simply that Lady Throstletwist had guessed that, handsome as the caddy was, it in fact contained no sugar lumps. I had used the sugar for the cakes, which had been meant to last the week but which were swiftly disappearing. I smiled at Lady Throstletwist gratefully; now Mama need not know the empty state of the sugar caddy.

“Very wise,” said my mama. “I daresay you shall outlive us all, Sir Quentin.”

“Have you heard about the arrival of Lord Boring’s party?” Lady Throstletwist enquired, changing the subject. “Quite an excitement for us here in quiet little Lesser Hoo.”

“I believe five young men are coming to enliven our neighborhood,” said Miss Clara.

“I must differ with you, my dear Miss Clara,” said Lady Throstletwist. “I have it on excellent authority that there will be six!”

“Miss Sneech and Mr. Bold,” announced Greengages gloomily, showing yet two more neighbors, our vicar and his niece, into the room.

“How delightful,” said my mama. “Greengages, more tea and cakes please.” Greengages looked at her reproachfully, but took the tray and went to boil more water in the kitchen. After seeing our new visitors seated, I took the opportunity to excuse myself and followed him.

“Oh, miss,” wailed the cook when I showed myself in this domestic office. “Whatever shall we give them to eat? Your lovely little cakes are gone.”

“Is there any bread?” I asked.

Cook allowed as how there was a bit of bread, “But I was planning on it for breakfast.”

“Never mind breakfast. Slice it very, very thin and toast it—carefully, mind, don’t burn it—then spread it with butter.”

“Nay, there’s none, miss,” said Cook dolefully.

“Plain will have to do, then,” I said. “Boil a vast amount of water,” I instructed, and returned to the drawing room.

Little Miss Sneech, always anxious to think the best of everyone, credited the Baron with bringing an even larger party. “Eight young men, I hear,” she was saying as I sat down next to her. She clutched my wrist with a small, hot hand. “Is it not the most
amazing
news?”

“Doctor and Mrs. Haxhamptonshire,” sighed Greengages (correctly pronouncing this, by the by, as “Doctor and Mrs. Hamster”), “Mr. Eliot, Mrs. Eliot, Miss Eliot, Miss Cynthia Eliot, Master Samuel Eliot, Miss Agatha Eliot, and Master Augustus Eliot.”

I returned to the kitchen as this large group filed in.

“Tiddlers from the moat,” I ordered. “Set the kitchen boy to catching them.” Our moat was more of a lake than a moat. It did not entirely encircle the castle, situated as it was on the very edge of a cliff—it had been constructed solely to provide the need for a drawbridge—but it was nevertheless a sizeable body of water, regularly flooding after a heavy rain. Once upon a time it had been stocked with fish for the table, but we had eaten our way through these larger specimens long ago. Tiddlers were all that were left.

Cook looked at me doubtfully. “There’s no’ much eating on one of them tiddlers, miss. Wouldn’t even call ’em tiddlers,
I
wouldn’t. More like a minnow than a proper fish.”

“That is why he must catch a great many of them. Have him use a fine-mesh net. Broil them and salt them and put them on one of the good platters. And then we can garnish the platter with watercress, also from the moat. I suppose we have watercress?”

“Oh, aye, miss. Any amount. Oh, and miss? The fireplace crane is rusted near through. Hope the whole great pot don’t come crashing down, if you understand me. That would be a picture, that would.”

“Very well. You must have Jock call in the blacksmith to repair it,” I said, then called over my shoulder as I left, “Boil more water!”

As I entered the room, now choked with broken-down and ruinous pieces of furniture dragged in from other chambers to seat the throng, I heard the cry: “Twelve of them! Actually twelve people in Lord Boring’s party! We shall be quite overset!”

So long as we did not have to feed and water them, I thought, taking my place amidst the crowd, I shouldn’t mind if there were a hundred.

At last, having supped on Crooked Castle’s version of a Barmecide feast (and if your governess has neglected your education to such an extent that you are unfamiliar with
One Thousand and One Arabian Nights
, why then, shame on her—go and read it), the knight and his lady wife rose to take their leave. The moment Lady Throstletwist stood up, her chair shuddered and then slowly collapsed into a sad little splintered heap on the floor. Being extremely well bred, she sailed on out through the door without a backwards glance at this small disaster. Everyone else present also contrived to ignore the situation, save the younger Eliots, who giggled. On this note the party broke up, and having settled to everyone’s satisfaction that the number of Lord Boring’s party lay somewhere between five and fifteen, the neighbors betook themselves to the comforts of their own homes.

I assisted Greengages with collecting the soiled crockery and setting the room to rights, dragging the surviving chairs back to their proper positions.

“Tell Cook that the broiled minnows . . . er, tiddlers, were a great success,” I said. “As she will see for herself, they are entirely eaten.” The platters were stripped; even the watercress had been devoured.

“I will so inform her, Miss Althea,” Greengages said, and staggered off with the tea tray.

Relieved that it had not been necessary to sacrifice our own dinner, a rabbit snared by the groundskeeper, to the entertainment of our guests, I was able to look forward to a peaceful evening after a turbulent day. Therefore, putting my shoulder into the task, I wheeled my embroidery out into the center of the room; then, lighting a candle, I seated myself and began to work.

It is customary for young ladies to paint a fan or embroider a purse; these elegant arts show off wifely skills and a pair of dainty hands to good effect. While my stepsisters were generally involved in this sort of project, I was unable to waste my time on such pleasing trifles. Instead, I was mending the tapestries from the great hall; a monumental task, but a necessary one, as they helped to soften and absorb the icy winds that howled through the castle in January and February.

Besides, without them, the great hall of Crooked Castle bore more resemblance to one of His Majesty’s less attractive prisons than to the home of a family of an ancient and honorable name.

The current tapestry I was repairing was as large as the dimensions of the room in which I worked. In order to render it more manageable, it had been fan-folded and stacked in great piles on its own wheeled table. On pleasant days, with the aid of Greengages, the groundskeeper, and the kitchen boy, I had the whole conveyed out into the sunlight so that my stitchery would run true. On evenings like this I used a cheap tallow candle and hoped.

I was soon joined by my stepsisters and mother, who were chattering quite cheerfully together after the success of our impromptu entertainment. Prudence even complimented me on the refreshments in her patchy and inaccurate French.

“
Les très bons hors d’oeuvres, mon enfant
,” she said, edging her chair in front of my mother’s next to the fire, thereby casting Mama into cold and darkness. “A delightful, crisp texture!” she continued in English, baffled by the French for
crisp
and
texture
. “But I could not determine what, precisely, I was eating.”

“Thank you, Prudence,” I said, without enlightening her. Prudence cherished delicate sensibilities when it came to her diet, and undoubtedly the crisp texture was due to the fact that the little creatures were made up almost exclusively of skin and bones. One day I feared I should have to direct Cook to fry up some species of insect, as I am informed is done in some of the wild places of the world, in order to feed my family. Should that day ever arrive, I almost hoped Prudence would uncover my deception and fall into a swooning fit, but no—the ensuing screams would destroy any pleasure thus gained.

As we were not yet arrived at that extremity, we ate our simple repast (a ragoût of rabbit, each lady being further refreshed by a thimbleful of wine poured into a cup of water). My mother went up to kiss Alexander good-night and then we listened to Charity reading from
The Mysteries of Udolfo
(a most enthralling tale) whilst we sewed, with no further news or excitements save Miss Clara’s stable boy, sent to tell us by way of an addendum, that Lord Boring’s sister had now been confirmed to have accompanied her brother.

Exhausted by this further good fortune (for an amiable sister to such an eligible man is a great advantage to young ladies, who can call upon her from morning till night in hopes of catching sight of her brother), we retired to our chambers rejoicing.

3

LORD BORING AND HIS mother, the Honorable Mrs. John Westing, had but lately moved into the district. We had of course been acquainted with old Lord Boring, the present Lord Boring’s uncle, who, having suffered from ill health nearly all his life, he had excused himself from much visiting amongst the neighbors, so we had never been intimate. Our relationship was almost entirely limited to our asking, “How do you do, my lord?” and being told, “I am sorry to say that I do poorly, very poorly indeed.” After many years of this—my entire lifetime, in fact—he apparently did even more poorly than usual, and died.

The new young lord (known until his elevation to the peerage as Mr. Sidney Westing) had remained in Town upon succeeding to the title, sending his widowed mother ahead to put the property to rights and to make herself known to the district, with the assurance that he would follow her as soon as he completed his course of study at Oxford. We had called upon her and she had returned those calls, tho’ she’d seemed in no particular hurry to do so. Our position in the neighborhood and our ancient, if not noble, family name demanded both respect and courtesy, but apparently the smallness of my mother’s income meant that Mrs. Westing’s civility rose to a certain level and no further.