Castle Barebane by Joan Aiken
After a while, Val screwed up enough courage to creep to the edge and look over. The tide had reached the foot of the cliff; waves chopped and slapped at the rock, sending up great white plumes of spray. Farther out, in the moon-silvered sea, black fragments of the Dragonfly drifted and tossed. But of the two men who had fallen over the cliff, there was nothing to be seen. And whatever secrets they had shared must now remain locked between them till Judgment Day.
After a while Val crawled back up the slope to the castle. Using the last of her strength she dragged the black japanned box out of its hiding place. When she had pulled it as far as the slope it began moving of its own accord; it slid faster and faster until it reached the projection, balanced a moment, then somersaulted on, and followed its owner into the sea.
Chapter 18
Val walked down the snowy hillside to Ardnacarrig House. Not a light showed, not a soul was to be seen in meadow, orchard, or garden. Val tried the main door, but it was locked. However when she walked round to the terrace she found the French window broken, and she was able to get in that way.
The house was all dark and silent. A dread began to fill her. What terrors might it contain?
Grateful for the moonlight that lay in lozenges here and there across the bare floors, she picked her way through the wreckage to a little room off the kitchen passage where candles and lamps were kept. She found a small brass hand lamp which, by some miracle, had survived the general destruction and lit it. Then, somewhat braver for its moving pool of golden shadowy light, she went on into the devastated kitchen.
“Elspie?” Val called softly, and then, louder, “Elspie?”
The silent house listened and waited with her for an answer, but none came.
That was the moment when Val reached true despair. Lamp in hand, she wandered through the ravaged rooms: the library, where the shelves gaped empty and a huge heap of torn paper, crumbling calf, and vellum filled the middle of the room; the dining room, with its great table hacked and splintered, the chairs backless and legless; up the stairs, whose banister hung in a broken swag; through bedrooms with disembowelled beds where sheets and curtains lay ripped and trampled on the floor; through the Long Gallery, where the pictures were thrown down and panels hacked in a vain search for secret cupboards; what had Thrawn Jane thought about that?
“Elspie?” Val called, again and again. Sometimes she sank down in misery—on a step, on a window seat—but always she rose up and wandered on. The house reproached her in many voices: rooms where the children had played, chairs they had used as adjuncts for building houses, now smashed; floors that Val had rebelliously swept or polished under Elspie’s ironic eye, now covered with rubble and debris; objects the children had used as toys, now in fragments; here a glass from which David Ramsay had drunk whisky, there Elspie’s cherished chopping board, broken; pieces of furniture that Mungo had mended, smashed again; towels and curtains that Elspie had preserved by infinitely slow and patient darning, torn to shreds; valuables that Elspie had grimly defended from the children, now wrecked beyond repair.
What would the Carsphairn ladies think now, if they came back to Ardnacarrig?
And I brought all this trouble here, thought Val; if I had kept the children with me in London, all this mad violence would have been unloosed elsewhere.
But that was an unprofitable train of thought; and in any case, whatever she had done, Nils might still have fled to Ardnacarrig as a refuge, dragging crime and death behind him like a slug’s trail of slime.
“Elspie!” she called again, loudly, despairingly. If Elspie were not here, how could she, Val, ever bring herself to face Mungo again? A series of horrible images came into her mind: Elspie thrown down the well, hanging from some rafter in the barn, pinned to a door by a crossbow arrow. There were all the outhouses to be searched yet, and the farm buildings, and the moon was near setting. Val was filled with dread at the prospect of the long search, and yet she could not rest. Her own room, and that of the children, had suffered some of the worst damage, as being in evident occupation; she could not bear the sight of the children’s beds, ripped and smashed; wearily she wandered downstairs again.
Now she realised that, in fact, to this day, she did not know exactly where Elspie’s own bedroom lay. In the mornings, Elspie had always been up first, and at night, she generally retired after everyone else. But just occasionally, if Val had stayed up late writing, she remembered seeing Elspie departing for bed, candle in hand, in the direction of the stable wing.
Val made her way through the green baize door and along the silent stone passages. Beyond the dairy there was another heavy door, and beyond that, a flight of stone stairs. At the top of these, Val found a narrow, uncarpeted passage with a row of doors on either side. It was cold, bare, and dusty, suggesting stable boys and scullery maids, the lowest and least-regarded fry in the domestic hierarchy. Two or three of the doors stood open: Val looked in; the tiny damp rooms were empty, unfurnished, and smelt of dry rot. The moon shone on bare boards and crumbling plaster. Evidently the wreckers had looked into a room or two here and given up. And so they had missed Elspie’s room, for, at the end of the passage, Val found it: furnished with a bed, a chest, and a jug and basin.
And, kneeling against the bed, with her head on her arms, Elspie herself, fast asleep.
At first Val thought in terror that she was dead. But then she saw the thin chest move in a breath; and, laying her hand on Elspie’s shoulder, found it warm. The old woman was wearing a flannel nightgown, with a plaid thrown over her shoulders; her long hair hung down her back in a careful plait, glinting a little in the lamplight.
“Elspie!” Val said softly.
“Ay, what is it—what is it?”
As Elspie stirred, and woke, and struggled to rise, Val looked round the tiny, prim, icy room, thinking, There can’t be a smaller one in the whole house. Why did she choose to stay here, when she might have slept in any of the master bedrooms? Was it fear that the ladies might come back unexpectedly and catch her out of her place? Or inverted pride? But—at least her room has survived the wreckage.
“It’s only me—Val,” she said gently, and, taking Elspie’s arm, helped her up.
Elspie looked rather wildly around.
“Where’s Mungo? He’s no’ hurt? And Pieter?”
“No, no—don’t worry—they’ve gone in the boat to Wolf’s Hope to give the alarm. But I thought I’d come back—”
“Eh!” said Elspie, on a note of satisfaction. “For a moment ye had me frichted! But gin they’re at Wolf’s Hope they’ll be safe eneugh.”
She did not thank Val for returning. But there was a certain dry approval in her expression.
“At least,” said Val, “things seem quiet enough here? Everybody’s gone.”
“Ay. Ye’ll likely have heard from Mungo aboot the ones that went into the Kelpie’s Flow?”
“Yes. And Mungo cut the yacht loose; and she was wrecked on the point. And”—Val’s voice wavered as she thought of the horrible scene on the cliff—“my brother and Lord Clanreydon are both dead.”
“An’ that’s as weel,” said Elspie matter-of-factly, “for an iller pair o’ wanchancie scoondrels ne’er trod groond.” She did not inquire how they had died, and Val did not go into detail, nor pretend sorrow. Instead she said, “Elspie, I’m grieved to the heart about your house. I think of it as yours—you are the only one who has loved it and cared for it all these years. If I and the children hadn’t come here—”
But Elspie, as usual, was remarkably detached about it.
“Och, dinna greet about sic a trifle as that,” she said. “The good book says we maurna bow down tae idols o’ wood an’ stone. Forbye the hoose itself still stands—an’ whit’s a few bit tables and curtains? Gin Lady Stroma is sae fashed she dismeeses me, Mungo an’ I will marry an’ live in a wee croft.”
“It would be very unfair if La
“Ach, ye silly tawpie! Things arena that important. It’s wee Jannie ye should be greetin’ for, an’ Davie Ramsay, an’ my puir Kirstie that I dinna doot was hurried oot o’ her life wi’ carking an’ trouble. ‘Tis them ye should mourn.”
“I am; I do,” said Val, and fell silent. Elspie looked at her and said, “Would ye like tae sleep in here, the nicht? The lave o’ the hoose is no juist very comfortable the way things are at present. Tomorrow’s morn we’ll set to worrk an’ pit a’ to richts.”
“Yes, I’d like to sleep here,” said Val, “if you don’t mind having me.”
“There’s a few bit covers i’ the awmry. I’ll spraid mysel’ a pallet on the floor; I’ve sleepit there mony an’ mony a time when I was a lassie.”
But Val would not hear of this, and insisted on Elspie getting into bed while she made herself up a bed on the boards. And there she slept, not too well, for she was assailed by strange fierce dreams and terrors, while beside her Elspie lay motionless and lightly breathing, in a slumber as untroubled as that of a child.
Next morning Val felt stiff, aching, racked with tiredness, and with the painful throat and difficulty in swallowing that were probably precursive warnings of a heavy cold. Small wonder, she thought, after riding through the sea, rowing in the bitter night, walking in the snow, all in the same soaking wet clothes. But her feeling of ill-health was the least of her troubles; the day seemed wretched in every way. Inspected by daylight, the devastation of the house filled her with wild rage and grief; while the deaths of David and Jannie ached intolerably in her heart. The thought of Pieter, too, troubled her deeply; how was he going to bear the loss of his sister?
“Ach, he’ll just have to,” said Elspie, raking ashes and lighting the range. “Childer bear trouble easier than grown folk, whiles; they’re easier distractit. An’ syne he’ll gae to school, an’ a’ the things he learns will put wee Jannie oot o’ his mind.”
Val supposed this to be true. Pieter, like the rest of them, would have to find some way of meeting his loss. And the next thing to do was always the best—as Elspie was demonstrating. Val took a broom and swept the spilt meal and broken pottery out into the yard; presently they had some porridge made, and were eating it in an almost cheerful atmosphere of improvisation. At last Val felt herself on equal terms with Elspie; their concerns, plans, and satisfactions were the same; they both rejoiced equally over a whole barrel of oatmeal found unbroken behind a door, and the discovery that none of the poultry had been taken by a fox despite the fact that they had been turned out of their hen run; the cattle were unharmed, also. But it was unfortunate that they had no cash, for Elspie had lent her last ten pounds to Nils, who had taken it over the cliff with him.
“I’ll write to Sir Marcus,” Val was saying. “He promised he’d take some of my articles and I’m sure he’ll pay up promptly when he hears what’s happened—” when there came a loud trampling of horses in the yard.
Elspie paled.
“It’s no’ those hellicats comin’ back?” she gasped.
“No, it’s a carriage—drawn by four horses—who can it possibly be?”
Val’s heart leaped—then sank again. For who, of all people, should step out of the carriage, looking about him with an air of puzzled gloom at his extraordinary surroundings, but Benet Allerton; and he then turned to help a lady descend: Mrs. Allerton.
“Oh, no!” muttered Val.
“Dod save us, it’s a leddy!” exclaimed Elspie with equal dismay. “Was there e’er a like time for sic a one tae come calling!”
She turned and surveyed her ravaged kitchen. “Aweel, the fire’s lit, but that’s a’ ye can say. I doot if we’ve sae much as a dram o’ whisky or a hale tea cake ben the hoose.”
Two more ladies stepped out of the carriage—Delia, and Charlotte Warren, who both looked wonderingly around and then proceeded to pick their way across the courtyard through the snow.
“Losh, losh,” grumbled Elspie, making for the door, “of a’ the times folk choose tae come steeking their nebs in, yon’s the waurst.”
But Val was still watching the carriage and now observed a tall, thin, well-wrapped form walk round from the far side: Sir Marcus, who stood talking to Benet for a moment and then strolled with him across the yard in the rear of the ladies.
“Oh, the wretch!” thought Val. “How could he? How could he bring them, without giving me warning? Oh, what a monster!” But nonetheless, at sight of him, her heart had bounded up so high that, just for a moment, she forgot her many troubles, and how far from well she felt.
She started to walk across the kitchen, and heard Elspie saying, as dourly as only Elspie could, “I’m afeered it’s no’ juist very convenient tae receive callers at praisent—we’re in a wee bit o’ a clamjamfry. Hech, Sir Marcus, is that you?”
Val walked out into the yard and said composedly, “Benet; how do you do? Mrs. Allerton—Delia—Miss Warren—how pleasant to see you. But, I’m afraid, as Elspie says, we are in a pickle here, not really in a position to offer you hospitality. However—come in and see for yourselves.”
It was worth it, she thought, it would almost have been worth all the agony—no, no, not the deaths of Davie and Jannie, never that—to see the faces of the Allerton ladies as they gazed in utter stupefaction and horror about the havoc in the dining room and library. Val went on politely, “Of course the house is not always like this—as Sir Marcus will corroborate. But we had—burglars—yesterday, and they left the place as you see.”
“My dear Valla—burglars?” Benet said in his most weighty legal manner. “Are you joking? It looks as if a tribe of Goths or Vandals had been through the house. Is this the result of some Scottish—ah—feud? Was anybody injured?”
“No, I’m not joking.” Val felt suddenly very weary. “And, yes, several people were injured. Killed, in fact.” She looked up at Sir Marcus, who was standing beside her, his eyes fixed very intently on her face. “David Ramsay was killed,” she said in a low voice, “and—and Jannie. It was Lord Clanreydon who came here. In pursuit of my brother, over the Bermondsey murder articles, you know. And Clanreydon told his men to wreck the house.” The alert, lined face of Sir Marcus expressed perfect comprehension, but Benet exclaimed, “You mean Lord Clanreydon the politician? You must be mistaken! What extraordinary cock-and-bull tale is this? I can understand your brother being involved in such scandalous goings on—he did strike me as an adventurer, I am sorry to say—but Clanreydon! Why, I’ve met the man. In London, at the Inns of Court! Why, it’s too ridiculous!”
“Yes, it’s too ridiculous,” said Val, and fainted, feeling very much ashamed of herself as the floor came up to hit her.
When she recovered, she found herself in the library, lying on a sofa which moulted flock and horsehair. The Allerton ladies were clucking over her solicitously and very ineffectually. “We must get her out of here instantly,” she heard Mrs. Allerton say.
Val propped herself on one elbow and croaked out a request for Elspie.
“Here I am, my doo; I ran an’ borrowed a dram for ye from Mysie Kelso; an’ no harm conseedering a’ they’ve had from the Hoose; no’ but what it’s as weel they were a’ sick wi’ the influeenza an’ nane o’ them around when thon villains were here. Let that slip down yer throat, noo, my dearie, an’ lie back easy.”
The dram helped her throat considerably. It was plain that while Val had been unconscious a certain amount of explanation had taken place between Elspie and the men. Val heard, vaguely, from a distance, discussions between Benet and Sir Marcus as to the proper legal steps to be taken, the need for informing Lady Stroma, and the doubtful possibility of redress. Val closed her eyes. She was not interested.
Benet, seizing a chance when the others were
“My dear Valla. I deeply regret that you have suffered from these unfortunate alarms. But I hope it will have been a demonstration to you of the unwisdom of your course. I need hardly say that if you had remained in New York, none of this would have happened.”
“No, it wouldn’t would it,” agreed Val, shutting her eyes again. “And I should never have seen Ardnacarrig, or met Elspie and Mungo and the Ramsays. Have you been to see David Ramsay’s body, Benet? It’s out in the grange, on a trestle. Elspie and I brought it up from the beach.”
“My dear Valla, death is hardly a subject for levity.”
“No levity was intended,” she said coldly. “Elspie would take your visit as a mark of respect.”
“To return to my main theme,” he went on, ignoring this, “I hope you now see the advisability of returning to New York without delay. My mother and Delia and Charlotte (who has come with us for her health) will be glad to give you their escort; we can wait another week, by which time you should be sufficiently recovered to travel. Once you are away from here it will be easier to put all this behind you; you can forget these people.”
“Never in my life,” she said. “Which I owe to them—among other things.”
“You are still upset, I am aware,” he pronounced. “Believe me, you owe these people nothing. What have they ever done for you?”
She stared at him.
“Mungo saved me from that man’s ship! He rowed out in the middle of the night—risking being shot—and got me out of the cabin where I had been locked in—”
“What?”
Benet’s composure totally left him. Evidently this part of the tale was new to him.
Val explained.