Castle Barebane

by Joan Aiken

  “Come, children,” said Val, “each bring a bundle, and let’s go in.”

  They had just crossed the cobbled yard and reached the door when it was flung open and a tall thin woman stood outlined against a dim interior light.

  “Is that you, Jockie Kelso?” she called. “What for did ye no’ come to the front?”

  “And carry a’ the stores richt round aboot wi’ my lame leg? I’m no sic a fule,” Jock called back.

  “Good evening,” said Val, rather affronted at being ignored. “Are you Elspeth Cross? I am Miss Montgomery, the children’s aunt—I hope Lady Stroma wrote you about me; and this is Pieter and this is Jannie.”

  “Ou, ay, she wrote,” said Elspie with a marked lack of enthusiasm. “Jock! Mind yerself, wi’ yon barrel! Did ye bring the calico? And the cheesecloth? And the pickling salt and the tea? There’s barely a pinch left i’ the kist.”

  “Weary on ye, Elspie! Leave your havering and take the yoong leddy and the bairns in ben. Ay I brought the calico and the salt and a’ the ither things—ne’er fash yourself.”

  But Elspie, taking no further notice of Val and the children, hurried over to satisfy herself that all the things ordered had indeed been brought.

  Not best pleased at this reception, Val decided to wait no longer in the cold.

  “Come along, children,” she said. “We might as well go in where it’s warm,” and she led the way through the door and along a stone-flagged passage, which presently opened into a big kitchen. Here it was warm enough; a new iron kitchen range had been installed in the wide old chimney place, and fire glowed redly between the bars above a massive steel fender. The kitchen, like the passage, was floored with big slabs of blue slate and a huge table, scrubbed to immaculate whiteness, stood in the middle of the room. Against the walls were dressers, laden with crockery and china; hams and flitches and bunches of herbs and bundles of tallow candles hung from the ceiling. Big copper-bound tubs for washing stood upside down on a broad shelf near the door.

  Seeing this comfortable orderliness, Val felt cheered.

  “Look,” she said to the children, “there’s two little three-legged stools just right for you by the fire. Sit and warm yourselves.”

  They did so, looking round wonderingly; it was plain they had never been in such a place.

  But at this moment Elspie erupted back into the room in a towering rage.

  “The deil’s in it wi’ the weans!” she cried furiously at Val. “What gar’d ye let them tear the salt bag, an’ half the salt rinning oot abune the stanes—and salt the terrible price it is—”

  She snatched up a brush and pan and was gone again.

  Val groaned inwardly. She guessed at once who the culprit was. Jannie, in between spells of openly frenetic activity, had also a truly demonic propensity for wreaking havoc while apparently sitting quietly unoccupied, vacant, and dreamy. This had already been discovered at Lady Stroma’s house where, while no one was paying attention to her, she had cut about a hundred finger-sized holes with her great-aunt’s embroidering scissors in a pair of brocade curtains that were waiting to be darned; and at Robina Gourlay’s house, where she had spent a quiet and blissful hour mixing oatmeal and raisins in a pailful of soot, the chimney just having been swept. Jannie’s tiny fingers seemed as strong as skeleton keys and her capacity for making unlikely and disastrous juxtapositions was unbounded. Val could have sworn that she had kept Jannie under close supervision during the whole journey; but there must have been a time when she was sleeping, at the start, when the child had woken and managed to prise her way through the tough sacking of the salt bag. No wonder she was so thirsty all day, Val thought, with a chuckle, as she walked out, to make amends by helping Elspie clear up.

  Her assistance was received ungraciously, but she managed to make herself useful carrying the more portable of the stores into the house, and although Jock protested that it was “nae job for a young leddy” the work went on so much faster with her participation that in five minutes all the bundles were out of the carriage.

  “Aweel, I’ll have the cattle sorted and say good nicht to ye,” said Jock briefly and led the horses off into the darkness.

  “Does Jock not live here?” Val asked, reentering the kitchen.

  Elspie was inspecting a dustpan full of dirty salt from the courtyard, muttering and shaking her head over it, casting angry looks at the children. She was a handsome woman, Val now had time to see: not the bowed and ancient crone that the title of Kirstie’s old nurse had called up, but tall, straight, and active in all her movements, though she must be approaching her seventies. Her hair, which must once have been a bright straw-gold, still kept some of its former colour, now tarnished like the salt-bitten beech leaves, and partly hidden under a black mutch. She wore pattens, a black stuff dress under a striped apron, and a tartan screen pinned across her bosom with a large brooch containing a lock of hair. Her eyes were a blue that was faded but still clear and bright; her features, impressive and strong, might have been carved from oak, and forcibly reminded Val of somebody, some person that she had seen in the recent past—where could it have been? On the ship? In London? A portrait in the Edinburgh art gallery? Elspie’s mouth was well-shaped, if puckered; her lips were set in a firm line; the skin of her face was wrinkled and weathered, and a sprinkle of short gold hairs glinted on her jaw, but she must once have possessed a beautiful pink-and-white complexion, and her hands, though roughened with work, were slender and long-fingered. She must have been a beauty when young.

  If only she will take a liking to the children, Val thought. But the omens were not good.

  “Jock? Nay, he’s awa’ to the lodge,” Elspie said shortly in answer to Val’s question, and then she suddenly turned with ferocity on Pieter and Jannie.

  “Do ye not know better, ye thrawn, ill-deedy bairns, than to be dabbling your fingers and playing with good victuals, that cost dear, too? Have ye no’ been learned better than that, nor chidden for sic ill-doings?” and before Val had realised what she intended, she had dealt each child a stinging box on the ear. Pieter went white with shock, his mouth fell open; Jannie burst into piercing wails.

  “Let that be a lesson to ye that I’ll no’ have yon ways here!” said Elspie.

  “How dare you!” exclaimed Val, springing forward furiously, and at the same moment little Pieter, with his eyes blazing in his white face, put both arms protectively round Jannie and shouted, “You mustn’t ever, ever hit Jannie on the head! Don’t you know that? When I tell Mama what you did she’ll—she’ll be so angry that she’ll want to kill you!”

  “Huts, tuts, what a cafuffle,” said Elspie shortly. “I’ll keep order in my ain kitchen. If ye need a skelp, a skelp ye’ll get. Aiblins, ye’d best be off to your rooms, or I’ll ne’er get the dinner on the table.”

  “Show us where, then,” said Val, biting back angry words. She had no wish to prolong the scene, or needlessly antagonise Elspie who, after all, was going to be in sole charge of the children here. But she intended to have it out with her later.

  Elspie picked up a lamp and led the way out of a different door from the one by which they had entered. They passed first along a drugget-lined passage, then through a huge cold dining room, with a table that could have seated thirty people, and blackened gold-framed portraits round its dusky walls; then into a large square stone-flagged hall with massive double doors at one end which obviously formed the main entrance. Its walls were wainscoted and adorned with antlers, crossed battle-axes, and pikes, which gleamed rustily in the soft golden light of the lamp.

  A wide shallow flight of stairs, beginning opposite the double doors, climbed round three sides of the hall, ending at an almost equally large landing on the floor above. From this, passages led off in all directions. The house was much larger than Val had guessed from her brief view of its rear regions. Elspie led them some way along a passage, then opened two adjacent doo
rs.

  “Ye’ll be in here, Mistress Montgomery, and the bairns alongside.”

  The rooms she displayed were both very large and square, with sagging floors. The box beds and old dark wooden presses they contained seemed dwarfed in the dim, freezing space.

  The room assigned to Val had windows on two of its sides. In the corner between them, two steps led up to a door.

  “Yon’s the water closet,” Elspie said curtly. “The auld laird had it pit in. Noo I’ll leave ye. And I’ll be setting the meal on the table directly, so dinna loiter.” She set down the lamp she had brought on a chest and went out, finding her way in the dark with the confidence of many years’ practice.

  “A water closet!” said Val. “Fancy! Aren’t we lucky. I didn’t think there would be such a thing.” She opened the door and discovered that this convenience had been converted from what was plainly a round turret; two arrow slits, unglazed, let in air and made the turret even colder than the bedrooms. The seat and fittings were handsomely made of porcelain and brass, and the whole was boxed in with mahogany. Through the window slits the wind keened dismally. “There you are, Jannie! I daresay you’d better use it at once.”

  But Jannie was wet, as usual, and shiveringly endured having her clothes changed. Val resolved that she would have fires in the bedrooms if it meant going out and chopping the wood herself; this part of the house felt as if it had not been heated for the past twenty years. An icy damp seemed to eat into one’s bones.

  “Aunt Valla,” said Pieter nervously.

  “Yes, Pieter?”

  “Is that old woman the one who was Mama’s nurse?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she always as cross as that? Is she as cross as Mrs. Pipkin?”

  “I hope not, Pieter. I expect she’s just tired and hasty-tempered tonight. I’ll tell her that she mustn’t hit Jannie. Don’t worry.”

  He looked sceptical about the efficacy of Val’s intervention, and said, “It’s us that are tired; she hasn’t been traveling all day in the coach.”

  “No but she’s been busy making our beds and getting dinner ready.”

  “I wonder if she was cross to Mama?”

  Jannie, whose reactions were never predictable, seemed taken by the size of the large icy rooms, which had a connecting door. She was dancing, skipping, whirling to and fro between the rooms like a dragonfly, with her long flaxen hair streaming behind her and her plaid alpaca dress ballooning out over her long drawers, chanting, “Dilly-dilly, dilly-dilly,” in a little piping voice, shrill as a gnat; the look on her face was so intent, abstracted, almost fey, that it gave Val a strange queer chill to watch her.

  “Come, Jannie,” she said. “We’ll go down to supper.”

  Jannie took no notice.

  “You say it wrong,” Pieter informed Val.

  “How do you mean?”

  “If you want her to mind you, you have to say it like this—Jannee!”

  Jannie turned and came skipping towards him, trailing her sash behind her.

  “Jan-nee!” Val repeated on the same high note.

  Jannie gave her a wide, impish grin, then twirled round and skipped away. It was like trying to come to terms with a hummingbird or a butterfly; the contact lasted only a second, if that, then was lost again. At least she did notice me then, Val thought; that’s a tiny step, but a step.

  Pieter took his sister’s hand, Val picked up the lamp, and they carefully found their way back to the landing and down the stairs.

  Returning toward the kitchen, Val was dismayed to see that three places had been laid at one end of the table in the huge, freezing dining room. It would be like picnicking on the verge of a frozen lake.

  She walked on into the kitchen.

  “We’d rather eat in here, Elspie. It’s much warmer—that dining room is too cold for the children. Anyway it’ll save you carrying dishes through. We don’t want to give you unnecessary work.”

  “Eat in the kitchen?” Elspie was scandalized. She drew herself up like a grenadier. “That would no’ be richt, Mistress Montgomery.”

  “Nonsense,” Val said. “It’s only the children and me—we needn’t stand on ceremony.”

  “It ill becomes me to speak,” Elspie said grimly, “but I dinna like tae think what her leddyship would say.”

  “She’d say it was a very sensible notion,” said Val firmly. “She’s probably sitting on the sand in the desert somewhere at this minute, chewing mutton bones in her fingers with some emir.”

  Elspie gave a sudden crack of laughter. “Verra like! Eh, well, gang yer ain gait—I can see you’re neither to hauld nor to bind.” And she stood with hands on hips, watching with a sardonic expression, as Val, without more ado, carried the plates and dishes from the dining room to the kitchen table.

  Jannie had resumed her airy dancing round the spacious kitchen.

  “My sartie,” said Elspie, watching. “She does have a look of her mither, whiles. She was a bonnie wee lassie, was Mistress Kirstie. And when will herself be coming home to Ardnacarrig?”

  “Soon, we trust,” said Val, lifting Jannie into a chair. “Pieter and Jannie are hoping that you can tell them lots of stories about their mother when she was little, aren’t you, Pieter? Won’t you sit down with us, Elspie? You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

  “Na, na, that wouldna be richt,” said Elspie obstinately.

  “Oh, what nonsense. Anyway, you must remember that I come from America, where everybody is equal.”

  By a slow process of alternate bullying and cajoling, Val finally got Elspie sitting down with them and sharing the meal she had provided: soup, containing both meat and vegetables, herrings fried in oatmeal, and cranberry tart.

  “You’re a marvellous cook, Elspie; what do you call that soup?”

  “Och, it’s just the Hotchpotch; it’s no’ very special.”

  “I hope you’ll give me the receipt. Wasn’t it good, Pieter?”

  By working hard at it, Val hoped to promote better relations between Elspie and the children. After the meal they all helped her clear away, Pieter proving quite handy.

  “Ay, ay, it’ll no’ harm the weans to learn the ways o’ the hoose,” Elspie conceded. “I canna bide an idle bairn. An’ dear knaws I have little help here.”

  “What help do you have?” Val could hardly believe there was just the one old woman in this huge place. But this, it seemed, was the case.

  “Och, weel, there’s Mysie, Jock’s wife, up at the lodge. She lends a hand, whiles, at the spring cleaning. But she’s only a poor skaterumple.”

  When the dishes were done Val said, “It’s time the children were in bed, they’ve had a long day. Elspie, can you tell me where I can find kindling and coal? Pieter and Jannie come from the south, they aren’t used to this cold. I want to light a fire in their bedroom, or they’ll be coming down with congestion of the lungs.”

  Elspie’s face expressed strong disapproval.

  “Ye shouldna be soft with bairns! Else they’ll be aye greeting and wailing for thon or the other thing and a’ spoiled to death.”

  “A fire isn’t spoiling them,” said Val with the utmost firmness.

  After much argument she had her way. Peat fires were lit in both rooms, and the icy chill of twenty years began slowly to thaw. The children each had a hot brick to warm their beds and were wrapped in shawls.

  “Now I’ll leave the lamp on the chest,” said Val, “but you must go to sleep. I don’t want to hear a sound from you.”

  She passed through the communicating door into her own room. She was dead tired and longed for her own bed, but she intended to speak to Elspie first. Nerving herself for this, reluctant to move from the tiny glow of her own fire, she stood wearily smoothing her hair, and heard the children’s voices, faint, like swallows twittering under the eaves.

  First an
indistinguishable murmur from Jannie.

  Then Pieter: “She’s called Elspie. Elspie Cross. I’m afraid she may be another horrible one. Like Mrs. Pipkin. But don’t worry, Jannie. I’ll try to look after you.”

  He did not sound very confident about it though.

  Another murmur came from Jannie.

  “Aunt Valla? I don’t think she’s wicked. But she doesn’t love us.”

  Jannie’s murmur again.

  “Perhaps Aunt Valla’s a witch,” Pieter said. “Witches can be partly good.”

  Jannie appeared to ask a question.

  “I don’t know when Mama will come,” Pieter said. His voice shook—with strain, with sadness.

  “Go to sleep, children!” Val called.

  Dead silence followed.

  She went downstairs and found Elspie sitting by the kitchen grate, mending a pile of aged towels and tablecloths; they were of the very finest woven damask but in so tattered and frail a state that every prick of the needle seemed likely to start a new rent.

  “Mercy!” Val exclaimed. “Are they worth the work?”

  “They are until her leddyship thinks gude to purchase some new for the hoose,” replied Elspie with her sardonic smile.

  Val was puzzled. Could the Carsphairn ladies be really pressed for cash? She had vaguely understood that they commanded an immense fortune which would come to Kirstie when they died; but this house hardly suggested wealth; on the contrary; all around were evidences of neglect or parsimony: upholstery brittle with age, torn curtains, cracked panelling, peeling paint, dilapidated hangings and worn flooring. Val, however, felt a certain delicacy about asking Elspie about the state of Lady Stroma’s finances.

  She did say, “Are you not afraid to be here alone at night, Elspie? It seems such a big place for one caretaker. Are there not valuable things here?”

  Elspie sniffed her short laugh. “Ou, ay. There are pictures and stuff. But a’ the folk round aboot know it’s falling to bits. Castle Barebane, they call it. Forbye, what there is, her leddyship knows is safe enough. Naebody wad come pilfering here. They’re unco’ frightened o’ Thrawn Jane.”