Castle Barebane

by Joan Aiken

  She turned and beckoned them back towards the house.

  “Why shouldn’t we go that way?” Pieter wanted to know at once.

  “Because o’ the Kelpie’s Flow!”

  “And what,” said Val peevishly, striding beside Elspie and carrying Jannie who, frustrated in her wish to examine the sheep at close quarters, had burst into dismal wails, “what in heaven’s name is the Kelpie’s Flow? Anything to do with Thrawn Jane? Another piece of local lore?”

  “No it inna,” retorted Elspie sharply. “And your joking is misplaced, Mistress Montgomery. The Kelpie’s Flow is a terrible deep quicksand that has sucked down gude kens how many souls in its time. A whole patrol of dragoons went down into it in the fog in 1745.”

  “Well,” Val said reasonably, “that’s over a hundred and forty years ago—perhaps legend has exaggerated—” but she stopped, silenced by Elspie’s look.

  “Ne’er gae beyond that white mark on the rock face yonder,” Elspie told the children, pointing back. “Ye can walk the other way, toward the burn, there’s naught to fear there. But now, i’mercy’s name, come your ways in ben to your porridge which is getting cauld; I’ve a hundred things to do wi’out chasing ower half the strand after a wheen daft young ones.”

  Val felt affronted at being included in this category and was not appeased by breakfast, which offered its expected aggravations: Jannie did not fancy her porridge, and Pieter asked more questions than Elspie could tolerate. The porridge came in a bowl for each person with a bowl of milk alongside for dipping the spoonfuls into singly. The children found this very odd, and outraged Elspie by asking for sugar.

  A welcome interruption came with the arrival of Jock Kelso’s Annot, but the first sight of the girl extinguished Val’s hope of finding a useful lieutenant to Elspie in her. Kindly and cheerful Annot might be, but intelligent, no: she was a stocky, red-faced, tow-headed lass with pale-blue eyes and hardly two words to say for herself; she giggled a great deal and amply justified Elspie’s description of her as a silly flisk-ma-hoy. However she gave the children a broad grin and they went with her willingly enough to “see the kye” while Val carried out her promise to Elspie and washed Jannie’s soaked clothes in a bleak but serviceable laundry room where hot water was produced in a copper over a driftwood fire. After hanging the things out to dry—smiling a touch wrily at finding herself, after all her fight for emancipation, thus reduced to a traditional role—Val felt that she was entitled to some time off, and proceeded to explore the house. It was built, she discovered, in the form of a quadrangle, two sides of which were stables and sheds.

  Beyond the dining room they had seen last night lay an equally large drawing room with a great open fireplace, more dark-brown panelling, and a great quantity of stuffed fish, otters, and wildcats in glass cases, the latter with ferocious snarls on their faces as if they longed to get at the fish.

  Lady Stroma shows sense in preferring Constantinople, thought Val. If this place belonged to me I’d sell it or pull it down. But I suppose she isn’t allowed to do that, according to the terms of some entail.

  A door led from the drawing room into a library lined from floor to ceiling with mildewed calf and vellum. Mainly sermons. Someone, some previous Carsphairn, had had a decided taste for collecting sermons. Suppose at a rough guess the library contained five thousand volumes and each volume held thirty sermons . . . Val gave up the unprofitable calculation and went on, through another door, up a spiral stone stair which led to a long gallery. This, presumably the terrain of Thrawn Jane, was full of aged cracked and peeling pictures in dingy gold frames, most of them family portraits, Val guessed. No doubt the sermon-collecting ancestor was here; everybody was here. Over and over, in canvas after canvas, Val saw Lady Stroma’s proud arched nose, her glacial eye, her thin patrician neck, her nervous taper fingers: here they grasped a sword hilt or a fowling piece, there they clasped a judicial-looking scroll, half concealed by lace ruffles. And there, too, were the gentler features of Lady Honoria, ringleted, or incongruously bewigged or crowned with a tartan bonnet. Here too—Val realised with a sudden shock of discovery—were Elspie’s features. What a fool she had been! It was plain as a pikestaff that Elspie must be related—no wonder her face had seemed so familiar.

  “Eh, so this is where ye’ve got to!” Elspie herself stood in the doorway, confirming Val’s hypothesis to the full. “Doctor Ramsay’s here and wishful to meet ye.”

  “Doctor Ramsay? That’s wonderfully quick—I was afraid he might not come for days and days. Are the children still out with Annot?”

  “Ay, but they’ll be inbye afore long; you can have your collogue wi’ the doctor while they’re walking, why not?”

  “I want him to examine Jannie but I can certainly do some explaining before they come back.”

  Dr. Ramsay was waiting in the chill, gloomy drawing room. Elspie evidently had fixed rules as to hospitality; she had provided a dish of oatcakes, two crystal glasses, and decanters of whisky and madeira. Val disliked whisky and the madeira looked old and full of sediment. She declined a drink, but the doctor helped himself to a dram of whisky.

  Dr. Ramsay’s appearance was a decided disappointment to Val. She did not know quite what she had expected; only that he was not it. A younger version of Sir Marcus, perhaps. But of course there was no relationship; Sir Marcus was his godfather.

  He was a very odd-looking young man, slight, thin, and dapper, with pale ginger-coloured eyes, very quick and bright, rather long light-brown hair, a turned-up nose like a duck’s bill, and a big mobile mouth. He also had a large disfiguring birthmark on one side of his forehead, but this did not appear to trouble him; his manner was not in the least self-conscious.

  “Yes, you look exactly the way old Marcus described you,” he said, regarding Val over the rim of his whisky glass.

  “Oh?” Val rejoined in a quelling tone. She was dying of curiosity to hear what Sir Marcus had said, but didn’t intend to demean herself by inquiring.

  “A beautiful Nordic snowqueen, also an arrogant, overbearing puss.”

  “Oh!” She was outraged. “Arrogant? How dare he?”

  “None of my affair,” Dr. Ramsay said, briskly drinking his whisky. “Don’t know so can’t judge. Anyway, so long as you don’t try to domineer over me, I’ve no objections; I don’t dislike strong-minded women if they are intelligent with it; rather the contrary. Can’t abide the silly ones.”

  While Val was absorbing this broadside and trying to decide what line to take, he went on, with a complete change of manner, to serious kind attention.

  “Come, then, what’s your worry? Cousin Marcus said you’re anxious about your niece, Kirstie’s younger child is it? How old is she?”

  “About three.” Relieved to get away from personalities, Val went carefully over her observations about Jannie’s many oddnesses—her inattention, self-absorption, backwardness, flashes of fury and panic.

  “Yes. I see. I’ll have to look at her. They’re outside with Annot? Why don’t we walk out and find them?”

  Val flung on a pelisse and they walked out on to the terrace. At the side of the house they found Elspie coming from the garden with a large basket of greens and potatoes.

  “The bairns?” she said. “They’re awa’ up tae the Wolf’s Crag wi’ Annot; I didna ken she had it in mind to take them sea far or I’d ha’ called her back.” And she pointed up the steep slope towards the ruin, where three tiny figures could be seen.

  “Never mind,” Dr. Ramsay said. “I’ve no other patients this morning. We’ll go after them.”

  “Isn’t it rather dangerous up there so near the cliff’s edge?” Val said.

  “Och, no. Annot’s got enough gumption to keep them away from the edge.”

  Considering how fussed Elspie had been about the quicksand, Val thought she seemed remarkably placid about the perils of the ruined tower and the possibility of
falling three hundred feet over the cliff. But Dr. Ramsay took an equally tranquil view.

  “Annot will fill their heads with bugaboos but she won’t let them break their necks.”

  He set off along a path which led back through the trees on the landward side of the house but soon turned parallel with the beach and began to climb, following the course of a tiny ravine with a little brook that dashed its way from one miniature fall to another. The air was piercingly cold, the ground hard and crisp with frost, but a pale sun had come out.

  “Do you know everybody in these parts?” Val asked, following him.

  “Indeed I do!” He turned his head. “I was born at Ravenswood, that’s about forty miles inland from here, and my father came to be minister here—at Wolf’s Hope—when I was five. Of course later I went off to school and university but my parents lived here until my father died three years ago—my mother still does—so I have always come back, when I had any free time.”

  “Where did you go to university?” she asked, wondering if by any chance he had been one of Nils’ fellow students, but he replied, “Cambridge. And then I studied medicine in Vienna.”

  She was impressed.

  “You must find it rather dull here after that?”

  “Och, well, people fall sick the same way everywhere. I believe cousin Marcus told you about my mother?”

  She nodded and said with gruff, shy constraint, “I’m very sorry. It must be dreadful for you.”

  “Why—thank you.” He glanced at her in slight surprise.

  “I’d like to come and see her if I might?”

  “She’d enjoy that,” he said with another sceptical glance, as if he did not expect to find a propensity for sick-visiting in Val. She said honestly, “Sir Marcus told me that your mother is a wonderful person. And I have a message to her from him.”

  “Ah, I see.” After a moment Dr. Ramsay added, “He wanted to marry her, when they were young.”

  Val did not know why this piece of information came as a slight shock to her.

  She said, to cover up her dismay, “I suppose somebody wouldn’t allow it—like Thrawn Jane’s father? Scotland seems to be full of frustrated lovers and examples of parental tyranny.”

  “On the contrary. My mother’s story wasn’t a bit like that,” he corrected her. “My mother just happened to prefer my father—difficult and tiresome though he was in almost every way. But she was very fond of old Marcus too; I daresay if polyandry were allowed in Scotland she’d have been happy to marry them both. Though of course my father wouldn’t have allowed that. He was a very conventional minister.”

  “What an extraordinary thing to say about your own mother!”

  “Why? It’s true. I’d not have expected you to stickle at a bit of plain speaking, Miss Montgomery? Marcus said you were a very emancipated young lady.”

  Sir Marcus seemed to have equipped her with a most disagreeable character, Val thought. It was really unfair, considering how warmly she felt toward him. She remained silent. After a moment, Dr. Ramsay remarked, “Why do you say that Scottish parents are tyrants? I won’t deny there’s a grain of truth in the assumption, but what evidence do you go on?”

  “Very little, really, I suppose. I was thinking of young Lochinvar. And Kirstie and my brother. And Thrawn Jane, of course.”

  “You haven’t heard Elspie’s story?”

  “No—what about her?”

  “I expect you had better know it if you are going to be living here. And she wouldn’t tell you. She was a by-blow of the auld laird, the late marquis of Stroma.”

  “Lady Stroma’s father, do you mean?”

  “Yes, he fathered quite a number of local children by all accounts. So when Elspie’s mother died of a fever—her husband, a fisherman, had been drowned a couple of years before—Elspie, aged five, was adopted into the Big House and brought up there.”

  “With the legitimate children?” This accounted, then, for Elspie’s air of breeding and the fact that her speech was less broad than that of the Kelsos.

  “Well, yes and no; she didn’t get sent away to school when the girls went off to Perth. But she’ll have shared their occupations up to a point. Scotland is a very democratic country, Miss Montgomery,” he said drily.

  “Well, so far the story seems humane and liberal enough. Where’s the tyranny?”

  “The old laird died when Elspie was still quite young. He was full of years and drink but he had left a will and strict dispositions about his estate. There were three Carsphairn sisters, you know—the legitimate daughters—Louisa, Honoria, and Barbara—who was Kirstie’s mother. Barbara was the only pretty one, she married early and luckily and died young, in India. The two elder sisters were very plain, and they hated men, it seems; they never married. Whether they hated the male sex because they didn’t have any suitors, or vice versa, who can tell?”

  “And Elspie?”

  “Elspie, who was younger, had a suitor, but the family wouldn’t let her marry him. He was a fisherman called Mungo Bucklaw, who lived in Wolf’s Hope. Louisa and Honoria told Elspie that she’d been fed and housed all those years on the strict understanding that she was to become housekeeper at Ardnacarrig and remain unmarried.”

  “But—!”

  He raised a hand.

  “Elspie, being a girl of sense and spirit, said what was to stop her marrying Mungo and being housekeeper as well? But no, that wouldn’t do, they said it would be sullying the Carsphairn blood and a shocking misalliance.”

  “But—!”

  “In the meantime, Mungo had got tired of waiting. Some say he had a letter, allegedly in Elspie’s writing, saying that it was all off. Perhaps it even was in her writing. Who knows what pressure was put on her? Anyway he went off to sea in a merchant ship and that’s the last that was ever heard of him.”

  No, it isn’t the last, thought Val, but she kept this thought to herself. A dreadful pang clove her heart at the thought of the thin old man standing on the black Edinburgh street sending his message to Elspie in the dark of the winter morning. How curtly, how briskly I took the paper. And then I almost forgot to give it to Elspie.

  But then she thought: for all I know Mungo has been married three times in the course of the last forty years. Why only now does he send his message? Perhaps his third wife just died and he’s looking for a comfortable billet to end his days.

  After a minute she said, “What a frightful story. I thought Lady Stroma seemed a very overbearing sort of character.”

  “Oh, you have met her?”

  “I wonder Elspie stays on at Ardnacarrig. I don’t suppose they pay her much.”

  “Family loyalty. And she loves the place. It is her home, after all.”

  Val walked on in silence. The climb had become so steep, now they had left the trees, that they were obliged to pause for breath every few yards. How ever had Jannie been persuaded up here?

  Now they could see the whole sweep of the bay, and the grey bulk of Ardnacarrig House, all gables, turrets, and chimneys, nestling among the elms and beeches of its policies, the half-wild pleasure-grounds pertaining to a Scottish manorhouse.

  “Where is the village—what is it called?”

  “Wolf’s Hope.”

  “What a strange name—what does it mean?”

  “Wolf’s Haven, I believe—it’s probably a Norse name. It lies over on the north side of this headland, beyond the castle, which is called Wolf’s Crag. Have you never read The Bride of Lammermoor?”

  “No, never, I haven’t read any Scott at all—except ‘Young Lochinvar’,” Val said, unabashed. “Why?”

  “The castle of Wolf’s Crag was the last piece of property remaining in the possession of the bankrupt master of Ravenswood.”

  “When was this?”

  “Mid-seventeenth century.”

  “Even then, I dare
say, it wasn’t very comfortable,” Val said thoughtfully, looking at the battered shell of stonework. “What was the story?”

  “Ravenswood wanted to marry a girl called Lucy Ashton. But her family had a feud with his. The young couple plighted their troth; but when her parents found out, they wouldn’t allow it, and married her off to someone else.”

  “There!” Val said triumphantly. “What did I tell you? Parental tyranny.”

  “That was why I wondered if you’d read it.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Oh, she went mad and stabbed her bridegroom on the wedding night and died raving. And the bankrupt master of Ravenswood rode his horse into the Kelpie’s Flow and was never seen more. So the land—what there was of it—passed to the Carsphairns, who were distant cousins, and they built the house in the bay.”

  Val shivered. “What a miserable tale. Even worse than Elspie’s. At least her lover didn’t jump into the quicksand.”

  “So far as we know. Have you been warned about it, by the by?” She nodded. “Look, you can see it from here.” He took her arm to steady her and pointed over the shoulder of the cliff. The tide was now far out, exposing a jagged line of rocks extending outward from the foot of the cliff—Dr. Ramsay said they were called the Kelpie’s Fangs—and a huge expanse of smooth, sparklingly white sand. But at the foot of the cliff and alongside the rocks a strange, curdled, dimpled patch of sand extended for about a hundred yards; when the small waves rolled in towards it, the sand heaved all over, as if, in the unknown deeps below, some great subterranean eruption were taking place.

  “It’s at its most dangerous now, when the tide is on the turn,” Dr. Ramsay said. “But it’s always fairly deadly. You’ve heard about the patrol of dragoons? Perfectly true story. That is why you can’t walk to Wolf’s Hope along the shore, which would be the shortest and most logical route. You could swim, of course, when the tide’s in, but you would have to go round the end of the rocks. I do it sometimes on my horse, who is a famous swimmer.”