Castle Barebane

by Joan Aiken

  Accompanied by Val and the delighted children she rummaged in a large damp-smelling closet in one of the many unused first-floor bedrooms where, interspersed with sour apples hung on strings to discourage the moths, were all kinds of treasures—ball gowns of a most antique cut, tight and skimpy and high-waisted; velvet mantles and swansdown cloaks of no conceivable use to anybody, which was just as well, for they were falling apart with damp and shredded at a touch. But there were more recent garments too, of a plain and serviceable nature, including a brown bombazine riding-habit which, if taken in at the sides, would do well enough, though nobody could call it flattering or fashionable wear. Val spent a day unpicking the seams and resewing them, sighing for the nimble fingers and willing kindness of Miss Chumley; she could see that no help would be forthcoming from Elspie, once she had produced the garment and some sewing materials.

  Val thought it prudent to take Dunkie down on to the sands for a trial trot, accompanied by Pieter and Jannie who found this very good entertainment and demanded rides in their turn. It was soon established that Jock’s assessment of Dunkie’s sluggish disposition was a just one; a slow trot was all he was prepared to vouchsafe, and Val thought that riding him would be hardly faster than doing the journey on foot, though it would certainly be less tiring.

  Dr. Ramsay, riding his own mare Greylag, chanced to come along the beach while they were thus engaged, and found Val leading the phlegmatic Dunkie bestridden by Jannie, who, her plaits and plaid skirts blowing, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, crying, “Look a’ me, look a’ me, Pieter!” seemed for once like any normal child of her age.

  “Look how well Jannie rides, Doctor Ramsay!” called Pieter, racing to meet the doctor.

  “Yes, indeed, Pieter, she rides like a Cossack!”

  “What’s a Cossack?” Pieter demanded instantly.

  Dr. Ramsay explained with his usual good-natured thoroughness; then it was Pieter’s turn to ride and Jannie was set down; Dr. Ramsay wanted to draw pictures on the sand for her to identify, but she was in one of her wilful moods and danced off, whirling round and round like a dervish, singing wordless tunes at the top of her shrill gnatlike little voice.

  “She’s like a will-o’-the-wisp,” Ramsay said, looking after the flying, twirling figure. “You’d think she could go right across the Kelpie’s Flow without sinking in.”

  “Will-o’-the-wisp or no,” said Val, “I’m taking no chances of that; I got Jock to put those big posts in” —she gestured with the hand that was not holding Dunkie’s bridle—“and the children have been told they’re not to go beyond them.”

  “You made Jock do that, did you?” Ramsay said with a quirk of the mouth that recalled Elspie’s expressions. “I can see you are quite settling in at Ardnacarrig.”

  “What’s wrong with making arrangements for the children’s safety?”

  “Not a thing; it was an admirable idea, though I fear you may find the midwinter tides sweep your posts away.”

  Val opened her mouth to say she hoped to be gone by midwinter; but after all, the children might still be here then; she remained silent. After a minute she said, “I’ve been reviving my horsemanship; I plan to ride over and visit your mother tomorrow or the next day, if you think she will be equal to it?”

  “I’m sure she will be delighted; it’s very good of you.”

  “I shall enjoy getting away for a day,” Val admitted frankly. “I’m not used to being cooped up like this.”

  “No—I suppose not.”

  They had turned and were walking the horses across the sheep-cropped turf below the azalea hedge; Ardnacarrig House, with all its turrets and pinnacles, reared up ahead of them like some extraordinary grey geological outcrop.

  “I daresay it does seem a prison to you,” he said, “after spending your life in capital cities.” But he sounded dispassionate, rather than sympathetic, and she was reminded that he himself must often chafe at his confined existence after former freedom in Cambridge, Vienna, and Edinburgh.

  “Well, since Jannie’s in no mood for learning today I’ll leave you here,” he said. “Greylag is as happy to go in the water as on land and while the tide’s right that’s my quickest way home.”

  “You really mean to go through the water?” Val was amazed and so was Pieter.

  “Can your horse swim then, Doctor Ramsay?”

  “Like a fish, laddie. She thoroughly enjoys it. We only have ten minutes in the deep water; once round the point, we take to the sand. However I don’t advise you to go that way on Dunkie,” he said to Val.

  “My dear Davie, I shouldn’t dream of it!”

  “You know how to go? Over the headland you’ll see two little glens ahead; you take the right-hand one, and the path down it will lead you into Wolf’s Hope the quickest way; the manse lies over a bridge behind some thorn trees. Oh, by the way,” he added, “a band of traveling tinklers have set up their camp in the other glen; I do not think they are to be feared, but they are rough characters and you would do better to avoid them; and warn Elspie to keep a careful eye on her poultry and make sure they are locked up at night.”

  “What are tinklers?” asked Pieter.

  “They are a Scottish kind of gypsies; your aunt Val will tell you all about gypsies I daresay. Tinklers live by selling pots and pans and clothespegs—and love potions and charms for warts, doubtless—and a bit of horse-thieving.”

  “They won’t break into the Big House?”

  “Not a chance—too scared of Thrawn Jane.”

  Val smiled, and he said, “You haven’t seen the lady yourself?”

  “Who is Thrawn Jane?” Pieter wanted to know instantly.

  “Now see what you have done,” Val scolded Ramsay, who only laughed.

  “I’ll tell my mother to expect you at noon if it’s fine—it will take you that long to flog old Dunkie over the hill,” and with a wave he touched up Greylag and cantered off along the edge of the waves. Val watched apprehensively, half expecting to see horse and rider disappear under water, but they struck out to sea and soon passed out of sight, swimming strongly, round the high tumbled rocks at the foot of the headland.

  Val steered the conversation away from Thrawn Jane and kept it firmly to gypsies as they returned to the house.

  Next morning she started off early, having bidden up Annot Kelso for the day and impressed on her that she was to look after Jannie the whole time and never, if possible, let the child out of her sight. Annot swore that she would “see after the little lass as if the auld laird himself were on my tail” but Val had more faith in Pieter’s care; Annot, except when satisfying her dramatic instincts by telling the children wild tales, was apt to go off into a dream, combing her yellow hair in front of some tarnished old glass, and forgetting her charges for half hours together; and half an hour was long enough for Jannie to get into the most fertile and unpredictable trouble if left unsupervised.

  For once, the day was fine and clear; even the lethargic Dunkie seemed infected by Val’s high spirits at leaving Ardnacarrig for a holiday. Unprompted by heel or crop, he broke into his lumbering trot and went rapidly enough up the zigzag cart track which led over Wolf’s Crag. At the top, Val paused to breathe him, and looked back. On the beach she was pleased to observe two little figures and a larger one, with a yellow dot for its head, sitting nearby. Good, Val thought; on the beach Annot would be less tempted to wander away from her charges and fall into a dream.

  Val shortened the reins and managed to thump Dunkie into a reluctant canter across the short turf on top of the headland. Presently the ground sloped away ahead, and for the first time she came in sight of Wolf’s Hope village—a dozen cottages clustered at the landward end of a short curved stone pier built out on the northerly side of the headland. Threads of blue peatsmoke drifted from the chimneys. A couple of small fishing boats were moored in the shelter of the pier and Val could just distinguish th
e tiny, antlike figures of men busy about them. Wolf’s Hope looked a well-found, tidy little anchorage and Val’s heart rose at the sight of it.

  Soon she came to the point where the paths diverged. Two small glens opened ahead of her with a shoulder of rock thrusting up between them and grassy tracks running down each. She took the right-hand path, which plunged down beside a rocky brook, sometimes so steeply that she found herself dizzily looking down over Dunkie’s bony shoulders and in danger of sliding on to his neck. The glen bore away to the left; now she had lost sight of the village. Presently the path ran in among a stand of larches and became rather less steep, though the stream was now a nerve-racking depth below at the bottom of a young ravine; plainly there was still some way to descend. The distance from the top of the headland was much farther than Val, in her first optimism at seeing it, had supposed. Now there was another steep and slithery stretch of downhill track; Dunkie slipped and snorted, Val’s thighs and shoulders ached with leaning and pulling back, and her fingers were stiff from her nervous clutch at the reins. At last the ground levelled, and she saw kail patches and drystone walls ahead.

  The manse, Ramsay had said, lay to the left; soon, rounding a corner of hill, she discovered it, off by itself among thorn trees, slightly bigger and more comfortable-looking than the other houses, with a well-tended garden at the back and a few frost-pinched roses still against its walls.

  All of a sudden Val found herself gripped by a paralysing shyness, a kind of dread quite alien to her usually confident nature.

  What would it be like, to talk to somebody who knew that they were dying? What ever could she find to say? What could she talk about? Caught short by this anxiety, she felt she had not given the matter nearly enough thought—she had not given it any thought at all, in her childish pleasure at the fine morning and liberation from Ardnacarrig. Now she was halted by a horrified awareness of her own inadequacy. She pulled Dunkie to a halt. Dismounting, she stood leaning her back against the parapet of a small stone bridge spanning two streams that came tumbling from different directions and met at the head of the harbour. To her right, on the stone jetty below the bridge, men were stretching nets to dry in the sun. To her left, the manse door opened, and a white-capped woman stepped out, shook a mat vigorously, gave Val an inquisitive look, then went inside again and shut the door.

  Dying was an unknown process to Val. She had sat by no deathbeds. Her mother’s end, when it came, eight years after that parting at the dockside, had seemed so far removed in time and place that it had little reality for Val. And her father had been taken suddenly by a heart attack while he was on a visit to a publishing firm in Seattle, thousands of miles from his daughter. It had happened during a summer heat wave and the hasty funeral was over even before the news had reached Val so that, although it came as a sudden and grievous shock, his death had strangely little actuality for her; part of her mind had not even accepted it yet and she was prone, when tired and off-guard, to imagine that she saw him at street corners or coming toward her through open doors; she still half expected that a letter in the familiar writing might arrive to say that it had all been a mistake.

  None of which reflections were of any help to her in the present situation.

  Val shook herself, squared her shoulders, and walked over the little bridge in the direction of the manse, leading Dunkie, who followed slowly and reluctantly behind her. Tying him to a tree, she knocked on the door.

  It was opened by the white-capped woman she had seen before, who gave her a pleasant smile and said, “Ye’ll be Mistress Montgomery? Mrs. Ramsay’s ettling to see you and asks if ye will be so kind as to step through into the conservatory.”

  The conservatory sounded startlingly grand—for the house was small, though pleasantly furnished and showing every sign of cultivated taste; there were books and flowers in profusion, good furniture, and many original and interesting pictures and sketches hung on the walls. Val was led through a couple of rooms and found that the conservatory was a small glass-walled and roofed extension at the back. There were ferns and geraniums in pots, two wicker chairs, a couple of small tables littered with books and papers, and a sofa, on which, covered with a shawl, Mrs. Ramsay was lying. A door and windows leading to the garden stood wide open but the little glassed-in place was warm enough, for it faced south and had the full benefit of the sun.

  “Miss Montgomery—or may I call you Val, as I gather my unconventional son already does? I am absolutely delighted to see you. Forgive my not getting up to welcome you; the welcome is nonetheless warm. Tibbie, Miss Montgomery is dying of hunger and thirst after her ride.”

  “Ay, ay, she’ll be taking some o’ my diet loaf, whiles, an’ a glass o’ buttermilk,” said Tibbie, and bustled out to fetch these articles.

  “Tibbie will enjoy feeding you up on all the delicious things I can take no longer. Do sit down—there, where I can see you. Now tell me how you are liking Ardnacarrig? It must seem exceedingly strange to you after New York.”

  Val sat obediently, as directed, and began to talk. She felt large, clumsy, and self-conscious; shabby, too, and untidy, with her blown hair and brown bombazine. While on the surface she felt these vague discomforts, and meanwhile did her best to describe her impressions amusingly, make jokes, be entertaining, underneath she was suffering from a profound sense of shock.

  For a start, the woman on the sofa was so young-looking! David Ramsay must be approaching thirty, and Val had vaguely expected that his mother would be in her sixties, but Helen Ramsay must be barely forty-five and her delicate thin face, when in repose, looked even younger. She must have married when she was hardly halfway through her teens. Her glossy sweep of chestnut-brown hair was drawn smoothly into a big loose chignon at the back of her head; Val noticed that Tibbie, when she came back with the refreshments, lovingly stroked a stray strand of this into place, as if she took more pride in it than did its owner.

  Helen Ramsay was young, but she also, quite unmistakably, was dying. Val had never seen anybody who looked so desperately ill. Her beautiful brown eyes were sunk in deep pits; her cheeks were hollow; her face was transparently white as the geranium flowers behind her and her skin seemed stretched so tightly over her bones that it was a wonder her face could show such animation. Val could see plainly that the least movement exhausted her, but that she was absolutely determined not to be handicapped by her weakness. Evidence of activity lay scattered all around; while they talked, Mrs. Ramsay was at work stitching patchwork pieces over hexagonal bits of card, and two-thirds of an unusually beautiful patchwork quilt lay at the end of her couch; sketches were strewn on the floor by her—Val noticed a pencil portrait of David; a stool by the couch held more books and a piece of embroidery. Her thin, fine hands seemed to move with unerring skill, whatever she did; all the time she talked, she was setting exquisitely small stitches with the smooth speed of a lifetime’s practice.

  “And tell me all about the children. How I long to see them! But Davie thinks it would be wrong to expose them to infection—even with the doors and windows open like this, which I hope you can bear? Tibbie shall bring you a plaid if you are cold. I love the air and can never have too much.”

  “Perhaps next spring they could come over and visit you in the garden?” Val suggested.

  “My dear, it is kind of you to suggest it, but I shan’t last that long. Next spring I shall not be here,” Helen said calmly. “Never mind! I choose to imagine that Heaven will be just like that valley up there”—she waved a stemlike hand at the view—“filled with all the children I would have liked to have, and the sun always shining. An endless picnic, in fact. Now, tell me more about Jannie and the way she talks. What did you say was her word for beautiful?”

  “Arla—anything she wants, and can’t have, like the clock or the crystal chandelier—or the red moon—or Elspie’s bantam cock—is arla.”

  “Arla, arla,” repeated Helen, savouring it. “And what
else does she say?”

  “She has quite a few words of her own—I suppose because she hasn’t been able to learn the real ones. Grake, for instance, is her one verb and it does for everything—give, eat, pick up, put down; all the time she’s with Pieter you can hear her commanding little voice crying ‘Grake it, Pieter, grake it.’”

  “And? What else?”

  “She loves noise; sometimes she’ll wake in the night and suddenly begin singing at the top of her lungs, banging two iron saucepan lids together, or thumping the poker on her brass bed head.”

  “I hope Elspie doesn’t sleep within earshot,” Helen said, laughing. “I can’t imagine her being as philosophical as you about these midnight concerts.”

  Val did not confess that she was far from philosophical herself.

  “I’m not sure yet where Elspie sleeps—she hasn’t shown us—miles off, somewhere in the south wing.”

  “More about Jannie?”

  “With animals, and outside things, she’s completely fearless; she’ll run up to bulls, Jock’s farm dogs, geese, pigs, without any touch of anxiety; she’s far braver than Pieter. And the creatures seem to recognise her trust; they are never hostile. But with strange people she is generally wary and timid as a wildcat. She tastes everything—if you let her—bark, raw potatoes, ivy leaves, pebbles on the beach; you have to watch her like a hawk or it all goes into her mouth—in amazing combinations too—onions with marmalade, porridge and pine needles, milk and grass. Although in five minutes she can reduce a room to total chaos, she’s fussily tidy, too, in her own way; won’t have things piled on top of one another but must put them side by side, in neat patterns.”

  Val went on with more ease, talking about the children, about Elspie, telling tales of their ill-assorted life together and its ups and downs.