Castle Barebane

by Joan Aiken

  “Good . . . I most strongly advise you not to, in any correspondence, for instance.”

  “Do you think the police should be told—about my brother?” Val said slowly.

  “Yes; I believe they should. But leave me to think about it. I am wondering if it is not too isolated for you here,” he exclaimed, suddenly turning to regard her with an air of uncertainty. “Should I be bringing you and the bairns back to Edinburgh with me?”

  She was amazed. “You think this place is making me morbid—that I’m letting my imagination fly away with me?”

  “Och, no! But anybody who was looking for your brother—or the children—might come here.”

  Val shivered again, she did not know why. London, with its dark narrow streets and its sinister mysteries, seemed far enough away—a thousand times farther than Edinburgh. And why should there be any connection between the Bermondsey Beast and this remote spot? But there was a connection, she told herself. If Nils had known something about the crimes . . . But Nils was not here. Nonetheless, if somebody were looking for Nils—if someone thought he might be here—or even if someone thought he might have passed on information to his sister—in New York for instance—

  “Come, we’re wasting time, and you should be off,” she said, shaking herself out of such stupid fancies. “Your horses will be rested. Besides, you must wish to speak to Mungo. Anyway—he is here to protect us—and sent by you! That is another thing for which I have to be thankful to you.”

  “Well, well,” he said. “I will think it all over and be back tomorrow. I will not stop to talk to Mungo now. In the meantime I am very happy to have seen you. You are looking bonnie. Ardnacarrig has done you good. And you have done me good.”

  They had walked back along the azalea path and swung round through the forlorn gardens, beside the crumbling arch that led to the stable yard.

  “Mungo will have his work cut out, setting all this to rights,” Sir Marcus said, chuckling, glancing at the broken stonework, the overgrown, shrouding trees, the shaggy grass and untrimmed flowerbeds. “Better, maybe, he should bide in the gardener’s cottage!”

  “What do you—?”

  “No matter. I’ll tell you another time. There is Andie, looking daggers at me because he has been ready and waiting these seven minutes and I have no time for a crack with Mungo and Elspie and your bairns. Never mind. I shall be back soon enough. And you have put me in good heart, my dear girl. Thank you.”

  He picked up her cold hand and kissed it lightly, nodded in a placating manner at the indignant Andie, and climbed into his carriage.

  Val waved, as they rattled away between the evergreens; then she strolled back into the mist-hung garden. She did not want to enter the house yet. So much had happened to her in the last few hours that she felt gasping—suffocated—as if she were drowning in some strange and unfamiliar element.

  She retraced her steps to the shore, and then remembered that Sir Marcus had brought her another letter from Benet, sent care of the Selkirk’s office. She opened it, and scanned it with only half her attention.

  “Hope while you are in Scotland you are availing yourself of the opportunity to procure and read the lesser-known works of Sir Walter Scott,” Benet wrote. “Woodstock, Redgauntlet, besides his Life of Napoleon, Essays on Ballad Poetry, Provincial Antiquities of Scotland, & Account of the Coronation of George IV are all worthy of your perusal. On no account, though, should you read the works of Burns, who, despite his national popularity, was a man of depraved tastes and sordid character. Please remember to change your stockings when you come in, as I understand that the ground in Scotland is always damp—”

  Impatiently she folded the letter without reading to the end and put it in her pocket. It seemed to have no relevance to anything in her present situation.

  The tide was coming in, now, as dusk fell; wave after wave rolled up, rasped and broke, not ten yards from the crisscrossing lines of prints that showed where she and Sir Marcus had walked to and fro, to and fro.

  Happiness often seems a thing of the past, understood only when it is gone. But now, looking at those lines of footprints, Val thought, I was happy, walking there, and I knew it. I was full to overflowing with true feelings, beautiful, outgoing, real feelings. Perhaps at the very end of my life I shall look back and know that was the best hour I ever had. If that is the case, at least I knew at the time that I was in a state of blessedness; at least I made the very most of it.

  She thought, I’ll walk along just once more, just as far as the cliff, and then I must go in and play with the children. I have hardly seen them all day.

  But they were all right, she knew; she had passed the brightly lit kitchen window and seem them inside, busy at some activity on the table, with Mungo supervising.

  Walking slowly, she took a childish pleasure in following the larger line of prints and trying to match her step to it. She came to the line of cliffs, honeycombed with caves, and strolled on as far as Jock’s line of posts. Here she turned to go back—and gasped with fright as a shadowy figure moved out, without making a sound, from a dark cleft at the foot of the rocks, and came rapidly towards her. She moved instinctively, to run, to flee, make her way to safety and the house with its lighted windows; but the voice stopped her.

  It said: “Val! Val! Don’t run off! I’ve been hoping you might come back. I’ve been waiting here all day for a chance to talk to you.”

  Slowly she turned, and took a few reluctant steps back towards the cliff. Cautiously the figure moved towards her; by slow degrees they approached one another until they were only a few inches apart. Val looked up into the dirty, haggard, unshaven face of her brother Nils.

  Chapter 15

  Nils? Is it really you? Not a ghost?”

  If it was not a ghost, it must be Nils. She had forgotten again how tall he was. Now, staring up at him in the gloom, she remembered how, long ago, even when they were children, he had seemed to tower over her.

  He had on black, shabby clothes, and some kind of dark waterproof boat cloak over them. His lint-pale hair, long and unkempt, blew in the rising breeze.

  “Hush!” he said, glancing round. “Of course it’s me! Don’t make a row!”

  “But how did you come here?”

  “On a boat—from Hull—I got them to put me ashore,” he said impatiently. “Who was that man you were walking with on the beach, earlier?”

  She could not help a shiver, at the thought that, while they were walking, Nils had been watching from some cranny.

  “Have you been here all that time? But why didn’t—”

  “Who was it?” he repeated.

  “Sir Marcus Cusack—but I don’t—”

  “The Selkirk’s Magazine fellow? What’s he doing here?” To himself he muttered, “Yes, it could have been Cusack. I saw him once, in London.”

  “He has left, anyway.” Val was puzzled. “Why do you ask? Nils, come in! Come to the house. The children will be—”

  “Wait!” he said abruptly. “Who’s there? In the house?”

  “Old Elspie; you know, you’ve met her: Kirstie’s old nurse. Nils,” Val said urgently, “where is Kirstie?”

  He waited a moment before answering. Then he answered, in a low voice, flatly, “She’s dead.”

  He seemed wholly unmoved by Kirstie’s loss. She was gone, that was all, perhaps there was even a shade of relief in his tone. Freedom regained.

  “Oh . . .”

  For a moment Val had nurtured a fragile, floating wisp of hope that now, with the reappearance of Nils, normality would return. But his words struck down that hope, ground it into the earth. Indeed she had already half perceived that Nils was more removed from her than he had ever been, by some barricade of dreadfulness that she was unable to cross or comprehend.

  “How—how did she die, Nils?”

  “She was drowned,” he said, in th
e same dull, dogged manner.

  “Drowned?”

  Though grievous, this did not seem quite such an appalling end as Val’s worse flights of imagination had encompassed. Though, what had she expected? She brushed that thought aside.

  Trying to disperse the formless dread from her mind, she caught his hand.

  “Poor, poor Nils. I’m so sorry. What you must have been through. Poor little Kirstie.” For a moment the frail ghost of her sister-in-law seemed to flutter past them, timid, anxious, pleading—

  “Dear Val—be kind to them? I know you will—”

  “At least,” said Val, trying to draw Nils onward toward the house by the hand she held—it was ice-cold—“at least, thank goodness, the children are well. They’ll be so happy to see you. How did you find out that we were here?”

  “It was obvious, wasn’t it? Where else would you be?” His tone was surly.

  She realised that he was almost at the end of his strength, exhausted, probably hungry. A strange odour came from him—acid, rank; sweat and salt and tar compounded, as if he had not been able to wash for weeks past.

  “Come into the house, Nils.”

  “Wait!” he said again sharply. “This is important! There’s no one else in the house? Just you and the children and this old woman?”

  “Old Mungo, possibly.”

  “Mungo?” he said with instant suspicion. “Who’s that?”

  His cold, clutching hand brought her up with a jerk.

  “Mungo?” How to explain Mungo. “He’s an old sailor—a long-ago sweetheart of Elspie’s. He fell in love with her when she was sixteen, spreading out the sheets in the bleach field. He lives in the gardener’s cottage.”

  “Listen.” Nils spoke without paying any apparent heed to her words. “Val. Have any strangers been here lately? People from outside, foreigners?”

  “No, Nils. Why?”

  “Who does come to the house, from outside?”

  “The postman, the doctor—Annot from the lodge—”

  “Who’s the doctor?” And, when she had explained, “Is that all? No one else?”

  She could not fathom the reason for this interrogation and began to wonder if her brother was ill—his manner seemed so abrupt and inconsequential. He kept looking around him in a strange, staring way—at the leafless shrubs, the grey tufted grass, the ivy on the wall.

  “Nils, do come along in! you must be frozen, and it’s nearly dark.”

  “Listen!” he said again. “This is important.” His grip on her wrist tightened until she gasped with pain—but still his eyes were everywhere, behind, to the side, over her shoulder; he did not look at her.

  “What is it, Nils? What’s the matter?”

  “No one—no one at all—is to know that I’m here. Do you understand? Is there a side entrance to the house? Can you take me in by a way that no one will see?”

  “Yes, there’s the French window. But why, Nils? How can we help people knowing that you are here? Elspie will have to know—and the children, naturally—”

  “No, they don’t have to! It’s a big house. There must be dozens of empty rooms where you could put me. You could bring me food—”

  She could not see his face, for his was still looking away from her, but his voice wavered oddly. Val became more and more certain that he must be feverish, temporarily unhinged, perhaps, by the distresses that he had undergone. It seemed simplest to humour him for the moment.

  “Come along, then, this way. Quietly.”

  It was dark enough now so that even his morbid anxieties must be allayed; there seemed no possibility that even the keenest watcher would be able to spot their approach to the house. She led him along the terrace to the French window, in across the derelict card room, and up a spiral stair in the corner turret to the first floor. There she showed him a bedroom, by the light of a candle that Elspie had left burning on the hall table.

  “No, this won’t do!” he whispered. “I must have a room on the sea side.”

  “Don’t you want to be near me and the children, Nils?”

  “No!”

  “We’ll have to go up to the attic floor, then; all the others look on to the garden or into the yard.”

  She thought how characteristic of Nils it was, to be so difficult and particular about his accommodation, even when he was in the last stages of fatigue.

  “The attic floor would be better. Don’t walk so loudly!”

  They went up again, Val leading the way with the candle.

  She had been in the attics two or three times on rainy days, taking the children as a diversion. They were a mazelike and surprisingly extensive series of tiny rooms under the leads, some intercommunicating, others joined by narrow passages. It was hard, on this level, to find a room looking toward the sea, for many of the small cobwebbed windows gave on to the roof, or had their view cut off by the parapet, but at last Nils found one that satisfied him, with a small round window like a porthole, looking toward the beach. The room contained a cot bed, a chair, and that was all.

  “This will do,” said Nils, and flung himself on the bed, which had no covers. “You can leave me. All I need is sleep.”

  “I’ll get you some blankets.”

  “There’s no need.”

  But she had left, tiptoeing down to the floor below. When she returned he was nearly asleep already. As she spread the covers over him he woke and clutched her hand.

  “Don’t tell anybody that I’m here—Elspie—the children—anyone. Do you promise?”

  “Very well,” said Val, but with a mental reservation that her promise held only until tomorrow morning. It would be wholly impossible—ridiculous—undignified—unethical—to hide Nils here, to keep him concealed from the other inmates of the house. What would Elspie think if she found out? And there was the whole question of Lady Stroma. She thought of Mr. M’Intyre saying, “While their father is alive, Lady Stroma is not prepared to do anything for them . . .” No doubt Lady Stroma should be informed of his reappearance. But that must be shelved until Nils was better. In common humanity, even Lady Stroma could hardly evict Nils and the children while he was in his present state.

  But why should not the children have the satisfaction of knowing that their father was alive and close at hand? Particularly since the poor little things would soon have to learn of their mother’s death.

  “Don’t you want anything to eat, Nils?” she said.

  “No. I have some brandy.” He drew a metal flask from his pocket, uncorked it, and drank. “That’s all I want.”

  “Shall I leave the light?”

  “No! Dark is better. Then one can’t see at all. I’m going to sleep. Besides, somebody in the garden might notice the light.”

  He seemed, Val thought, to imagine the house surrounded by hostile watchers. She softly closed his door and carried the candle back to the upstairs hall. Then she went down to find the children playing hunt the thimble in the kitchen, with an old horn thimble lent by Elspie, watched and adjudicated over by Mungo. Elspie, looking both conscious and severe, was peeling potatoes; she wore an unaccustomed knot of slate-blue ribbon tied under her collar.

  So much seemed to have happened that Val felt it must be very late. But it was not; and she presently sat down and read aloud to the children, letting the words flow from her mouth in an unheeded stream while her mind roved away into the dark; now up to the cold black attic where Nils lay lost in sleep, now over to Wolf’s Hope in sad speculation about Helen—how was she? Was Sir Marcus with her? What were they saying to one another?

  “You’re unco’ silent, Mistress Val,” Mungo said presently, giving her a shrewd, kindly look, and Val answered with truth that it had been a very sad visit to Mrs. Ramsay.

  “Ay, poor soul,” Elspie said. “Yon Andie told us that Doctor Davie feared she’d no’ last the nicht. I doubt we’ll
no’ be seeing the doctor the morn.”

  “I suppose not.” Val had overlooked this probability in her preoccupation with Nils; she had been planning to ask David’s advice about Nils—if he would allow it, or even, perhaps, without his permission.

  Oh well—she would decide what to do in the morning.

  “Aunt Val,” said Pieter. “Have you noticed Elspie’s new ribbon? Isn’t it pretty? Mr. Bucklaw gave it to her.”

  “It’s very pretty,” said Val, but Elspie, blushing, grumbled, “Och, awa’, he shouldna be wasting his siller on such gear.”

  “And he bought me a little cart and Jannie a doll,” said Pieter, exhibiting these treasures.

  “Aren’t you lucky? Where did all these beautiful things come from?”

  “A tinkler came to the door with a tray full of toys and ribbons and combs and sewing needles. And he said, weren’t there any grand ladies and gentlemen staying here who would like to buy lots of other things he had, even better, but we told him there was only you, Aunt Val, and that your clothes are awfully plain, so we didn’t think you’d want any lace or ribbons.”

  “Na, na,” remarked Elspie with grim approval, “Mistress Val has a mind abune sic whigmaleeries.”

  Val laughed and agreed, looking at her brown bombazine.

  “Dinna talk like that, Elspie,” remonstrated Mungo gently, “or you will make me think that you take no pleasure in my giftie.”

  “Ach, ye great silly,” said Elspie, half scolding; but she gave him a soft look.

  Mungo presently retired to his croft. Val longed to tell him about Nils, but held to her promise and kept silent. It was strange—the secret seemed to cut her off from them all, though it was the children’s own father who lay up there in the darkness. The thought chilled her. Why was Nils so set on secrecy? Who did he imagine could be interested in his whereabouts? She could think of several possibilities and none were comfortable.