Castle Barebane

by Joan Aiken

  “No, he wouldn’t touch the food. He asks for brandy.”

  “Och, weel, there’s a few bottles the auld laird left ahind him—he micht as well hae them, nae ither person cares for the stuff,” Elspie said drily and left the room.

  After she had gone, Nils very slowly pulled himself straight in the bed and said to Val, “Was there somebody in the room just now?”

  “Of course there was! I told you—it was Elspie.”

  “Truly?”

  “Truly.”

  “You see,” he explained, looking round with that same sliding motion of the eyes, “sometimes I fancy things. I think I see—people. The Kindly Ones. You know who I mean? Horrible old women. Snakes in their hair. I get a glimpse of them—just behind: over my shoulder. That’s why I like to sit with my back against the wall.” He gave Val a haggard grin, glancing sidelong again. “And brandy’s a help you see—it keeps out the cold. Helps me sleep. I don’t see them when I’m asleep.”

  “Don’t see whom?”

  “The Kindly Ones.”

  Shivering, Val said, “I’ll get you the brandy,” and left him. The icy, stuffy little room was suddenly more than she could bear—it seemed filled with alien presences.

  For the next four days Nils lay up in the attic. At times, after he had had a tot of brandy, he was sensible enough and did not cry out at the sight of Elspie, or address her as Alecto, or assert that there were small, threatening figures moving very fast along the wall of his room, lurking just out of his line of vision. When he was rational, Val tried hard to get him to talk, feeling sure that he needed to unburden himself; but he was singularly reticent and would only repeat the bones of his tale—“Got on a ship. Got on two ships. Came here.”

  At other times he would embark on long, rambling, malicious reports about people she had never heard of and never wished to meet, they sounded so unpleasant.

  He slept for a good deal of the time—strangely heavy sleep—but always awoke with a start, glancing behind him and muttering, “Are they here yet? Orville says they can’t follow over water but I think he’s wrong—I think he’s wrong!”

  “What do you think is the matter with him?” Val asked Elspie.

  “It micht be the drink in him. The auld laird was like that, whiles; a touch o’ the deleerium treemens; but likely as not, it’s juist his whole bad life has caught up wi’ him,” Elspie said grimly.

  The children still had not been told of their father’s arrival, because Nils was adamant in his refusal to see them; and while he was in his present state, seeing him would do them no good; on the contrary, it might upset them badly. It did seem as if, in some dark, unhappy way, he was reliving the whole of his life, following a random chronological pattern discernible to him alone. At times he was Val’s ten-year-old brother, bullying, jealous, spiteful, domineering.

  “You touched my paint box. Didn’t you? You walked ahead of me, you’re not allowed to! You went upstairs on the left-hand side, that’s forbidden. You had two lumps of sugar—I shall punish you! You have got to be punished! Father won’t, so I have to. Stand still—no, over there. Shut your eyes!”

  The Val he spoke to was imaginary, but sometimes he railed and screamed at the real one.

  “Go away! Get out of my sight! I can’t bear you. You remind me of too much.”

  Then he would go off into fantasy once more.

  “You can’t come to England. Mother doesn’t want you. She only wants me—she loves me best, she always will. I don’t care if you stay in New York with Monty—he’s not my real father, my father wasn’t a hack writer, he was a gentleman. I’m nearly all Norwegian, you’re only half. Mother doesn’t love you at all.”

  Sometimes he thought that Val was their mother.

  “Please, please dearest, don’t be angry, dearest Mia! I’ll stay in my room all day, I won’t come down and bother your guests. You can lock me in, if you like! I won’t look, I won’t listen. Just so long as I know you’re there. Please, Mia! Just so long as I’m not alone. Don’t be angry with me.”

  Val had forgotten his pet name for their mother, which he had forbidden her ever to use, on pain of his worst punishments. It gave her a strange pang to hear it used so.

  “I’m not angry,” she said gently, but he was off again, assuring Mia that he would never peep through curtains, never listen at keyholes or talk to her maid, that he would not dream of being jealous of her friends, that he didn’t wish to be a nuisance, or an embarrassment, but please wouldn’t she come up to say good night, wouldn’t she show that she loved him just a little?

  A gruesome picture began to build up for Val of the life in that bijou little house in Bruton Street with the carriage and the manservant and the genteel card parties, the friends, the flowers. She could not avoid constructing a very unflattering portrait of their mother, and her various pursuits, downstairs, while Nils was relegated to his upstairs bedroom, peering through the banisters. Where he still is, Val thought, transfixed with pity. But the next minute Nils had turned on her with bitter spite, and was shouting, “You—you! What good are you? Nobody wants you! Girls are stupid lying cheats. All except for Mia! You couldn’t even hang on to Benet Allerton—that stuffed snob—and he only wanted you for your money!”

  “Money?” said Val, shaken out of the calm she usually managed to maintain with his irrationalities, “you know I haven’t any money.”

  “Oh, you stupid stupid bitch, you’re too stupid even to know that! I found out a couple of hours after getting to New York; went straight to Winthrop and Babcock—read Monty’s will—of course you have money, only the cunning old fox left it all tied up till you’re twenty-seven. Consolation for being an old maid on the shelf, eh? He didn’t leave me any, mean old swine; what’s two hundred dollars? I’m only his stepson; no, precious little Valhalla gets the lot. But Benet knew about it, you can be sure of that; those lawyers all live in each other’s pockets. A dandy little nest egg, ready to hatch when the marriage is cooling down!”

  Could he be right?

  Winthrop and Babcock certainly were Mr. Montgomery’s lawyers. And they had firmly assured Val that she had no expectations apart from the house on Twenty-third Street.

  “If Benet knew about it, don’t you think it rather odd that he didn’t tell me?” she asked coldly. “Or—if he was such a fortune hunter—that he let me break off the engagement?”

  But he hasn’t allowed me to, she thought. Is that why?

  “How could he tell you? He wasn’t supposed to know himself! He’ll be after you, never fear; pro’ly on the boat now,” said Nils, refilling his glass. “Comes to Lon’on three, four times a year ‘n any case—seen him on the rampage there, at Mereweather’s—gals! Not legal business, no, no. Gals. Can’t chase gals in N’York, someone might see him.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Val said. “Benet! Of all people! You might as well suggest that father—”

  Nils burst into a raucous laugh. “Old Monty? No, no, Vallie dear, I wouldn’t suggest that para—paragon of p’fection ever went chasing gals! He couldn’t! Mia always said it was a c-contradiction ‘f the laws ‘f nature that you were ever c-conceived! It was as much as he dared t’ c-crawl into bed with her, he had no more real blood in him than C-Cleopatra’s Needle.”

  “I don’t believe a single word you are saying,” Val said, at the end of her patience. She rose to leave. But the hostile teasing gaiety instantly left his face.

  “Don’t—don’t go, sit with me a while longer, Vallie, do! Don’t leave a fellow—there’s a dear! I do run on, I know I do, but I won’t say another word—it’s only my fun, y’know!”

  When she said she had to go to the children and suggested they should visit him—“No, no! For God’s sake don’t bring them here. They drive me wild with their noise. Can’t stand little hideous voices like drills, specially the gal. Well then—if you must go—bring ‘nother
bottle ‘f brandy when you come back—will you? There’s a dear girl.”

  Val became more and more worried about him. After four days he seemed no better—worse if anything. The quantity of brandy he got through offset the benefits of rest and nourishment; and the hours he spent in solitude seemed to lower his spirits and make him yet more irrational, nervous, and prone to wild fits of malice, hostility, guilt, and despair. At times he begged Val for money for his ticket to America, assuring her that she had only to write to Winthrop and Babcock, they would advance it; at other times he let fall veiled hints about huge potential wealth of his own.

  “A gold mine, a real gold mine, Vallie, eighteen carat! All we have to do is dig it carefully and we’ll be set till the end of our days; just wants a little management; you wait! You’ll see.”

  Sometimes he complained furiously about being shut away in the attic “like a servant” when, if he had his rights and certain things were known about certain people, he would be wealthy enough for a house of his own in Grosvenor Square and could thumb his nose at those two old plaster trouts who affected not to recognise him if they met him in the street.

  Never once, not ever, in his ramblings, did he allude to Kirstie.

  On the fourth day, as David Ramsay still had not reappeared and there had been no word from Sir Marcus, and Nils had been at his most difficult and obstreperous all day, Val, tried to the limit of endurance, decided to see what the results of getting him up would be. She felt that if he continued to lie on his bed and drink brandy, he might easily send himself into a decline from which there would be no recovery.

  “Come, Nils!” she said. “There is nobody in the house. The children are down at the boathouse with Mungo watching him work on the boat. And Elspie has taken a bottle of currant cordial to Mrs. Kelso who’s sick at the lodge. So come and walk in the Long Gallery for half an hour. It will do you good.”

  She helped him put on his threadbare black jacket, which she and Elspie had cleaned and pressed.

  “Why do you always wear black, Nils?” she asked, easing it over his bony shoulders. He had never worn any other colour, even on that carefree summer holiday so long ago.

  “Mourning, mourning for the best mother a fellow could hope to have,” he muttered mechanically, glancing behind him. “Mourning for Mia.”

  The falseness and artificiality of his words discouraged Val, who said nothing more, but took his arm and helped him along the passage. The best mother? Val remembered her week-long banishment over that blue-and-black alpaca dress. If Mother was the best, she thought, heaven preserve us from the worst.

  With groans and complaints, Nils allowed himself to be guided down the attic stair and along to the gallery, where he ignored the portraits of bygone Carsphairns on the inner wall, but looked fixedly out of each seaward window while slowly walking past, as if he hoped, or feared, to see a sail come over the horizon. Visibility was not good, however; snow fell steadily, and a heavy bank of cloud hung so low over the stone-grey sea that sea and sky tended to merge into a general dimness behind the fluttering, weaving snowflakes. The portraits on the inner wall wore dusk like shawls around their shoulders; only here and there could a pair of cold blue eyes be seen, gazing down at Nils and Val as they walked slowly by; here and there a fan, a wig, a scroll or sword, or mane of prancing charger was faintly discernible.

  Outside, the winter afternoon was condensing into twilight. Ardnacarrig House was mute as the inside of a pyramid; the only sound to be heard was their footsteps going to and fro, to and fro. The way I walked with Sir Marcus on the beach, Val thought sombrely. Five days ago now. No letter from him. Perhaps there won’t be one. Perhaps he has concluded that I don’t wish to meet him again.

  She longed to write him another letter, expressing sorrow for the missed meeting, expressing sympathy over Helen’s death. But how could she, when so much would have to remain unwritten? She had, in fact, started one or two drafts, addressing them to the Selkirk’s office, but, since she could not mention Nils, who was almost her whole preoccupation at the moment, they seemed wholly false, and she tore them up.

  To and fro, to and fro. Nils talked, in a rambling, petulant way, of fellows in London he knew, who had said they would back his bills but then unaccountably changed their minds, of ignorant prejudiced editors, of damned encroaching tradesmen, and those two miserable old tabbies in Grosvenor Square, who would not advance Kirstie so much as a pony, though she would inherit all this one day.

  “That isn’t true, you know, Nils. The property is entailed; it goes in the male line.”

  “Well then Pieter ought to have it; or how did the old girls get their claws on it in the first place?” demanded Nils, with one of those sudden disconcerting flashes of practicality which generally seized him, Val had noticed, when money was in question, or when a malicious accusation could be levelled at some respected target.

  “I don’t know; perhaps Scots law is different.”

  But she did wonder, suddenly, if the Carsphairn ladies were in wrongful possession, and knew it; would not that account for their absentee habits, neglect, and parsimony? Were these shortcomings founded on the guilty knowledge that they were usurpers?

  “I’m tired,” said Nils fretfully like a child, and she was about to steer him back to his bed when the door at the far end of the gallery burst open. Noise and light streamed through and the children came clattering in, preceding Mungo, who carried a lamp.

  “There you are, Aunt Val! We’ve been making a snow woman, just like the picture of Lady Christina Carsphairn! Mungo’s been helping us—” Pieter began, and then his jaw dropped, his eyes opened Wide, he screamed, “Papa!” and hurled himself joyfully toward Nils. At the same moment Jannie also screamed, equally loud, but hers was the wild, wailing cry of pure terror. She turned from Nils just as violently as Pieter had rushed toward him, and fled from the gallery. Her terrified gasping cries died away in the distance.

  “Och—maircy, what’s wi’ the bairn?” exclaimed Mungo.

  “Go after her, Mungo, can you?” said Val quickly, and he nodded and turned on his heel.

  Appalled by Jannie’s reaction to the sight of her father, Val stared after them, biting her lip; it was a moment before she realised that something was badly the matter with Nils. Instead of welcoming Pieter’s ecstatic greeting, he was holding off the boy with one hand, staring fixedly past him, and whispering, “Keep her away, don’t let her touch me! Who’s that woman?”

  “There isn’t any woman. That was Mungo,” said Val, mystified.

  “Papa? Aren’t you going to hug me?” demanded Pieter, abruptly transformed from a small hurtling projectile of delight into a puzzled, scared child.

  Nils began slowly backing away, his eyes still on the door.

  “It’s no use your coming here carrying that baby!” he cried in a loud, threatening tone. “You can’t get me now. You’re dead! And it isn’t my fault you died, damn you, it’s your own! It’s too late to help you—don’t come whining to me now. For God’s sake—let go of my hand!”

  By now Nils had backed himself into an angle of the wall, and here he appeared to undergo some species of seizure; his breath came pantingly, foam crusted up on his lips, he let out several short but extraordinarily piercing cries and shuddered violently, as if an electric current had been passed through him. His eyes rolled upward in his head, his mouth opened, and he fell heavily to the floor.

  “Wh-what’s happened to Papa?” asked Pieter with chattering teeth. “Is he—is he d-dead?”

  “I don’t know, Pieter,” said Val, kneeling by her brother, trying to control the shaking of her own hands enough to discover if he had a pulse.

  “I’m frightened!” wailed Pieter.

  “Hey, hey! What the devil’s going on here?” demanded a familiar voice. “Mungo’s downstairs with Jannie looking as if they’ve seen the bogeyman—what’s up?” and Val turned with
unutterable relief to see David Ramsay coming toward them from the other end of the gallery.

  Chapter 16

  Somehow, between them, David and Mungo succeeded in carrying the rigid body of Nils up the attic stairs and back to his bed. David listened to Val’s description of the seizure and said that it sounded to him like an epileptic attack; no treatment would be necessary but that the patient should be left with loosened clothes to sleep it off.

  “Oh, I am so glad to see you, Davie,” Val kept saying. “I didn’t like to send for you because I knew how sad and busy you must be, but I have been longing for you so. My brother is in such a strange state—sometimes he seems quite mad, really—at other times sensible enough. But he was so imperative that no one outside the house should know of his arrival—I haven’t known what to do.”

  “My poor dear girl—you have had a time of it.” David squeezed her hand sympathetically. “Well—for the moment—do nothing. I’ll come back and look at your brother when he is awake—tomorrow, perhaps. At present, after a seizure of the severity you describe, he will very likely sleep four or five hours, or even longer.”

  “It was very frightening—he seemed to be seeing some apparition—he thought it was Kirstie,” Val said, shivering. “He kept telling her that she ought to be dead.”

  “Perhaps it was really Thrawn Jane he saw,” David suggested, only half in jest. “Who knows? After all, Thrawn Jane was Kirstie’s great-great-aunt; there may have been a family resemblance.”

  “Let us go and find Jannie,” Val said, shivering again.

  Jannie was in the kitchen; Mungo sat in the rocker and she was huddled, fast asleep, in his arms, sucking her finger, the marks of tears half dried on her flushed cheeks. Pieter was there too, very subdued, reading one of his books on a stool by Mungo’s knee. And Elspie was chopping cabbage on a board as if it were somebody’s head under a guillotine. Mungo’s usually benevolent face looked like that of an Old Testament prophet pronouncing doom on a whole generation of Baal worshippers.