A Brief History of Montmaray

by Michelle Cooper

  “Of course,” said Veronica. Henry was standing there, all bright eyes and twitching ears, so Veronica added, “Why don’t you come into the library, Alice?”

  So the two of them moved off, but they’d barely reached the door when Veronica turned and said, “Come on, then, Sophie.”

  “Oh,” I said, “I don’t think… wouldn’t you rather … if it’s official business…”

  Then I thought, Well, it’s just sitting there next to Veronica while she sorts it out, whatever it is, and giving her some moral support. I must admit, I was also terribly curious. So I trailed after them to the library.

  Veronica took the chair at the desk, leaving the chaise longue to Alice and me, although Alice again refused to sit down. She twisted her reddened, work-gnarled hands and refused to meet our eyes, and altogether looked so uncomfortable that I felt very sorry for her.

  “It’s quite all right, whatever it is,” said Veronica kindly. “I’m sure that we can figure out a solution to whatever’s bothering you.”

  “Oh, Your Highness!” said Alice. “I’m sorry to be asking you, I know I ought to be talking to His Majesty, but, er…”

  As we’d left His Majesty in the middle of a loud conversation with his chamber pot, we both nodded understandingly.

  “And young Toby—I mean, His Highness—away at school …”

  It took a good five minutes of Veronica’s coaxing before Alice spat it out. She wanted to ask Veronica’s permission for the three of them, she and Jimmy and Mary, to leave Montmaray. Because now that George was gone, God rest his soul, there was no need for her to stay to look after him. She and Mary were the only adults left in the village—and poor Mary, with the rheumatics bad in her knees—and two women just weren’t enough to manage the nets and the lobster pots and the gig. It had been enough of a struggle when George was there. And she worried about Jimmy. He thought of Henry as his friend and that wasn’t right, anyone could see…

  “She is an awful brat, isn’t she?” said Veronica. “It’s very good of Jimmy to put up with her.”

  Alice looked horrified. No, no, she hurriedly explained, she wasn’t saying a word against the little princess, only that it was wrong that Jimmy should be on first-name terms with a member of the royal family and getting ideas above his station, and she, Alice, had to think of his future. Which was why she had written to her brother-in-law in Fowey. He’d written back to say he had his own fishing boat now and could take Jimmy on.

  “And besides, with Your Highnesses being young ladies now, you’ll be leaving yourselves soon and being wed and—”

  “I can assure you,” said Veronica, sitting up straighter, “that I will not be leaving Montmaray.”

  “Er, no, I mean, yes, of course,” said Alice, blinking very fast, so I felt obliged to speak up.

  “Alice, you know we’d never stand in your way, not if you’ve decided to leave. And of course we wish you all the best.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Veronica quickly. “And we’ll do all we can to ensure you have everything you need to settle comfortably in your new home.”

  There followed an embarrassing quantity of tears and curtseys from Alice, which made me wince because really, it is we who should be thanking Alice (and Mary and Jimmy), not the other way round. She has always said she stayed behind, after the other villagers left to find work, on account of George, but I know it was just as much for our sake. She and Mary have always helped out with the cleaning in the castle, kept us supplied with milk and cheese and vegetables, shared each catch of lobster and fish, and been on hand to help with household disasters whenever Rebecca was too preoccupied with Uncle John to do anything useful. And Jimmy—what would Henry have ever done if she hadn’t had him as a constant companion? I daren’t even think of how she will react to the news—first George and now Jimmy taken from her.

  Oh, the more I write, the worse I feel. My heart feels so weighed down with worry that it seems to be currently residing somewhere near my knees. Veronica can insist that she—we—will stay on, but how can we, really? Let’s take a look at our household, shall we, soon to be quite, quite alone on a small island in the middle of the Bay of Biscay, two hundred miles of storm-tossed sea between us and civilization, a household that consists of:

  1. One middle-aged man of indifferent health and intermittent sanity;

  2. One middle-aged housekeeper, who prefers not to house-keep too much as it interferes with her worship of the man previously mentioned;

  3. Two young ladies not yet turned eighteen, neither of whom can cook very well, although between them they have adequate skills in the areas of bookkeeping, plumbing, dusting, historical research, laundering, and storytelling;

  4. One ten-year-old tomboy, able to fish, swear, and trap rabbits, but unable to write, make her own bed, or remember to brush her teeth;

  5. One dog, several mad cats, numerous chickens, half a dozen pigeons, and far too many rats.

  Oh, I wasted my Christmas pudding wish! I should have wished for… what, exactly? What could possibly help? I suppose wishing for Simon’s presence is as good as anything. At least it would distract me from our current woes.

  Boxing Day 1936

  This is the first spare minute I’ve had since Alice and the others left, but now that I’ve dutifully sat down, pen in hand, to record events in my journal, I realize I don’t feel at all inclined to relive any of the past ten days or so. Let’s see, what has been the worst so far? Henry’s rage over the departure of her dearest and only friend? Rebecca’s furious outburst when asked if she could possibly spend a little more time on the housework now? Or is it that smelly nanny goat of Mary’s, bleating fiercely at the kitchen door if I’m five minutes late for her milking?

  No—the worst, the very worst, was Alice and the others leaving. I was determined to be dignified and not cry, especially when I realized Alice must have been planning this since George died. Her brother-in-law didn’t even wait for a reply to his letter—he simply appeared on Tuesday morning in his fishing boat and started loading the bags. There were pitifully few of them, with all their clothes, china, linen, and cutlery fitting into an old suitcase of Toby’s, a flour sack, and Alice’s little wooden chest. The furniture was left behind. Afterwards, I sat at Alice’s kitchen table, blinking up at the bunches of rosemary still hanging from the rafters, an enormous lump in my throat, wondering how we’d ever manage without the three of them.

  However, despite everything, we are not starving or living in complete squalor. Veronica’s talent for organization has come to the fore and we each have schedules pinned up in the kitchen. Rebecca has taken up cooking duties and much of the cleaning, and we’re learning to treat her incessant grumbling as mere background noise, the way we do the Blue Lady’s moaning (that is, the noise made by drafts in the Blue Room, which overly fanciful types might imagine to be a ghost). Veronica and I take it in turns to accompany Henry down to the village every few days to check the lobster pots, collect some crabs, or do a bit of fishing. Henry is in charge of poultry, firewood-gathering, and (at her insistence) rat-catching. I have just finished reading Goat Husbandry for Pleasure and Profit (written in 1873, but I can’t imagine goats have changed much in the last sixty years), am about to start The Noble Art of Cheese-making, and have taken over the job of transferring the best bits of the village vegetable garden to our courtyard. No one is willing to tackle the beehives, which were always George’s duty. We’ll just have to learn to do without honey.

  Veronica has also written to Mr. Grenville and Aunt Charlotte explaining the situation and requesting they send at least one servant as soon as possible. She sent the letters with Alice, so we won’t have a reply till the new year. I expect both our solicitor and our guardian will say that the best course of action would be for the five of us (six if you include Rebecca, but I’d rather not in the mood she’s in) to pack up and move to England, at least until Toby is old enough to live here permanently. However, I can just imagine Veronica’s respon
se to that.

  What else? Oh, Christmas. Well, Aunt Charlotte must have insisted Toby spend it with her. So much for Veronica’s Christmas pudding wish—or mine, come to that. I’m pretty sure Simon spent Christmas at Aunt Charlotte’s, too. As for us, we tried to put on a cheerful front for Henry’s sake, but she was too miserable to appreciate it. To be honest, even I felt my festive spirits evaporate when I went to look for the box of decorations and found they’d been stored directly under a leaky part of the nursery ceiling. Toby’s cardboard angels, my tissue-paper snowflakes, a dozen years’ worth of paper chains—all reduced to a sodden gray pulp. Even the gold-painted pinecones seemed to have sprouted mold. And it was raining too hard to contemplate gathering any flowers or greenery outside, not that there’s much about at this time of year anyway.

  In the end, I followed the example of an arty governess we had a few years ago and set up a tall twisted bit of driftwood in the kitchen, with shells strung from the branches on pieces of leftover knitting wool. Henry contributed an angel she carved from a cuttlefish shell. And Veronica and Rebecca managed to cook Christmas dinner together without any major catastrophes. We had roast chicken, glazed ham, and all the vegetables Henry could salvage from the waterlogged garden. The pudding was … well, it had a very interesting texture. Henry dropped her slice on the floor and it bounced. I think we boiled it too long. But Julia and the rest of the Stanley-Rosses had very kindly sent us a hamper stuffed full of mince pies and nuts and preserved fruit, so we had that instead. Afterwards, Rebecca made eggnog and I read A Christmas Carol aloud by the stove while Veronica fixed the leaky tap over the sink and Henry mended a rip in her best fishing net. Uncle John stayed in his room throughout, of course, but the door was ajar, so it was almost as though he were there, too. So it wasn’t such a terrible Christmas after all.

  Today, though … Traditionally, Boxing Day is when we go down to the village and hand out presents and join in the carol singing. This year, we have each set ourselves up in a separate bit of the castle to mope. At least I assume the others are moping. I certainly am. I even had a bit of a cry earlier, which achieved nothing except red eyes and a swollen nose. I’m also ashamed to admit to spending a whole hour hoping that Alice, Mary, and Jimmy were having a really miserable time in Cornwall, and that they now rue the day they ever decided to leave their proper home.

  And now Henry has come running in with the news that pirates have anchored off South Head and are preparing to attack.

  “Don’t be absurd, Henry,” I told her.

  “Oh, all right!” Henry huffed. “Perhaps not pirates, but you have to come and look—honestly, I’ve never seen a flag like that. And they’re just sitting there, not fishing or anything.”

  I’d better go up and see what she’s on about.

  Henry was right. A strange ship is sitting there, half a mile off South Head. It’s not a fishing trawler, nor a freight steamer, nor one of those American cabin cruisers. Veronica is currently wrestling Henry for control of the telescope so she can figure out where it’s from, but I could swear its flag has that bent-cross thing that’s on the German flag.

  Now Veronica has commandeered the telescope. “Yes, I see what you mean. A blue swastika on a white background,” she says at last. (That’s what it’s called, a swastika. There’s one on a vase that Great-uncle William brought back from a tiger-hunting expedition in India.) “How odd,” Veronica says slowly, returning the telescope to Henry. “The German flag is a black swastika on white and red. Unless it’s the Rhineland—do they have a new flag now?”

  Well, no wonder none of us recognized it. We know French and Spanish and Portuguese boats, of course, we’ve seen lots of them. And sometimes we see Moroccans or Italians or Danes—but rarely Germans. I wonder if the ship’s something to do with the Spanish war. Aren’t the Germans supposed to be helping Franco’s side? Except this ship isn’t very big. Perhaps they’re just lost—we had a terrific fog this morning.

  “Ooh, they’re getting in a little boat!” Henry has suddenly shouted. “With supplies! And they’re—don’t, Veronica, you’ll make me drop it! There’s two of them—oh, you should see their motor, imagine if we had one like that! They’re heading for the village. I wonder if they’ve got a proper chart, they’ll go right into the rocks if they’re not careful.”

  “We’d better go down,” Veronica says to me. “See what they want.”

  This is the first time we’ve had any visitors since Alice, Mary, and Jimmy left. Not that they would necessarily have been much help (nor would George, come to think of it), but I suddenly feel terribly defenseless.

  Well. It is evening now and we are unharmed—at least for the moment. By the time we got down to the village, the strangers had already tied up their motorboat at the wharf—we could see it bobbing about on the huge waves.

  “Should we tell them it’s safer to tie up around in the cove?” wondered Veronica out loud, with a glance at the leaden sky.

  “They’re trespassing,” hissed Henry. We’d wanted her to stay back at the castle but had no way of making her obey us, short of chaining her to the floor. “That’s as bad as being pirates, almost. They deserve to sink.”

  “But if their boat sinks, they’re stuck here,” I pointed out.

  For, to our surprise, the ship with the swastika flag had already moved off. We stayed crouched for a while behind the boulders above the village, trying to decide whether to confront the men or not. It was all very well for Queen Matilda, but she had a whole battalion of soldiers following her. Meanwhile, the men went on transferring their things from the boat to Alice’s cottage. It made me feel very indignant to see them treating her home as a campsite (even though Alice had abandoned it, as well as us).

  I also felt more than a bit frightened. One of the men, the blond one, was very troll-like. I hugged Carlos closer, but it wasn’t much comfort—he’s big and occasionally loud, but not much of an attack dog. I found myself wishing desperately that we had a man around for protection (unsurprisingly it was Simon, rather than Toby, who sprang to mind). However, we had no men, or none of any practical use, so Henry and I just looked at Veronica, waiting for her to tell us what to do. At last she sighed and said, “Well, they’ll probably come up to the castle eventually. At least this way, we’ll find out what they want straightaway.”

  Henry agreed to sneak around the back and keep a lookout, in case anything happened. She promised to rush back to the castle and raise the alarm if it looked like we were in any danger (not that I could imagine Rebecca caring much if we were, or doing anything very helpful). Then Veronica and I called Carlos over (he’d grown bored and wandered off to harass puffins) and the three of us marched down the track, making as much noise as we could. The troll saw us first and set down a leather case that looked as though it housed a typewriter.

  “Guten Tag,” he said, with a wary glance at Carlos.

  Veronica gave him her best frown. “Good afternoon,” she said. “Er … Deutsch?”

  “Ja,” said the troll, adding something else in rapid German.

  Veronica shook her head. “Do you speak English?”

  The troll turned around and called out to his companion, who hurried over. This one was an elf—big, sad eyes, an enormous forehead, and pointed ears. He bowed and said something in French, less than a quarter of which I caught. Veronica and I are both competent at written French (Veronica is better than competent), but our speaking and listening skills are terrible due to not being allowed to practice them inside the castle. The FitzOsbornes were never very keen on the French, not after Napoleon ruined our perfectly good curtain wall, but Uncle John has taken this dislike of all things Gallic to new depths since the Great War. He smashed up our old radio, the big one, two years ago when he caught us listening to Radio Normandie. Mind you, that’s nothing compared to how much he loathes the Germans.

  Meanwhile, Veronica was explaining—or attempting to explain—our limited French proficiency, in French. She must have succee
ded—the elf’s liquid eyes became even sadder. “Español?” Veronica asked hopefully. The elf shook his head. “English?” she said.

  “My English is … not so good,” he said, but it was a lot better than our German.

  “So, what are you doing here?” Veronica asked, trying to regain the sense of righteous irritation she’d lost in all that language-negotiating. “Do you know you are trespassing?”

  I won’t attempt to reproduce the entire conversation, as it was lengthy and multilingual, supplemented with notes that the elf, Otto Rahn, exchanged with Veronica on pages from his notebook. However, he seemed most apologetic when Veronica introduced us and made a point of using our royal titles when he addressed us after this, which mollified Veronica somewhat. He even knew a little of the origins of the FitzOsbornes, having just visited an estate in northern France that had been owned by the family at the time of the Norman conquest of England. Herr Rahn, it turned out, was a scholar from Berlin with an interest in medieval history. That was why he was here.

  “But Montmaray Castle isn’t medieval,” Veronica said. “It isn’t even a castle. Ce n’est pas un château moyenâgeux.”

  “No, of course, Your Highness,” said Herr Rahn. Then he explained that he was tracing the path of some heretics who’d fled France in the thirteenth century, trying to escape the persecution of the Church.

  “You think they came here?” said Veronica. We were all using exaggerated facial expressions and gestures to compensate for the poverty of our vocabulary, and at this she narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “There’s no record of any inhabitants before 1542.”

  “Perhaps … perhaps their ship is …” He pointed to the bay.

  “Wrecked,” I contributed.

  “Then there won’t be anything to see,” said Veronica.

  He smiled. “We thought perhaps to speak to the …” He gestured around the abandoned village and shrugged. “But perhaps, Your Highness, we may visit your library?”