Come to Castlemoor

by Wilde, Jennifer;

  “Miss Kathy’s terribly smart,” Bella said proudly. “She helped Mr. Donald write his first book, and she intends to finish the one he was workin’ on. We’re not ordinary people, I’m pleased to say.”

  “Aye, and that’s no lie,” Alan muttered.

  Although it was not yet completely dark, the sky still more green than black, I could see the first stars flickering dimly like chips of diamond scattered recklessly in space. We passed through a grove of scrubby trees, over a marshy stretch, and then I got my first sight of Castlemoor. It was an enormous gray structure, perfectly square, with a round turreted tower at each corner, stone battlements around the top. There was no moat, no drawbridge, but the front entrance door must have been twelve feet tall, seven across, ancient black oak embellished with brass studs. The windows were recessed at least a foot within the thick stone walls, the leaded glass as dark as steel. Oak trees grew around it, though they were by no means as immense as those we had seen earlier, the topmost branches barely reaching the battlements. The castle was like something out of Sir Walter Scott, and it looked all the more incredible sitting there in the middle of the empty, desolate land.

  “Land o’ Goshen!” Bella cried, unable to restrain herself.

  “Aye, impressive, ain’t it?”

  “I’m not believin’ my own eyes,” Bella retorted. “People live there? Why, it could hold an army—”

  “Aye, people live there. There’s two hundred rooms—some of ’em big as a barn—and that’s not countin’ the dungeons.”

  “Dungeons!”

  He nodded, grinning. “And some say a secret tunnel that leads out to the moors a mile away, though I ain’t never seen it myself. There’s a vast courtyard with trees and a vegetable garden, and stables, too, right there inside the castle. It’s somethin’ to see, though ain’t many folks had that privilege.”

  “You’ve been inside?” I asked.

  “Aye, I’ve delivered supplies and packages.”

  “How many servants?” Bella wanted to know.

  “Ten or twelve. Most of the place is shut up, all dust and cobwebs, white shrouds over the furniture. Used to be fifty servants, they say.”

  “It looks scary,” Bella said. “I’m sure I wouldn’t want to work in such a place. It’d give me the creeps.”

  We rounded a bend, and the castle was partially concealed by a curving slope of land. The wagon headed down, and I saw the house. It was small and neat, two stories high, with a blue-slate roof and a crooked chimney of dusty-orange brick. The stone was the same dark gray as the castle, but it looked lighter, not so dark and ponderous. Neat blue shutters framed the leaded-glass windows, and an oak tree towered up in the front, spreading its limbs to touch the roof. There was a small garden to one side, protected by a low stone fence, and in back there was a smoke shed and an ice house. I thought it was beautiful, a mellow, comfortable oasis here in the middle of the moor. Alan stopped the wagon in front. I felt something wet on my cheek, and only then realized my lashes were brimming with tears.

  Alan helped us down and took our valises out of the back of the wagon. I wiped my eyes and looked with love at my new home. Bella gave it a quick inspection and then turned to Alan, who was standing rather awkwardly beside the horse, stroking its chestnut coat.

  “Aunt Maud came out this mornin’ and straightened up,” he said. “She put fresh linens on the beds and checked the pantry. There’s hams and bacon in the smoke shed, cheese and eggs and butter in the ice house. You’ll find lamps and candles on the hall table just inside the door.”

  “Thank your aunt for me, Alan,” I said.

  “We knew you’d be gettin’ in. Aunt Maud, she was mighty fond of your brother, and she wanted to make you feel right at home.”

  “Do tell her I’m looking forward to meeting her.”

  “I’ll do that, ma’am.” He dug his toc in the dirt and seemed reluctant to leave. “I—uh—I reckon I’ll be stoppin’ by tomorrow to see if you need anything.”

  “I reckon you will,” Bella said tartly. They understood each other perfectly. “You might just take a bath first!” she snapped. “And when you come, I want you to bring a new broom and lemon oil and a pail of wax and—” She paused, giving him a saucy look. “I might just be able to use a new ribbon for my hair.”

  Alan gave her a long, slow look that was almost menacing. The sapphire eyes crackled and the wide mouth grimaced. Bella glared at him impudently, her hands on her hips. Alan started to say something, then thought better of it. He shrugged his shoulders and climbed back up on the wagon. He saluted us and drove away, whistling softly to himself. There would be no ribbon tomorrow, but there would be verbal fireworks, and Bella would be in her element. She smiled, watching the wagon disappear over the slope. She turned to me, radiant, full of merry expectations. I wiped a final tear from my cheek and took her hand. We went inside just as the final yellow ray died on the horizon and night fell black over the moors.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Waves of sunlight washed in through the open window, spilling over the old green carpet and reflecting brilliantly on the green-and-white-striped wallpaper. I felt the warmth on my eyelids and opened my eyes, to see the leaves of the oak tree rustling, and beyond, the towers of Castlemoor sticking up over the hill. I stretched luxuriously, rustling the coarse linen sheets and disturbing the brilliantly hued patchwork quilt at the foot of the bed. The room was small, the furniture plain—golden oak with a gloss of varnish over the natural grain. A white porcelain pot with delicate green leaves sat on a low table, and the light-blue curtains billowed at the windows. It was a wonderful room, and I already felt at home.

  Delicious smells drifted upstairs from the kitchen. I stretched again and got out of bed, slipping my feet into the yellow slippers and pulling a yellow robe over my white nightgown. I tied the sash and pushed disheveled golden curls away from my face, then walked down the narrow hall and paused at the head of the staircase with its shabby green carpet and glossy oak banister. I tried to identify the smells. Coffee, for sure, and sausage, and freshly baked bread? Impossible. Not at this hour. Then I saw the white porcelain clock in the hall and realized it was after ten. I had slept incredibly late, but the bed had been heavenly and the house a haven after the rigors of traveling. I hurried down the stairs and passed through the parlor and on into the compact little kitchen at the back of the house.

  Bella was just taking the bread out of the squat black stove. Her hair tumbled about her shoulders, and her cheeks were a bright pink from the heat of the oven. She took out two crusty golden loaves that would have pleased a master and set them carefully on the zinc drainboard. The drainboard was smeared with flour, and particles of flour were sprinkled over the dull red floor like white dust. Bella tossed the potholders aside and took out a long butcher knife and a piece of pumice stone. She started to sharpen the knife, making a noise not at all endearing to one who had just awakened.

  “There!” she cried, testing the edge of the knife with her finger. “I see you finally woke up! I was goin’ to wake you, but I thought it’d be nice to have breakfast all ready. Then I decided to make bread so you’d have a bit of toast with your coffee.”

  “You spoil me, Bella,” I protested, though weakly.

  “That’s what I’m for,” she retorted.

  “What time did you get up?” I asked.

  “Hours ago! Couldn’t sleep a wink for thinkin’ about them awful tales that Alan Dunne was fillin’ our heads with. There’s heaps of work to do, Miss Kathy. Our trunks are piled in the front room, and books are spillin’ all over the place in the study. The windows need cleanin’, and the place needs a whole goin’ over—”

  “It can wait till after breakfast,” I said wearily.

  “Oh, it’ll take us a week at least!”

  Bella was surprisingly enthusiastic about domestic affairs. She loved to cook, to clean, to sew, to stock the pantry. She had a genius for such things and loved doing them almost as much as she loved e
xchanging insults with strapping young men. I sat down at a table spread with a dark-yellow cloth and set with chipped blue dishes. Bella sliced the bread and toasted some of it while I admired the copper pots and pans hanging on one wall and the golden oak cabinets that dominated another.

  “I want to go through Donald’s things this morning,” I said.

  “That study’s a mess, and that’s no lie! All those files and papers! Mr. Donald never let me get anywhere near his workin’ quarters, and I’m not goin’ to start now. I’ll unpack the trunks while you’re in there. Alan Dunne can take the empty trunks down to the cellar when he gets here.”

  Bella served a delicious breakfast of toast, coffee, and sausage, producing a jar of wild-strawberry jam she had found in the cabinets. We chatted as we ate, discussing a wide assortment of subjects. Bella was satisfied with her small room adjoining the kitchen, although she wanted new curtains for the windows and said all the mattresses needed airing. She intended to make a list of food and supplies for Alan to purchase in town, and she had a mind to bake a chocolate cake this afternoon if she could find the time. I had several cups of coffee, lingering at the table. Bella was able to get up in the morning and radiate vitality. It took me quite a long time to be really certain that I was actually awake.

  “Come on, Miss Kathy! Let’s get started!” Bella cried fifteen minutes after she had cleared the table. “It’s practically noon.”

  “All right!” I retorted, none too pleasantly.

  “For shame,” she said, frowning. Bella had always been bewildered by this post-rising stupor which was a Hunt-family trait. My brother had been even worse than I. No one dared speak to him for at least an hour after he got out of bed, and he had even been known to throw old shoes at birds who sang on the window ledges of our old apartment. I finally got up from the table, noting that Bella was clanking the dishes together with unnecessary noise. I yawned, stretched, and finally went up to my room.

  I changed into a light-blue dress with tiny pink print roses and tied my hair back with a long blue ribbon. I went back downstairs with a feeling of reluctance. I didn’t want to go through Donald’s desk and files, but I knew it was something that had to be done.

  Donald had turned the front sitting room into his study. The room had been light and airy, with pearl-gray walls, light-blue carpet, graceful white furniture, but he had managed to amass a masculine clutter that marred the intended atmosphere. The sky-blue-velvet sofa had been shoved into a corner to make room for a bulky brown desk on which sat a huge lamp with red-glass shade, a black-onyx desk set, an elephant of carved ivory, several paperweights, and at least twenty books. Boxes of magazines and journals sat beside the desk, and on the other side of the room an immense filing cabinet stood between two delicate blue-and-white chairs. One wall was covered with the shelves Alan had built for my brother’s books, crammed full, and pipe racks and tobacco boxes and ashtrays rested sturdily on tables meant for fragile ornaments and flowers.

  Going through all the desk drawers, I found several sketches of the ruins he had made with charcoal and ink, and I discovered a mushroom-shaped rock with a hole in the top, through which a leather thong had been inserted. I examined it with curiosity and blushed when I realized that it was a Celtic amulet of the sort described in several forbidden books. I wondered where Donald had found it. In the ruins, perhaps? Although it repelled me, I knew it was valuable, a museum piece, something he could certainly never have afforded to buy. I found various magazines, letters from myself and his professors, and several meaningless papers, but the manuscript I had been looking for was not there.

  I put everything back in the desk, puzzled. Something bothered me, and at first I didn’t realize what it was. I fingered the ivory elephant, trying to remember something. Then it struck me. Although the rest of the desk drawers had been hold-alls and invariably messy, Donald had always kept four of them scrupulously neat. One held blank paper, neatly stacked, and the next held pens, blotters, and ink, while the third was reserved for pages of manuscript in rough draft. The fourth drawer, usually locked, was for the final draft. Though everything else might have been heaped in messy piles, these four drawers had always been tidy. There had been no such system in the desk today. All the drawers were full of clutter, which wasn’t at all like my brother.

  I frowned. Oh, well, I thought, maybe he gave up his regular working habits while he was out here all alone. They were eccentric, some of them. It doesn’t mean anything.…

  I attacked the filing cabinet next. Before I started working with him, Donald’s files had been hopelessly jumbled. Whenever he had wanted to locate something, he had had to go through piles and piles of material before he could find it, and it had been a source of maddening frustration to him. I had devised a simple and effective filing system, purchasing hundreds of manila folders and labeling each one. Thereafter the files were admirably neat and completely serviceable. They weren’t now. They were incredibly messy, papers and articles stuffed in the wrong folders, stacks piled loose in the back of each drawer, clippings scattered. I gasped. No, no, Donald wouldn’t have done this … something is wrong.

  I spent two hours putting the files in order. I sat down on the floor and separated all the materials and put them in their proper folders, putting each folder in order, placing everything back in the filing cabinet. I found manuscripts of articles Donald had written, rough drafts of articles he had planned but never completed, the original manuscript of the book published a year ago—but there was no sign of the manuscript he had been working on when he died.

  I went through the boxes of magazines and journals. The manuscript was not among them.

  I stood in the middle of the room, alarmed and yet afraid to give way to the alarm. There was bound to be a logical explanation for everything. The manuscript was not here. It was somewhere else, then, perhaps in one of the drawers in the bedroom, perhaps in a box on the floor of one of the closets, perhaps … perhaps he had lent it to someone. It would turn up. There was no reason to be alarmed, no reason. The desk, the filing cabinet, the mess and confusion—there were explanations for that, too. There must be. I couldn’t give way to alarm, not on my first day. It was utterly foolish to feel this way.…

  Bella came into the room, her blue-and-white-striped dress dusty and soiled with perspiration. There was a smudge of dirt on her forehead, and she smelled of camphor and mothballs.

  “What a job!” she exclaimed. “I got all the trunks unpacked, though. All the clothes are put away, and everything else sorted out. There’s those books you wanted, a couple of dozen of ’em, and the little painting of Mr. Donald that wild artist friend of his painted. They’re the only things I didn’t know what to do with.”

  “We’ll find room for the books on the shelves,” I replied, “and I’ll put the painting here on the desk.”

  We toted the books into the study and managed to squeeze them onto the shelves with the others. Although most of the books pertained to the work my brother had been doing, there were also many novels, Volumes of poetry, history, biography. Some were so old that their bindings were worn, some new with flashy jackets, some bound in fine leather, and a few from France that had stiff yellow-paper covers. They gave the room a certain character and flavor strongly reminiscent of the man who had owned them.

  Bella handed me the painting, and I started to put it on the desk. Donald’s friend Damon Stuart had painted it two years ago, a small canvas not quite eight by ten, framed in polished brown wood. I had packed it away, not wanting to look at it, but now I studied that face, so lifelike, so vital. The dark-brown eyes blazed with intelligence, the wide pink mouth curled with humor, the tawny gold hair tumbled boyishly over the high forehead. The strong, ruggedly handsome features had been perfectly duplicated on canvas, and I caught my lower lip between my teeth and looked down at the portrait with misty eyes. I wanted to tell Bella to put it away, hide it. I couldn’t look at that face every day, not now, not yet. I started to hand the painting b
ack to Bella, but the blazing brown eyes stared up at me from the canvas and seemed to admonish me. I stepped over to the desk and placed the picture beside the ivory elephant. No tears. No maudlin sentiment. A living memory. That’s what he would have wanted, and that’s what I intended to preserve.

  “He’d be proud of you, Miss Kathy,” Bella said quietly.

  “I—I certainly hope so.”

  “He’s here. Don’t you feel it? It’s strange.”

  “I know. It seems he just stepped into the next room—”

  “I like that feeling,” Bella said. “It’s—comforting.”

  “Not sad,” I said. “Not like the apartment.”

  “Come, Miss Kathy. I want to show you the pantry.”

  It was after two o’clock when we heard the wagon pulling up in front. Bella’s hands flew to her hair, and she darted to the nearest mirror. I went to the front door to see an outrageously dressed old woman climbing down from the wagon Alan had brought us here in yesterday. She wore a shapeless blue dress that hung like a sack on her plump, stocky body, and a mothy old gray sweater with bulging pockets. Her feet were shod in a pair of boots, and a sad black felt hat drooped about her face. She gave the horse a smart pat on the rump and plodded up the flagstone path toward me.

  “Mornin’!” she cried. “Or is it? Ain’t never been able to keep track of time! Busy from mornin’ to night, an’ not a minute to spare. Thought I’d plop by for a minute and welcome you to Castlemoor, Miss Hunt. Yes, and I’d know you were your brother’s sister in the middle of the desert. Same eyes and same nose, though your hair’s a bit brighter, not so tarnished-lookin’! I’m Maud—you probably guessed that—and I worked for Mr. D. Smashin’ gent ’e was! Bleedin’ shame—”

  Her face was marvelous to behold, fleshy and lumpy, as though patted in shape by a generous though amateur sculptor, as plump as the rest of her. The blue eyes were lively and shrewd, and the mouth was mobile. It was a face that registered emotion: first delight, then sadness, then distress as she referred to my brother’s death. I could see she was afraid she had upset me by the reference. I smiled, warming to her immediately.