The Triple Goddess

by Ashly Graham

  There were drawbacks to the adherence to Elizabethan, or earlier, tastes in dining, and Jenny’s parents, who were accustomed to everything that was served, and never turned a hair at what was put in front of them unless it were to remove a boar bristle, were often perplexed as guests went white and held up their hands in horror when they saw what was on the table for them to grapple with, or the covers were removed from the plates.

  For her delectation at the opening of a meal, a vegetarian duchess was offered a choice of stuffed honey dormouse, otter tail, or the squirrel meat of a Brunswick stew—it was a nice touch: the woman was descended from the Duchess, later Queen Caroline, of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.

  Dishes of laverocks’, or larks’, tongues; plovers’ eggs; beccaficos, or the garden warbler Sylvia hortensis; nightingales; turtle doves; ortolans, or the bunting Emberiza hortulana—diners were provided with extra-large napkins to cover their heads and faces with, so that they might absorb the buntings’ odour with the flavor—were placed in front of her husband: who, being president of the Royal Ornithological Society, was already eyeing with dismay the central displays of a peacock, served with head and tail-feathers in place, a swan in aspic, and something that looked as though it might once have done business as a bustard.

  Observing this and taking it as a sign of lack of appetite, the Earl of Northmarch cheerfully remarked, as he used the knife from his belt that he used to eat—he had no use for that modern invention, the fork—to stab a pullet that was just out of reach, and grabbed a slice of umble pie containing deer offal, and a chitterling of pig’s intestine, that ’twould be a pity if the birds had died in vain.

  In this he was showing an insensitivity similar to that of his Northmarch ancestor, who, when Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, was staying overnight and breakfasting in bed, to make him feel at home he was sent up the type of sausage that his detractors had named after him, because he was the same shape and smelt of pork.

  ”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “

  The efficiency of the storm in wreaking havoc at the castle having revived Lady Eugénie’s longing to solve the puzzle of the missing rooms, her priority was to survey the interior of the roof. For at the time that her husband had the renovations done, it had been a source of great anxiety to her that he had chosen as his personal private quarters the section of the castle in which the mystery area that had preoccupied her since childhood was located.

  And she was doubly concerned now, because since it was his lordship’s wing that had sustained by far the majority of the damage, it was natural that he would wish to attend to its repair first, and with a much greater chance than before of unwittingly discovering the fortress’s ancient secret.

  As extensive as the refurbishments conducted by Huntenfisch had been, to Jenny’s relief only a number of minor items of interest had been revealed, behind skirting boards and chimney-pieces and under floorboards. Among them were a bag of coins from the reign of Edward the Confessor; several love-letters to an eighteenth century Earl of Northmarch from an actress who had understudied Miss Verjuice in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, one of which included a lock of her hair, and another a handkerchief that still smelled of patchouli; an indiscreet diary that had been kept by one of the countesses; and a few Victorian children’s toys.

  Given that her current plan involved a thorough search of her husband’s residence, Jenny was very glad to receive word of his indisposition from his lordship’s butler, Noggins; who, upon descending to the cellar that night to restore his shattered nerves with a draught from the same barrel as his master had been suckling on like a newborn babe since his return from Alaska, found his master sprawled on the floor and blowing bubbles as he snored.

  Knowing the pattern of Otto Huntenfisch’s binges, Jenny expected that it would be several days before he came out of his funk and the cellar, and in a fit state to take things in hand.

  At eighty-one years old, as Clerk of Works, Jock McJoist—a McJoist had slipped across from the Borders into Northumbria while the Northmarch attention was elsewhere—had been a member of Jenny’s original inspection team when she was a girl, and it was to him that she was now turning for assistance in prosecuting her endeavour.

  Upon being so apprised, McJoist, thinking that Jenny meant for him to tackle the job from the top down by descending through gaping holes in the roof, informed his mistress that he was no longer suited to climbing ladders, and she was a right daftie for thinking otherwise. In fact, despite his fifty years as Clerk of Works, McJoist had always been afraid of heights, he said, referring to himself. Like a junior seaman sent up a ship’s rigging to reef the mainsail, as a young man, whenever tiles and slates needed replacing, McJoist had always been the one, he said, unlucky enough to be sent to contend with the treacherous winds that whupped around the castle walls. He had slipped many times, he said, especially in wet weather, and many times had risked falling hundreds of feet to an unlamented death upon the rocks.

  So, at his present age, said McJoist forcefully, he wasn’t inclined to repeat the experience; but he did repeat the statement in case he had not said it forcefully enough the first time. He also took the opportunity to remind Jenny of the occasion when, as an eight-year-old, she had pulled away the ladder he was using—fortunately not when he was upon it—and gone off to have her tea, leaving him stranded on the roof and without his tea.

  When Jenny assured McJoist that, no, no, Jock, they would be exploring together from the inside, he was equally unenthusiastic. There was nothing to be gained by reopening the investigation, he said. As familiar as he was with the old plans of the castle, which he had inherited from his Clerk of Works predecessor, and notwithstanding Jenny’s grandstanding ten or so years ago with towels, there was no doubt in his mind that every inch of space within each tower, turret, loft, garret, and attic was documented and known about.

  McJoist’s personal opinion, if Jenny was interested, and even if she wasn’t, was that the window frames that had intrigued generations of Plantagenets were a trick. They had been painted on the stonework as a trompe l’oeil, or “trompery” as he called it, in an attempt to make the castle look more symmetrical.

  Jenny, adamant in her strategy, pointed out that Dragonburgh was top of the list of the world’s most asymmetric buildings, and that nobody in his or her right mind would try and alter the fact, with the possible exception of her husband, and he was not an architecturally minded person.

  Upon which McJoist, recognizing the look in her eye that indicated the futility of arguing further, with the grim resignation of the reluctant gunslinger played by Gary Cooper in High Noon, went to fetch a ladder and his tool belt.

  The following morning, having spent a restless night in fear that another tempest would finish the castle and them off for good, or that Otto Huntenfisch would cast off his demons and arise from the cellar floor, ready to send another army of builders once more into the breaches, Jenny was delighted to ascertain that the weather was calm, and learn from butler Noggins that her husband was still in deep colloquy with Napoleon.

  Further emboldened by the knowledge that the CCTV and alarm systems—which until the day before had been monitored by Huntenfisch’s ex-SAS bodyguard, who would have any intruder on the ground looking at the wrong end of an automatic weapon, or up the nostrils of a sawn-off shotgun, and inspecting the tonsils of his Alsatian dog—were out of commission, and the bodyguard had taken the opportunity to abseil down the rock and go to visit his mother in Skegness, Jenny and McJoist began the aerobic exercise of climbing every staircase in the suspect area and conducting their own search for the windows.

  Jenny drummed her fingers impatiently on the banister at each landing…unreasonably, given that in addition to his advanced years the Clerk of Works was encumbered by a hickory trestle ladder…as she waited for him to catch up. Every time McJoist turned, the ladder chipped more chunks of plaster off the un-smoothed walls, which Jenny was pleased to note
were sweating with damp again as they had in the good old days; already, promising patches of mildew and clumps of toadstools were showing. She kicked and dug her heels into the gaudy modern canvases that had fallen; and noted with delight that the Plantagenet portraits by Van Dyck, Kneller, Reynolds, and Gainsborough, which Huntenfisch had ordered consigned to the stables, were back in place and perfectly straight, as was a Stubbs horse that looked more equine than any of those in the stalls and less so than the Plantagenet dame next to it.

  Starting at the top floor, the pair spent hour after hour examining walls and floors and ceilings, tapping wood panelling, testing cracks and anything else that showed signs of hollowness or looseness, and crawling into cupboards. They were soon both covered in dirt, and Jenny was hoarse from shouting instructions and encouragements to McJoist, who complained continually about his aching bones, the dust in his eyes, and the cruelty of Jenny’s demanding such work of an octogenarian.

  When much later she decided that they would start again at the beginning, McJoist unbuckled his belt, dashed it on the floor, and swore that he would drop dead if so compelled, and a blessing it would be. Jenny was prepared for this, and produced, from a satchel of useful items she’d brought with her, a restorative bottle of malt whisky. She hadn’t wanted him to know she had it until necessary, but it was clear that moment had come.

  Suggesting they sit down at the top of a staircase, Jenny watched as McJoist, mollified, pulled the cork out and set to refreshing himself with such enthusiasm that she had to wrest the bottle from him. She smacked the stopper home with the flat of her hand, to indicate that it would not be coming out again any time soon, and observed that a veined flush had replaced the pallor in the Clerk of Works’ cheeks, under the streaks of dirt and dust.

  ‘Please, Jock,’ she implored, ‘just a while longer. Trust me, I had a feeling back there, and I think we should go over it one more time. Then I promise we’ll stop, and you can have a drop more before we go down.’

  The ploy was effective, and McJoist recovered the firmness of his limbs. As certain as he was that there was nothing to find, he reckoned that another half hour spent in proving it would be worth the pay-off; plus it would afford him the pleasure of being right. Then he could have some more of the excellent whisky, and probably get to keep the bottle for company for when he retired to the fireside in his own snug quarters that night. For this being a Sunday and Mrs Furness the cook’s night off, instead of eating his supper in the castle kitchen he would be dining at home on the mutton and onions, neaps and tatties, that were slow-cooking in the kettle.

  Setting such thoughts aside for the time being, after Jenny had taken from her satchel and quickly eaten the second half of a sandwich she’d saved from earlier, and down half a pint of water from a bottle, and after he’d refused the biscuits that she tried to press upon him to mop up the whisky, the Clerk of Works got up and dragged the ladder back down the passage to go over the same area again.

  When nearly all the ground had been covered again, they stopped at the foot of another staircase off a corridor, a narrow one, the shiny worn wooden banister rail of which surmounted a decorative wrought-iron baluster tracery of fleurs de lis.

  McJoist propped the ladder against the wall at the foot of the stairs, wiped his forehead with a piece of cotton waste, grunted, and began to walk up. At the third step he stopped so abruptly that Jenny, who was hard behind him, bumped into him.

  ‘What the…move on, McJoist,’ she said with asperity, backing down two steps.

  The old man looked upwards and scratched his head.

  Jenny tutted. ‘Jock, why have you stopped?’

  ‘Hoots, cannae you see for yersel’, lassie?’ he said, twisting his head and frowning at her. Eleven or twenty-one years old, his manner of addressing her was the same.

  ‘See what? You’re not transparent. Keep going.’

  ‘I’m more’n one step ahead of you, it would seem. Pass the whusky.’

  ‘No. We agreed. Go on up, man.’

  ‘My point exactly. There is no up. I’ll tak just a drappie, lass.’

  ‘What do you mean, there’s no up? These are stairs, aren’t they? I knew I oughtn’t to have got the bottle out so soon. Heights aren’t the only thing you’ve lost your head for, Jock.’

  ‘What I’m saying,’ rejoined McJoist, ‘is that there’s niver been stairs here before, there’s nae call for them. My puir brains aren’t as befuddled frae my old stone jar or that wee dram I just had as a’ that, whatever you might think. There’s nae reason for these here steps, is my point.’

  ‘What? Why not?’

  ‘Why not, in consideration of there being nae floor above the one we’re on, as you should ken from your scampering about the premises as a bairn, missy. We’re on the top floor as it is. There’s nobbut over us but attics.’

  ‘Mansards,’ said Jenny.

  ‘An attic’s an attic in my book. Anyhoo, we’ve been doun this corridor a hundred times a’ready today, and up it a hundred more, and I’ll be hanged if there was a staircase here before, nor has there ever been to my knowledge, so happen there’s more to this than meets the e’e after a’. ’Orrible Ott...I mean, your husband cannae have had anything to do with it.’

  ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out.’ Jenny gave McJoist a shove.

  It was a steep flight, and to Jenny’s amazement and Jock’s satisfaction, at the top there was nothing but a small landing against a blank whitewashed wall, a dead end. Jenny hammered on the wall with her fists, to what purpose she didn’t know. More sensibly, McJoist did the same with the wooden mallet that hung from a loop on his tool-belt, working his way methodically around, down, and across in search of a stud or hollowness. But all was solid stone.

  Giving up, the pair sat on the landing side by side with their backs against the wall, and McJoist looked wistfully at Jenny’s satchel.

  ‘I’ll agree this doesn’t make any architectural sense,’ said Jenny, her head in her hands. ‘Why would someone build stairs to nowhere? Could it have been blocked off deliberately, d’you think, to hide something?’

  ‘Like I said, missy, there’s niver bin a staircase here, old or new, and that’s certifiable, like half your family. Going back a ways, that is,’ he added gruffly.

  Jenny considered. ‘I suppose one of them may have been responsible. Great-great-grandfather “Potty” Plantagenet, for example. He drops in for dinner occasionally; slurps his soup, bangs mashed potato off his spoon handle at his portrait on the wall, eats off a jewelled poniard, and belches. He loves his food, does Potty. He used to live in the kitchen, with a bed next to the dogs, so that he could get his food quicker and while it was still hot.

  ‘Potty’s cousin, Barkynge Plantagenet, lived in a suit of armour, the vizard of which was forever dropping, so that he had to keep flipping it up like people flick their hair out of their eyes.’

  McJoist said, ‘A man I hadn’t seen for a while strolled by the woodshed last week, while I was doing some chopping, and told me I wasn’t using the axe right. I told him I’d been doing it this way nigh on seventy year, but he was welcome to show me how and finish the job.

  ‘He laughed and said, if I recall correckly,

  “When somethin’ needs doing, a Plantagenet

  Prefers to just sit and imagine it;

  As a breed we are lazy,

  And some of us crazy,

  So it’s best not to ask in effectin’ it.”

  ‘Then he lit a cigar and left.’

  ‘That was Useless Eustace. He talks in limericks.’

  ‘Useless or not, I’d say your bogle ancestors ought to rally round, seeing as you’re prepared to keep them in house and hame after they’re dead.’

  Jenny nodded. ‘You’re right, Jock. As the poet said, “Death opens unknown doors”.’

  ‘A Plantagenet poet?’

  ‘There’s not a poetic bone in the family skeleton, Eustace’s limericks are as good as it gets. No, that’s Masefield,
I think.’

  Jenny got to her feet and exclaimed, ‘Come on, you Plantagenets, you heard the man—help us out here!’

  A moment later, McJoist winced at a sudden discomfort in his back, where it was leaning against the wall, and turned. Then he scrambled to his feet with alacrity for one of his years, and Jenny, sensing that some alteration must have occurred to make him move so fast, did the same.

  ‘Well I’ll blethering be,’ breathed the Clerk of Works.

  They stared. Where there had been nothing but plaster and paint was now a door: an oaken door studded with iron bolts and banded with scrolled hinges.

  ‘Thank you, Plantagenets,’ shouted Jenny.

  Fearful that the door was about to disappear again, she grasped the ring handle, and was about to turn it when she changed her mind, and knocked instead; gently at first and then, after a pause, louder.

  No sound came from within.

  ‘It’s probably just storage,’ said McJoist, hopefully, remembering his neaps and tatties and stone jar before the fire. Hunger was overcoming curiosity.

  Apprehending excitement, Jenny said, ‘I very much doubt it, a storage room doesn’t have a serious door like this.’ And she knocked again.

  As they waited, McJoist cleared his throat. ‘You could try opening it, lass, instead o’ chapping awa’. Doors often respond favourably to sich treatment.’

  Jenny felt nervous for the first time. ‘You do it, Jock.’

  He reached for the handle and twisted it. There was the click of a raised latch on the other side, but when he pushed the door it didn’t budge, nor did it respond to a heave from his shoulder.

  The Clerk of Works took off his cap and scratched his head. ‘Locked, I reckon.’