Master of Dryford

by Helen Magee

  ‘Alexander,’ I called, ‘where are you?’

  My hands felt around the walls. They were rough and clammy with damp.

  ‘Over here,’ came his voice. ‘It’s a little dog and it’s hurt.’

  I moved towards him as best I could, stumbling on the uneven earth floor. almost fell over them. I knelt and felt with my hands, so much clumsier than Alexander, until I found a soft warm bundle of fur. It whimpered again and made a feeble attempt to snap at my fingers, then my hands encountered a warm sticky patch and matted hair.

  ‘We must get it out of here,’ I said to Alexander. ‘I will carry it, you lead the way.’

  So Alexander led the way in the darkness while I followed behind, clutching the tiny bundle of fur to me.

  Once in the hallway Alexander was triumphant.

  ‘I told you I heard something. I rescued it. Oh, can I keep it?’

  I looked at the animation in the child’s face and at the disreputable little terrier that lay in my arms. Blood was dripping down my skirt from a freshly-opened wound, but on balance the dog did not look too bad.

  ‘We’ll need to bind it up,’ I said. ‘It must have cut itself trying to get free of that tangle of wire.’

  I looked towards the stone stairway that led upwards from the hall. ‘What’s up there?’ I said.

  When I turned back his face was so pale that I thought he would faint. He seemed to be struggling with himself, then the dog whimpered again. He put his hand out to it and a small pink tongue came out and licked his fingers.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ he said.

  I followed him up the spiral staircase, hardly knowing what to expect. It was a circular room, the window slits set at intervals round the wall so that it commanded a view of the entire countryside surrounding the Keep. It was barely but beautifully furnished with rugs on the floor and a few pieces of fine old furniture. In one of the windows stood a tapestry frame with a stool before it. Alexander moved with a sure step to a chest shaped to the curve of the wall.

  ‘In here,’ he said, ‘you will find cloth to bandage it.’

  I laid the little dog in his arms and opened the chest. Inside was layer upon layer of folded, beautifully worked linen. I took a large napkin from the top and carefully bound it round the terrier’s wound. It had almost stopped bleeding already and the animal was showing signs of recovery. I felt in my pocket for the sweet biscuits I habitually carried on our walks, for Alexander had a healthy appetite, and gave them to the child. The dog gobbled them up greedily as he fed them to it. I looked with interest around the room. Facing me on a low easel was a life-sized portrait of a woman. She was dark with slanting eyes and a sweet expression and I knew I was looking at Vida. I cast a glance at Alexander. His face was composed once more and he was absorbed in preventing the dog, which now seemed fully recovered, from jumping out of his arms.

  ‘Alexander,’ I said, ‘this painting . . . ’

  His grasp on the dog relaxed and the animal bounded to the floor but Alexander seemed hardly to notice. He nodded silently then said with difficulty, ‘This was her place, her special place.’

  I went over and put my arms around him. ‘And it will be again when she comes home.’

  There was no expression on the pale set face and I found that more disturbing than anything as he said, in a cold little voice, ‘She will never come home.’

  Then there was the sound of a table being overturned and I turned to find the little dog grinning and wagging his tail delightedly in the middle of the debris. It was a small worktable beautifully made and inlaid with marquetry in an ornate style, and the contents of the drawers had spilled out over the floor.

  ‘Oh, you naughty dog!’ I cried, fearful that the table had been damaged. He looked at me and the tail slowly stopped wagging and drooped pitifully. I could not help but smile, then he was off again racing round the room excitedly. I looked in despair from the prancing dog to the debris of silks and bobbins and scraps of material that littered the floor.

  ‘Alexander, we must find something to use as a lead for that animal or we will never get him home.’

  ‘Don’t call him ‘that animal’,’ said Alexander, his little face pugnacious. ‘He’s just glad to be free again. It must have been frightening for him down there.’

  I relented. ‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘and he’s still a puppy. Look, we’ll use this cord as a lead.’

  The walls were hung with heavy curtains, presumably to dispel the chill of the stone and these were looped back with cords from the windows. I unfastened one and carefully tied a loop in one end and slipped it, not without difficulty, over the dog’s head.

  ‘There,’ I said, ‘now you take him downstairs while I tidy this up.’

  I pointed Alexander in the direction of the stairs and watched them go, hoping that the puppy would not trip him up on the winding stone staircase. I sighed as I began to pick up the contents of the table and set it to rights. Alexander was so independent and that made it all the stranger that he should have been so afraid to enter the Keep. One thing I knew and that was that I would get nowhere by asking him the reason for his fear. I should have to find out some other way. I closed the last drawer of the table and sat back on my heels. ‘She will never come home’ he had said. I looked at the portrait, such a calm gentle face.

  ‘Please come home,’ I whispered to it, then there was a shout from below.

  ‘Miss Grainger, come quickly. He’s got away.’

  As I made to rise something rustled beneath my skirt, a scrap of paper crumpled up into a ball. I thrust it into my pocket as I dashed for the door,

  ‘I’m coming!’ I called.

  It took quite a time to catch the dog and I insisted that Alexander carry him the rest of the way home, no matter how much he struggled. As luck would have it we ran straight into Lachlan Grant, dressed in riding jacket and breeches and looking, I noticed, very handsome. We came to a halt and the terrier leapt out of Alexander’s arms and began to wrap its makeshift lead round my skirts, barking with excitement. He raised an eyebrow. I looked down to check the dog and for the first time became aware of my grubby skirts. My hands flew to my hair but it was beyond redemption. I don’t think there could have been a pin left in it.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Grant,’ I said in as dignified a manner as I could, then Alexander was speaking, his face taut with apprehension.

  ‘Oh, Father, we found a little dog. It was caught in the cellar under the Keep but it wasn’t hurt, well not badly hurt and it really is very well behaved,’ and I saw him cross his fingers behind his back, ‘and can I keep it? Please say I can. I rescued it. Well, Flissy helped . . . ’

  ‘Flissy?’ said his father and the eyebrow rose even higher.

  I was too surprised to speak. Alexander had never called me anything but ‘Miss Grainger’ before. The child coloured slightly.

  ‘It’s what I call her,’ he said.

  ‘And does Miss Grainger approve of this new name?’ said his father, but his eyes were on me and there was more than a hint of amusement in them. Alexander opened his mouth to speak but I intercepted him.

  ‘Indeed I take it as an honour that Alexander has a special name for me,’ I said firmly.

  Alexander said nothing but put his hand in mine.

  ‘So,’ said his father, ‘and must we all call her ‘Flissy’ now?’ The amusement was unconcealed, and I blushed.

  ‘No indeed,’ said Alexander heatedly, ‘it’s my name for her.’

  ‘So be it,’ said his father, ‘though at the moment ‘Flissy’ would seem to suit her better than Miss Grainger.’ He was taking in every detail of my dishevelled appearance. He looked at the dog.

  ‘That animal, Alexander, is only marginally more dirty than you. I suggest that you bathe and change while I take it to the stables. We will meet in the library when you have done so.’

  I noticed that Alexander did not take issue with his father for calling the dog ‘that animal’ but nodded meekly. I
also presumed that his remarks were also addressed to me.

  I handed Alexander over to Dorcas, who was appalled.

  ‘What have ye done to him, the puir wee laddie? Would ye just look at him. Whatever will his father say?’

  ‘He’s said it,’ I said unsympathetically and she looked at me, scandalised.

  ‘He’s seen him like this?’

  I nodded and she pursed up her mouth in the way that I was becoming familiar with.

  ‘Call yerself a governess,’ she muttered as she led the child away.

  I do, I thought ruefully as I made my way to my own room, but no one else in this house seems to.

  The mirror was no comfort! My face was flushed and there was a long muddy streak down one cheek. My gown was dirty and torn in places, and my hair lay about my shoulders in a tumbled mass of unruly waves. I rang for hot water and began to divest myself of the object that had once been a gown. It was ruined and I found myself thinking of the woman who had sat at her tapestry in the window of the Keep like some medieval lady. I thought of her calm face and sweet expression. She would never have got herself into this state, I told myself angrily as I kicked the bedraggled dress to the far end of the room. Dorcas was quite right. Governesses simply did not behave like this.

  When Alexander and I appeared in the library I was dressed in my severest dark blue cotton and my hair was scraped back rigorously into a tight bun. Alexander was shining with cleanliness. His father made no comment on our appearance. It was decided that enquiries would be put in hand to see if the owner of the dog could be found. Alexander’s face fell but his father pointed out that since it had no collar it was quite probable that the dog was a stray. I felt quite sure then that Alexander would not be disappointed and I smiled my thanks at him. He looked at me, his head on one side.

  ‘Then I’m not such an ogre after all, Miss Grainger?’ he said.

  I blushed and was angry with myself. Really, it was becoming a habit. I made some excuse and left, taking Alexander with me, but I distinctly heard him say as the door closed behind us, ‘Flissy!’

  And I swear I heard him chuckle.

  * * *

  The finding of the dog marked a watershed in my relations with Alexander. He continued to call me Flissy and lost the gravity that had sat so strangely on a child. He became almost mischievous at times but I loved to hear him laugh and allowed him much more freedom than I would otherwise have done. I could not bear to think of him reverting to the pale polite little stranger he had been. For the same reason I did not mention the Tower Room to him but I determined to pay another visit to the Keep on my own. I did so a few days later. I had finished writing my weekly letter to the Larkins and had just put it in the box in the hall for collection. The house was quiet. Alexander was having his nap, though that rule was becoming more difficult to apply since the arrival of the dog. He had called it Fergus and it was his constant companion, even in the schoolroom, though Dorcas would not allow it in his bedroom.

  As I mounted the spiral stair I knew that more than anything else I wanted to gaze again on that portrait and to wonder about the woman who had spent so much time here. I had asked Dorcas about that.

  ‘The mistress used to go there near every day,’ she told me. ‘She said it was her quiet time and none was allowed to disturb her, not even the Master himself. She was that gentle. She used to make pictures of her home in her tapestries, her real home that is, in Italy. Ach, the poor wee thing, she missed it that much.’

  ‘But was she not happy here?’ I said.

  ‘She was happy enough,’ said Dorcas. ‘She was happy with Mr Grant. It was just the difference. She was used to the sun, ye see, coming from foreign parts as she did. ‘Dorcas,’ she would say, ‘when I work at my pictures I can feel the sun, smell the olive groves and it warms me in this cold land’. And what an olive grove might look like I don’t know but it did her good to go up to that room on her own for a while.’

  Yes, I thought, it must have been very different here for Vida. Even I felt it. Here the sky seemed to stretch for miles and if the air was cooler it also seemed purer somehow and free. I did not yearn for the home of my childhood or for the bustle of London. I loved this place and I realised then that I never wanted to leave it.

  ‘I remember when she first took to going to the Keep,’ Dorcas was saying. ‘It was when she was carrying the child, and her no more than a child herself at the time. The Master had it all done just as she wanted it with the wall hangings and the furniture specially imported for her. She was that pleased,’ Dorcas sighed. ‘Aye but things change, nothing stays the same for long. I can picture her in my mind weaving those little scenes on her tapestry that reminded her of home.’ And Dorcas stopped, clearly distressed.

  I put my hand on hers comfortingly. ‘And she will again when she returns, Dorcas.’

  She looked at me and her eyes seemed to burn as she said,

  ‘That she’ll not. She never will again. That room hasn’t known her this past year nor ever will.’

  I caught my breath. It was what Alexander had said. ‘You mean since the accident?’ I said.

  Her eyes glittered as she said, ‘The accident, aye since the accident.’

  The door of the Tower Room was open and I was about to enter when I stopped, for I was not alone in the Keep. Standing in front of the portrait was Lachlan Grant and on his face was a look of such tenderness that it was almost painful to watch. I drew back, conscious of intruding on something very private and quietly I went down the stairs and out of the Keep. He had not heard me. I doubt if he was hearing anything. He was alone in the room with Vida. I was conscious of a dull ache in my breast but I dismissed it. I was not ready at that time to face the truth.

  4

  It was on the afternoon of the ball that I found out that there was something wrong with the accounts. I had found myself with some unexpected free time. Alexander had been taken into the nearby market town of Greenholm by his father, mainly to keep him from getting under the servants’ feet as they prepared the house for the ball.

  I had been in the habit of helping Charles with the accounts once or twice a week but recently I had let this duty slide a little. Alexander was no longer taking his afternoon nap. He had successfully rebelled and even Dorcas was forced to admit that perhaps he was a little too old for such things, so he and I had been spending every afternoon together for the past few weeks and Charles had been left to get on with the work alone. Charles was often away on estate business but he had come home the week before for the ball. My time being so occupied with Alexander, I had found little opportunity to be with him and he in turn had spent much of his free time with Araminta riding, sometimes with the Sutherlands and sometimes alone. When I did see him at dinner I had noticed a change in him. He was not his usual light-hearted self. I taxed him with it one evening.

  ‘Duty is a hard burden to bear,’ he said with his lop-sided smile.

  ‘Poor Charles,’ I said, ‘you’re not really cut out for it, are you?’ But I felt that he was more troubled than I had ever seen him.

  I was alone in the library. I had escaped there since it seemed to be the only place that was not being turned upside down. Everywhere smelled of soap and polish and great armfuls of flowers and potted plants were being brought in to decorate the house, much to the disgust of old Redpath who seemed to think that since they had been nurtured in the gardens and the conservatory that was where they should stay. I turned the pages of the ledger checking the figures against the pile of papers that lay beside me. At first I did not quite realise what I was looking at and then as I turned more pages I began to see that figures had been altered here and there. This was no faulty arithmetic. It was quite deliberate I was sure, though cleverly done, a nought here and there in the outgoings and in such an estate there were many outgoings. I sat there frowning. I must speak to Charles about this, I thought; then the door burst open and Araminta flung herself into the room and onto a chair.

  ‘Well I
’ve got it,’ she announced.

  ‘Got what?’ I said, ‘and please don’t sprawl like that Araminta.’

  ‘A gown,’ she said, sitting up and twitching her skirts into place, ‘for you . . . for the ball.’

  I looked at her in amazement. ‘What do you mean? I shall wear my grey silk.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ she said sharply. ‘This is my ball and you are not to come to it like some little mouse of a governess out of a novelette, and besides it’s a perfectly splendid gown and it would be a pity to waste it. It won’t fit me.’

  ‘How do you know it will fit me?’ I said.

  She smiled like a kitten that had got at the cream.

  ‘You remember the gown you ruined the day you found Fergus?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I stole it,’ she said.

  ‘Stole it?’ I repeated.

  ‘And took it to Miss Machivor who was making mine.’ She stopped suddenly and rummaged in her pocket. ‘Oh and I found this in the pocket. It must be yours. It’s in French I think.’

  I caught the scrap of paper as she tossed it to me and glanced at it quickly. My first thought was to remonstrate with Araminta, whose education must have been scanty in the extreme if she could not tell the difference between French and Italian, and then a curious feeling of excitement welled­ up in me as I realised that it was the piece of paper that I had picked up in the Tower Room and that the words written on it in an overly ornate hand had been written by Vida. Once more I put it in the pocket of my gown as Araminta continued to speak.

  ‘ . . . and I chose the pattern and the material and, oh Felicia it is the most beautiful thing and she made it exactly the same size as that old parlourmaid’s dress and I shall be so cross if you don’t wear it.’