‘What have you been doing? demanded Mrs. Costane, brushing flour from her hands but with all her attention on Murray.
‘As I said, playing at Captain Cook in the pigsty.’
‘Those breeches are soaking. You’d be better to have them off.’ Her face turned long and bland. ‘Hannah’ll help you.’
‘Oh!’ said Hannah, ‘I’d hate to get in your own way, Mrs. Costane. I doubt you have more experience of young men’s breeches than I do.’
‘Aye, in my young days,’ sighed Mrs. Costane.
‘Anyway,’ said Murray hurriedly, ‘what has Lord Scoggie done to offend you this time?’
‘Oh, the usual,’ muttered the kitchenmaid.
‘Kale, kale, kale,’ added the cook, dramatically. ‘The man wants nothing but kale and brose, herring and brose, cheese and brose, or on a holiday beef and brose, with a wee bitty kale, maybe, for a treat. Why in the name of all that’s good and holy am I here? I’m a French-trained chef!’
Murray’s lips twitched as the kitchenmaid, behind Mrs. Costane’s back, mouthed the last four words along with her. Hannah, nearly the cook’s age, was not a French-trained chef – nor, strictly, was Mrs. Costane, but her husband had been – but Hannah usually ended up saving Mrs. Costane from the disasters that could easily have resulted from her boredom with kale and brose.
‘Any worse than usual today?’ Murray asked, feeling slightly guilty for his lack of sympathy. Mrs. Costane’s eyes rolled.
‘We have a guest coming to stay.’
‘Oh, yes, I’ve heard. The great Major Alexander Keyes.
‘Aye, that’s the one. The great hero of Seringapatam in India. You’d think a man who had travelled would take kindly to good food, and Miss Deborah and I had a whole menu worked out, and then his Lordship comes and changes the whole thing, says military men need proper food, not foreign muck, the Scots have fought on brose for centuries and fought and won, and it’s brose and dumpling and boiled chicken or he won’t touch it. I’ve kept my beetroot pancakes, though!’ she added, with an air of vicious triumph.
‘When is he arriving?’
‘Tomorrow. You’d think it was Sir David Baird himself, the state they’re in upstairs. Wee Grisell’s up and down those stairs like a clockwork toy overwound, and Miss Beatrix and Miss Deborah have the hero’s bedchamber spun like milk in a churn.’
‘And what about Lady Scoggie?’
‘What about her? Has she died off? I haven’t seen her for months.’
‘She’s very busy,’ said Murray, reluctantly drawn into defending the family. ‘She does a great deal of charitable work.’
‘So I hear,’ said the cook, with a degree of irony.
‘Och, she does work hard, though, give her that,’ said Hannah, with unexpected benevolence. ‘There isn’t a soul in the parish she wouldn’t attend to if they needed it. And I hear she’s not above getting down and scrubbing a floor or making a bit of broth if it has to be done.’
‘I grant you, I grant you I’ve heard the same stories.’ Mrs. Costane was gracious. ‘And she’s very organised, I’ll grant that, too. But why does she do none of it in her own home? The minute Miss Deborah was old enough to give an order, she was away like a bird with the cage door open.’
‘She hasna looked happy this long time,’ Hannah reflected. ‘I’ve sometimes had the thought that it’s the way with these fine-looking women: you reach the age when you start looking at your daughter – and so do all the men – and you realise your fine looks have faded like – like an oul hen,’ she finished with a poetic flourish.
‘Fine looks faded, eh?’ said Mrs. Costane, her mouth tight. ‘Just because you’re an oul hen yourself, Hannah, you needn’t think that female persons of the age of Lady Scoggie are not in the prime of their looks.’
‘And, Mrs. Costane, I believe you mentioned once that you and Lady Scoggie are of an age?’ Murray put in, innocently, and scooted sideways as she flailed at him with a pudding cloth.
‘Anyway,’ he went on, from a position of greater safety beyond Hannah. ‘I don’t see why everyone praises Miss Deborah’s looks – though I don’t say she’s not pretty – and ignores Miss Beatrix. Why do you say she should be a nun?’
‘Oh, the poor relation, no family, that’s how the French manage matters,’ said Mrs. Costane, with the authority of the widow of a man who had been to France. ‘And that calm look of hers. If it wasn’t for her, this household would be upside down in a week, whatever Miss Deborah’s orders.’
‘You think Miss Beatrix will not marry well?’ Murray asked, trying to sound as interested as he would be in an academic problem.
Mrs. Costane blew through resigned lips.
‘I doubt it, or not before Miss Deborah goes, anyway. You’re a young man, you don’t see things yet the way the world does. But you’d be surprised the difference five thousand pounds and a few fine gowns can make to a girl’s beauty.’
‘Beatrix seems to have fine gowns, too,’ Murray objected.
‘Yes, but not till they’ve been worn a few times by Miss Deborah first – or had you not noticed?’
Murray turned in surprise. The idea had never occurred to him.
‘But –’ he began, ‘but –’
At that point the kitchen door opened without warning, and an extraordinary-looking man stepped in.
Murray had seen storks in Italy and Spain during his limited grand tour, and had noted the way they sometimes stood, wings tucked behind them, long grey beak thoughtfully down, crown feathers slicked back and thick black thighs dwindling abruptly to skinny legs and feet. Murray could not get it out of his head that Naismith, the butler to the household, abided by Pythagoras’ notions and was in fact more used to inhabiting the body of a stork than that of a man. His thin grey hair was drawn back over a balding crown to a black silk ribbon at his collar, and his long, flat nose seemed to blend down into his long, flat chin and on down, in about the same shade of greyish white, to where his shirt and pale waistcoat made a V at the top of his coat – the tip of his beak. The tails of the same coat could easily have been tail-feathers, and his unfashionably ample black breeches and knobbly stockinged calves completed the picture. Murray always expected him to fly up and roost on the chimney.
‘Ah ... cook,’ he said, after some avian contemplation.
‘Mr. Naismith,’ said the cook, as one who draws a line in the sand.
‘Preparations are going on well for the Major’s visit. Are they?’
‘You tell me, Mr. Naismith. I’m never out of my kitchen, as you ken.’
Hannah rolled her eyes at Murray out of sight of the others, and made a performance of checking that the dumpling was not boiling dry. Naismith regarded Mrs. Costane for a long moment with his head on one side, hands clasped behind him, then turned back to the door.
‘Boy!’ he called.
A young man, not much below Murray’s own age, stepped quickly into the kitchen and closed the door behind him. Blond, brown-eyed and rosy, he had the look of one who would take storks and angry French chefs in his stride. Naismith nodded at him.
‘A new boy for general and occasional upstairs work, cook. Boy, this is the cook, and the kitchenmaid. And – oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Murray. This is Mr. Murray, his lordship’s secretary.’
Murray nodded, slightly embarrassed at the formality with which Naismith had introduced him. He was never quite sure where the line was between him and the servants, or between him and the family. There was one, certainly: he was welcome in both worlds, and made free of the pleasures of both. Where it came, he sometimes thought, was that he could find fault with neither in either place. He could be easy with the Scoggies and with the lower servants, and was even trusted, he believed, with the secrets of each. Naismith, though, was the greatest difficulty. As one who saw himself as the legitimate go-between for family and servants, he treated Murray, particularly when he had found out from Lord Scoggie that Murray’s father was not unimportant in society, with all the stiffnes
s that he reserved for the family. That did not matter upstairs, but here in the kitchens it could be seen, though Murray tried not to be tempted, as rudeness. The new boy, however, nodded back to Murray affably. He seemed unlikely to be bothered by such niceties – until Naismith educated him otherwise.
Naismith had fallen silent, and stared for a long moment at the youth as if he had wound down. Then he stared about him, beady eyes shining, and gave a little cough.
‘But this is not the whole establishment, of course. Ah, Mrs. Costane, where is Grisell?’
‘I think she said she was to lay a fire in the drawing room, Mr. Naismith.’
‘I shall, ah, fetch her,’ Naismith announced, with a queer little smile on his face. In Murray’s view it was not half as queer as the look then exchanged by Hannah and Mrs. Costane the minute he left the room. He believed he was trusted with secrets ...
There was a moment of silence, as Mrs. Costane inspected some boiling fowl and Hannah brought kale from the scullery table – there was no separate scullery in this old-fashioned kitchen, but a table, sink and buckets in a window corner served the purpose. The young man took in the great sandstone vault of the kitchen, the huge fireplace, the high windows in the cross vaults, in a manner that said that he intended one day, with all due respect, that all this would be his.
‘Well,’ he said eventually, ‘my name is Andrew. I’ve been in service the last four years to a merchant in Kirkcaldy, but he died and I fancied the country life again. Mrs. – I’m sorry, I don’t believe I caught your name – have you been here long?’
The merchant in Kirkcaldy had not taught Andrew not to speak till he was spoken to. The cook sighed, and resigned herself to a twisted smile.
‘I’m Mrs. Costane, boy, and this is Hannah. You’re not backward in coming forward, are you?’
Andrew grinned, flicking back the soft blond hair that must have broken several Kirkcaldy hearts already.
‘Where would be the point in that, ma’am?’
Mrs. Costane glared.
‘Maybe you’d find you knew your place better, boy. Are you serving at table?’
‘Mr. Naismith said no, not for a while.’
‘Then if you’ve nothing to keep your clothes good for, you can take these peels out to the pig midden. It’s over the yard.’
‘I’ll find it,’ said Andrew brightly, undeterred. Murray smiled to himself: Andrew and Mrs. Costane were not going to settle easily, and the battle might be amusing. Andrew started to gather scraps into a bucket, going to wipe the scullery table off with a cloth.
‘Not that cloth!’ cried Hannah. ‘Grisell uses it for my lady’s room.’
‘Grisell? Is that the maid?’ said Andrew, turning back. ‘That’s a strange name. I think my granny used to know a Grisell: she must be ancient.’
‘Take that muck out to the pigs and get on,’ snapped Mrs. Costane. Hannah watched him, an odd expression on her face. Murray seemed to be the only one to hear the light footstep in the passage outside.
The kitchen door opened, and Naismith entered. His wing-arm flapped protectively around the shoulders of a girl – around, but not quite touching.
‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘This is the new boy.’ He slid round her and presented Andrew by seizing him by the arm, tugging him away from his work at the scraps. Andrew still clutched the bucket. Naismith looked as proud as though his infant daughter clutched a posy to present to some great lady.
‘Twenty to one, Mr. Naismith,’ Mrs. Costane interrupted, nodding at the great kitchen clock.
‘Oh! my.’ Naismith pivoted on claw feet. ‘Time for me to lay the silver.’ With a sweeping beam from Andrew to Grisell, he stalked out of the kitchen.
‘Is it no dinner yet?’ asked Grisell.
‘Oh, Grisell dear, I’ve hardly the upstairs dinner made, and here’s Mr. Murray still down here.’
Murray suddenly realised the time himself. Hannah hurried to tip the kale into the broth in short crinkly strips of black-green. Mrs. Costane spat to test the heat of her griddle.
‘You’re Grisell?’ asked Andrew, taking in red hair, creamy skin, quick blue eyes and a figure he had only dreamed of, even in Kirkcaldy.
‘Grisell, aye. Who are you? The new boy?’
‘Aye,’ said Andrew weakly, and dropped the bucket of slops all over the kitchen floor.
‘My, ye ken well how to make an impression on your first day,’ remarked Mrs. Costane.
‘Here, I’ll help you.’ Grisell’s offer was made with a good deal of resignation, and Hannah, too, came round the table to fetch a mop and bucket. Andrew looked helpless, though Murray thought he detected a hint of practice to the look, as if it had worked well before. If it had, it was not going to here. Grisell, on her knees on the flagstones, slapped Andrew smartly on the calf with her wet cloth.
‘Get down here and help, you useless hapeth!’
Laughing with Mrs. Costane, Murray made his way back to the kitchen door and almost collided with a flying figure in the doorway.
‘Mrs. Costane! I beg your pardon, Mr. Murray – oh, you are not changed yet – that is a good sign!’
‘But I’m late,’ said Murray, and received a frown in return. Miss Deborah Scoggie did not brook impediments.
‘Mrs. Costane, is there any way dinner could be stretched for another two?’
‘Two, miss?’ Mrs. Costane assumed a blank look.
‘Well, one and a half. Is there?’
‘One and a half?’ Murray queried.
‘Mr. Tibo and Mr. Leckie, of course,’ she snapped, hardly glancing at him. ‘You know Mr. Leckie has the appetite of a child.’
‘Considerably less, if the child in question is Robert or Henry,’ Murray agreed, and this time received a quick sideways grin.
‘You hear Mr. Murray, Mrs. Costane. One and a third?’
Murray wondered if it was for the sake of Mr. Tibo that her dark hair was particularly finely braided today, and she seemed to be wearing another new gown. She held the pale skirts of it away from the slop-clearing operation continuing at the scullery table.
‘One, maybe,’ said Mrs. Costane finally. ‘I cannot answer for Mr. Leckie’s dinner.’ Her lips sealed themselves up like dampened pastry pressed shut.
‘Oh, then the family must all eat less,’ Miss Deborah decided abruptly. ‘I shall tell Father and Beatrix – and the boys, the greedy wee beasts. And I must tell Naismyth to lay two more places. With cushions for Mr. Leckie. Thank you, Mrs. Costane.’
Murray held the door open for her as she flew out, then turned to wink heavily at Mrs. Costane before following Miss Deborah back up to the ground floor. He left the kitchen reluctantly: it was vast, but somehow cosy compared with the rest of the castle.
Miss Deborah was in a hurry, and only realised he was behind her when they reached the hall again.
‘Oh! Mr. Murray!’ She spun round, new gown swirling.
‘Miss Deborah.’ He bowed, hoping that she would not notice his damp boots and breeches.
‘You have heard that Major Keyes is coming to stay?’
‘Yes, of course.’
She frowned and looked away for a moment, as if she had just remembered to dust the swords on the walls.
‘He’s been very ... heroic,’ she said eventually. ‘You know he lost a leg at Seringapatam?’ Her mind was still on household matters, and she made it sound as if the Major had lost a button at the breakfast table.
‘Yes, though I understand he is still very active.’
‘Yes! Yes, he is.’ She fingered a pretty pendant that she seemed to have acquired recently, but still frowned. ‘Mr. Murray, you won’t be upset, will you?’
Thinking she meant to tell him something further, Murray said cautiously,
‘No, no, I’m sure I shan’t.’
Deborah Scoggie smiled, relieved.
‘Good! Thank you so much, Mr. Murray.’
With a whisk of her skirts, she vanished in the direction of the Great Hall, leaving him standin
g bewildered. Her voice floated back to him, but unhelpfully.
‘Mr. Murray, your boots are soaking!’
Chapter Two
Determined not to let the boys out of his sight again, Murray marched Henry and Robert, clean and shining as he could make them make themselves, downstairs and across the entrance hall into the Great Hall for dinner.
The Great Hall stood above the kitchen in the oldest part of Scoggie Castle, and, like it, was loftily barrel-vaulted and whitewashed, with a flag floor. Paintings dotted the bare walls as if hung on nails left over from forgotten purposes, and a few panels of tapestry dangled lifelessly between the high windows, their colours long faded into drabs and greys. Murray often felt he had never eaten food in such an uncomfortable place. From March to October, there was no fire in the huge fireplace in the middle of the day, Lord Scoggie’s chosen dinner time, and the draughts blew as they had blown for centuries, unimpeded from chimney to doorway to window and on mysterious routes of their own, as if the ghosts of Scoggies long gone came and whispered over the shoulders of the dinner guests. In the winter, when the fire was lit, you had the enviable choice of freezing at the edges of the room or roasting by the fire, and whichever you chose, the draughts remained as deliberately fickle as ever.
The table was the same one that had been built in the Hall when the Hall itself was new, and could have seated a regiment. The Scoggies of today electing not to eat with their entire household, those dining usually formed a small company at one end of the board, with Lord Scoggie at the head. The original benches had, fortunately for the ladies, been replaced by chairs, hard and upright, which had scraped white channels on the grey flags since the day they had been knocked together by some ambitious local chippie. Members of the family, and guests who were familiar with the room, often brought rugs for their knees, and even squares of carpet for their feet, preferring not to be crippled by rheumatism or chilblains by the end of the meal.
Today there were nine places laid at the end of the table, from Lord Scoggie’s at the head to Lady Scoggie’s, set last on one side rather than at the distant foot of the huge board. Murray and his charges were the first of the family to appear: alone in the room, as they came in, were the two guests, Mr. Tibo and Mr. Leckie.
Knowledge of Sins Past (Murray of Letho Book 2) Page 2