“If Catchpole hasn’t shown his face by the time I finish breakfast,” I told Reginald, “I’m going to go look for him.”
I arrived in the kitchen to find Jamie standing over the range, stirring a heavy saucepan full of bubbling oatmeal. He was wearing the same dark blue sweater and faded jeans he’d worn the day before and his smile was as fetching as ever, but his face was drawn and his brown eyes were clouded with fatigue.
“Good morning,” he called. “Sleep well?”
“Very,” I said, piling my outdoor gear on the white dresser. “How about you?”
He shrugged. “Not as well as I’d hoped. The silence kept me awake.”
“I know what you mean,” I said, with a sympathetic nod. “Fortunately, it had the opposite effect on me.”
Steam rose from the brown teapot sitting on the scarred oak table, where a place had been set for one. Jamie gestured for me to take a seat.
“Wendy found porridge, sultanas, and a supply of long-shelf-life milk in the larder,” he informed me. “Hungry?”
“I could eat my boots,” I told him.
Jamie chuckled. “With or without sugar?”
“Either way,” I replied.
I sat at the table and poured a cup of tea for myself while Jamie spooned a generous helping of oatmeal into a bowl, sprinkled it with dried sultanas, and carried it to the table.
“Dig in,” he said, placing the bowl before me. “Wendy and I have already eaten our fill.”
“Where is Wendy?” I asked, starting in on the oatmeal.
“Up in her room, revising her trip.” Jamie covered the saucepan and placed it on a trivet, then sat across the table from me and refilled his own teacup. “The blizzard upset her best-laid plans, apparently. I suspect that her floor’s carpeted with maps by now.”
“Huh,” I grunted between spoonfuls. “I have a friend who’s map-crazy. She could carpet St. Paul’s Cathedral with her collection.”
“I’m not a map person, myself,” Jamie admitted. “I don’t mind getting lost. To tell you the truth, I’ve come across some of my favorite places by getting lost.”
“Me, too,” I exclaimed, after a hurried gulp.
I regarded him fondly, knowing I’d found a hiking soul-mate, and told him about a superb pub I’d discovered at the top of a hill in a village that had turned out to be a mile east of my original destination. He came back with a story about a beautiful, abandoned church tucked away in a pocket valley he’d stumbled into by accident. By the time we finished swapping lost-traveler’s tales, I’d consumed two brimming bowls of oatmeal and four cups of tea.
“I’m glad Wendy’s in her room,” I said. “She’s the kind of person who looks at a breathtaking landscape and sees topography. She wouldn’t understand the joys of getting lost.”
“You’re not planning on getting lost today, are you?” Jamie glanced toward the white dresser. “I couldn’t help but notice that you brought your jacket down with you.”
I followed his gaze and felt a sting of self-reproach. I’d been having so much fun dancing down memory lane that I’d forgotten about Catchpole. Jamie responded to my urgent inquiry by saying that he’d seen neither hide nor hair of the old man all morning.
“In that case, I’d better be on my way.” I pushed my chair back from the table and stood.
“Where are you going?” said Jamie, getting to his feet.
“To look for Catchpole,” I said. “I’m worried about him. He’s not exactly a spring chicken, you know, and he went into that storm all by himself last night, without his gun. Anything might have happened to him. I want to make sure he made it to his cottage in one piece.”
“Are you sure it’s wise to go out there on your own?” Jamie said doubtfully.
“I’m not afraid of him, if that’s what you mean,” I responded. “He won’t hurt me, Jamie. He won’t even threaten me. He’s terrified of my powerful lawyer husband, remember?”
“I remember,” Jamie said, “but I still don’t like the thought of you going out there unescorted. I’ll come with you.”
“You will not,” I said flatly. “Look at you. You have circles under your eyes and you nearly fell asleep when I was telling you about the overgrown graveyard I found in North Wales. You’re in no condition to slog through snow, whereas I’m fit as a puppy.”
“All right,” Jamie said reluctantly. “If you insist on going alone, I can’t stop you. But . . . wait here a minute, will you? I’ll be right back.”
He set off at a trot down the service corridor. While he was gone, I washed the dishes and kept watch through the Gothic windows for any sign of Catchpole. I saw nothing but snow, snow, and more snow. I was drying my hands on a tea towel I’d found in the white dresser when Jamie returned, carrying his blue parka.
“Take this,” he said, draping the bulky garment over my shoulders. “Your jacket’s not designed to cope with brutal weather.”
“Thanks.” I slipped my arms into the overlong sleeves and did up the zipper, then spread my arms wide and turned in a circle. “If I do get lost, I can use your parka as an emergency shelter.”
“It is a bit large,” Jamie conceded, “but it’ll keep you warm, and that’s the important thing.”
While I put on my hat and gloves, Jamie told me how to find Catchpole’s cottage.
“He pointed it out to me while he was frog-marching me from the mausoleum to the house,” Jamie said. “Go straight back from the kitchen door, across the courtyard, to an open passageway between the outbuildings. When you reach the end of the passage, you’ll see a clump of pine trees on your left. Catchpole’s cottage is among the trees. You can’t miss—”
I clamped a gloved hand over his mouth.
“Don’t say it,” I snapped. “Don’t even think of saying it.”
“Mmmph,” Jamie agreed, nodding earnestly.
“If I’m not back by dinnertime, send out the dogs.” I flashed him a jaunty smile and headed for the courtyard door, hoping fervently that I’d moved fast enough to ward off the travelers’ curse.
Ten
The moment I set foot in the courtyard it became clear to me that Jamie’s gallant gesture, though well-intentioned, had been unnecessary. The air was warmer outside than it had been in Ladythorne’s frigid corridors. The blasting wind had dwindled to a vagrant breeze, and the flakes spiraling down from the gloomy sky struck my face like wet kisses instead of sharp needles.
I was grateful for the respite, but a glance at the gravid clouds told me that the situation could turn on a dime, so I didn’t dawdle. I tried to keep to the spots that had been scoured bare by the wind, but they were too few and far between to serve as reliable stepping stones. More often than not, deep drifts got in my way, forcing me to employ an awkward, high-stepping gait that reminded me of my sons’ first teetering steps.
Depth perception was a problem, too, because of a curious absence of shadows. The sun must have been lurking somewhere in the sky, but its beams had been severely blunted by the heavy overcast. Snow that should have been blindingly white was instead a uniform, pale gray. The diffused light robbed the drifts of contours and made it tricky to guess whether my next stumbling step would land me up to my ankles in snow, or up to my knees.
If there were few shadows, there were even fewer sounds. I strained to hear a single note of birdsong but heard only the gentle soughing of the wind, the occasional muffled thud of snow shivered loose from a tiled roof, and my own labored breathing. Frost had put a crust on the drifts, and each ungainly step was accompanied by a satisfying crunch that seemed unnaturally loud.
The open-air passageway between the low-roofed outbuildings was clogged by deeper drifts. I plowed through them by main force, dragging one leg, then the other, less afraid of falling than of catching a toe on Catchpole’s buried body. He might not be my favorite person in the world—I couldn’t quite forgive him for roughing up Jamie—but no one deserved to meet such a frosty fate.
I trembled to think of t
he old man making the journey from the abbey to his cottage in total darkness during the height of the storm. The howling wind would have snuffed out his oil lamp in the blink of an eye, and the plummeting snow would have obliterated every landmark. As I struggled onward, I wished with all my heart that I’d had the presence of mind the previous evening to persuade the old fool to stay put and let his budgies fend for themselves for one night.
When I reached the end of the passageway, I paused to give my gasping lungs a chance to recover, looked to my left, and saw a clump of towering pines that stood out like sentinels against a backdrop of leafless trees. The pines were so heavily burdened with snow that their lowest branches drooped to the ground, but they’d served as a windbreak, keeping the path that wound between them free from drifts.
I gladly left the difficult passage behind and made my way to the shelter of the trees. I’d gone no more than ten paces along the winding path when I caught sight of Catchpole’s cottage.
The cottage itself was adorable—small, thatch-roofed, and built of golden limestone that had gone gray with the passage of time—but its fairy-tale prettiness was brought down to earth by a higgledy-piggledy agglomeration of sheds and lean-tos that looked as though they’d been cobbled together using warped timber and rusty metalwork scavenged from a junk yard. If the pine grove hadn’t been there to act as a windbreak, the blizzard would have smashed into the frail buildings like a wrecking ball, leaving scattered piles of debris in its wake. I thought it a small miracle that they were still standing in any case, considering the amount of snow that had accumulated on their rickety roofs.
Tessa Gibbs, I thought, must have been thankful for the screen of needled branches that tastefully concealed Catchpole’s attempts at low-budget carpentry from view, but I admired his ingenuity. Lucasta DeClerke hadn’t made it easy for the old man to earn a living, so he’d done the best he could with what little he had.
Elation surged through me when I saw a steady stream of smoke rising from the cottage’s chimney, and I sped up the path to knock on the front door. Although the smoke seemed to indicate that Catchpole hadn’t perished in the blizzard, I wanted to see him with my own eyes before returning to the abbey. I was somewhat disappointed, therefore, when he responded to my knock without opening the door.
“Who is it?” he bellowed through the time-darkened wood.
“Lori Shepherd,” I bellowed back.
“What do you want?”
“Um . . . nothing, really.” I stood there like an expectant trick-or-treater, and when the door remained determinedly shut, added lamely, “I was worried about you.”
“Why?”
I rolled my eyes in exasperation. “Oh, you know . . . hypothermia, frostbite, wolves. I wanted to make sure you were okay and I guess you are, so I won’t bother you anymore. Have a nice day.”
I loaded the parting line with sarcasm, and was about to turn on my heel and stomp back down the path when the door swung open and Catchpole appeared, clad in canvas dungarees, work boots, a plaid flannel shirt, and a moth-eaten, baggy brown cardigan.
“Come in,” he said shortly. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
I nodded stiffly and followed him into a dimly lit parlor. It smelled of herbs and wood smoke and had the comfortably jumbled feel of a room furnished with castoffs—nothing matched, but everything went together. Faded rag rugs covered the flagstone floor, an old patchwork quilt lay atop an oak chest, and a row of hunting prints in rustic frames hung above a sturdy oak desk. A six-shelf bookcase stood beside the desk, crammed with a dog-eared collection of biographies, travelogues, and books on natural history.
Dried herbs hung in bunches from the rafters, and fresh ones grew in clay pots clustered on the deep sill of the parlor’s only window. A sagging easy chair and a wooden rocker sat facing the blackened stone hearth, where a log fire snapped and hissed. The chunky mantel shelf held assorted odds and ends—a tobacco jar, a pipe rack, a George IV coronation mug—and a wooden perch behind the rocking chair held a stuffed owl that nearly startled the life out of me when it slowly opened one enormous yellow eye.
“It’s . . . not stuffed,” I managed, pointing a shaky finger at the owl.
“ ’Course it’s not,” said Catchpole. He seemed shocked by the very idea. “What would I want a stuffed bird for? Nasty things, if you ask me.” He walked over to stroke the owl’s back. “She’s a long-eared owl, she is. See the tufts? Found her three weeks ago, her legs all tangled up in fishing line some fool left by the river. Cut her pretty deep, but she’s on the mend. Got a pair of bluetits in the kitchen, fell out of their nest last spring. Don’t seem to want to leave.” He motioned for me to be seated in the easy chair. “Take off your coat. I’ll see to the tea.”
I gazed in fascination at the owl’s tufted ears and mottled brown feathers, but she’d evidently lost interest in me because the yellow eye closed again, as slowly as it had opened. When the old man had gone to the kitchen, I chuckled softly. Only Catchpole, I suspected, would use the word budgie to describe such a supremely dignified wild creature.
I hung Jamie’s parka over the back of the easy chair and stood close to the fire, in an effort to dry my snow-dampened jeans. A framed photograph sat on the mantel shelf, between the pipe rack and the coronation mug. It was a sepia-toned portrait of a little girl in a low-waisted, frilly white dress. She was sitting on a velvet pouffe, with one leg curled beneath her, and her long blond hair hung in sausage curls from a starched white bow. Her hands were folded primly in her lap, but her eyes twinkled with mischief and an enchanting smile graced her lips.
“Cream and sugar?” Catchpole called from the kitchen.
“Yes, please,” I replied, noticing for the first time that the caretaker had stopped addressing me as “madam.” Formality might apply in the big house, but in Catchpole’s cottage, it seemed, we were on equal footing.
“Here you are, Mrs. Shepherd.” Catchpole returned to the parlor carrying two large, blue-and-white striped mugs. He handed one to me, then sat in the rocking chair.
I wondered briefly whether I should explain to him that I hadn’t changed my name when I’d married, and that while my husband was Bill Willis, I remained irrevocably Lori Shepherd, but gave it up as a lost cause.
“Please, call me Lori,” I said, as I lowered myself into the easy chair. “Not just here, but in the abbey as well. I’m not used to being madam’ed. It makes me feel like a snooty old matron.”
“Lori it is, then.” Catchpole rocked in silence for a moment before continuing, “It was kind of you to think of me, Lori, but you had no cause to worry. I could find my way to the cottage under water, if need be.”
“I’m a mother, Catchpole,” I said. “It’s my job to worry. I would have been much happier if you’d stayed at the abbey last night.”
“That’s as may be,” he said stiffly, “but I wouldn’t have been very happy. I don’t fancy being laughed at, Lori, and that’s what you were doing, you and the other two, laughing at me behind my back when I went to find milk for your tea.”
I cast my mind back to the pertinent moment and decided that a diplomatic half truth was in order. “We weren’t laughing at you, Catchpole. We were . . . laughing with joy. Because we survived the storm, you know? And your shotgun.”
Catchpole reddened. “Less said about that the better.”
“Mum’s the word.” I warmed my hands on the striped mug and took a sip of the strong, sweet tea. “If you feel like coming to the abbey, please do. Everyone will be glad to see you.” I meant well, but regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. I glanced at Catchpole’s wooden expression and hastened to remedy my faux pas. “Not that I’m in a position to invite you to a place that’s more yours than mine, Catchpole, but—”
“I understand,” he said graciously, “and I’ll bear it in mind.”
I nodded gratefully and gazed into the fire, wishing I could burn logs in my bedroom grate instead of coal. Coal was efficient—it burned
steadily and gave off plentiful warmth—but it didn’t have the sweet fragrance of wood smoke or fill the room with friendly snaps and crackles.
“I can see why you’d want to stay here, though,” I said, after a time. “Your cottage is beautiful.”
“You think so?” Catchpole sounded faintly puzzled. “Never thought of it like that. It’s just home.”
“That’s what makes it beautiful.” I raised my mug to the photograph on the chunky mantel shelf. “Is that your mother?”
“It’s Miss DeClerke, when she was little,” Catchpole informed me. “Mother was fond of the picture, so I keep it there, in memory of both of them.”
I stood to take another look at the girl’s bright eyes and enchanting smile. It was easy to imagine her clambering through Catchpole’s maze of sheds and lean-tos, toasting crumpets over his open fire, or playing hide-and-seek with him among the pines.
“Did she spend much time here?” I asked.
“She did when she was a lass,” said Catchpole, “but not so much by the time I came along. She was eleven years older than me, and it wouldn’t have been proper for her to spend time here once she’d grown into a fine young lady. In the old days, there was more of a line drawn between servants and their employers.”
“Do you miss the old days?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “Things were slower back then, none of this rushing around that tires you out and gets you nowhere. People were more content to be who they were. No one wants to be himself, these days. Always trying on different skins, then wondering why they don’t fit. It makes for a lot of unhappiness. And”—his gruff voice became taut—“you could trust people, back then. Didn’t have to watch ’em like a hawk every minute of every day to keep ’em from robbing you blind.”
I sensed another bout of Thieving Yank Fever coming on and returned to my chair. “Catchpole,” I pleaded, “what can I do to convince you that I have no intention of taking so much as a soup spoon from the abbey?”
Aunt Dimity: Snowbound Page 9