The Griffins of Castle Cary

by Heather Shumaker

  “That’s exactly where I would live if I were a ghost,” cried Will, leaping from the top of the stile without using the steps. “Come on!” He charged across the next pasture at a run.

  Meg followed more slowly. He must have forgotten about Caesar already. Meg kept a nervous eye on the sheep, who were standing bunched together on the crest of the hill. Was Caesar up there? She could almost feel his ram’s horns barreling into her.

  It was a short walk to reach the manor. When they arrived they found a tourist group clustered around a guide. The guide wore a black top hat, and nearby a folding easel announced: DAILY TOURS OF MENDIP MANOR 10 A.M. AND 1 P.M. ADULTS £5, CHILDREN UNDER 12 FREE. “That’s us—we’re free,” said Meg.

  “Good,” said Will. “Because I didn’t bring any money.” They slipped in with the crowd, which was just moving toward the great entrance doors.

  “Creepy,” Will added as they entered the manor’s hush. “Wouldn’t want to live here.”

  Meg nodded. She’d felt dwarfed as soon as they’d passed between the manor’s double wooden doors, each studded with metal spikes. The entrance was big enough to deserve a drawbridge. Inside was dark and vast. Spring wrens had been singing in the courtyard, but now their cheery song was swallowed up by thick stone walls. The only sound was the murmur of the crowd’s shoes and the squeak of the children’s rubber boots.

  The tour led them through rooms with canopy beds, others with uncomfortable-looking stiff sofas, and everywhere tapestries and pillows with prancing lions embroidered on them. Then came a musty-smelling library with its own fleet of rolling ladders to reach the top shelves. “I wonder if they had their own private librarian, too,” mused Meg. The next room was the grand ballroom, a space as big as their school gym, with mirrors stretching to the ceiling. Meg looked at her reflection. It was contorted and yellowish, and the mirrors were bent and coated in tarnish. Finally, the tour guide stopped at the bottom of a spiral staircase that disappeared up into the dark. “One at a time, please—mind the steps,” he said.

  “This must be the West Tower!” said Will. He’d been quiet during the tour of the bedrooms, sofas, and mirrors. Now he grew animated and darted up the narrow steps.

  Meg followed, tracing her fingers along the stone. She had never been up a staircase like this before. Each step was dented in the middle, its stone worn away from centuries of footsteps. She took a step. Just think, with that tiny step, another bit of stone was wearing off. She climbed some more. They were ascending a cylinder. The walls were curved, and the steps shaped liked wedges: fat triangles at one end that grew skinnier at the other. At the skinny end, the steps stacked together to form a central column, like medieval Legos.

  “One hundred and twenty-five steps,” said Will, greeting her at the top.

  “You counted them?”

  They were standing in a round tower room. It was only about half the size of the Griffinage kitchen, and Meg and Will were forced to shuffle over as more bodies from the tour group pressed against them. Meg ended up near one of the tower’s two windows. Above the trees and fields, she could see the Griffinage’s distinctive thatched roof, with its fox weather vane. The tower smelled faintly of burned-out matches, and Meg wondered if sometimes the tour guide lit candles up here. Will began to hiccup.

  “Do you think this is the tower Shep was talking about?” Meg said in a low voice.

  “Shh,” said Will.

  “Shh yourself,” said Meg, as Will’s hiccups grew louder.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said the tour guide. “We are now standing in the most famous part of Mendip Manor, the West Tower, also called the Ghost Tower.”

  “See, it is,” said Meg. Will hiccupped again.

  “Ghosts! Cool,” said a red-haired boy in the tour group.

  “Mendip Manor is proud to have its very own ghost, a lady ghost. Elizabeth Carlisle lived in the manor until her premature death in 1860. She married Richard, baron of Mendip, and they had one child who was killed in an accident. After her daughter’s death, Lady Mendip withdrew from society and often came to this lonely tower. She died soon after from a broken heart. Every spring, ghostly lights appear in this tower and people hear bells outside at night.” The guide paused and cleared his throat. “They say it is Lady Mendip’s ghost looking for her child.”

  “Why only spring?” asked the redheaded boy.

  “Spring is when her daughter died. She died in early April.”

  “Why bells?” It was Will asking the question this time. He could always find a question to ask about music even in the middle of a ghost story.

  “Church bells rang the night young Gillian died. Ringing the bells was like an alarm—it called out the search party to look for her. When they realized she was dead, they kept ringing the bells for three days in mourning.”

  Meg shivered. She ran her finger along the stone windowsill, imagining the poor girl dying so young and her stricken mother gazing out. This tower made her feel lonely, which was silly, because she was standing in a crowd of people. But she did feel lonely, the same sort of achy loneliness she’d felt this morning when she first woke up.

  “Watch your step going down, please,” said the guide, ushering them back down the staircase.

  The tour group shuffled forward, but Meg and Will lingered near the back to be the last ones in the tower room.

  “If there’s a ghost here, you’d think we’d feel it,” Will said, rubbing his ears. He still had the hiccups and the sound reverberated around the stone chamber.

  “She must have stood right here,” said Meg.

  “Yeah,” said Will. “More than a hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “Wouldn’t you just love to see a ghost?” asked Meg. “Like her, I mean. A mother ghost. A nice, gentle one like that.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  A Visit in the Attic

  As Meg and Will descended the tower’s spiral staircase, Ariel was on another set of stairs, at the Griffinage, climbing up.

  “You can make the attic your playroom,” Aunt Effie told her. “Just your size.”

  She was clean now, after her bath, and in her arms Ariel cradled a cardboard box. She didn’t mind so much about missing Meg and Will now. Aunt Effie had just given her a present and she was eager to try it out. Uncle Ben padded after her, his great paws fumbling on the narrow steps. Ariel ran up them lightly until she came to a landing. There the staircase ended in a short ladder. Uncle Ben stopped beside her and whined. Ariel shook her head. A great big bulky dog couldn’t balance on ladder rungs.

  “You wait here, Uncle,” she said, squeezing past his furry body. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back and play with you.” She made sure to say that. She didn’t want him to feel bad. She knew what it felt like to be left out. Uncle Ben slumped on the landing and snuffed, his snout pointing at Ariel as if determined to follow her.

  Ariel climbed up. At the top was the most enchanting room she’d ever seen. It was tiny, only about as big as a bed. It was high up, too, right among the thatched rooftop. One small window jutted out through the thatch and she could see the ends of the thatch stalks, their spiky tips bundled together. In an instant Ariel loved the little attic room. Child-sized. Good for secret games. The ceiling slanted so sharply even Ariel could only kneel at one side but could stand at the other. The room contained one window and was empty, except for a rug.

  “Can’t wear a hat in here,” she announced, trying to sound like Aunt Effie.

  She lifted the lid off the cardboard box. Inside was a china tea set. Six white teacups with pictures painted on them lay tucked inside cardboard dividers, plus saucers and a teapot in the middle. Ariel talked to herself as she set each piece out on the floor.

  “One for you and one for you. Here’s the teapot. You want some cake? We’ve got chocolate with vanilla fudge. Oh look, here’s one with an angel face.” She inspected the teacup and its miniature painting, which showed a chubby cherub ringing a bell.

  “Hello,” said a voice.<
br />
  Ariel’s hands jumped, and the angel cup landed in her lap. A girl was perched on the dormer window ledge. She was dressed in a midnight-blue dress with a white pinafore on top, just like the girls in Ariel’s old-fashioned picture books. This little girl had only one shoe on, though. A black leather shoe hooked with many buttons, quite scuffed. On both feet she wore lumpy grey stockings.

  It was the girl she’d glimpsed this morning. She could see more of her now. The one who’d held her hand when she first woke up and knew she was missing her mother. Her new friend.

  Ariel smiled. The girl must have climbed through the window when she wasn’t looking.

  The girl smiled too, and slid down from her window perch to stand on the rug. She was taller than Ariel, and older than she was, but still definitely a little girl, not so big and busy as Meg or Will.

  “I remember you,” Ariel said. “Do you live here?”

  “ ’Course I live here,” said the girl. “I’ve always lived here.”

  “Does Aunt Effie know about you?”

  “This is my house,” answered the girl.

  “Oh,” said Ariel. If it was the girl’s house, maybe Aunt Effie was just borrowing it or something—maybe “renting” was the right word. It didn’t really matter. She was glad to see her new friend again.

  “You have pretty eyes,” said Ariel. She had never seen such beautiful eyes. The girl’s eyes were silver. Shining silver, like a fairy, Ariel decided.

  Down on the landing, Uncle Ben barked. The girl shrank back toward the window.

  “Don’t worry, that’s just Uncle Ben,” said Ariel. “He’s a dog, not a real uncle, but he’s a nice dog.”

  “Don’t like dogs,” the girl said.

  Uncle Ben barked again, then his voice dropped to a steady rumbly growl.

  “It’s okay. He’s too big to come up,” said Ariel. “You wanna play? I’m playing tea party. You can have the angel cup.”

  She surprised herself when she said that. She’d been admiring the cherub face with wings and was planning to use that one herself, but the girl looked sad and she liked to cheer people up. The girl said nothing, simply accepted the angel teacup Ariel handed her.

  “I’m Ariel.”

  “I’m Kay Kay,” the girl answered.

  The two girls sat cross-legged on either side of the rug and solemnly looked at each other. Besides the silver eyes, Kay Kay had stringy black hair and a locket around her neck. Her face was smudged, and Ariel could see her pinafore was streaked with mud, as if she’d spent her morning in rough play outside, the kind that would set a mother tsk-tsking and asking her to strip off her dirty things when she came in, perhaps even into an Emergency Bath.

  “Your dress is dirty,” said Ariel, who was still damp from her own bath and feeling unusually clean herself.

  “They were chasing me,” said the girl.

  “Who was?”

  “Everybody.” Kay Kay shrugged. “They were all running and shouting. That’s why I tripped.” A tremor seemed to pass through the girl’s body. She shivered and her hands shook.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Ariel.

  “I don’t like the dark!”

  Ariel glanced around. A sunbeam was slanting through the window shining cheerful light across the attic. Ariel looked back at the girl, puzzled. Now she was rocking to and fro, clutching her face in her hands. Maybe she was remembering a nightmare. That happened to Ariel sometimes.

  “You don’t like dogs, you don’t like the dark, what do you like?” asked Ariel.

  The girl sat up, and fixed her gaze on Ariel, her silver eyes suddenly shining.

  “I like you,” she said.

  The first person Meg and Will saw when they approached the Griffinage garden was Shep. He was clipping hedges with an enormous pair of garden shears and showering bits of yew about his boots.

  “Been up to the manor, have you?” he said, greeting them. “And what did you see?” Meg thought she saw a hint of suppressed excitement on his face.

  “No ghost,” reported Will.

  “Well, not too likely, I suppose,” said Shep. “Not with all those people tramping about,” he added, giving the hedge a swift chop. “Keep your eyes out. You never know where ghosts may appear.” He winked at them and looked around the garden, as though half expecting to see a ghost there, then beamed and raised his shears in greeting to Aunt Effie, who waved to them from the side window.

  “Aunt Effie doesn’t like ghosts, does she?” asked Meg.

  “No,” agreed Shep. “A fine woman otherwise. None finer.” He coughed suddenly and moved round to the other side of the hedge. The children trailed after him, Will practicing his wink as he walked.

  “Can you tell us more?” asked Will. “More about the manor ghost.”

  Shep paused and rested his shears beside him. They were behind the hedge now, and could no longer see Aunt Effie in the window. From the walnut tree, a robin sang and another robin answered from the thatch. Time seemed suspended.

  “Well, the girl was called Gillian Elizabeth. I’d say she was around your age, Meg. She was just ten—”

  “I’m eleven,” Meg interjected.

  “Well, Gillian had just turned ten, and she died on her birthday.”

  “Oooh, that’s horrible.” Meg squirmed. She could think of nothing worse than dying on her own birthday.

  “How did she die?” asked Will. “What kind of accident was it?”

  “Horse riding. Very common accident in those days. Rather like car crashes we have today. Falls, kicks, trampling under foot. Not the horses’ fault, mind, but it happened all the same, especially to children. Well, on the day of her tenth birthday, Miss Gillian went riding. They say it was late afternoon, with April mud as slick and slippery as today. She was out on her ride when a fog came up. Miss Gillian’s horse headed down by Mendip Brook, slipped, and threw her. She landed on the rocks in the cold water and broke her neck.”

  The children huddled by the hedge in silence. The sunshine and robin’s song seemed out of place. All Meg could picture was that rocky creek and the poor girl with a crumpled body. Walking back from the manor, she’d been hungry for lunch, but now she didn’t feel like eating.

  “As they say, the mother went wild. Of course, they found the body and held a proper funeral and all, but Lady Mendip wouldn’t stop searching for her daughter. Took to wearing a copper brooch and the same dress she’d worn the night her daughter died, a dress made of green velvet. She let her hair drape down all wild and tangled. She still looks for her.” He picked up the shears again.

  “Still wears it too,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

  “Wears what?” asked Will.

  “The green velvet. And the brooch. Wears it over her heart.”

  Meg and Will looked at him, puzzled. Shep spoke with such authority, almost as if he’d seen the lady himself.

  “But how do you know?” asked Will. “How could you know she still wears it?”

  Shep shifted to the next part of the hedge and began clipping the highest branches with great whacks, but did not answer. Will pitched his next question loudly to make sure Shep could hear him above the clack of his shears.

  “You don’t really believe in ghosts. Do you, Shep? I mean, you can’t really.”

  Shep turned his chapped face toward Will for a moment, then abruptly turned back to clipping the hedge. Scattered yew needles landed on Will’s hair as the twigs flew.

  “Now you’ve done it,” Meg said, poking Will in the arm as they entered the Griffinage front door.

  “What?” said Will.

  “You made him feel dumb. He’s all offended now.”

  “I never said he was dumb!”

  “No, but that’s the way he took it.”

  “So? I was just asking a question!” said Will. “Besides, most grown-ups don’t take things like ghosts seriously.”

  Most grown-ups don’t take kids seriously either, thought Meg. That’s what made Shep so instantl
y likable. He treated everyone as equals: children, adults, and ghosts.

  As the children washed their hands for lunch, the small ghost left the attic and drifted back to her spot near the walnut tree. Already she felt stronger. She rubbed her icy fingers and pressed them to her cheeks. They weren’t so cold anymore. Oh, it was good to be back in the warmth of a human smile.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Creek

  They didn’t see any more of Shep that day. After lunch their parents called, and then Aunt Effie took them all into Shepton Mallet for a ride on the steam trains. That treat was followed by ice cream cones, proving, once again, that Aunt Effie was the best aunt of all. By the time they returned, the hedge clippers were hanging back in the toolshed and the bits of loose yew stems had been swept up.

  Ariel was full of chatter during dinner, which was shepherd’s pie with chocolate pudding for dessert. Will tuned her out. He was still thinking about ghosts, and wondering how they’d ever learn more if Shep was annoyed with them. Asking Aunt Effie was out of the question. There were some grown-ups you could ask for ice creams, and some grown-ups you could ask about ghosts; it was important to know which type of grown-up you were dealing with.

  “I really, really like it here, Aun’ Effie,” Ariel was saying. “I have a friend and she’s called Kay Kay, and Uncle Ben was too big to come up, but Kay Kay wasn’t too big and she says she’ll come back to play.”

  “Who’s Kay Kay?” asked Meg.

  “Well, she . . . Kay Kay just lives here an’ plays with me.”

  “Another imaginary friend,” said Will, rolling his eyes. “They always have kooky names.”

  “She’s got a nice name,” retorted Ariel. “And she’s better than you, Will. She’s got lots of time to play. And she said she’d play with me tomorrow.”