Castle Barebane

by Joan Aiken

  After Jannie had slowly recovered, by lengthy and protracted stages, from sobs to hiccups, from hiccups to silent trembling, they played games, endless games. Val taught Pieter naughts and crosses and, to her astonishment, he then taught it to Jannie, who grasped it instantly, and proved able to beat her brother three times out of five. So she can’t be mentally defective—can she? thought Val. This was a fear that had troubled her several times before on the journey when Jannie, finger-sucking, eyes glazed, had seemed vacant, stupid, almost cretinous. But now, with bright eyes, face sparkling with wicked pleasure as she blocked her brother’s row of crosses she looked, surely, bright as any child her age, if not brighter? She was a complete puzzle. She also, with the same easy rapidity, learned scissors-paper-stone, and greatly entertained an elderly Scottish farmer who had joined the train at Newcastle, by playing it with him and beating him six times running.

  “Hech, sirs, the little lass is a fair caution!” he said.

  At last, after what seemed like a lifetime in it, the train began to slow down, and the farmer told them that they were coming into Edinburgh. Dark had fallen long ago; now the lights of houses began to climb up hillsides on either side.

  “Is Edinburgh like London?” Pieter asked.

  “Not so big,” Val said.

  “Will Mama and Papa be there?”

  “I don’t know, Pieter. But if not, I hope they’ll come soon.”

  “Will you stay with us till Mama and Papa do come?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said guiltily. For of course she intended to leave them with this Elspie; who sounded just the kind of reassuring, comfortable person to care for them faithfully until—until their circumstances improved; of course Val intended to make her escape as soon as she had settled the children. If she had known what caring for children entailed, she would never have accepted Nils’ proposition in New York.

  And (as Pieter would say) then what? wondered Val. What do I do with myself? One of these evenings I must write another letter to Benet.

  “Want Mama! Want Mama!” wailed Jannie, and burst into a heartbreaking flood of tears.

  “Oh, heavens! Don’t do that now!” exclaimed Val, at the end of her tether. “Look! Look at the pretty lights! Look at all the other trains!” For they were now pulling in to Edinburgh station, granite-built and glass-roofed. “Look at all the horses, Jannie! Look at the man in the kilt.”

  But Jannie wept all the harder and would not be comforted. Weeping, she was lifted from the train by the kind farmer; weeping, she allowed herself to be led along by Pieter while Val wearily saw to their luggage; weeping still, she was hoisted into a cab.

  “The lassie’s tired, forbye,” said the driver. “Ah, it’s an awfu’ long journey frae London. Where’ll I be taking you, ma’am?”

  And when Val told him it was number twenty-nine, Regent Terrace, he said comfortingly that it was no’ sae far to go, and urged his horses out into the wet night. For it was raining in Scotland, as it had been raining in London that morning, though Val noticed, when they stopped in a quiet tree-lined road, after ten minutes’ drive through the cobbled streets, that the rain was coming down in large lumps and showing a dismal tendency to turn to snow.

  Chapter 9

  Val pulled her beaver collar tighter round her neck. The fine, gritty snow, blown on a piercing northeast wind, seemed able to penetrate the tiniest opening, and stung her skin like grapeshot. Ducking her head against the blast, she darted across Cockburn Street and plunged down a narrow steep wynd, which, a helpful man had told her, would bring her in due course to Appin Court where, at number seventeen, she would find the offices of Selkirk’s Magazine.

  In the shelter of the high buildings the wind was less ferocious but the light was correspondingly worse; although the hour could not be much after three in the afternoon, the alley was so confined, and the houses on either side so high—seven, eight, nine storeys, many of them, each floor extending out beyond the one below—that the footway was almost obscured in gloom. The cobbles were uncomfortably wet and slippery, too, half-buried in slush and dirt. Val picked her way as best she could, observing with a professional eye the damp, insanitary-looking brickwork, black with age and streaked with green, suggesting a constant seepage of water. Lines of dingy washing dangled from wall to wall overhead, heaps of rubbish often partially blocked the way. Skinny children lurked and stared in corners.

  Edinburgh was depressing her. On her last visit she had thought it a grand city, handsome and windblown. But that had been a carefree summer week, spent sightseeing with her father. They had stayed at the Charlotte Hotel, dined out in elegant eating houses with Nils, and hired a carriage for jaunts to Stirling and the Lothians. She had hardly seen this face of the grim old town. But just the same it was here, she thought with a shiver; it was here waiting all the time. She was daunted by the prevailing blackness, the narrowness and height of the houses, jammed together like stalagmites; the reckless steepness and breakneck angles of the passageways, and the savagery of the climate. And, after all, this was autumn! How much worse could it become when true winter closed in? New York seemed a temperate, civilised, sybaritic place in comparison. Moreover, how did people ever learn to find their way about this mazelike wilderness?

  Coming at last into Appin Court—a murky, cobbled rectangle about the size of a kitchen table, with black walls rising to seven-storey height on all sides—she stopped a moment to shake the snow off her muff and cap, then plunged into the entrance of number seventeen. A black unlit stone stair confronted her; she began to climb. Each landing was faintly illuminated by a grimy window, but since there were no numbers or names on the doors, and few people seemed to be behind them, or prepared to respond to knocks, Val soon began to wonder how she was ever going to achieve her objective. After fifteen steep flights, however, she found an open door and a sign that said Selkirk’s Magazine, Editorial Offices. Inside the door lay a small dusty gaslit cubbyhole containing a table littered with papers and a dour-looking elderly clerk who asked her name and business.

  When she had recovered her breath she said that she would be glad of a word with Sir Marcus Cusack. Hearing this the clerk informed her with evident satisfaction, “I doubt Sir Marcus’ll no be in, the day. He sent word by his man that he was terrible bad wi’ the gout.”

  “Oh dear.” Val was acutely disappointed. Up to this moment she had hardly realised to what an extent she had depended on finding Sir Marcus again. London had been bleak, Edinburgh was bleaker. She was much in need of somebody with whom she could have a friendly human exchange. And, in retrospect, Sir Marcus’s long cantankerous silences on the boat had diminished in importance, while his kind offer of help on the dockside stood out even more clearly.

  “Ye can leave a card, if ye wish,” said the clerk in a grudging tone. “Or call again, next week.”

  “Unfortunately I am leaving Edinburgh tomorrow.”

  “Aweel, there’s no help for it then,” said the clerk triumphantly, and returned to his previous task of opening envelopes and extracting manuscripts from them.

  Dejected, and with aching legs, Val made her way back down the stone stair. It was at least a relief that Pieter and Jannie had not accompanied her here; she spared a wry grin at the idea of hoisting Jannie up the interminable flights. She had taken them out on a shopping excursion earlier in the day to buy more articles of winter wear which their great-aunts apparently thought indispensable for life at Ardnacarrig. A telegram to this effect had been dispatched to Robina Gourlay from Grosvenor Square before the ladies departed on their Mediterranean trip. The telegram contained explicit instructions about garments and the stores from which they were to be obtained—the Carsphairn sisters, it seemed, had holdings in all Edinburgh’s main emporiums. Val was amused—but also irritated—by this almost military organisation of the children’s affairs. It was a relief that she herself would not be exposed to much more of it; she would
soon begin to find it exasperating. However she went out cheerfully enough with the children to buy the mackintoshes, broadcloth spencers, plaid alpaca dresses and trousers, and rough, warm, kerseymere garments for country wear. She also, on her own initiative, added a few more books for Pieter; if the ladies wished to scrutinize the bills when they reached Nice or Istanbul, and complain, let them do so then!

  After the shopping was completed, as it snowed harder and harder, and Jannie’s unreliable bladder had once again betrayed her, Val took the children back to Regent Terrace and deposited them thankfully in the care of the soft-spoken, cushionlike Robina. It was, in a way, a pity that they were not to stay here, she thought, setting off again joyously at her normal swift pace; Robina seemed prepared to lavish infinite affection on the pair. But Robina had her boarding house to run; and country air would certainly be better for the children than Edinburgh’s murky reeks. Anyway, the coach was bespoken tomorrow to carry them on the last stage of their journey to Ardnacarrig.

  Val herself had not intended to accompany them in the coach, but, finding that no other arrangement had been made, she perforce agreed to go along. It seemed too barbarous to despatch them on a nine- or ten-hour drive with no company but that of the unknown driver; Pieter’s face of total dismay at this prospect had finally persuaded her.

  Meantime, she wanted to locate a doctor, and here again Sir Marcus’s absence from his office was a decided blow, since she had hoped for his expert advice; such a valetudinarian must, she thought, have all the latest information about Edinburgh medical men. Robina had proved useless in this respect; kind, vague, good-natured, and totally without intelligence, she had merely remarked in her dulcet coo, “Eh, noo, I can see little amiss wi’ the wee lassie, she seems bonnie enow! Ne’er fash the doctor for a sackless errant, my dearie. Forbye, my auld Doctor McTavish is deid, a month syne, an I havenae tried oot the capabeelities of ony ither; an ill doctor’s waur nor the ewking crewels!”

  With which clinching brace of proverbs she had washed her hands of the matter.

  How did one set about finding a doctor in Edinburgh? The town must be full of them. Nils had begun his medical training here, after all, before throwing it over to marry money. If only he or Kirstie were at hand, Val thought, not for the first time, how much easier matters would be! What could make two apparently ordinary people, devoted parents, responsible citizens, abruptly abandon their normal habits and desert their children?

  Reaching the foot of the stairway, she paused a moment to refasten her collar and burrow her hands deep in her muff before venturing out again into Appin Court, where a kind of miniature snow whirlwind seemed to have worked up a violent momentum.

  And then, to her surprise and delight, she heard voices outside—three voices, two of them familiar.

  “Are you sure you can manage, Sir Marcus?”

  “Would ye no’ like an arm up, sir? Ye’ll mind the stairs are unco’ slippery—”

  “No, no, thank you both, I can manage capitally. But come back for me at five, sharp, will you Andie?”

  “Och, ay, Sir Marcus—”

  Hearing these words, Val almost ran out of the doorway and came face to face with her companion of the voyage. She would hardly have known him, except by his height and bearing, for he was wrapped to the ears in ulster, muffler, and deerstalker cap. He had, apparently, just hoisted himself out of an elaborate wickerwork wheelchair, and was still being regarded with anxiety by his two attendants, as he balanced himself on a pair of sticks.

  For a daunting moment, Val thought that he was not going to recognise her. He stood propped on his sticks, with what could be seen of his pale bony face above the muffler drawn into an expression of martyred politeness, as he waited in patience for her to move out of his path. And then, all of a sudden, the politeness broke up like a plaster mask, wrinkles rayed out from the brown eyes, and his features were illuminated by a smile of wholly unexpected charm and humour.

  “Why, God bless me! It’s Miss Montgomery! My dear child! What a totally unlooked-for pleasure!”

  Absurdly she felt tears spring to her eyes as she smiled up at him. His arrival and welcome had transformed the dismal and unprofitable afternoon into a happy and successful one.

  “Sir Marcus, I’m so glad I caught you! I was just going away disappointed.”

  “John-Jo! Andie!” Sir Marcus called. “Come back this minute!”

  “What’s your will, Sir Marcus?”

  The attendants returned.

  “Just run up the stairs, John-Jo—you’ll be a deal faster than I should—and ask Mr. Hoseason to step down here a moment. Tell him to bring the English mail with him if it has come.”

  Val could not help being pleased that the unhelpful clerk would now see that she had, after all, met Sir Marcus. An extra trip down the stairs would do him no harm at all.

  In a few minutes Hoseason appeared behind the red-headed John-Jo.

  “Losh, Sir Marcus, ye didnae ought to have come awa oot while yer gout is at ye.”

  Sir Marcus was wearing carpet slippers, in spite of the snow.

  “Tuts, man, I was doing no good at home. I might as well be in the office, seeing what’s there. Has the English article not come?”

  “Not yet, Sir Marcus,” said Hoseason, who carried nothing with him.

  “It had better come tomorrow, or I sever that connection. Aweel, Hoseason, I’ll not keep you further then. I met Miss Montgomery at the stairfoot, and I am going to take her to dine.”

  Val opened her mouth to demur, but Sir Marcus anticipated her with an upraised hand, precariously waving his cane. “Doubtless you consider four o’clock an outlandish hour to dine, Miss Montgomery, but you must remember that we provincials keep rustic hours. At all events I’ll engage to return you to your lodging safe and early.”

  “It wasn’t that which worried me, Sir Marcus. I was only wondering if you should not be home with a basin of gruel.”

  “Ay, he should,” said John-Jo. “But try telling himself that!”

  “Do you want to drive me to an early grave?” demanded his master, climbing back into the bath chair. “Take me back to the brougham; let Miss Montgomery lead the way.”

  The procession wound back up the wynd to Cockburn Street, where Val and Sir Marcus were packed into the brougham and the chair was somehow fastened on at the rear. “Now drive us to the Charlotte Hotel, Andie. Its private rooms are impeccably correct,” Sir Marcus told Val. “A young lady like yourself who is not afraid of crossing the Atlantic unescorted need not scruple to dine alone there with a respectable man who is old enough to be her father.”

  “I don’t scruple at all, Sir Marcus,” Val assured him. “But I can hardly accept that you are old enough to be my father—unless you begat me at a most precociously early age.”

  “Huts! Ye’ll allow me to be acquainted with my own age, my dear lady, and we’ll leave it at that! And now, tell me what you are doing in Edinburgh? I understood that you were to make a stay of some months with your relatives in London? Did they not make you welcome?”

  “Well, no—it wasn’t that. It’s all a mystery,” Val explained. “My relatives seem to have disappeared. It’s a long tale, though.”

  “I prefer long tales. But let us keep it until we are settled at the Charlotte.”

  The Charlotte, as Val remembered from her earlier visit, was an eminently respectable hotel, and it was also plain that Sir Marcus was well known there as a person of some status in the town. They were swiftly established in a pleasant room with a fire, and a messenger was despatched to Robina Gourlay with the news that Val was dining out, but would not be late. Meanwhile no less than three waiters bustled about, laying the cloth and asking Sir Marcus’s wishes.

  While the waiters were in the room, Sir Marcus chatted easily and amusingly, keeping the talk to general subjects, art, literature, and public affairs. He seemed a di
fferent person from her morose companion of the voyage. Val discovered that, as she had imagined, he was both well-informed and highly intelligent. Their long, mutual silences on the boat seemed to have established them, now they met again, on the basis of old friendship; they were comfortable and relaxed together, able to tease, criticise, contradict, and argue with the utmost ferocity. How very odd this was, Val reflected, when they had next to no information as to one another’s private lives. I don’t even know if he is married, she thought, helping herself to another woodcock, though surely, at his age, he would be? But if so, where is his wife?

  “More claret, Miss Montgomery?”

  “Thank you, just a little. It is very good. But ought you to drink it, Sir Marcus, with your gout?”

  “Tush!” he said. “My gout was caused, not by my own potations, but by those of my ancestors. I have no intention of mortifying myself because of their intemperate habits.”

  The talk rambled to travel and Val confessed her longing to visit the Near and Middle East. She was all agog at learning that Sir Marcus had made several journeys to Samarkand, Baku, Teheran, and Baghdad.

  “Oh, how I envy you!” she exclaimed.

  He had also, she learned, written books about his travels.

  “Under what name, Sir Marcus? I have read all that I can lay my hands on about that part of the world.”

  “Och, I have no taste for self-advertisement. My books have come out under the pseudonym Viator.”

  “But I’ve read them!” She was delighted. “I read The Sands of Arabia, and also A Voyage on the Black Sea—it was reading those volumes that filled me with such a wish to see the places.”

  She questioned him eagerly about his various trips. Hearing his accounts of month-long voyages in caiques, weeks on mule or camel back, perilous ascents of craggy untrodden mountain ranges, thirst-racked passage over barren deserts, she could not help a certain amusement at the odd disparity between the man and his achievements. It seemed hardly possible to imagine this frail pernickety invalidish person—who subjected each dish, as it came, to a lengthy, suspicious scrutiny and interrogated the waiter as to its wholesomeness and antecedents—riding on a camel across the Turanian Plain, dining with sheikhs on couscous or sheep eyes. And when she thought of his total misery on board ship—why, what a mixture of improbabilities the man was!