“And you had to go chastise them?” Anthea asked, her eyes round.
“Not ‘had to,’ I suppose—but Lady Dulcie wouldn’t think of having me offer for her, if I hadn’t some bit of land and rank to my name. I suppose it’s my own fault, in a way—I ignored a feud of long standing, between her family and mine. But the lady was beautiful, and our estates did border one another, and ancestral grievances seemed far less important to me than the luster of her eyes. Still, there must have been in her some trace of the old malice that bred the ancestral quarrel, for she challenged me to prove my love by joining the expedition against these raiders. I went in the train of my lord the Duke. The Scots fell on us at dawn, and we fought briskly, I assure you.”
“Who won?” Anthea asked, her eyes widening again.
“I can’t say, actually—I was killed in the thick of the fighting. A scoundrel tripped my horse with the butt of his pike. I fell quite hard, but their blows were only heavy enough to dent and mar my armor. I lugged out my sword and forced my way up to my feet, but just then a great rawboned chap in a kilt swung a huge claymore at me, and the blasted sword rang on my helmet as though on a bell. The straps burst, and off it came. I cut back at him, of course, but he only stepped back till my blade had passed, then leaped in and swung again—and, well, there went my head. I don’t really remember much of the rest of the battle, you’ll understand—only a dazed sort of feeling that I wasn’t all there, quite. There was a confused business of winding through the countryside on a cart, and of some doleful chanting in Latin. Then, finally, my mind cleared, and I found myself looking down at my own tombstone—out there, in the churchyard.” Sir Roderick gestured toward the window.
“Why, how horrible!” Anthea exclaimed.
“No, not really—except for those few horrible seconds of blinding pain, but that was over soon enough. And I haven’t been troubled with a sore throat since.”
“I should think not,” Anthea said.
“It is deucedly boring,” Sir Roderick confessed, “and one can’t really see too well, without a head.”
“Can’t you get it back?” Anthea asked.
“I suppose I can, though I haven’t had much luck thus far. You see, they brought my body back for burial in the family plot, but my head was lost amidst the carnage on the field of battle. I’m still searching for it, of course, but I can’t leave the house unless I’m haunting a member of the family—bound by ties of blood and land, you see, and none of my kinfolk have ever gone far enough north for me to come near the scene of that battle.”
Moved, Anthea cried, “I promise to go there, as soon as I’m old enough! Only you’ll have to tell me where it is.”
“Would you really? Why, how good of you!” Sir Roderick didn’t mention that she probably wouldn’t have enough money to go to London, let alone to the battlefield, unless she married—in which case, she wasn’t likely to have the freedom. “Don’t go without an escort, though—these Scots are great rough hairy brutes, you know.”
“Oh, I understand they’ve improved recently—quite civilized, Papa says.” The reminder of her parents clouded her brow.
Sir Roderick noticed. “Bit of a rum show, eh? To have to leave London and come to this rambling old manor.”
“Yes, it’s really quite unpleasant! ... Oh, forgive me! I hadn’t meant any disrespect for your family home.”
“Yours, too, my dear, though you’ve only just found it—and it’s really quite all right. Windhaven is quite thoroughly run-down, I assure you—not what it used to be at all. Even at its best, though, I confess it did become a bit tedious after the first hundred years. I’ve taken the opportunity to travel to London with the family, you see, not to mention Bath and ...”
“London?” Anthea stared. “Was it really you, then, who made those odd noises in the night?”
“Quite so, and I’ve known you since you were an infant—charming, perfectly charming. I could have stayed with Trudy—your Aunt Gertrude, don’t you know—but I thought I’d better come along to the old manor, and see that you were well enough cared for.”
“Oh, but I’m not at all! Nanny died, and they hired this horrible, ignorant stranger in her stead, and the housekeeper and the rest of the staff are so tiresome, I could swear they hate children, and ... Her griefs came to mind again, and Anthea’s eyes swam in tears.
“Now, now, it’s not quite so bad as it might seem,” Sir Roderick murmured, reaching out an armored hand—but all Anthea felt was a chill on her cheek. “Life’s always worth living, don’t you know, if only because it might go better in times to come. There will be a troupe of young men dancing attendance on you some day, though you may feel no one pays attention to you now.”
“They don’t, they truly don’t!” Anthea cried. “Mama cares nothing for my feelings, and hardly ever sees me—indeed, at times I think she wishes I weren’t there!”
“Painful, bitterly painful,” the knight agreed. “Still, you mustn’t be too hard on your mother, little mademoiselle—she’s had a dreadful disappointment, you know.”
“Well, yes,” Anthea admitted, “but she doesn’t seem to have much time for anyone or anything except melancholy, at the moment.”
“Quite so,” Sir Roderick agreed, “though I thought she made it quite clear she cares inordinately about her social circle.”
“Oh yes, she does carry on so about the loss of her wonderful friends and gay parties!” They had been lost with the Goslings’ London house.
“She has cause to rail against the bitter fortune that has consigned her to the country life,” Sir Roderick pointed out.
“She would, if her own extravagances hadn’t been so great a part of that misfortune!” Anthea returned. She had come rather early to that age at which a girl can find any number of things wrong with her mother, especially one who had been so distant as her own. “And really, she shouldn’t call this wonderful house a ‘decaying old manse,’ or go on about its being so far from the lights and salons of London!”
It was in Kent, actually.
“Decaying old manse!” huffed Sir Roderick, offended. “Does she really? Well, well, it has been let go of recent years. Your father hasn’t truly cared very much about it.”
“Papa has taken it very badly,” Anthea stated. Indeed, Papa seemed to blame himself for Mama’s loss. Not that he needed to—she was blaming him quite enough for them both already.
“But it was he who paid all that money, and promised all those sums that he didn’t have,” Sir Roderick pointed out.
“Never mind that it was Mama who ran up all the bills with her modiste, and insisted on so many servants, and on redecorating the town house, and holding their share of parties and soirees!”
“Don’t mind it at all,” Sir Roderick returned, “for your father called in the tailor every month in his own right.”
“Yes, because Mama kept after him to keep his wardrobe up to the latest fashion, of course, and carried on so about being ashamed to be seen with him, if he didn’t.”
“There’s some truth in that,” Sir Roderick admitted, “but certainly no one had to urge your father to run up such enormous gambling debts, least of all your mother.”
“That is true,” Anthea conceded.
“True? The truth of it is that neither of them cared a fig for keeping an eye on their expenses, or to trouble themselves with concern that their expenditures might outstrip their income,” Sir Roderick said. “Not that I’m blaming them, mind you—I never much thought to look at the money myself. More concerned with honor and chivalry, don’t you know—but it’s for a man to provide for his wife and babes, eh wot?”
“The land does that,” Anthea muttered, but somewhat uncertainly.
“True enough, but you must take care of the land before it will take care of you—and not take out of it more than it has to give.”
Which was exa
ctly what Papa had tried to do, of course—and the long and the short of it had been that they had had to sell the town house, and where could they live after that?
Only in the rambling old manor in which Grandpapa had grown up. And Papa hadn’t wished to be there for more than the occasional visit, and hadn’t tended to anything that fell into disrepair—so, now that they needed it, the big old house was dank and ramshackle.
“But the land has a great deal to give,” the ghost assured her. “Not just in corn and cabbage and tenants’ rents, but in the beauty of field and hill and woodlot.”
“I haven’t seen it,” Anthea said shortly.
“But you must!” the ghost said. “Not tonight, of course, for it’s raining, but on a bright and sunny morning, or in the glow of a summer’s evening. When you step into budding woods and find it thronged with birdsong, when you spy a fox peeking out from a covert, when you come upon a meadow filled with wildflowers, you will find the country is not so bad a place to be.”
“It sounds lovely,” Anthea said, caught up in his enthusiasm.
“That it is—but not on a gloomy day of rain and wind. Though that too has its charms, if you’re snug and dry, before a warm fire.”
Anthea made a face and gestured at the cold hearth. “Would I dare to light a fire there?”
“Of course, for the flue still draws well, and is reasonably clean for want of use—and the birds’ nests have fallen for the season, so there’s little chance of a chimney fire. If you’d set a log on, I’ll show you.”
Anthea was somewhat puzzled, but she did as Sir Roderick asked, slipping off the window seat and crossing to place a log between the andirons. The bark crumbled in her hands. “I wonder how long this has been here.”
“Well, if it’s a bit gone to rot, it will light all the sooner.”
The ghost clanked up beside her and knelt, holding its hands out over the logs.
Anthea followed its movements with her eyes. “How is it that you clank now, when you didn’t before? I thought ghosts had no substance.”
“We don’t, but I wouldn’t wish to startle you by coming up in total silence, then speaking at your shoulder.” A silver glow appeared around Sir Roderick’s gauntlets and spread out to envelop the log. It turned golden; then flames began to dance. Sir Roderick withdrew his hands, and the glow died—but the flicker of a burning log remained.
“Oh!” Anthea clapped her hands. “How marvelous! Are you truly magical?”
“Truly, though limited—I’d no teacher, you see, so it was rather hard to make use of the Talent. Took me sixty years to learn that little trick, though rattling chains and slamming doors came somewhat more easily.”
Anthea leaned toward him, but felt only a chill and shivered.
“The fire’s glow does make the room more pleasant.” Then she shook her head in irritation. “But there’s nothing to do!”
“Oh, there are games to pass the time.” Sir Roderick stood and paced over to a table nearby. “There’s backgammon here, you see, and chess.”
Anthea made a face. “Chess is boring. Besides, I don’t know how to play it.”
“Really? I assure you, you’ll find it exciting enough once you’ve learned.”
“I’ve no desire to.”
“Oh, come now! Just to indulge a new friend, eh? It’s been years since I’ve had a game—decades, in fact.”
With surprise, Anthea realized that she really had made a friend, though a very unlikely one. Hard on that came fright that she might lose him and be completely alone again—except for Mama and Papa, who scarcely noticed her, and that poisonous Nanny and the chilly staff. She rose with a theatrical sigh and came over to the table. “Oh, well, just to please you, then.”
“Truly? I’m ever so grateful!” Sir Roderick pointed at the table, and a drawer slid open. A chess piece floated out of it to settle on the checkerboard inlaid in the wood.
Anthea stared, amazed, and feeling just the slightest frisson of fear.
“Dreadfully sorry,” Sir Roderick apologized, “but I can’t really grasp them, you know. Can’t handle anything much over a pound, either. Well, then, this piece is called a pawn, and there are eight of them to a side ... .”
“How lovely!” Anthea picked up the miniature carving, delighted at the warm darkness of the rosewood. “Is it a medieval soldier, then?”
“Yes, and quite authentic, too, which is why it’s just the teeniest bit battered. It can only move forward one pace at a time, unless it’s fighting another pawn, in which case it moves diagonally ahead.” Sir Roderick pointed again, and another warrior floated out of the drawer, armored like the ghost himself, though with a visored helm. It sat astride a rearing horse. “This one is a knight, and he’s the hardest of all, because his horse can jump over anything in front of him—but it always lands to the side, you see.”
The miniature knight leaped off the board, sailed two spaces forward, then swerved to the side and settled again. “Like a capital L,” Sir Roderick explained. “And this is a bishop ...”
Anthea listened, enthralled. It made so much more sense when he explained it! Though it helped that the pieces looked like what they really were, not just little knobs and rods. She settled down to make a pleasant evening of it, after all.
They played every day after that, with the ghost carefully coaching Anthea in tactics and gambits. Finally she realized that he was deliberately letting her win two games out of three, and demanded he start playing to win. He claimed that he did, but she was still suspicious of how often she came up victorious.
For Sir Roderick became her great friend, of course. In winter, he strolled out with her in the very earliest morning, as visible by day as by night (though only to her), and showed her the beauties of newly fallen snow and the lacework it made of the branches in the woodlot. She would have thought it a dreary waste otherwise, but with him she was able to see beauties that she never would have discovered otherwise. And she had need of it, for Mama, in despair at having missed a London Christmas, pined away and succumbed to pneumonia, dying between New Year’s and Twelfth Night. When Anthea saw her eyes close for the last time, and Nanny managed to pry her away from the lifeless clay, she dashed out of the room and ran pell-mell down the stairs and into the library, where she threw herself down among the cushions on the window seat and wept and wept. She must have cried herself to sleep, for of a sudden, she woke with a start and found herself in darkness. For a moment, the fear was so sharp as almost to make her cry out; then she was able to make out the familiar shapes of tables and chairs, and the racks of dusty old volumes on the walls, by a faint glow that somehow permeated the room. Then that glow brightened and coalesced, drawing in on itself till it assumed the familiar form of her armored and headless friend. “I had to watch over you, you see,” Sir Roderick said, almost apologetically. “I couldn’t have you waking alone in the dark.”
“Oh, Sir Roderick! Oh, thank you!” Anthea leaped up and dashed to her friend, throwing her arms about him—and right through him, and the chill bit into her. She drew back, and the tears started afresh. “Or, Sir Roderick, it’s terrible! Mama has quite pined away—and has died!”
“Yes, Anthea,” the ghost said quietly, “I know.”
“You know? But how ...” Then Anthea’s eyes widened, and she clapped a hand over her mouth-but her thoughts fairly shouted, Of course! You knew the moment she came forth from her body—for she’s a ghost now, too, isn’t she?
“She is,” Sir Roderick confirmed.
Anthea was so agitated that she didn’t even notice that the ghost had read her thoughts.
“But she hasn’t lingered, I’m afraid,” Sir Roderick said.
“She was a good woman underneath it all, and departed almost immediately for Heaven. She hadn’t a fallen head to hold her here, you see.”
“No, she had ... Oh, I mustn’t say it!”<
br />
“No, you must,” Sir Roderick said gently. “ ‘A child who needed her,’ is that what you were going to say? Yes, she had, little lady, and she misses you quite sorely—I know, for she’s telling me that now, even as we speak.”
“Oh, is she truly?” Anthea cried.
“Yes, though she won’t be able to do it for long, and not very often—and only another ghost can hear her. When she realized she was about to die, she repented of her silliness in mourning her London life, for then she discovered how precious life had been, even though it wasn’t exactly to her taste.” The ghost sighed, and Anthea somehow knew he would have been shaking his head, if he’d had one. “Of course, it was too late then, for she’d let the sickness take far too firm a hold on her. She never knew how much you meant to her, Anthea, until suddenly she found you beyond her reach. Now she aches for you, child, and will surely do all she can to comfort and reassure you from where she is.”
“Oh, Sir Roderick!” Anthea threw herself into his arms, not minding the chill, snuggling down against the upholstery of the big old wing chair which was all she could feel, and she wept and wept again, in the insubstantial embrace of a ghost.
Papa almost turned into a specter himself, after that. He became wan and melancholy, and seemed to take very little notice of the life about him. Alarmed, Anthea took every chance she could to evade Nanny—not hard, for the woman ignored her as much as possible—and crept in to be with Papa, and pay what attentions she could, for fear that he, too, might leave her for the buffering of death—and she must have succeeded to some extent, for, though he didn’t seem to take much interest in life, he didn’t die, either.
It was a strain on her, and she probably couldn’t have borne it if it hadn’t been for the attentions of Sir Roderick. She had a great deal of lost and lonely time, for Nanny seemed to feel that if she wasn’t causing trouble, there was no need to bother with her—she’d far rather drink Father’s port with the cook—and Papa wouldn’t take much cosseting before he would send her away, so that he might be alone to wallow in self-pity. Hurt, Anthea would wander off to the library and try to nap. There she whiled away the time till evening with napping and reading, for there were a great many books in the library. It was fortunate she did, for Papa either wasn’t willing to spend money on a governess, or never thought of it—and in the evenings, Sir Roderick would guide her studies, suggesting books to her, and discussing them after she’d read them. He insisted on a half-hour of mathematics every night, and a deal of science and history and geography, too—but he made it all so interesting that it was almost fun. It never occurred to Anthea to wonder how he knew so much that hadn’t been discovered until after he had died, or even that he knew so much of books, when most medieval knights had never learned to read.
The Crafters Book Two Page 13
