by Joan Aiken
‘Here we are, here we are!’ said my elderly companion, and bustled me to the carriage. ‘See, see, James, I have him – is he not the Master Felix of twenty years ago? To the very life?’ And to me, ‘This is James Merriwether, who taught your father to ride his first pony.’
‘And rarely he shaped at it – he rode like a gipsy,’ said the little man, thrusting out a gnarled brown hand, ‘And I’ll warrant you’ll be the same, my young master, for you’ve a horseman’s upright back and flat thigh – or my name’s not Jem Merri-wether!’ and he, too, shook my hand up and down as if he could not bear to stop.
Then I was almost lifted into the carriage – which, I learned later, was called a chaise – Merri-wether took his place on the box, and the black-clad man climbed in beside me.
We started off at a rapid trot, taking the road away from Bath, and bowled along by the river, which here wound beside a great flat meadow full of brown cattle, below a wintry wooded hillside.
‘Sir,’ I said, ‘please explain to me for I am wholly puzzled – were you expecting me to come to that inn?’
‘Indeed we were, my boy, and had been for weeks past! But then, the day before yesterday, we had intelligence by post from the Customs Officer at Falmouth that a boy named Felix Brooke had been saved from a wreck, so our expectations – may I say our hopes – had become more immediate!’
‘But who did the – Sir, may I please know whom I have the honour of addressing?’
Being quite ignorant of whom he might be I used the politest Spanish mode of address, and my companion broke into laughter.
‘Indeed you may, my dear boy,’ he said in a friendly tone. ‘But there is no honour in the case! My name is Thomas Burden – the Reverend Thomas Burden; for many years I was your dear father’s tutor, and I am also your grandfather’s chaplain.’
Another grandfather! I thought. And then – like Father Tomas – but what a difference!
‘Then, Senor Burden – if my grandfather does not live at The Rose and Ring-Dove – how did word reach you?’
‘Why, your grandfather has been advertising for you – or at least, his man of business, Mr ffan-shawe, has – he had left word at all the Channel ports – ’
‘But why has he been advertising now?’
I was even more puzzled than before. Why should this English grandfather begin to advertise for me after twelve years? Or had he been doing so all through my life?
But how did he even know of my existence?
‘Why advertise now?’ said Mr Burden. ‘Why, because we had a letter from your Spanish grandfather, the Conde de Cabezada – a most dignified, proper letter, I may say – explaining that you had left your Spanish home, and he had reason to believe you were coming here.’
‘But how did he know where to write?’ I was more and more amazed. ‘He could not have received my letter yet. He did not even know that I had an English family. I did not know it myself, for sure!’
‘Ah, I am no hand at telling a tale!’ exclaimed Mr Burden apologetically. ‘I have it all topsy-turvyf He knew, of course, because when your great-aunt Isadora died – ’
‘What? I gasped. ‘She is dead?’
I do not precisely know why, but this news came as a most mortal shock to me – I turned cold from head to foot, the very marrow seemed to drain from my bones. That she, who had wished and caused me such harm, should suddenly be gone – disappeared into the shadows – how can I explain what I felt at hearing this? It was not fear, but a kind of dark sadness. I had hated her so fiercely; now she was gone; what avail to hate her any more?
‘Are you ill, my boy?’ inquired Mr Burden anxiously. ‘You have gone very pale?’
‘No – no, thank you, senor; I am not ill; only the shock – it is so strange. – How did my great-aunt die?’
‘It seems there were some prisoners lodged in your grandfather’s house at Villaverde, on their way to trial – ’
I nodded, having known of this from Senor Smith’s letter.
‘And your great-aunt went up to visit them – it was thought, with charitable intentions of giving them counsel or religious instruction: but she caught a malignant fever from one of them, and died of it within a week.’
Another cold shiver went through me as I thought of that scrawny, wiry old body stretched out on a bed of sickness, tossing in fever; great-aunt Isadora had always been so vigorous and strong, she had never known a day’s ailment … I felt as if the fever had entered my own bones.
‘On her deathbed,’ said Mr Burden, ‘she made a confession that greatly shocked your grandfather the Conde. It seemed that she had always hated your mother, and hated you equally, from the moment of your birth. So, when, three years ago, I wrote to your grandfather – ’
‘You wrote to him three years ago?’ I exclaimed in amazement.
‘I should go back earlier in the story; I am making a sorry tangle of it,’ Mr Burden lamented. ‘Four years ago there came into my hands a letter from your father – ’
‘From my father? Four years ago?’
Hope flashed up in me like a comet; then sank again as Mr Burden said sadly,
‘It was written before he died; ah, poor fellow, he was so injured in the wars that he could hardly scrawl, and the address was so ill-writ that the letter wandered half over England before it reached us. And then we could not read it! Will you believe me, Felix, when I tell you that it took me a year’s patient labour to decipher his writing, and even then I do not believe I could have done it if I had not been a student of strange scripts, Coptic, Sanskrit, Arabic, and others?’
‘Indeed I will believe you, Senor Burden,’ I said with heartfelt truth. ‘For I have myself some papers in his writing, and the only words I could decipher, from start to finish, were the ones naming the Rose and Ring-Dove Inn, by which means I was able to come here.’
Then, filled with joy, I cried out, ‘If you can read my father’s writing, Senor Burden, can you help me to understand these papers?’ And I pulled out the little packet in its waterproof wrapping.
‘It will be my happiness to help you,’ said Mr Burden, receiving the packet from me with gentle hands. ‘Ah, I see you have your father’s book also – he was so fond of that book! He would have it with him always – he thought it one of the shrewdest and best-writ tales he had ever come across, and often said he wished he might meet the lady who wrote it – ’
‘But then,’ I puzzled, going back to his tale, which still seemed all snarled up like a tangle of worsted, ‘what happened after you read my father’s letter? What did it say?’
‘Why, it told of his marriage, and your birth, and your mother’s death, and your poor father said that he feared he himself had not long to live. And he gave the name and address of your grandfather in Spain. So then we wrote at once to the Conde de Cabezada, asking for news as to what had happened to your father, and about yourself and saying that, if the Conde agreed, you should be sent over here to receive an English education. – But it seems that your great-aunt Isadora managed to intercept this letter so that the Conde never knew of its arrival. They found it among her belongings after her death. – And your great-aunt Isadora wrote a false letter here, saying that you had died of a fever. Your English grandfather was much grieved at this intelligence, and wrote no more. Your great-aunt Isadora must, I fear, have been a very wicked woman,’ said Mr Burden in a tone of moderate condemnation.
‘She wanted her own grandson to inherit Villaverde,’ said I. ‘My cousin Manuel. And I suppose she feared that, as soon as Don Francisco knew that I was legitimate, he would wish to keep me.’
‘Disgraceful,’ murmured Mr Burden to himself. ‘Disgraceful behaviour. However, she has gone to her rest now and made her peace with God; it is not for us to condemn her.’
I did not really see why she should not be condemned. She had caused much harm and unhappiness.
‘If she has made her peace with God,’ I inquired, ‘does that mean she has gone to heaven?’
It di
d not seem at all fair to me that one deathbed repentance should cancel a whole life of deceit and malice; and if great-aunt Isadora were now in heaven, I was not at all certain that I wished to go there. However I decided to discuss that with God at a later time.
Mr Burden said it was all a matter for debate; and then he smiled and said,
‘Ah, you are so like your father!’
I was still pondering over his tale in which there seemed to be many gaps.
‘I wonder how my grandfather Cabezada knew that I intended to come here and search for my English family? – I had said so to Pedro, but I had not told him where I intended to go.’
I wondered if great-aunt Isadora, on her deathbed confession, had mentioned bribing the Comprachicos to decoy me on board the Guipuzcoa and transform me by their terrible arts. If she had not confessed that, then she was still doomed to damnation. It made me shiver to think of her launching this hateful plot after me like a poisoned arrow, and then being overtaken by her own death before it had even been carried out.
I thought I would not mention this matter to Mr Burden.
He said, ‘It seems that your grandfather the Conde received some intelligence about your journey. He had caused inquiries to be made after your departure, and had traced your progress part of the way. Then he had a letter from a priest in a village called Santillana, commending your bravery, and from that place he was able to follow your track backwards to a smith in Llanes, and a miller in San Antonio.’ Mr Burden smiled, and added, ‘There are probably not so many yellow-haired boys riding about north Spain, after all!’
I was quite surprised that my grandfather had taken such pains to trace me. But hoped, on reflection, that the reports he received of me on my journey would not have been too unfavourable.
Bringing my thoughts back to the present, I asked,
‘Where are we going, senor?’
The chaise was now travelling along a smooth gravelled road between rough walls crowned with a curious iron-dark stone. Over to our left I saw a large and fantastic building, built of the same dark-coloured stone, and all crowned with cupolas and battlements, like a castle.
‘Those are your grandfather’s stables,’ said Mr Burden, to my considerable surprise. They did not look in the least like stables.
‘The way to them passes in a tunnel underneath this road,’ he explained. ‘And here are the park lodges.’ He gestured at two small buildings with similar turret-work on the right-hand side of the road.
‘Now we shan’t be long, your lordship!’ called back Merriwether, through an opening in the glass pane.
Your lordship! I wondered at this mode of address.
‘Senor Burden – who am I? Please tell me about my English family?’
‘But – ’ He seemed astonished. ‘Did your father, then, never tell you?’
The carriage turned to the right, passed through a gate between the two lodges, and began bowling along towards a dark mass of leafless oakwoods.
‘My father?’ I said. ‘But I never knew my father!’
‘Good heavens!’ Mr Burden stared at me, wholly taken aback, it seemed. ‘In all those years then – even at the last – he never divulged his identity? He was with you all through your childhood, and yet never revealed himself? Eh well – poor fellow – poor fellow! Doubtless he thought it best. He would always go his own way – there was no ruling him, or advising him!’
Utterly astounded at these words, I pondered over them, while their meaning slowly shook and dissolved and settled into my understanding.
Who had been with me all through my childhood?
The carriage rattled through the belt of woodland, then emerged on the other side. Ahead of us rose a high, green grassy hillside, and at its foot, set between clumps of huge chestnut trees with massive twisted trunks, lay an enormous grey house – so long, so big, that it seemed like a whole village in itself.
‘Do you mean,’ I said slowly, ‘do you mean, Senor Burden, that Bob was my father? Is that what you mean? Did he write this letter?’
‘Why, of course – who else?’ said Mr Burden. ‘He wanted to watch over you as long as he could, poor dear fellow. – But now, here we are.’ He added, more formally, ‘Welcome to your grandfather’s house, my lord St Winnow. Welcome to Asshe.’
‘But who is my grandfather, Senor Burden?’
‘His name, like yours and your father’s, is Charles Felix Robert Lewis Carisbroke. He is the Duke of Wells and Taunton.’
The chaise rolled to a halt at the foot of a great flight of stone steps while I was still digesting this information.
* One Spanish dollar was worth about 4s.6d. or 22½p.
11
In which I meet my Trustees, and Mr Burden reads my father’s Letter
I hardly noticed my surroundings, as Mr Burden assisted me to alight from the chaise, and led me up the great curving flight of stairs towards the main entrance of the house. I was still utterly stunned and perplexed by this news of my father.
If my father was Bob – why had he never revealed himself? If Bob was my father – why was my English grandfather a Duke? If Bob was my father – why had he not told me about my English connections, instead of leaving me an illegible letter?
All these questions jostled together in my mind. I stumbled along, hardly looking where I put my feet.
At the top of the steps a wide terrace, with a stone balustrade, extended on either hand, running along the front of the house. Mr Burden glanced, in a somewhat harassed way, to our right, where two people were strolling, not far away. He said, in a hurried, anxious manner.
‘Ah – there is your grandfather. But perhaps it will be best if you do not meet him just yet – ’
He made as if to lead me into the house, but we had delayed a moment too long, and the couple on the terrace came up to us. I saw a tallish, handsome man, with rather bulging eyes and curling brown hair – he could not be my grandfather – who carefully held the arm of a short, spare little personage, slightly bow-legged but elegantly dressed in a black silk jacket and pantaloons, with ruffles of the whitest lace at his neck and wrists; he wore an immense, comical, old-fashioned wig, out of which poked forth a sharp, wrinkled, suspicious old countenance, with a nose curved as sharply as an eagle’s beak, and two bright, angry blue eyes. The eyes raked back and forth as if searching for enemies. They rested on me, darted away, came back again, left me once more … I saw with sorrow that they had no sense in them. They were the eyes of a child.
‘Your grandfather is very old,’ said Mr Burden in a hasty undertone. ‘Do not allow yourself to be distressed by anything he may say. He is not quite in his right wits any more – ’
My English grandfather stumped up to me, his buckled shoes and his black cane clacking impatiently on the pavement.
‘Well, Felix!’ he said sharply. ‘I hear you have been playing truant, as usual! And your appearance is disgraceful sir – disgraceful! What kind of garments do you call those – ?’ With his cane he jerked at my jacket – which was stained and threadbare enough, in all conscience. ‘You look like a stable-boy – like a stable-boy, sirrah! Go and get changed immediately. How dare you appear like this before me! Take a bath! And mind you are in time for dinner.’ Then he turned on his heel, adding over his shoulder. ‘You may send your brother Charles to me.’
‘Y-y-y-yes, sir!’ I said, angry because my stammer had come back – and very sad, also, because, if I had at any time framed hopes of what my father’s father might be like, they certainly had not been anything like this.
‘Lord St Winnow – this is Mr ffanshawe – your grandfather’s man of business,’ Mr Burden said, in the same hurried undertone, and the tall man made me a low bow, rapidly saying,
‘Happy to make your lordship’s acquaintance, I am sure!’ before hastening away after his charge.
‘Of course he took you for your father,’ said Mr Burden, quietly, piloting me indoors, into a great black-and-white marble tiled hall with statues set about o
n plinths. ‘And indeed, the likeness is remarkable. Poor man, his mind is all in the past.’
‘Where is my father’s brother Charles? The one he mentioned?’
‘Your father’s elder brother? He died at the battle of Waterloo.’
Just at that moment the sun came out, and a great shaft of light poured through a wide, high-up window, brilliantly illuminating the great marble hall. I stared about – at the brocade hangings, the suits of armour, the statues, the grand white staircase – feeling as trapped as ever I had at Villaverde. Here, it seemed, was the same thing all over again. Old people grieving for young ones who had been sent to their death.
‘Why do men fight wars, Senor Burden?’
‘Ah,’ he sighed, ‘if I could answer that, my dear boy, I should be the wisest man in the world! – But come, you are tired after your travels: Watchett, here, who is your grandfather’s valet, will take you to your chamber. It is probable that there are still some clothes of your father’s – or your uncle Charles – which may fit you; and if you have been on the road since dawn I expect you may be glad of a bath; and then I daresay you could eat a nuncheon!’
He smiled at me very kindly, as he offered me these remedies, and then moved away, saying, ‘I will leave you in Watchett’s care, and shall await you in the morning-room in half-an-hour’s time.’
I thought what a piece of good fortune it was for me that he should be my English grandfather’s chaplain. Suppose he had been like Father Tomas! What an arrival I should have had then!
I had not particularly taken to Mr ffanshawe.
Watchett, a stout, white-haired man, seemed friendly, however; he led me to a handsome chamber and there prepared me a bath in front of a great blazing fire of earth-coal. I was not used to so much attention and felt somewhat embarrassed by his services, but he left the room while I bathed, and presently returned with an armful of clothes, saying,
