Fowl, venison and oysters. Roast goose, oozing grease in a heap of browned potatoes. A whole swan pickled in aspic, its noble white neck decorated with strings of berries. Little tartlets, pastries and flans, but it was the puddings that made my saliva run. Nothing had passed my lips since lunch, an eternity ago. Oh, how I longed to pick up a cool pistachio ice. To lick a spoon full of creamy trifle. To feast on great heaps of meringues and strawberries until I was sick. To gorge on blancmange, jelly and chocolate cake.
“Stop dribbling,” Rachel snapped. “We’re kidnapped by maniacs and all you can think of is sherry trifle!”
“How do you know it’s sherry?” I asked.
“Isn’t it?” said Rachel.
“Could be Marsala-flavored or even vanilla.”
“No one makes vanilla trifle.” Rachel’s eyes were glued to the pudding, as if she could gobble it up with her gaze.
“Think about something other than your bellies, girls,” Waldo interrupted. “Look over there.”
A line of guests were heaping their plates with food; a red-faced perspiring man had more on his plate than I would have thought it was physically possible to eat. Boar, quails eggs and flan, with a large slice of swan. It was the middle-aged lady next to him who had caught Waldo’s attention. She had a serene face with drooping eyebrows, and severe brown hair topped with a lace cap. The woman had a dignity about her that set her apart from the other guests, but maybe that was partly because she hadn’t bothered with a ridiculous costume.
“Who is it?” I asked. “I think I’ve seen her somewhere before.”
“Don’t you know?” Waldo teased. “I’d have thought you’d have her image engraved on your womanly heart.”
“What?”
“The Lady with the Lamp.”
“Florence Nightingale,” I gasped and it was true I did admire her deeply. She had treated the sick in Crimea, fought for the rights of women to go to the battlefield, to be useful and not just stay home knitting socks for the soldiers. She was a great heroine—but what on earth was she doing here?
“Over there!” Rachel murmured. “It can’t be.”
She was pointing to a portly man wearing feathers and carrying a tomahawk decorated with black ribbons. A Red Indian clearly, but who was the owner of the chubby face so crudely daubed with red and yellow war paint. Could it be?
“Tum-Tum,” Waldo blurted. “It’s old Tum-Tum.”
“Don’t talk of the Prince of Wales like that,” Rachel said. “He is going to be king one day.”
“I’m an American, remember,” Waldo said. “I’m not impressed by all that royal nonsense.”
“You could show a little respect,” Rachel said.
“Anyway, hope he goes easy on the cakes before that. Otherwise he’ll keel over stomach first,” Waldo retorted rudely.
“It’s not Tum-Tum I’m worried about,” I interrupted. “LOOK!”
Partly hidden by the portly Red Indian was a woman, dressed as a squaw. She had clearly buttonholed the Prince and was bending his ear about something. My friends stared at the comical figure—stout, determined, looking most alarming in her leather fringed dress, boots, feather and paint-covered face.
“Don’t you know who it is?” I asked.
“No idea!” Waldo shook his head. Then he peered more closely. “It can’t be.”
“It is,” I murmured.
Now all my friends were staring at the small figure, who was gesturing forcefully to the Prince as she spoke.
It was Hilda Salter, lady explorer, patriotic spy, sharpshooter and the terror of native tribes from the Amazon to the Kalahari. The smooth talker who could part a Maharajah from his crown, a Khan from his camels and a prospector from his gold. She could even, I believed, have relieved a sheikh of his harem.
“Your aunt!” Rachel spluttered. “What is she doing here?”
I shook my head. “Playing some deep game, no doubt. She won’t leave this castle empty handed.”
“But Kit, these people—whoever they are—they’re kidnappers! They’ve—”
“Clearly rich kidnappers!” I interrupted. “Kidnappers with royal friends.” I didn’t say so to Rachel, but I was becoming increasingly sure it was the Baker Brothers behind all this. But what was my aunt doing in the home of our sworn enemy?
“It doesn’t matter what she’s doing here,” Isaac interrupted. “We have to get a message to her.”
“Hammer on the glass!” Waldo bellowed. He rushed up to the pane and beat on it. “Oi! Oi!” he yelled as we all followed his lead.
We banged on the window as hard as we could, screaming to attract the attention of the revelers standing just inches away from us. To no avail. We might as well have been invisible.
“It’s a game,” I said, as exhausted we fell back. “Our kidnappers are taunting us with that scene. The Prince, my aunt, Florence Nightingale.”
We were interrupted by a knock at the door and two white uniformed waiters pushed a trolley into the room. A most delicious smell wafted from a silver tureen. One of the waiters proceeded to set the table, which stood in the corner of the room, with four plates, knives, forks and glasses, while the other unpacked the trolley. Mrs. Glee had appeared and watched in silence, a frail figure hovering uncertainly by the doorway. Behind her were two burly guards.
“I told you they would treat you well,” she murmured. “I apologize for Lips on the way here—but—”
“No more excuses,” Waldo cut in.
“Vera,” I said, “if you are really sorry, can you just tell us—what on earth is going on?”
Mrs. Glee blanched and backed out of the door without speaking. In an instant she was gone.
“No use looking for answers in that quarter,” Isaac said.
It seems odd in the light of our serious situation, but my eyes were on the trolley. We hadn’t eaten for hours—the coach ride, the grueling journey across the sea. I was famished, that’s my excuse. Scrumptious dishes were on display, including many of the dainties we had spied through the window. My stomach was rumbling.
Isaac and Waldo were already at the trolley, scooping food onto their plates. Isaac had forgotten his plan to contact my aunt. I followed their example. There was a choice between ginger ale and lemonade. I filled my goblet with lemonade and it slid cool and tangy down my parched throat. Heaven! Then I took a small selection of flan, boar and guinea fowl in honey sauce. Well, fairly small. I didn’t leave much room on that plate.
I intended to save myself for the trifle. Someone had to investigate if it was sherry flavored!
With a troubled look Rachel followed our lead and was soon wallowing in chicken pie. Yes, maybe this feast had been provided by an enemy. Did it matter? With my spoon heaped with boar and potato, I was able to take a more mellow view of out captors. Was it just possible that I had been wrong to sense evil in the castle? Perhaps our kidnappers were not the Baker Brothers? Perhaps this was all some sort of extravagant jest.
Certainly whoever had snatched us off the moors had a good cook.
Chapter Seven
“Definitely sherry.” I licked my lips of the last spoonful of creamy, spongy trifle and sank back in my chair. Eating, especially in large quantities, can be exhausting.
“I feel bad,” murmured Rachel. “My mother always used to say, ‘You should know a man before you sup at his table.’”
“It hardly matters what your mother thinks,” I blurted, then immediately felt guilty. Rachel’s mother was dead, like my own poor mama. We never talked of it.
Isaac glared at me and put a comforting hand on his sister’s arm.
“I didn’t really mean …” I muttered. “I just meant, it’s too late for second thoughts now that we’ve filled our bellies.”
“Hear, hear,” someone murmured. In unison we turned to the door. But the man wasn’t there; he had materialized, ghostlike, in our midst, though no one had heard the sound of the key turning or the door opening.
“Your mother was an
uncharitable woman, Rachel. She should have heeded the Jewish proverb: ‘If your enemy be hungry, give him food to eat.’”
It was a Baker Brother, standing so close I could feel the chill. He put his hand, which was encased in a white glove, on my shoulder and I flinched as if I’d been struck. A stray ribbon—black, I noticed—tickled my cheek.
He was handsome, this man, with golden skin, fair wavy hair and the palest of pale blue eyes. Walking down a street, he would have drawn admiring glances, with his youth and air of well-being. I knew this beauty was a mask—I’d seen the real man in the Himalayas. His voice was reedy and he gave off an unwholesome smell. Something of the grave, of decomposing bodies. And when I looked at him more closely, I saw a peculiarity about the skin on his face. Too taut, too stretched—all wrinkles and marks of character had been blanked, like an alabaster statue of a Greek god.
“Which one are you?” Waldo asked coldly.
“A strange question, though fair, I suppose,” he replied. “After all, we’ve never been properly introduced.”
The Baker Brother removed his hand from my shoulder and extended it to Waldo. I could see my friend struggling with the question of what to do: shake the loathsome glove or spit on it.
“Pity.” The man recalled his hand with a sour smile. “I am Cecil Baker, precisely thirteen and a half minutes older than my brother Cyril, whom you’ve already met. If you look through the window you will see him in the ballroom, playing the gracious host to our future king.”
We all stared through the window and saw a strange sight. Another pale handsome man, with the same rubbed out and remodeled look as his brother, was standing in a group around Albert, Prince of Wales, uncomfortably close to Aunt Hilda. He was laughing, sharing a joke with our future king. As if he knew we were talking about him, Cyril Baker turned his head toward us and a look passed between the two men.
Or seemed to.
“You need not be afraid that any of our distinguished guests will see you.” Cecil Baker strode up to the window and tapped it playfully. “This is a one-way mirror. We can see through it, but all our guests can see is a shiny mirror reflecting their pretty costumes back at them. I assure you, Cyril and I find this jolly useful, not to say amusing.”
“Spying on your guests,” Waldo said. “Hardly the behavior of gentlemen.”
Ignoring him, Cecil pulled out a chair and sat down.
“Is this your new business plan?” I asked. “Are you adding kidnapping to murder and thievery?”
“That’s a vulgar way of looking at it,” Cecil Baker gave me a wintry smile. “I prefer to see it as inviting you on a luxurious and mutually profitable visit. If you do as you’re told, that is. Going by your history, I cannot say I’m confident.”
He looked me over, from head to toe. I felt like a slave being sized up at a flesh market. I recalled the last time I had seen this man, in that magical glade in the Himalayas. The shrunken, wizened being lapping greedily at the waters of immortality. For the time being, at least, his gamble with fate appeared to have paid off. He was much changed from the wheezing ghost we had first spotted leaving the steamship at Bombay. Now, in appearance at least, he was young and handsome.
“I have a job for you,” Cecil Baker continued. “An exciting opportunity.”
“Bet it’s an opportunity to get ourselves killed,” Waldo said.
“We won’t go into the details tonight. You will eat, drink and sleep. Cyril and I will meet you again tomorrow. We will have a little chat and then I believe you will see sense.”
Cecil Baker stood up. “I wish you a good night. Things always look rosier after a decent sleep.”
“I won’t do a thing for you and nor will my friends,” Waldo spat. “We’re not for hire.”
“We shall see.” The man smiled, to reveal perfect white teeth. With that Cecil Baker was gone.
We looked at each other after he vanished, not knowing what to say. We were all very scared, but unwilling to admit it to each other. The silence hung heavy in the air.
Finally Waldo said, “It’s not as if we have any choice, is it?”
“We could run? Fight?” I said. “Maybe we could climb out of the windows.” But though I tried to sound brave I was despairing inside. I couldn’t see how we could escape from this castle fortress.
“He has us. Don’t you see it, Kit?” Waldo shook his head. “The Bakers are famous collectors, aren’t they?”
“So?”
“We are their latest exhibits.”
Chapter Eight
That night we were given an elegant chamber furnished with twin beds, the sheets silk, the pillows filled with the softest feathers. Two starched cotton nightgowns were laid out. There were even hot-water bottles. Rachel curled up in an eiderdown, looking over the marble washstand, the velvet curtains, the Turkey rugs on the gleaming floorboards. It was everything we could have wished for.
But we were not on some luxurious holiday. We were prisoners—high up in the castle’s guest quarters. There were guards on the door. Through the night drifted sounds of revelry that excluded us. The strains of a mazurka from the lawns below, then some jolly peasant dance. The faintest chink of champagne glasses. And beyond, the sounds of the other orchestra, more plaintive. Neither Rachel nor I was in the mood for conversation and we lay in our soft beds in silence. I finally drifted off to sleep with the sounds of the violins in my ears—their sadness echoing my own mood.
I woke up with a jolt, my limbs stiff and aching, despite my feather bed. At first I thought it was the orchestra—still fiddling away. No. It was a human voice I heard. Someone wailing in the spaces over our heads. It was a heart-rending cry, grief-stricken. It sounded high, like a child’s. It made me want to weep; at the same time I was desperate to jump out of bed, charge out into the night and stop whatever was causing this sadness. No use. Armed guards on the door and, besides, this castle was a pit, full of horrors I did not yet know.
Uneasily I dropped back into an aching, dreamless sleep.
I was woken again by the door opening. Two different waiters in white livery, their faces as expressionless as the others, were pushing another trolley. Breakfast. What a breakfast! Fried eggs, quail, bacon, sausages, toast—a feast. I wasn’t hungry. Still, you know Kit Salter. I managed a few mouthfuls.
We had scarcely finished breakfast when the guards came. We were marched through endless corridors, down twisting staircases, over a bridge, till we came to an elaborate teak door. I was struck by the carving. The beautiful figures on it looked foreign to me. There was a female in the center, with a globular head, a panther squatting at her legs. I sensed she had been imported from some distant, scorching land. The door swung open, revealing an enormous room.
“Butterflies,” Rachel whispered.
There were hundreds, thousands of butterflies, crawling, sleeping and fluttering in the glass cases, which towered to the ceiling. One section of the wall shimmered an iridescent blue. Another glowed a coppery orange. Still another, whiter than snow. I marveled at the extravagance of a nature which could create such joyful patterns. One of the turquoise butterflies had white splodges marching up her wings, as if someone had dipped their finger in paint and anointed her with tribal marks. The guards pushed us onward, leaving us only moments to feel for these beautiful creatures trapped in their glass prisons. Then we were in another chamber, similar to the last but full this time of dead treasures. Like the butterflies they glowed, though this time in more restrained colors. Yellows, blues, subtle shades of white. The most delicate Chinese porcelain you could imagine—from the Qing and Ming and other dynasties, a quick glance at the labels told us. All this wealth was illuminated by the light that poured in from a large, arched window. Looted, judging from the stained glass at the top, from some abbey or cathedral.
The Baker Brothers were sitting under the window, two misers in the midst of their wealth. In the middle of the circular table there was a large square shape, covered by a checked tablecloth. Cyril wa
s reading The Times, Cecil the Illustrated London News. Both of them were wearing spotless white cotton gloves. They looked up as we approached and Cecil greeted us with a pallid smile.
“Up with the worm, I see,” he wheezed.
He gestured us to sit, waving a white paw. All four of us did as we were bid. Cyril was staring at us with glassy eyes and I was struck again by the Brothers’ oddness. Their faces didn’t really have expressions. When they smiled their faces scarcely moved, as if some doctor had drained the humanity out of them. No doubt about it, drinking of the waters of immortality had turned them into freaks of nature. They were fine, yes, almost beautiful, but only as a statue is beautiful. They were blond, clean, free of the marks of age, but it had somehow robbed them of life itself.
“My brother has convinced me of the wisdom of inviting you children to Hadden Castle. I took some persuading, I can tell you!” Cyril said, his voice even more papery than his brother’s.
“You’re very fortunate,” Cecil smirked. “My brother does have an unfortunate tendency to bear grudges.” In the look he gave his twin, I saw for the first time, some fondness.
“Thanks very much for the ‘invitation’—but none of us asked to come to Hades Castle,” Waldo said boldly.
“Hadden Castle,” Cyril snapped, then to his brother he murmured, “I believe some of the workmen took to calling it Hades.”
“Impudent beasts,” said Cecil, and then he turned his blue gaze on me. “You were invited here, dear children, for a reason. I have in mind a task for you. A very special mission—which will test your intelligence, your nerve and, how shall I put it, your survival instinct—in equal proportion. I am convinced you have these qualities in some measure. You see, it is a rare person that can best me in a challenge.”
The Book of Bones Page 4
