Calgacos

by Aubade Teyal

  **********

  The following morning she had no desire to get out of bed. The thought of showing her face in the school corridors made her want to curl up in her bed and burrow out of sight. But Mannik knew nothing of her feelings. He tapped on her door as normal, and they walked down to breakfast together as if nothing were amiss.

  Lennox looked around for Connel in the dining room, or any of the other boys who had been in the attic, but none were present.

  'Bambridge has taken them all on a run,' Mannik explained, unasked, as he heaped so much cereal into a bowl, it dropped onto his tray like a waterfall. The strange thing about Mannik was that he resembled a wading bird with his skinny legs and big mouth, and yet ate everything he could.

  They joined Rick and Henry at an empty table. Rick was looking around mournfully, wondering when Connel would show up. Henry was doing what he always did, ignoring everyone else, and eating as if he was running a race.

  'He came for him while it was still dark.' Mannik added. He could not stop himself from smiling openly. It was intensely satisfying for him to see someone else, especially someone like Connel, get caught out. But Lennox did not even notice. She was attempting to scan the dining hall for Kellas, whilst simultaneously keeping her eyes fixed on her tray.

  'I knew the probability of Connel coming out of that card game with anything other than trouble was nil,' Mannik continued gleefully, almost forgetting to whisper.

  Kellas didn't seem to be in the hall. He was either very late for breakfast or very early. Either way, it was nothing to do with her, Lennox reminded herself, and she tried to listen to Mannik.

  'He can't resist any opportunity to compete against Gram.’ Mannik was bursting with delight. ‘Personally, I think there's something wrong with his head.'

  Despite everything, this made Lennox grin.

  'Whose head?' she asked. 'Gram's or Connel's?'

  But the smile froze on her face. Kellas had just walked into the dining room. He looked straight at her, and through her, as if she wasn't there, then walked down to a table of juniors.

  'Both,' Mannik decided. But Lennox wasn't listening again. Kellas didn't even look at her. It was as if she didn’t exist.

  Breakfast was almost over when a few stragglers appeared, mud splattered, and miserable. Rick’s head shot up.

  'Well?' he asked, as soon as Connel dropped a tray onto their table. 'Was it that bad?'

  'No, it was worse,' Connel snapped, sitting down. 'You have no idea.'

  Jonas, Aston and Shergar joined them as well. Aston had a bacon sandwich in his mouth before he sat down. Shergar was drinking coffee as if it was water. His eyes were red rimmed and his hair matted with sweat. Lennox had never seen him look so worn out. Jonas was doing nothing. He looked concussed.

  Then Bambridge entered the hall. He did nothing but cast an eye over the boys eating and suffering, then headed off to get his own food. The boys on kitchen duty had stopped serving, but quickly started as soon as they saw Bambridge.

  Fortunately for Connel, and the others after their brutally early start, Sundays at Calgacos were gentle. The mornings were allocated housekeeping time. Each house was supposedly self-sufficient; duties were allocated by the head of house. The main classroom block was the duty of the caretaker, Mrs Forbes, who came over from Balreaig twice a week, and charged down corridors like a bull on her thick legs, limping slightly as one leg was longer than the other, firing orders at anyone who crossed her path.

  Duncan had given Mannik and Lennox the job of sweeping out all the fireplaces in Feliformia. They made their way to the first floor, where the prefects slept, tentatively knocked on a door, and edged their way inside. To their joint relief, it was empty. There was a narrow bed, an ancient chest beside the bed, a modern foot locker at the end of the bed, a basket of wood and kindling, and a simple desk and chair. Beyond a few textbooks, posters, and an untidy pile of clothes and gear, there was nothing to show which of the senior boys the room belonged to. Lennox went straight over to the desk.

  'What are you doing?' Mannik asked, concerned, as he knelt at the fire place.

  'Nothing,' Lennox muttered, picking up a book and looking inside the cover where the name Zac Holder was written.

  She breathed deeply and joined Mannik at the fireplace. She had just wanted to know.

  To Lennox's surprise, not one of the rooms on the prefect’s corridor belonged to Kellas. She checked each one. Mannik stopped asking her what she was doing after the fifth room.

  The last room on the top corridor was slightly larger than the others, with an armchair by the hearth, a scattered collection of papers and maps on the desk, and mud splattered shoes by the door.

  As usual, Mannik went directly to the fireplace. Lennox, instead of moving to the desk, stared at the wardrobe. Like the rest of the furniture in this random school, each wardrobe was different, some ancient and richly carved, some plain, but this was the first wardrobe she had seen with a padlock on it. It seemed a strange thing to do to padlock a wardrobe of clothes, and Lennox wondered whose room it was.

  Behind her, the door swung open, and Mannik, who was doing nothing but what he was supposed to be doing, which was kneeling and sweeping, gave a muffled cry of surprise. Lennox casually joined him. Duncan walked in and threw himself into the armchair. His long legs almost reached Lennox's heels where she knelt at the fireplace.

  She picked up the dustpan and brush, and started sweeping the ash. It billowed into the air as she worked, coating her sleeves and face in a fine, dark, dust.

  'When I first came to Calgacos, 7 years ago, it was my job to clean the fireplaces too.’ Duncan remarked, as he watched Lennox sweep. ‘I was already tall then, taller than all the other juniors, and taller than some of the seniors too,’ he added.

  Mannik began poking with a long handled brush up into the chimney. He brought down a large clump of soot which caught him on the forehead, exploding like a bottle of dropped ink. Duncan did not notice, and Mannik hastily brushed the soot away.

  'There was one senior called MacMillan who was the shortest senior in the school. I was already far taller than him, but I never looked down on him. He was rarely in his room, for he was always out running, or training, or climbing. He was built like an ox, his shoulders so broad he could have carried a man on each side.'

  Neither Mannik of Lennox spoke. They swept and listened and wondered why Duncan was telling them this story.

  'Then in his last year here, against all expectation, he was picked for the Feliformia team to compete in the Challenge Cup. I remember many people said Kearns had made a mistake, MacMillan would let the team down. He was too slow over flat terrain. He could run from coast to coast, but was outsprinted by any junior who put his mind to it.'

  Lennox had heard about the Challenge Cup. Connel had been talking about it the other day. The ultimate endurance he had called it.

  'But all those people who doubted MacMillan were proved wrong. The final stretch of the challenge cup involved a near vertical climb. MacMillan was up it like a monkey, he practically sprinted up. Then he lowered a rope, and hauled his team to the top, one by one, in half the time it would have taken them to climb. Feliformia won the cup that year, and he was the reason.'

  The hearth was bare, Lennox's dustpan and brush were still. Mannik glanced furtively at the door, then at Lennox.

  'Finished?' Duncan asked.

  Mannik nodded vigorously. But Duncan paid him no attention at all. Mannik might as well as been in Balreaig. Duncan was only looking at Lennox. Whatever the purpose of his story, it was for her benefit.

  ‘If there's anything I can do,’ He told her. ‘Let me know.'

  This time it was her turn to nod.

  Duncan stopped her again before she was fully out the door.

  'You know why I told you about MacMillan, don't you?' he asked.

  'Because he was short, and I'm a girl.'

  Duncan laughed out loud, then corrected her.

  'No,'
he said. 'Because no one expected anything from him, and he proved them all wrong.'

  'I'll do my best,' she promised.

  'What was that about?' Mannik asked, as soon as Lennox joined him outside. He was facing down the hallway, but peered at her from the corners of his eyes, anxious. Duncan was a formidable presence, and Mannik wanted to be sure they both stayed on the right side of him. For Mannik, that meant invisible.

  'Nothing much, I'd just missed some soot.

  After lunch, Lennox sat with Mannik in the common room to study. It was his idea. Lennox suspected it was to get away from Connel, Rick and Henry, and if that was his plan, it worked. There were only a few seniors in there, playing cards as they lounged in armchairs which were comfortable only because they were so old they had been worn soft as feathers.

  Lennox had brought her maths text book as tucked inside it were the leaflets she had borrowed from the library. She picked up The Clan that Vanished and glanced at the opening chapter.

  The McTarn family was known for its cruelty and inhumanity. The family ruled like absolute monarchs over the peoples of the far western highlands, taking what they wanted in the name of taxes, and enforcing no justice but the privacy of their own lands and their word as law.

  So far, she thought, the McTarns were not so different from any other ancient feudal family. She turned to the next chapter.

  Over the years, the clan became increasingly reclusive, until they despised all contact with those beyond the walls of their ancestral home, Donnhegil castle. They still acquired servants from the local villages, but once taken on, their servitude was a job for life, and some were never seen again. This spawned rumours that Donnhegil castle was cursed, not safe for man nor beast, for even livestock would disappear without trace if they wondered into McTarn territory.

  Lennox thought of the portrait she had seen hanging in the Great Hall of an evil looking man with overhanging brows and dead eyes. Lennox shivered and turned some more pages.

  Eventually, the clan turned in on itself completely. There were no marriages, no new blood. A single heir was born for successive generations, out of wedlock, and through force, said the local tales. There were suggestions of incest and the rape of servants. The villagers hoped and prayed the family line, and its dominion, would come to an end; but no one predicted the manner of the clan's eventual end.

  Lennox turned the page, and saw the very portrait she had been thinking of, and below it the caption: The last Baron McTarn.

  The final Baron was the epitome of everything that had blackened the name of his forefathers. He was the culmination and final horrific flowering of its blood lust and belief in its own supremacy. He never set foot in the village, until the very end; he had no communication with the world beyond his border, and patrolled his lands like a wild beast, considering everything and everyone within it prey. He was said to eat meat raw, and to have fought a pack of wolves single handed. Huge, a head taller than any other man in the Highlands, and brutally strong, even strong men became as fleet footed as deer if he approached. His needs were few, and what he wanted he took. So when he first spied the girl, Mathilda, and liked what he saw, her fate was sealed.

  'What are you reading?' asked Mannik, peering over her shoulder. He could see it wasn't maths. Her textbook lay in front of her, unopened.

  'Nothing,' she said, absent-mindedly, far too absorbed to talk.

  Rumour has it she was sent to Donnhegil to deliver a crate of malt. The Baron saw her from a distance, wanted her, and could not bare for her to leave. He chased her back across the forests, his appetite increasing all the time as she fled back to her village. In broad daylight, roaring her name to the rocks on the hills, he came marching through the village, flinging open doors, his wolfhound with him. But her family knew they would never see her again if they let the Baron take her, so they hid her in a sack of oats. The Baron went away empty handed but not defeated. He came back that very night. While everyone sleep, he set fire to every cottage roof, and waited for the screams to begin. As they ran out of their homes, he was there, an axe in each hand, and he cut them down even as the flames licked their backs. His wolfhound tore apart those he did not reach, and half the village died before Mathilda appeared and ran sobbing from her home, straight into the violent embrace of the Baron. With his prize in his hands, he turned his back on the bloody, burnt remains of the village, and carried Mathilda back to Donnhegil in triumph. In his arrogance, he gave no further thought to what he left behind, and so committed a fatal and final mistake. For Mathilda had a brother, so close in age and appearance, that many thought them twins, and closer still in friendship. Gavin, her brother, survived the attack, and swore revenge. Here the story grows misty, for the next events occurred behind the formidable, walls of Donnhegil Castle. Gavin left his ruined village to seek out and rescue his sister from the Baron. What happened when they met, no one knows. Some say the Baron must have died. Others say the Baron was only injured but forced to flee Donnhegil. Only one fact is known for sure. The rule of the McTarns was over; and their ancestral home, Donnhegil Castle, was abandoned. It stayed empty and deserted, avoided by the villagers, until the ancient school of Calgacos was established in its cold, draughty halls some years later.

  Lennox put the book down and looked up. Mannik was watching her closely.

  ‘So?’ he asked. He had noticed what she was doing, and was just as curious as she was.

  She handed him the book. 'Here, you read. It seems the last Baron who lived here was a fiend. This castle has a shady past that pre-dates the arrival of our shady Masters.'

  Mannik began reading at once, his back curled, his face sunk near to the pages, transfixed by the history.

  Lennox, meanwhile, picked up the second book Donnhegil, A History by Alan Christie.

  She turned the pages hastily, and stopped, delighted, at a photocopy of a torn, very old, hand drawn map.

  Balreaig was marked on it, Donnhegil Castle was marked, and some distance from Donnhegil, was another village, smaller than Balreaig. There had once been an inscription, but the name was gone, rendered illegible many years ago. All that remained was a very faint shadow, like a water mark, and a cloud of watery ink.

  Lennox stared at the map in her hand, then at the maps on the wall above her head. As far as she knew, and according to the maps on display, Balreaig was the only village for miles, and miles around.

  'Mannik,' she exclaimed. 'Look.' She pointed at the village on the map. 'This old map shows a village but there are no villages west of Calgacos. There's nothing west of here, but mountains, and then the sea.''

  Mannik tore himself from the other book, and stared, eyes glittering, at the map in Lennox's hand, then back to the story of Baron McTarn, and his destruction of Mathilda’s village.

  'Ok. I'll go,' he said, under his breath, absorbed in the Baron’s story.

  Lennox smiled. He had read her mind.