by Heide Goody
“Are you a good person, Ella?” said Mr Dainty.
“Hmmm?” She pulled her attention away from the wolf-blob. “I try to be.”
“But are you?” he asked.
“I suppose so.”
He nodded.
“I am not a good person,” he said. “I am a bad man. A beast.”
“Oh, Mr Dainty, I’m sure that’s not true.”
“I am a beast but not a liar. I have a wicked soul and I do harm to others. You are my last hope, I think. And I will die if you reject me. I have been married before.”
“Back in the old country?” said Ella.
He shrugged.
“Perhaps. I will seek your hand in marriage and, if you accept, there will be such feasting.” He wheeled his horse about and looked at Thornbeard House. “You will be mistress of my house and want for nothing in all your life.”
From this distance, Thornbeard House looked even more amorphous and organic, merging from land into sea, not belonging to either. At the seaward edge, the spikey gorse bushes seemed to rise up and take hold of the castle, as though they were the only thing that stopped the building falling into the waves. Poking out from this mass of stone and thorns, like a righteous finger, was the south tower. A light sparkled in the topmost window.
“And if I don’t accept?” said Ella.
“It is an ancient house full of rooms where things — even the most precious things — can be lost forever.” Mr Dainty’s voice was not threatening; it was filled with sad resignation. “I am not a good person, Ella.”
Chapter Eleven
Back at the stable yard, Ella silently handed the reins to Scarhead and, before Dainty had a chance to speak to her, went inside the house. She made her way quickly back to her room with every intention of barricading the door and then either punching some walls, planning a reckless escape plan or having a bit of a cathartic cry. She wasn’t yet sure which.
Flowers were arrayed on every surface. There were cellophane-wrapped arrangements and buckets of single blooms. There were even some potted plants and some gaudy tufts of greenery poking out of a china teddy bear. It looked very much as if an entire florist’s shop had been transplanted to her room.
This is what passed for a romantic gesture by Mr Dainty, she thought bitterly.
“Feel free to put my vases to use, should you find yourself in possession of any flowers,” he had said.
“Oh, yes. I’m going to use them all right,” she said, picked up a vase of flowers and hurled it against the wall.
“Yeah!” yelled the teapot and bounced on the bed.
Ella picked up another and dashed it onto the ground.
“Smash ‘is face in!” yelled the teapot.
“I thought you only hated other teapots,” said Ella.
“Death to all receptacles!” it said.
On the night stand, the tea cups trembled querulously.
“Of a certain size!” the teapot amended rapidly.
It scuttled rapidly over to the window (for a piece of pottery, it had quite a bit of bounce), nudged the catch and threw the windows wide.
“Go long!”
Ella did just that. Vase followed urn followed bucket followed pot followed stupid china teddy bear out into the evening. This last one produced a distant “Ow!” and Ella feared she had just murdered a magically animated ornament.
She went to the window and then took a rapid step back as the wolf hooked his claws over the sill and launched himself inside. He skidded across the floorboards, claws scrabbling for purchase. Ella heard a slamming sound from the skirting board and knew that the teapot had made a hasty exit.
Ella immediately went down on her knees beside him.
“Did I hit you?”
“Clearly, hurting wolves is a family hobby. But I’ll take ballistic floristry over your granny’s shotgun any day.”
“She said she didn’t shoot you.”
“Nicked my ear,” he said and angled his head to show her the tiniest indent in his ear. “But I’ll live.”
She scratched him on the top of his head.
“What are you doing here?”
“Came to see how you’re getting on with the whole being in charge of your own destiny thing.”
“But how did you find me?”
“I had a very informative lunch yesterday, although gingerbread does repeat on me.”
“You ate my gingerbread man?”
“He enjoyed it. Those guys are all masochists. ‘Chase me. Chase me.’ Seriously, he kept up a running commentary while I was eating him.” The wolf looked around. “Nice digs, sister. I have to say that it’s a surprise to see you here. Your granny’s managed years and years of ducking out of Carabosse’s reach. You didn’t even last a week.”
Ella glared at him. “I came here under my own steam, so I could find my dad. I know what I’m getting into, thank you very much.”
The wolf sniffed at the sheepskin rug, intrigued.
“What are you getting into exactly? Your dad’s not here anymore.”
“Let’s say that I need to find a sensible way to leave this place, that’s a given. In the meantime I am fact finding at the same time as avoiding being ensnared by the Red Rose Gambit.”
“Red Rose Gambit?” mumbled the wolf as he chewed experimentally on the edge of the rug. “This place.” He sniffed. “This is the Bloody Chamber Gambit.”
“Bloody Chamber?”
“The name ‘Bluebeard’ mean anything to you, sister? Trust me, it’s far worse.”
“I don’t think so,” said Ella, who had been reading up on her fairy tales in the past few days. “I’m here because my father offended his host. That’s the Red Rose Gambit.”
“This host being a dark and mysterious foreigner?” asked the wolf.
“Well, yes.”
“In fact, he’s not just from a foreign country. He’s a walking cliché of the dodgy foreigner. Bloody Chamber Gambit.”
“But the house is full of magical furniture. Red Rose.”
“And treasure,” countered the wolf. “Lots and lots of treasure which he has presumably promised to you if you marry him. Bloody Chamber.”
“He even described himself as a beast,” argued Ella.
“And he’s threatened you with violence if you betray him.”
“But if I leave him, he will die. At least he said so. That’s the Red Rose story.”
“Fair enough,” said the wolf. “And so he’s not explicitly said, ‘You are forbidden to enter so-and-so room and oh, by the way, here’s the key’?”
“Well, there is the south tower,” said Ella.
“Ha!” laughed the wolf. “So it’s forbidden.”
“It’s so forbidden that the way there is practically lit up with neon signs. Maybe it is filled with the dismembered corpses of Mr Dainty’s previous wives.”
The wolf nodded sagely. “So, we need to go there.”
“What? No we don’t.”
“Haven’t you been paying attention? The roles are there to be played out. You can pretend you’re going to avoid the south tower all you like, but you and I both know you’ll end up there. Don’t know why you don’t just get it over with.”
Ella shook her head.
“So what’s he like then, the Dainty guy who owns this place? Woodsman type? Got an axe?”
“An axe,” mused Ella. “I think an axe is possibly the only weapon I haven’t seen in here, although he might have some in the armoury. Oh, and there are these servants who look as though they would be happier garrotting house guests than sweeping floors.”
The wolf nodded. “Henchmen. I’d expect no less, no point messing with a classic. So why does this place have so much furniture?”
He finally gave up on the sheepskin rug.
“I’m starving,” he said. “Haven’t eaten in days.”
“You just told me you ate a gingerbread man.”
“I mean real food,” said the wolf. “Meat.”
�
�I could probably get a slice of something when Cheeky comes up with my dinner.”
“A slice?” said the wolf. “I’m using to guzzling down pigs and swallowing goats whole.”
“Then you might have to go and actually hunt for your dinner,” she retorted. “Like a wolf.”
“You know, princess, that’s no way to treat a dear friend who’s just dropped by,” said the wolf and leapt up onto the window sill to leave. “Let me know when you’re planning on visiting that forbidden tower.”
“Do I need you to protect me?” said Ella.
“No, sister. I just enjoy a dismembered corpse as much as the next wolf.”
The wolf loitered around the house for the next day or more and, like the teapot and the army of tables under Oscar’s command, managed to avoid being spotted by Mr Dainty or any of his servants. Ella continued her father’s work and, removing certain delinquent furnishings from the equation, realised that there was not much to be done. Mr Dainty had brought certain items with him when he acquired the place some ten years ago and bought more since, often at more than market price. However, most of the fixtures and fittings had belonged to the house for some decades and, once Ella had located the hand-written inventory taken by the previous owner, it was mostly a matter of ticking off what was still in situ and what had been removed by means magical or mundane.
She managed to get the teapot to assist in the stock-taking. As long as the items in question were not teapots or other viciously despised teapot-analogues then the energetic china pot was happy to go off, enumerate and report back.
While the teapot was away on such an errand, counting the gilt-framed Romantic paintings in the north galleries, Ella found an entry in the older house records that gave her pause for thought. She went to the window. Oscar and his ragtag band of tables were doing drill formations on the rear lawns with Oscar capering around in front of them like a crazed general or maybe a hyperkinetic majorette.
“Eighteen!” declared the teapot, springing back into the room. “But that paintin’ of the cart stuck in the river is rubbish and I wouldn’t bother countin’ that.”
“Thank you,” said Ella. “Would you come and look at this for me?”
The teapot vaulted onto the window ledge and turned its spout to the marching tables outside.
“Beautiful, ain’t it? All them different tables, arranged around their glorious little leader. It’s like that, wossname, the Lion King. Except, you know, with tables.”
Ella put a finger on the inventory.
“Three nesting tables in the Sheraton style (walnut with inlay),” she read.
“Yep,” said the teapot.
“What happened to the other two? Oscar’s parents.”
“I told you. They were murdered, weren’t they?”
“Broken?”
“That’s furniturist talk that is. Tables are people too, you know.”
“I’m fairly sure they’re tables. How did they die?”
“We don’t know. They went missing, years an’ years ago.”
“So how do you know they were murdered?”
Without a word, the teapot disappeared into the skirting board and emerged again, moments later, nudging a broken table leg before it.
“We found Tony’s leg on the beach up the coast,” said the teapot. “Snapped clean off.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Ella.
There was a loud and inhuman roar somewhere within the house that drove Ella automatically to her feet.
“What on earth…?”
She hurried out along the corridor. There was shouting now, only a smattering of it in English. It was Mr Dainty and he was furious. Ella came to the top of the grand staircase. Dainty stood in the hall below, a rifle in his hand, bellowing instructions to his servants, several of whom were either armed or in the process of arming themselves. His wild, roving eyes caught sight of Ella.
“Are we being attacked?” she asked.
He approached her, up the stairs, gun in hand, wild and uncontained emotion on his face. His breath came in ragged gasps as though he were about to burst.
“My queen,” he said. “All that is good and pure in my life.”
Ella, confused, put a questioning hand to her chest.
“My sheep,” he said. “A monster, a beast, has killed and taken one.”
“Oh,” she said and then, foolishly, “I thought something terrible had happened.”
Mr Dainty closed the distance between them in an instant. He looked huger and more terrible than ever.
“This, this is a stain on my land, on my heart. One of my queens is dead. It is a sign.”
“A sign?”
Ella suspected that he didn’t mean that it was sign he needed stronger fences or more watchful shepherds or anything so ordinary.
“A darkness has come to Thornbeard, Ella. I can feel it,” he said. A tear glistened in his eye.
Mr Dainty withdrew a handful of .303 rounds from his pocket and began feeding them into the rifle magazine.
“I had planned a ball for us this evening,” he said. “There was to be fine food and wine, there was to be dancing and music. Ernst and Plev have been practising.”
“That does sound lovely,” Ella said diplomatically. “It would be nice as a sort of farewell thing. It is my dad’s wedding tomorrow and I really must —”
“There will be a wedding,” said Mr Dainty simply.
Ella groaned inwardly. “We’ve discussed this before, Mr Dainty.”
Mr Dainty slapped the magazine into the rifle.
“There is a darkness here, Ella Hannaford. A stain on my heart. I cannot bear it much longer. I will go out and kill the beast that has offended me.” He shouldered the rifle. “And then you and I will conclude our business.”
He turned on his heel and marched down the stairs, bellowing orders at his men.
The moment the hunting party had left the house, Ella was back in her rooms and throwing her belongings into her bag.
“Tea up!” called the teapot, sauntering across the carpet.
“I’m leaving,” said Ella.
The teapot paused, momentarily downcast.
“But packing’s thirsty work, ain’t it?”
Ella held out her hand for a cup. “A quick one.”
“Nah, you can’t rush quality tea.”
Ella looked the teapot directly in the spout.
“The owner of this house is a psychotic loony. My mate, the wolf, has just eaten his favourite sheep. Said psychotic loony has gone out with a small army to kill the wolf, not that he’ll be stupid enough to stay within ten miles of this place, and when the psycho returns, I’m either going to have to marry him or find myself dead, dismembered and stuffed in his forbidden closet. I am leaving before they get back.”
“Oh. Well, I’m gonna miss you,” said the teapot and jumped affectionately into her lap. “We ‘ad good times, din’t we?”
“I’m sure we did,” said Ella. “You’ve certainly been the most upbeat and chipper person in this dour place.”
“Chipped?” said the teapot. “I ain’t got no chips.”
Ella gripped the teapot suddenly.
“Oi!” said the teapot. “I know you’re leaving but there’s no need to get so physical.”
“Staunton House,” she said.
“What of it?”
Ella traced her finger over the painted script below the image of Thornbeard House on the side of the teapot.
“This place is Thornbeard House,” she said.
“Is now,” said the teapot. “Wasn’t always.”
“But it was when Mr Dainty bought it a few years back. Who changed it?”
The teapot struggled out of her grip.
“Let’s get you that cuppa lovely tea before we get to all the questions.”
A tea cup was magically in Ella’s hand.
“The place changed name after it went to sleep,” said the teapot. “What was that? Thirty something years ago.”
; “It went to sleep?”
“Sure it did. One day it was Staunton House and then that woman turned up. No patience at all, just like you. Tea’s a drink to be savoured, not gulped. Sit still while I’m pouring, will yer? She loved a cuppa, didn’t she? She told me that mine was the best she’d tasted. Lovely woman.”
“What woman? And who changed the name?”
“No one. It just changed.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I did wonder about that. Is it called Thornbeard House cos there’s like a beard of thorns growing over all of the south tower? Seems obvious but then the word beard also means to sort of challenge or confront, dun’t it? So is this a place where you’ve got to confront the thorns or is that someone called Thorn was confronted ‘ere? Language is a funny thing. Oi, you’re gonna spill it.”
“I’m an idiot,” she said.
“Only an idiot wastes good tea,” agreed the teapot.
“This isn’t the Red Rose Gambit or the Bloody Chamber Gambit. This is the Spinning Wheel Gambit.”
“Yeah,” said the teapot. “She did say she had an appointment wiv a spinning wheel. Most unfortunate business that. Now, take hold of your cup.”
Ella took the cup and saucer and willed her hand to remain steady. “And is she still here?”
“Course she is! What did you think was in the south tower?”
“Oh, God. I feel faint.”
“You know what’s good for that, dontcha?” said the teapot. “Now drink up before you go dashin’ off.”
Ella slurped her tea as quickly as she could, while the teapot tutted with disapproval, then she made her way downstairs, her feet racing as fast as her thoughts.
She found Cheeky in the kitchen, rolling out pastry on the table. He raised his eyebrows at Ella.
“Miss.”
“Ah, hello, Ernst” she said.
“Yes. How may I help you, Miss Hannaford?
“Well,” said Ella. “The thing is, I need you to show me the way to the south tower.”
He stopped rolling pastry and frowned. “Miss Hannaford, the south tower is strictly forbidden. Mr Dainty is very clear on this matter.”
