Death in the Castle

  “I’ll try again,” Webster said, “and I’ll do it now.”

  He ambled out of the room.

  Sir Richard looked after him gloomily. “I must tell you, my dear, that I question whether Philip can handle the matter. I believe he quite regrets there being no lawsuit. It would have given him a chance to write endless papers no one could understand and brief barristers in front of everybody in the court, you know, and spout the stuff that lawyers can spew out on a moment’s notice. They’re all actors, in my opinion, and no more reliable when it comes to facts. They’re always harking back to precedents that other lawyers have made for centuries past.”

  “I’m sure he could never find a precedent for selling a castle to—What’s that place, Richard?”

  “I can’t pronounce it.”

  Lady Mary sighed. “ ‘Connect-i-cut,’ I think? Fancy having one’s castle moved to a place one can’t pronounce!”

  “Well, but Webster’s right on one count, you know, my dear. Our difficulties are profound. You know the only private offers we’ve had in spite of all the advertising—a boys’ school and an insane asylum. I simply won’t mention the prison, or the atomic plant. They wouldn’t use the castle for those, they’d raze it to the ground. All those scientist chaps want is empty space—a bit of a desert, as I told you. Our English scientists dream of equaling the Americans—those splendid deserts! Fancy a thousand acres of desert here in England!”

  She heard this with horror, her fascinated eyes, still childishly blue, upon his face. “You could put in the bill of sale that they musn’t,” she suggested. “You know you’ve always said that the castle wasn’t to be changed. That’s why that American millionaire from Hollywood wouldn’t buy it. He said he’d put in central heating and American plumbing and you said—”

  “Never mind, my dear. Americans always want to change things. At least there’s this to be said for this Blayne chap—”

  “John—”

  “Ah, yes, yes—John, you know—he wants to put the castle up exactly as it is. Has he said anything about central heating?”

  “No, he hasn’t. Nor plumbing.”

  “As to plumbing, one wouldn’t want baths in a museum though Americans seem to want them everywhere. But the idea of moving the castle? I agree with his father, it would be sheer folly—Why doesn’t he move Connecticut here?”

  Kate entered the room with a bowl of tulips which she placed on the table. “Lovely, aren’t they, my lady? And they’ve come so fast on the daffodils, as if everything about the castle wanted to look its best this spring.”

  “You sound quite pleased,” Sir Richard said.

  “And why not? You did manage well, Sir Richard dear! When the American saw how you felt about the castle, he knew he was honor bound to yield. He is honorable, don’t you think?”

  Only when she saw that her gaiety did not serve to cheer them did she realize their state of mind. They were sitting quietly, Lady Mary with her hands folded in her lap, and Sir Richard with his knees crossed. Their faces were grave, their eyes far away, looking as though they were not even listening to her.

  “Whatever is the matter, my own dears?” she inquired tenderly.

  She knelt impulsively before Lady Mary and chafed her narrow old hands, thin little hands, Kate always thought, like small plucked birds.

  “We are very badly off, Kate,” Sir Richard said. “Nothing is any better, really.”

  “How would you like to see the castle made into a prison?” Lady Mary asked mournfully.

  “Ah, but it can’t be that bad,” Kate said. “You’re just tired, the two of you, and I can’t blame you. I’m exhausted myself.”

  “I shall have to keep my word to this American,” Sir Richard went on. “Even if I broke it—which I am not willing to do, mind you—I’d have to be talking to someone else in a week from now, and about something else.”

  She rose to go to him, but he would not be comforted.

  “No, no, Kate,” he groaned, pushing her away. “You don’t understand. No one does. I must be by myself for a bit.”

  And he lifted himself out of the deep armchair and went from the room.

  She returned then to Lady Mary, and drawing up a footstool, she sat down at her side. A dying fire burned under the chimney piece but in spite of it the room seemed chill.

  “Is it really so desperate, my lady?” she asked.

  “It is,” Lady Mary said and sighed. “And what worries me most, Kate, is what they will say.”

  “I’ve thought of that, too.”

  Sometimes when they were alone, Kate leaned her head against Lady Mary’s knee, as though she were a child again. She did so now and felt Lady Mary’s hand smoothing her hair. She took the gentle hand and laid her cheek against it. “We’ve always respected them,” Lady Mary went on. “We let them move about at night, even when it keeps us awake. And nothing can stop those bells! If we worry about them so much, one would think they could do a little worrying about us, now wouldn’t one?”

  “If they know,” Kate said. “Yet how can they help us even if they do know? They may be far more helpless than we think, poor things! It’s all a matter of waves, I sometimes fancy!”

  “Waves?” Lady Mary repeated vaguely.

  “Like the wireless, you know, my lady. No wires, nothing one can see, but the voices come in. Only we don’t have something in ourselves that we can turn on. Perhaps they try all sorts of ways to break through to us and can’t.”

  Lady Mary seemed not to be listening. “If only they could help us to find a treasure hidden somewhere,” she mused. “Of course Richard says it’s nonsense because all castles are supposed to have treasures hidden in them by ancestors, but if it’s always supposed to be so, perhaps sometimes it is so.”

  “Maybe King John would tell us, if I got up early when the bell rings.”

  She spoke half playfully and Lady Mary did not answer for a moment. When she did her voice was grave.

  “Kate, are we mad, do you think?”

  Kate kissed the hand she held. “Certainly not. Did you ever make anything up out of your head, my lady?”

  “Never,” Lady Mary said fervently. “Never, never! One of them always told me.”

  “Then they do get through sometimes and we must simply try our best to get help from them,” Kate said.

  She rose to mend the fire and put on a log. When she spoke again her voice was carefully indifferent. “Too bad the American came here with such a stupid idea! He’s rather nice—and not at all stupid, really.”

  She broke off with a laugh. “That frog—so amusing!”

  Lady Mary stared at her open-mouthed. She was about to inquire why the laughter and what about the frog, pray tell, but the look on Kate’s face silenced her. What was happening? There was more than amusement in that look. There was tenderness.

  … Sir Richard reined in his horse and gazed over his fields. A faint mist had all but obscured the sun since noon, but as the afternoon hours lengthened, the mist had burned away, and the sun shone full upon the enlivened landscape. It was a fair sight, the fields green with early corn and his good Guernsey cows grazing the rolling meadows. In the distance a cluster of roofs showed the village, and here and there a few trees sheltered a cottage for a farm family.

  How eternal the landscape! Fields, meadows and forests were his by the divine right of ancient kings long dead, but who before they died had bequeathed this part of their realm to William Sedgeley, his ancestor. He was proud of the fact that he looked like William. Even as a boy his mother had said, “Richard looks so much like Sir William. I wish we’d named him William.” The portrait of William hung over the chimney piece in the ballroom, a tall slim man on horseback, his head held high. There was royal blood somewhere in the Sedgeleys—hidden, of course. A rumor, spoken only between the generations, hinted that William had been the lover of a queen and had taken their son secretly at birth to be reared among his own children, an eagle among pigeons. The story must be tru
e, else why would the castle, a royal seat, have been given to the Sedgeleys?

  And above all, how explain himself? He had known long ago that he was no common man even among his peers. Proud he had been called, even arrogant, “that haughty young chap,” they had said of him at Oxford, and the phrase had stung until he had told his father.

  “And quite right,” his father had said complacently. “You’ve every right to hold up your head. You’re Sedgeley of Starborough Castle, and the rest of them are upstarts by comparison.”

  And yet, with all his pride, he was not free. He had the tenants—they had him! They were like their kind everywhere in the world, asserting not their independence but their dependence. The power of the weak! They were children, who demanded without thought of giving. Kings were their slaves as all rulers were slaves of the ruled. The people were the tyrants, the discontented, dissatisfied, greedy, stupid people. If he had been an ordinary man, earning his living, even someone like Webster, would he be harried and oppressed as he was now, his conscience a burning coal in his breast because he felt responsible for his tenants as a king for his subjects? He groaned aloud. Intolerable burden laid upon him because he was born in a castle, the son of his father, heir to all the responsibilities of a kingdom! Well, it was a sort of kingdom—bigger than Monaco!

  Musing thus as he did so often, Sir Richard now heard shouts. At the end of the winding road ahead he saw a ragged cluster of farmers waiting for him. There they were, wanting something again, he thought with deepening gloom, without the sense to know that the world as they knew it, and as their fathers before them had known it, was about to come to an end.

  He quickened his horse to a trot and drew up before them, very straight and brusque. “Well, men? What do you want now?”

  A rough fellow with a brush of tawny hair stepped forward and he recognized Banks, the troublemaker. “Please, Sir Richard, we’ve heard the castle’s to be sold.”

  Sir Richard looked down at him from his seat on the great gray stallion. “Well?” he inquired coldly.

  Banks looked back at him sturdily. “What’s to become of us, sir?”

  The question released the tongues of the others.

  “Yes, Sir Richard—that’s wot we wants to know—It’s our bread, you know, sir—we’ve children to think of—”

  Children! They had nothing but children swarming into the world for him to feed! The bitter injustice of it, that these British men could beget their British sons while he was childless—had always been childless, in reality, for how could a man in his position acknowledge a moment’s madness when he was a mere boy—sixteen, to be exact. He stopped the memory, but not before a face appeared in his mind, a pretty, face, a simple girlish face. He dismissed it instantly as he always did, angry that memory could be so relentless. His wife was his love, his only love, and yet when they argued as they had only the other morning, as to which was responsible for their childlessness, he saw that face, Elsie’s face, and he sent it away. No, he could never reveal his secret. He could never retort to his wife, “I know I could have begotten a son—” Nor had Elsie herself ever made a sign to anyone, even to him, that there was a secret, nor had Wells reminded him in all these years, though he must know—everything. Wells had been young then—older than himself by twenty years, at that. Wells had simply announced one day that he and Elsie had been married the day before.

  “At my request and for adequate compensation,” his father had said sternly and refusing further explanation, had sent Richard off to Oxford.

  “You have far too many children,” he told Banks now.

  The men burst into angry clamor. He lifted his hand to silence them and they stepped back.

  “We have decided nothing,” he said curtly.

  He stared at them an instant, recognizing them one by one. James Dunn, whom he had hunted ferrets with as a boy, old Bumsley who had to be watched against poaching, Lester and Hunt and Frame, three of his best stalwart workers. His voice softened somewhat as he went on. “There’s a great deal to be considered. We are mindful of you and your families. Lady Mary is as attached to the place as you could be. We know our position and you may be assured that we will look after your welfare. We are aware of your troubles. Banks, we know your roof wants thatching—”

  There was an outcry.

  “ ’Tain’t Banks alone, Sir Richard—”

  “We’ve not had a new thatch since my grandfather’s time.”

  “Thatch—who wants thatch nowadays? A good slate roof on every cottage, I say—”

  “And septic tanks—”

  The horse, startled at the noise, danced left and right and rose to its hind legs. Sir Richard reined it in sternly.

  “We are aware of all these matters. We have large plans for the future. You will know of them in due time.”

  The men fell back as they always fell back when he wore his kingly air.

  “Thank you. Sir Richard—we know your hardships, sir. Times is bad for us all. But with our families and all—the women complaining about the leaks when it rains—the children’s beds have to be moved—damp runnin’ down the walls.”

  The broken chorus went on again until he stopped it.

  “We know,” he repeated grimly.

  Banks put out his right hand.

  “No ’ard feelin’s!”

  Sir Richard put out his left hand. Upon the forefinger was his great seal ring. He did not wear it always, but sometimes, as today, when he rode over his lands, he put it on. The sight of it on his well-shaped hand was a secret comfort, an invitation to dream. Nothing, no hardship or confusion, could change the fact that he was born Sir Richard Sedgeley of Starborough Castle.

  Banks held the hand a moment. “A fine ring, Sir Richard!”

  “It was given to my ancestor, William Sedgeley, by the king, five hundred years ago, when Starborough Castle became ours. Castle and ring have belonged by right to every Sedgeley heir since that time.”

  There was a moment’s silence. He knew what they were thinking. To whom would the castle go, and the ring, when there was no heir? Banks bent his head as though he were about to kiss the ring, and then dropped Sir Richard’s hand. Did they know the secret? He’d wager they did. They knew everything, with their low cunning. It was part of their power over their rulers, to find out the secrets, the weaknesses, the youthful sins, the private follies, and use them when the time came.

  He pressed his horse into a gallop and left the men staring after him. When he was out of their sight he pulled the ring from his forefinger and put it into the pocket of his coat. Then he reined his horse into a quiet trot again, and felt his lips tremble. Where could he find strength to sustain him, where gain wisdom to guide him? He was alone and lonely as only the rulers can be—must be, for how could he demean himself to ask from anyone the help he needed? There was no one his equal or, for that matter, his superior—no one living. Only his ancestors could give him courage, and to them he now turned.

  He followed the road to Starborough village and to the church that had been built long ago for the devotions of a sovereign and his court. In it lay the dust of all the Sedgeleys since the day they had been given the right to lie there. He knew already where his own dust would lie—in that far corner to the east, where a shaft of sun fell through the prism of the rose window.

  He dismounted, tied his horse to the hitching post and walked into the shadowy quiet of the church. It was empty and he strode up the aisle. Then he saw that it was not empty. The old vicar was standing before the altar, working at one of the tall silver candlesticks. He turned, startled, and put out his hand.

  “Sir Richard, this is unexpected, but pleasant. I am just mending a bit of the candle here. One of the choirboys knocked it off during choir practice last night, but the candle’s quite good if I can just … they are shockingly dear, these large altar candles …”

  “Let me help you,” Sir Richard said.

  “Ah, don’t trouble yourself,” the vicar said. “Thoug
h I could do with a bit of help if you would just hold the candlestick … while I …”

  Sir Richard grasped the heavy candlestick with both hands while the vicar lit a taper and held it to the candle to melt the wax enough to insert the broken bit. Sir Richard looked at the kind old face so near his own. He could remember the days when he was a boy and the vicar had come as a young man to Starborough village.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I came here hoping for help for myself—not expecting you, of course—but just to—perhaps meditate a bit, near the graves of my ancestors. I am in great trouble.”

  The vicar did not look up. “Are you? I’m sorry to hear that, Sir Richard. Somehow I don’t associate you with trouble. You’ve always been a good man.”

  “It’s not that kind of trouble,” Sir Richard said. “Nothing I’ve made for myself.”

  Nothing he had made for himself? Yes, it was hardly fair to call that brief episode on a languid summer’s day, when he had met Elsie in the forest gathering wild strawberries, that hasty moment of physical excitement in a boy’s body, a trouble that he had made for himself.

  “Your seed is valuable—don’t waste it,” his father had said bluntly. “You’re not only my son and heir. You’re the son and heir of a noble line.”

  If his father had not been so crippled by war wounds, if he had been able to have other sons, how differently might he have spoken! But there was only himself, precious as the crown prince, his father’s one hope of immortality. And had his father not pressed his ambition so heavily upon him, might not he, Richard, have been a different youth, less rebellious in heart, his repressed emotions less violent?

  “Whatever your trouble is,” the vicar was saying, “if I can help I’ll be glad … There—I think that’ll hold. Set it down carefully, if you please, and we’ll let the wax harden. Sit here in the choir stalls, Sir Richard, and tell me …”

  But Sir Richard had wandered to the alcove where the Sedgeley tombs were placed. He was looking at the stone profile of William, in effigy on the central tomb, wearing his knight’s armor. His stone hands were folded together in prayer, though he had been a warrior and not a praying man and there was little doubt, if the family records could be trusted, that it was true he had been the lover of a queen.