Death in the Castle (9 page)

The American voice broke in. “That’s right—and you couldn’t keep your inn open if they didn’t.”

Sir Richard could bear no more. He pulled the ring from his pocket, put it on his forefinger, and strode into the inn.

The innkeeper gave a shout of welcome. “Here he is, hisself, in the nick of time! Wot’ll you ’ave, Sir Richard?”

“A glass of ale, thanks,” he said coldly. He let his eyes move slowly from face to face. A few of his farmers were here, too, and they looked properly down when his eyes fell on them. Not so the Americans! They met his gaze with such smiling familiarity that he turned his back on them as he stood at the bar.

“Brazen and brass,” George mattered. “I’d throw them out if they wasn’t such good drinkers. I would that, Sir Richard, with all their talk of buyin’ the castle and takin’ it off to their own country! Invaders, I calls ’em—”

He was immensely fat and each year the space behind the counter grew more narrow for his spreading frame. He reached now to take a bottle from a special cupboard and gave a great gasp. “It’s me or the counter—I can see that I’ll have to move it out or shrink myself down somehow.”

“Hey, George,” one of the young Americans shouted brashly, “what’s that you’re bringing out of hiding?”

George turned with difficulty but maintained his dignity. He opened the bottle and poured a glass of pale golden ale into a tall glass and set it before Sir Richard before replying.

“I’ll thank Americans not to bandy my private name about,” he said in a lofty voice. “Please to remember this is England and the gentleman sittin’ here is Sir Richard Sedgeley, who owns the village and the land it stands on. In a manner of speakin’, he owns us all. We look to him to defend us, like he always has and his ancestors before him. My family has lived here hundreds of years under the Sedgeleys and will live for hundreds more as I tells young George. … We thank you, Sir Richard.”

Sir Richard inclined his head but did not speak. He lifted the glass of ale with his left hand, and the great ring shone upon his forefinger.

“Go to hell, Georgie,” the American said, with a crass good humor. “I was here in the war but we weren’t fighting you then and we aren’t now. I even went with an English girl once—not steady, of course—too long in the tooth she was.” He paused and inquired of his fellow Americans, “J’ever think she’d do anything about those teeth of hers? Have ’em out, I said, and I’ll pay for the convenience. Get some store teeth that’ll set back in your mouth, honey, out of my way. Do you think she would? No! And I bet she hasn’t yet, though she could have ’em out now for free. Damned stubborn English—I sure was glad to go home.”

“You couldn’t be gladder than we were,” George retorted. “And I’ll thank you to be on your way home again—and the sooner the better. I want to get my place cleaned up, which I can’t do until
you’re
gone.”

The American lifted his glass and downed its content. “Come on, fellows—there’s nothing doing here. The loser is you, Georgie, when we’re gone. Mr. John P. Blayne will simply put his money someplace else. … Good-bye, Mr. Sir Richard Sedgeley! Sorry we couldn’t do business.”

Sir Richard had stood by the counter all the while, drinking his ale slowly, giving no sign that he heard what was going on. Now he looked at the young American.

“It is not I who am dismissing you,” he said coldly. “You work for Mr. Blayne, I believe. Did we not meet yesterday morning at the castle? I am not aware of—”

“There’s a lot you aren’t aware of,” the man interrupted cheerfully as he sauntered toward the door. “So long, Georgie—good-bye, England!”

“Gangsters—that’s what they are,” the innkeeper declared when they were gone. “Good riddance, I say. Take your time, Sir Richard.”

“I must be getting back to the castle,” he said but he did not move.

The farmers lingering about the inn, some of them throwing darts now and again in a desultory fashion, began to wander toward the door. They had taken no part in the argument and as they passed Sir Richard they said nothing beyond muttered words.

“Evenin’, Sir Richard—”

“We’ll be on our way, sir—”

“My old woman will be hot to know what’s become of me—”

“Our bit of supper will he waitin’—”

To each he gave a nod of recognition. Yes, he knew these, too, he knew their families, and had known them from his earliest memory when as a small boy he had ridden about the land with his father. He had his first horse, a black mare, he remembered, and it had given him a flash of pleasure when grown men stood as he passed and pulled their forelocks. The older ones still did so and he felt the same pleasure, deepened by the years of his responsibility—his reign, as he liked to think of it.

“Fill your glass again, Sir Richard?” George inquired.

“No, thanks, it is getting late.” He paid for his ale and at the door looked back. “The Americans are right, you know, George,” he said. “We are the losers nowadays, however we look at it. If the castle goes, would you rather have a prison or an atomic plant?”

George stared. “What’s that, sir?”

Sir Richard tried to smile. “Tourists keep your inn going, but a castle—that’s another matter. It takes more than tourists. … Mind how you behave with the Americans, George, when they come back. I fear that the deal, as they call it, is far from over.”

He left then and George stood staring after him, his round eyes looking rounder than ever. His wife, a small thin woman with a long nose and scanty gray hair, came to the inner door.

“Supper’s ready, George! What was all that rowin’? George, do you hear me? You look daft, standin’ there!”

“It’s him that’s daft, I’m thinkin’,” George said. “Sir Richard has gone clean out of his mind, ravin’ about prisons and atomics.”

“You’ve been drinkin’ all day,” his wife said acidly. “Give over, do, and come and get something besides ale into that big belly of yours, where all the profit goes, I’m thinking!”

She disappeared and after a dazed moment, he followed. And beyond the village Sir Richard rode slowly homeward. He let the reins lie slack as he went and his eyes roved over the mellow landscape of field and forest. The afternoon light lengthened the shadows and deepened the gold of the willows and the green of growing wheat. In the distance the castle stood against the sunset in all its stately beauty. It was his home, his inheritance, and how could he give it up?

He tried to imagine the castle gone and over the low hills and broad valleys a magnificent modern farm with new machinery and farmhouses, his land tilled and productive, his barns rebuilt, a dream of a farm. In the distance he heard voices singing. The farmers were walking home by a nearby road. They had seen him riding along the road to the castle and too distant for greeting, they were singing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow …”

He felt tears come into his eyes. They loved him. He raised his hand in acknowledgement as they went their way and echoes fell into silence. Yes, he could see the farm, the new beautiful farm made upon his ancient land, forests kempt and rich fields stretching into the horizon, and all his people happy again. But he—where would he be? How could he be happy, his castle gone? A king without a castle was no longer king.

His head throbbed in waves of piercing agony and he gave his horse a command. All that mattered now was to get back to his castle. The sun had dropped beneath the horizon and in the twilight the castle stood lonely and forlorn against the evening sky.

… “I’m sorry, Mr. Blayne,” Kate said. “I shouldn’t have called you to the telephone, but it was your father—from New York. At least it sounded like him.”

He had been outside alone, watching the sun move slowly down the sky behind the towers, when he saw her standing in the open door of the great hall, her small figure distinct in a light dress the color of daffodils.

“How did it sound?” he asked, smiling.

“If I must speak the truth—like the bull of Bashan, roaring across the ocean!”

He shouted laughter as he followed her into the library. “That’s my father.” He took the receiver, “Hello! Hello?” No one answered. “He’s hung up—probably sulking now because I wasn’t here waiting for his call.”

“Ah no, perhaps it’s only a storm at sea.” She took the receiver from his hand. “Operator, will you please get New York again? I have my party here waiting. … Very well, I’ll keep him waiting.”

She hung up and turned to him, her eyes dancing blue light. “She said she’d connect us again as soon as possible, but she has orders not to do so unless his blasted son was on. … Is your father always like this?”

“Always has been, always will be, bless him!”

“However did your mother—” She broke off and bit her lip. Impudence—what right had she to inquire?

“Stand it?” he finished for her. “She adored him and laughed at him and wasn’t in the least afraid of him. Consequently he was utterly mad about her. When she died I thought he’d go insane. Everything she had owned became sacred. Nobody was to touch anything she’d touched. The paintings, for example, he wanted to lock them up.”

“I like to hear about two people loving each other like that,” she said quietly when he paused.

She stood leaning against the heavy mahogany desk, watching him. He took a small ivory elephant from the desk and when he did not speak she went on in the same quiet dreaming voice, her eyes on his hands—good hands, thin and strong and clean.

“Not that I know anything about such things, except what I’ve heard of my parents. My mother loved my father, or she’d never have married him. He was beneath her station.” She hesitated, and then said shyly, “She was a lady, but I don’t know why I keep telling you things.”

He looked at her quickly. “Why shouldn’t you tell me? I knew you weren’t—what you’ve tried to make me believe you are.”

“Oh, but I am,” she insisted. “My father was the son of the butler here in the castle, remember?”

“Wells?” His voice was incredulous.

She nodded. “He is my grandfather.”

They exchanged a long look and John Blayne turned away. “What does it matter?” he asked impatiently.

“I think it matters here in the castle,” she said softly, “but not to me.”

John Blayne began to pace the floor, acutely aware for the first time of why he was allowing himself to stay on in the castle. He wished she had not told him about her parents, and then he found himself wishing she would tell him more.

“What were they like, really?”

“From what I’ve been told,” she began slowly, “my father was tall and handsome and very proud. I’ve seen ever so many pictures of him—as a boy—then after he grew up—then in his Air Force uniform. He never wanted to be a servant, so he ran away to London when he was twenty. He wanted to be an artist, and he even had an exhibition once in London. Most of his pictures were of the castle.”

“Have you seen them?”

“No, they were destroyed in the blitz. Then he married and …” Her voice suddenly halted.

“And?”

“That’s almost all there is to the story, except me.”

“What was your mother like?”

“Her name was Diana Knowles. She was a lady, my grandfather always said, but I’ve never seen a picture of her and I gave up asking about her as my grandfather would tell me nothing. I think she was small and dark and slender and—distant-like.”

“Why?”

“Because, for one thing, my grandfather told me her people were offish and that they didn’t approve her connection with Colin Wells.”

She had been looking anywhere but at him while she spoke, now she lifted her gaze and sought his. He smiled, then moved across the room to glance out of the window. Kate followed him with thoughtful eyes.

He was almost too handsome, she decided, as she watched him. One must be careful when one was a woman, especially a woman such as she, in a strange and anomalous position such as hers in the castle—at times almost a daughter, yet always the maid and grandchild of the butler.

Ah well, she thought wistfully, she had told him the truth. He had asked for it. Now that he knew it he could think what he liked. While she drove the sword thus into her heart she kept looking at him as he stood by the window against the background of the castle and the green lawns, a tall slender figure, elegant even in his casual gray slacks and jacket and his shirt open at the throat.

“You look like an Englishman,” she said softly. “You could belong to the castle, standing there.”

“I’ve been off and on in England all my life,” he said. “My mother and I came in the summers quite often—we had a place in the Cotswolds—my father sold it when she died. He couldn’t bear to see it again without her. They met in the Cotswolds, it seems—her family was English originally and came from that region.”

“That explains you.”

“It doesn’t, as a matter of fact. I’m American—fundamentally and by choice.”

“Now why do you insist upon that?” she demanded. “Is it a disgrace to be English?”

“Of course not, but I like American ways—the directness, the simplicity, even the selfishness, if you want to put it that way, an innocent sort of selfishness, I often think—like a child’s. My father—” he broke off to laugh with a reluctant tenderness—“he knows what he wants and he sees to it that everyone else knows, too.”

“Ah, but you’re like that, you know,” she said eagerly.

“I? Like my father? Come, now—”

“Yes, you are. You’re well-spoken, and all that, but you’ve let us know what you want and I don’t put it above you to get what you want in the end.”

He had turned when she spoke and they were gazing sidewise into each other’s eyes, half laughing. What a pretty thing she was, the way her dark hair curled about her head, the depths of the blue of her eyes, an English beauty, sprung from what contradictory roots! It would be difficult not to grow up beautiful here and yet not even the castle could have shaped the delicacy of her lips, the small straight nose, the finely etched brows.

He felt a dangerous pull at his heart, a rise in the temperature of his blood, and was alarmed. As if he had not complication enough now without allowing himself a romantic attachment, however temporary! He had long ago discovered that he was attractive to women and after an experience or two in college had developed a wary half-humorous technique for self-defense. Alas, the difficulty now was not to ward her off. He saw no sign of her approach to him. On the contrary, she had taken great care to insist that she was only the maid here in the castle, a notion which he was alarmed to discover was increasingly repulsive to him. He was disgustingly pleased to know that whatever her father had been, her mother—he checked himself. As if such distinction mattered in his own country!