Page 8 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ she said briskly, not willing to show him she was worried. Without that allowance … ‘Even if it isn’t, Giles is bound to honour it. He’s a very virtuous person, he’ll always do what’s right. Anyway, I can talk him round. I could always make him do what I wanted when he was a boy.’

She had offered too many assurances. Cordwell was not comforted. Absently he finished his fish in one mouthful, instead of eking it out, and the footman and butler, who had been standing against the wall (he felt it imperative to keep up the style of a viscount, even if everything was crumbling about his ears) stepped forward to clear the plates and bring on the next course. He looked in dismay at the leg of pheasant on his plate, knowing how little edible material there was among the tendons and sinews of a pheasant’s leg. But they’d had the breasts yesterday. At least there’d be pheasant soup tomorrow. He helped himself to potatoes and cabbage. He’d hoped there’d be carrots, but perhaps they were being saved for the soup.

Linda was having a gloomy thought of her own. They could not have a dinner-party, and trigger lots of invitations for the winter, because she’d be in mourning for six months. Damn it! It was more than ever imperative that they got an invitation to stay on at the Castle after the funeral. Once installed, trust her to stretch it out.

The journey had seemed interminable. The Imperator was a well-appointed ship, and Giles’s stateroom was luxurious – he’d have been happy with more modest accommodation, but by the time he booked his passage the cheaper cabins had all been taken. Still, he’d enjoyed long baths in his own private bathroom, and even submitted, slightly shamefaced, to the ship’s barber shaving him. The man had admired his razors – a rare present from his father when he had reached eighteen, a pair of ebony-handled blades from Truefitt and Hill, the very best that money could buy – but had shaken his head at the state of the edge, and had taken them away to sharpen them. Giles could have explained the difficulty of keeping a strop from drying out in a desert climate, but would not demean himself further. He did not have a manservant, which the barber, like the cabin steward, had already kindly overlooked, while making it clear that a gentleman of his eminence needed looking after by professionals. The steward took away all his clothes to brush and clean and launder, which was agreeable, but Giles baulked at having his trousers held while he stepped into them, or his socks put on for him. ‘I’ve been dressing myself since I was four,’ he said, with good humour but firmly. The steward gave him the sort of kind smile you accord the mentally incompetent. Giles realised he was being written off as an English Eccentric.

Unused to being confined, he took his exercise by walking round the deck fifty times every morning, and again in the evening. He’d avoided contact with the other passengers – it was one thing for foreigners to be outgoing, but he did not understand why being on a ship should make the normally reticent English so excessively sociable. He had only to pause and lean on the rail for half a moment to find himself being wheedled to make up a table for whist or biritch, play deck quoits, or engage himself to eat dinner with this or that party. News of his bereavement had somehow spread, and he was always receiving warm and sympathetic looks – especially from a Mrs Cadwallader, who was travelling with an unmarried daughter in her twenties. Sometimes he feared actually to be embraced.

Fortunately he had books with him in his luggage, and could retreat to his stateroom and read. For much of the crossing he was happily engrossed in a recently published tome by Professor Montalcini of the venerable University of Siena. Montalcini documented similarities between Etruscan and Minoan wall paintings, quoting the Etruscan expert, Giles’s old friend and mentor Flavio Lombardi. He proposed that they stemmed from a common influence, the Egyptian. Civilisations that have been in contact for centuries may develop a common artistic vocabulary, whose origin is lost in time, he read. The author compared fragments of wall paintings from Knossos with the Etruscan murals of the Tomb of the Roaring Lions. The Egyptians were great painters of murals on lime plaster … Asia Minor … Lydia … Herodotus … the Aegean region … the island of Thera … Thucydides recorded that the Etruscans lived on the island of Lemnos in ancient times …

Absorbed in the world in which he felt most at home, he passed the hours happily. When he did emerge from his cocoon, it was to find the weather gradually worsening as the ship ploughed westwards, leaving the eastern Mediterranean climate behind. His walks around the deck were sometimes lively, as he found himself tipped against railings and having to cling to handholds. It was a reminder of what he was going to: the iron grey of English winter skies, the iron weight of responsibility.

He had been Viscount Ayton all his life and was used to being addressed as ‘my lord’ and ‘your lordship’, but his new position was driven home to him when one of the passengers – an American, and almost as keen a deck-walker as himself – stopped him on the last morning, touching his hat and saying, ‘Morning, Earl! Brisk today, don’tcha think? Fresh, I call it, but my wife won’t leave the cabin – thinks there’s a storm brewing!’

Giles had given him a startled look, and murmured something vague.

His tormentor gave him a rueful grin. ‘Dare say you’ll be glad to be getting home to dear old England. I never liked being at sea myself. Not looking forward to crossing the Atlantic again, I can tell you. You’ll be home a lot quicker than me, Earl, and that’s a fact.’

‘Yes,’ said Giles. ‘I suppose I will.’

*

The village of Canons Ashmore lay in the valley of the river Ash, built along either side of one long street, which had been a coaching route until the railway came. It was a pretty street – the wealthy second earl had added stone façades to the old Tudor and medieval houses, so now only the wavering roof line and jumble of chimneys suggested what mismatched horrors might lie behind. The same earl had built the dower house for his mother when he succeeded at the age of thirty – his mother and his wife did not get along – but it was his grandson, the fourth earl, who had been railway-minded. He had sold the necessary land and helped push the Bill through Parliament, against the wishes of most of his neighbours. The railway ran along the high ground to the north of the village, while Ashmore Castle was built halfway up the slope on the opposite side of the valley, so it was of little daily inconvenience to him. Indeed, he loved to travel, and as the railway provided him with a quicker escape to the Continent, he could see nothing wrong with it.

Giles was almost asleep at the end of his long journey when he arrived at Canons Ashmore station. He had to scramble to gather his effects together and descend to the platform, looking around rather wildly, afraid the train would move off before he’d got his trunks out of the luggage van. He needn’t have worried. The telegram he had sent to tell his mother what train he was taking had not passed unnoticed through the village post office. There was a welcoming committee waiting for him, headed by Persons, the station master, flanked by his two porters, and supported by a number of worthies Giles felt he ought to recognise but didn’t. Because of the solemnity of the occasion, his father’s death, they were trying to look mournful while attempting to convey how happy they were to see him. Words stuttered out at him. ‘Tragic circumstances … shocking accident … our noble patron … her ladyship’s fortitude … homecoming in happier circumstances …’

Giles had the impression that if he weren’t in mourning, there might have been bunting and a band.

‘My luggage,’ he managed to suggest.

‘All will be taken care of, I assure your lordship. The Castle brake is here. Please do not concern yourself for an instant. And there’s a carriage outside waiting for you, my lord. Hossey, take his lordship’s portmanteau! This way, your lordship. Oh, your ticket – no need, I assure you, your lordship, but – oh dear! – thank you.’ Persons was caught between shame that the lord of Ashmore Castle should have to show the same permit as ordinary mortals, and the awareness that Head Office would expect his returns to tally.

Outside, a closed carriage awaited Giles, drawn by a pair of his mother’s greys. The black leather harness lay in satisfying contrast against the shining dappled curves of flank and neck. They tossed their heads a little in their eagerness to be off; their breath smoked on the chilly air. He had forgotten how beautiful English horses were, sleek and well fed, round bodies and delicate heads – so unlike the poor thin scrubs of hot countries.

There was also quite a crowd of villagers, who parted to make passage for him to the carriage door, but stared in frank curiosity, whispering to each other. Some tried to catch his eye, smiling ingratiatingly. He recognised Millet, the proprietor of the Crown, and Mrs Albright, who ran the post office stores. He gave them a rather dazed nod and hurried into the carriage, disconcerted by the reception. This, he supposed, was what it would be like from now on – constantly in the public eye. He felt a weight of gloom descending.

The greys trotted him briskly down the high street, turned sharply left at the end into Ash Lane, and moments later they had passed over the hump-backed stone bridge, through the gates, and were on Stainton land. He stared through the window at the lush wetness all around him. Even in winter, England was green, and Buckinghamshire was surely the most verdant county of them all. But the sky was low and grey, seeping moisture, and there was so little natural light it felt as though night was coming already. He had grown used to acid blue skies and a white sun, and to having to seek the shade. So much green was depressing. He felt ever more out of his place.

In all the years of arriving home as Lord Ayton, he had been content to be driven round into the stable-yard and to go in by a side door. But, presumably on orders, the coachman swung the horses left at the top of the slope and then right, up the shallow incline to the paved terrace in front of the main entrance. Someone – either his mother or Moss, he supposed – had evidently decreed that his first entrance as earl should be a grand one. Shallow steps led up to the great door, and the servants were arranged in two rows slantwise down them, creating a sort of deer-trap to funnel him in. No escape! One or two he recognised and he tried to remember names, but they had never been important to him – the staff, not his staff. But they were his now. They bowed and curtsied as he passed, and one or two looked keenly up into his face, as though he had answers for them. I know nothing! Leave me alone!

At the head of the lines, nearest the door, were the housekeeper, Webster – he remembered her name, and greeted her by it, and she bobbed a curtsy – and Moss. The butler had been in situ most of his life. He felt it appropriate to shake his hand.

Moss seemed moved. ‘Welcome home, my lord,’ he said fervently, his eyes moist. ‘A sad occasion.’

‘Very sad,’ Giles responded, though he meant something different from Moss.

‘But we are most glad to see you, my lord, even so,’ Moss said. ‘Ashmore Castle welcomes you home.’ He made a little gesture with his hand, as though reminding Giles that all this was now his.

But I don’t want it! Giles thought. He took one last look round at the grey twilight of deep winter – even the skies seemed to be weeping for him – and went in.

In the great hall, there were good fires in both fireplaces, and lamps were lit. His sister Linda was the first to reach him. Good God, how thin she’d grown! She seized him in an embrace, an unaccustomed exercise in which she had no skill. She grasped him like a sheaf of corn she was about to stook. She felt like a bundle of broomsticks to him. Her hair smelt sour and her cheek was lean and cold.

‘My dear, dear Giles! Little brother! How wonderful to see you again! It’s been so long – too long. We’ve missed you so much while you’ve been away. You must never go away for so long again!’

She had never been a gusher. And ‘little brother’? He was only a year younger than her. Giles eased himself out of her grip, frowning. If Linda was being nice to him, she must want something. But what? He had nothing she’d be interested in, he thought – forgetting, with frightening ease, that he now had everything.

‘Good to see you, old girl,’ he said awkwardly. She was beaming at him – beaming! She clicked her fingers behind her and her husband shuffled up shamefacedly to shake his hand.