Keeping the Castle - By Patrice Kindl Page 0,1
down on the frayed carpet. “So I am glad you are not to wed him. However,” she admitted, “the whole east wing does need a new roof, or so I fear.” My mama cast her eyes upwards to a tracery of green mold on the stone walls.
“Oh,” she added, “and that balcony out over the guardhouse is sagging; the wooden framework is rotten.”
“It would be easier to tear it down than to replace it,” I suggested, and Mama agreed.
Our home was not a real castle in the sense of being ancient and fortified. My great-grandfather had been a romantic, fond of reading about the gallant knights of the Round Table, and it had been his childhood dream to build a castle by the sea. While influenced by the ruins of Castle Scarborough some miles away, he had not been a stickler for historical accuracy. Indeed, much of the structure was nonfunctional in any but a decorative sense, with winding stone stairs leading to nowhere, murder holes so improperly placed that they could pose no danger even to the most oblivious of intruders, and a hodgepodge of towers and battlements sticking out at random. He called it Crawley Castle, but such was his love for the picturesque that the building produced was immediately and invariably known as “Crooked Castle.”
My great-grandfather had sold most of his holdings in order to build this fantasy on a hundred-foot cliff overlooking the North Sea, and then spent most of the rest of his fortune furnishing it. Since he had exchanged rich farmland for barren chalk cliffs, our family’s financial situation has yet to recover from this architectural extravagance. Now our home, as inconvenient and eccentric as it was, made up nearly the sum total of our wealth, save for a pittance in rents, and for a time following my father’s death our retaining even that was in doubt. His decease took place shortly before the birth of my brother, and for several months we lived in suspense. Had the child been a girl we would have had to leave our home and go, who knows where, in order to make way for the male heir, Charles Crawley, a second cousin none of us even knew, living somewhere in Sussex.
The birth of dear little Alexander saved us from that fate, and ever since his birth it has been the object of all our care to save the property for him (and incidentally for ourselves) when he shall be of an age to hold it.
Two years ago my mother remarried, to a man of fortune but no property named Winthrop. Mr. Winthrop was a widower with two daughters, both several years older than myself, and he had had great plans, enthusiastically seconded by my mother, to repair and refurbish the castle.
Neither Mr. Winthrop nor his plans survived the first month of marriage. He began to cough as he walked my mother down the aisle and did not leave off until a renowned physician, summoned from York at vast expense, closed his eyes in death two weeks later. His money descended to his daughters with only a pittance to us, and we therefore found ourselves in much the same situation as before the marriage with the exception of having two more mouths to feed. My stepsisters did feel some obligation to contribute towards their upkeep, but the sum was ever in dispute, and tardy in payment.
We could not afford to live in and maintain the castle; neither could we quit it. In order to lease it out to a tenant it would be necessary to make some rather expensive repairs, and even had we wished to sell it we could not: it belonged to little Alexander. Other than abandoning it to tumble into the sea, we had no other alternative but to live in it as cheaply as could be contrived and put our hopes in the future, which, sad to say, looked little brighter than did the present. We had no aged, wealthy relative teetering on the brink of eternity, and it would be many years before Alexander could make any attempt to repair our fortunes. Besides, we doted on him and did not like to think of his risking his life and health in the gold fields, or at the helm of a privateer sailing the high seas.
No, our only hope was in marriage. Mine.
I smiled upon my mama. “We shall have a new roof, the furniture new-covered, and three elegant gowns, all for you, upon