Keeping the Castle - By Patrice Kindl Page 0,16
ambitions, though if Mr. Fredericks had only maintained his own house she might have considered him with some interest. It was harder to persuade Charity, who had some claims to beauty along with an impressive fortune, that she should not serve as guide. However, her friend Miss Hopkins, having already seen the attractions of Crooked Castle, such as they were, begged her to remain. And as a number of other unattached young men remained in the room she evidently concluded that without me present she could hope to work her wiles upon them uninterrupted.
As I rose to conduct them around, I reflected that Lord Boring, in common with Mr. Fredericks’s mother, treated that difficult young man with an amused indulgence. This was understandable in Mrs. Fredericks, who, as his mother, was more or less required to love him, but less so in Lord Boring, who was not. Perhaps Lord Boring found Mr. Fredericks’s rudeness amusing, as medieval kings were said to be entertained by the coarse and impertinent behavior of their jesters.
“Are you and your cousin intimately acquainted, Lord Boring?” I enquired. We stood a little apart from Mr. Fredericks as he paused to examine the least moth-eaten of the tapestries. “Did you grow up together?”
“No, not entirely, though from time to time he would come to stay with us, of course.”
From what I knew of the former Lord Boring’s attitude, there was no “of course” about it. It cast a surprisingly good light on the Westings—I should not have expected them to find the son of a shop clerk an acceptable playmate for the heir to a barony.
“Perhaps,” I hazarded a guess, “he saved your life?”
A quick smile came and went across Lord Boring’s face.
“Almost—but no, not exactly,” he said. “I am very fond of him. And of course, we are associated in our overseas interests—he looks out for my investments in India and so on.” He lowered his voice. “I owe him a great deal, more than he will allow me to say. He’s a good fellow, Hugh is, tho’ not very polished, I know,” he said, as we watched Mr. Fredericks poking a finger through a moth hole, thereby enlarging it.
I understood, or supposed I did. Lord Boring had employed this socially inept backdoor cousin and now felt responsible for him. Presumably Mr. Fredericks was a faithful steward of his master’s affairs, and Lord Boring was no doubt relieved to be able to fulfill a family obligation as well as to safeguard his own interests.
“Oh undoubtedly,” I said. The “good fellow” had just detached at least two feet of fringe off the bottom of the tapestry while attempting to tug it into place. My eyes narrowed. Someday I might have to sell those tapestries so that we could eat.
“That wants sewing back on,” said Mr. Fredericks, handing the strip of material to me. “What’s behind this door?”
“A passageway to the servants’ quarters and the kitchen offices,” I replied, but he opened it nonetheless. Unwilling to inflict this person on our long-suffering cook, no doubt enjoying a well-earned rest after whipping up all that cream, I suggested, “Perhaps you would like to follow me up to the minstrel gallery. We have a great many family portraits and other paintings, some of which are said to be quite fine.” In fact, most of the paintings left were portraits, as landscapes and still lifes are easier to sell than ancestors.
The walls of Crooked Castle are pierced, more or less at random, with arrow slits. In a real fortress these small openings, just large enough to accommodate an arrow angled towards the ground, would have allowed archers inside to take potshots at an enemy outside without providing a target themselves. In an unreal fortress like Crooked Castle, their only function is to allow the winds from off the North Sea free access to the interior. One such breeze rolled down the stairs to meet us as we mounted. Mr. Fredericks hugged himself and shivered. “You ought to have Rumford fireplaces installed—it’s like an icehouse in here,” he said.
“Oh, that’s only because you’re so used to the tropics, you know,” said His Lordship, smiling bravely at me as the gust of air lifted the hair on his forehead. “Fredericks has been ill,” he confided, as the gentleman in question moved ahead of us to examine the portraits. “He came back from India a few weeks ago and on the voyage home he acquired a chill on the liver that he’s finding difficult