Keeping the Castle - By Patrice Kindl Page 0,6

then called over my shoulder as I left, “Boil more water!”

As I entered the room, now choked with broken-down and ruinous pieces of furniture dragged in from other chambers to seat the throng, I heard the cry: “Twelve of them! Actually twelve people in Lord Boring’s party! We shall be quite overset!”

So long as we did not have to feed and water them, I thought, taking my place amidst the crowd, I shouldn’t mind if there were a hundred.

At last, having supped on Crooked Castle’s version of a Barmecide feast (and if your governess has neglected your education to such an extent that you are unfamiliar with One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, why then, shame on her—go and read it), the knight and his lady wife rose to take their leave. The moment Lady Throstletwist stood up, her chair shuddered and then slowly collapsed into a sad little splintered heap on the floor. Being extremely well bred, she sailed on out through the door without a backwards glance at this small disaster. Everyone else present also contrived to ignore the situation, save the younger Eliots, who giggled. On this note the party broke up, and having settled to everyone’s satisfaction that the number of Lord Boring’s party lay somewhere between five and fifteen, the neighbors betook themselves to the comforts of their own homes.

I assisted Greengages with collecting the soiled crockery and setting the room to rights, dragging the surviving chairs back to their proper positions.

“Tell Cook that the broiled minnows . . . er, tiddlers, were a great success,” I said. “As she will see for herself, they are entirely eaten.” The platters were stripped; even the watercress had been devoured.

“I will so inform her, Miss Althea,” Greengages said, and staggered off with the tea tray.

Relieved that it had not been necessary to sacrifice our own dinner, a rabbit snared by the groundskeeper, to the entertainment of our guests, I was able to look forward to a peaceful evening after a turbulent day. Therefore, putting my shoulder into the task, I wheeled my embroidery out into the center of the room; then, lighting a candle, I seated myself and began to work.

It is customary for young ladies to paint a fan or embroider a purse; these elegant arts show off wifely skills and a pair of dainty hands to good effect. While my stepsisters were generally involved in this sort of project, I was unable to waste my time on such pleasing trifles. Instead, I was mending the tapestries from the great hall; a monumental task, but a necessary one, as they helped to soften and absorb the icy winds that howled through the castle in January and February.

Besides, without them, the great hall of Crooked Castle bore more resemblance to one of His Majesty’s less attractive prisons than to the home of a family of an ancient and honorable name.

The current tapestry I was repairing was as large as the dimensions of the room in which I worked. In order to render it more manageable, it had been fan-folded and stacked in great piles on its own wheeled table. On pleasant days, with the aid of Greengages, the groundskeeper, and the kitchen boy, I had the whole conveyed out into the sunlight so that my stitchery would run true. On evenings like this I used a cheap tallow candle and hoped.

I was soon joined by my stepsisters and mother, who were chattering quite cheerfully together after the success of our impromptu entertainment. Prudence even complimented me on the refreshments in her patchy and inaccurate French.

“Les très bons hors d’oeuvres, mon enfant,” she said, edging her chair in front of my mother’s next to the fire, thereby casting Mama into cold and darkness. “A delightful, crisp texture!” she continued in English, baffled by the French for crisp and texture. “But I could not determine what, precisely, I was eating.”

“Thank you, Prudence,” I said, without enlightening her. Prudence cherished delicate sensibilities when it came to her diet, and undoubtedly the crisp texture was due to the fact that the little creatures were made up almost exclusively of skin and bones. One day I feared I should have to direct Cook to fry up some species of insect, as I am informed is done in some of the wild places of the world, in order to feed my family. Should that day ever arrive, I almost hoped Prudence would uncover my deception and fall into a swooning fit, but no—the