Keeping the Castle - By Patrice Kindl Page 0,66
bottom. The mortar bonding the stones disintegrated and fell in a fine shower of powder. The entire eastern wing of the castle shimmered, sagged, and then crumbled, tipping the easternmost portion with the lightning-struck turret over into the sea.
To my everlasting shame, the first words out of my mouth, when once the reverberations of this second crash had faded, were: “We just paid to have that roof repaired!”
Miss Vincy leaned from the carriage to cry, “Oh Althea! Your mother and sisters and your little brother! The servants! And how dreadful if someone were on the beach below!”
I gasped in mortification. What a monster of parsimony and avarice I was! How could I have thought of pounds and pence before human lives?
“Well, as to that,” said Mr. Fredericks, “I’ll warrant no one save the three of us would be foolish enough to be out of doors in this weather, so I doubt anyone was on the beach to be injured. However, we’d better determine the whereabouts of the rest of your list and see what the damage is.”
We were spared this exertion, however, by the eruption over the drawbridge of every inhabitant of Crooked Castle, from Mama and Prudence (Charity, we discovered, was visiting her fiancé’s family at the Park) to Greengages and the little scullery maid. Only young Tom, the kitchen boy, was injured, having been struck by a falling stone. He was carried out, much enjoying the attention, and the general belief seemed to be that he was suffering from a severe bruise rather than a broken bone.
The lack of injuries was less surprising than it seemed. The east wing was a cold, damp place in this weather. We rarely used it in the best of times except for Mama’s and my bedrooms. Since it was early afternoon, no one had any reason to have been in it, those two rooms having been tidied hours earlier.
The household milled around in the castle yard, reluctant to reenter the building until some sense of the present and future danger could be gained. As we counted off noses, ensuring that all were present and accounted for, our neighbors began to appear, in twos and threes.
The violent storm soon cleared out, leaving a pale blue sky and a smell of damp vegetation. We were therefore able to conduct our business in the open air, portioning off our servants to various houses in the area. Greengages was to go to his daughter, who lived in the village, Cook to her sister, and so on. The vicar, Mr. Bold, was good enough to busy himself in the matter and soon all were assured of a hot meal and a bed.
Miss Vincy was now in the awkward position of wishing to insist that Mama, Alexander, Prudence, and I join Charity at Gudgeon Park, while being herself a guest and unable to do so. Mr. Fredericks had no such scruples.
“Mrs. Winthrop, Miss Crawley, and Master Crawley, as well as Miss Winthrop, will all be housed at Gudgeon Park,” he announced.
I gathered breath to point out that he was no longer in a position (if he ever had been) to dictate who would or would not be housed at the Park, and to protest that I would be much happier to be accommodated at Yellering Hall, but remembered that it was shut up and the servants put on board wages while the Throstletwists visited their son and daughter-in-law in Hull.
“Yes, Althea, really you must,” murmured Miss Vincy. “With the engagement between Miss Charity and Lord Boring, you are soon to be closely connected with the family at the Park. It would look odd if you did not go to them under the circumstances.”
Mama concurred, and, as Lord Boring and the Marquis appeared on horseback and made the invitation official, it was so decided. I insisted on going into the stricken castle in order to retrieve a few items of a personal nature for myself and my relatives, spurning Mr. Fredericks’s advice on the subject. I had gone for two days without an opportunity to refresh my costume and did not propose to continue in the same manner for yet another day, no matter how risky the venture. Since it was my and my mother’s bedchambers that had tumbled into the sea, I purloined one or two things from Charity and Prudence’s room to make up the deficiency.
We all crowded into the carriage and were soon splashing down the road towards the Park. Being under the impression that I