reached dangerously close to a squeak whenever he tried to raise it. He stood before us with his back to the large slate that had been fixed to the wall of our classroom. A single word, Iverson, had been chalked across the slate, with a long, uncharacteristic flourish of a tail completing the n.
We sat two by two in assigned rows, because the history classroom was crammed up short against the southern edge of the castle, which meant it was very narrow and unexpectedly lofty.
My chair was next to Lillian’s in the far back. From our shared desk, Professor Tilbury looked like a white-bearded gnome against the slate.
He surveyed the lot of us; no one had moved. “To your feet, young ladies! Today is a most special day indeed. Today we will enjoy a walking tour of the history of our own fortress.”
Beatrice and Stella, directly ahead of me, exchanged eye rolls.
“Sir,” said Mittie from the very front, in her most piteous tone, “isn’t it cold out for a walk? We haven’t even our shawls.”
It had dawned another overcast day, with a brisk spring wind blowing spray in fitful spurts across the channel, rattling the windowpanes. Still, pug-faced Mittie was far from any danger of freezing. She just liked to whine.
Professor Tilbury must have heard every whine before.
“The majority of our tour will be within the castle walls, Miss Bashier. If you didn’t need your shawl for this chamber, you will not need it for the rest of them. However, if you truly feel a shawl is indispensable to your attire, you may fetch it now. The rest of us shall await you here. Naturally, any amount of time taken from the scheduled class period by your absence shall be made up by all of you at its conclusion.”
The hour after history was luncheon. Even Mittie wasn’t stupid enough to push matters that far.
I arose from my chair, glad to be doing something besides sitting and scratching down notes, anyway. One by one, the other girls did the same.
Confident that he had made his point, Professor Tilbury offered us what, for him, passed as a smile. He had blocky yellow teeth.
“Excellent. Let us begin at the beginning. Do any of you know what this room used to be?”
None of us did.
“Iverson’s original keep was constructed by the conquering sons of Normandy. It was ruled by barons who commanded the wealth of the ports and all the fertile lands nearby.” Someone tittered at the word fertile; Tilbury forged on. “Therefore, this fortress, even from its inception, was home to a powerful, prosperous lord and his family. It also would have been home to all his knights and servants and their families, as well. A castle this size might have had several hundred people living inside it, and that is before we even begin to consider the livestock.”
“How primitive,” sniffed Caroline.
“Primitive, mayhap, but necessary. So imagine you are that powerful lord who controls this castle, if you will. Where do you go for your privacy? Where do you retreat with your family to escape the everlasting noises and smells and demands of the general populace?”
A word came to me, a word from the past. It bobbed up from the blank ocean of my memory, untethered.
“The solar,” I said.
Professor Tilbury angled his head to find me standing in the back. “Yes, Miss Jones. Very good. The solar. Solar as in solaris, a place of the sun. Note our tall southerly windows, the near-constant light. Castles such as Iverson typically included a construct like this for the exclusive use of the ruling family, built above the ground floor so that the baron might observe the workings of his people below.”
“It’s terribly small for a family,” doubted Stella, looking around.
“Correct, Miss Campbell. The solar of Iverson is no longer in its original configuration. It was partitioned off, probably sometime in the late seventeenth century. The remaining portion of it,” he gestured toward the wall with the slate, “was converted into private quarters for the dukes and duchesses of Idylling.”
We all pricked up our ears at that. The conjugal room of all those dukes, just beyond our slate? Only a layer of stones—and perhaps a secret tunnel—between us and a marital bed?
Malinda and Caroline jostled each other, snickering. Pale Lillian had blotches of pink spreading up her throat.
“If you please, sir,” said Sophia sweetly, covering the snickers, “who stays there now?”
Likely Mrs. Westcliffe. She might not be a duchess or even a baroness, but there was