Chapter Two: Reconnaissance in Farce
Lyddon Hall, University of Leeds, October 15, 1990 (Eight years later)

Heather was in my room again. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

“Come on, Weejie,” she coaxed. “You can’t possibly want to wander around some old pile of rocks. Could anything be more tedious? Do you have any idea how many castles are just lying around the countryside, taking up space and gathering dust?”

“I’m sure someone’s done a count.”

“We don’t have counts. Or we do, we just call them earls.”

“Why? You don’t have earlesses. You do have countesses.”

“Oh, don’t start! It’s because we’re English. It doesn’t have to make sense. In fact, it’s not supposed to.”

“Let me guess. If it made sense, the French could figure it out.”

“Quite possibly. And imagine what a disaster that would be.” She flounced onto my bed, since I was already sitting in the only chair in the room. “Aren’t you at least going to offer me a biscuit?”

“Mi casa es su casa – near as I can tell, anyway.” It certainly seemed to be true, and I wasn’t quite sure how that had happened. “The tin’s on the shelf by your head.”

“And there you go with the Spanish again. Honestly, Weej! You are entirely capable of being good company when the mood takes you. Why are you being so difficult?”

I rolled my eyes. “Because you want to drag me down to the City for the weekend to chaperone you and Diana and Sarah. I’ll spend the entire time acting as a mobile coat-rack, hauling packages from store to store for three women.”

“Three stunning, beautiful, enchanting women . . . including moi. Really, Weejie dear. What’s not to like?”

“And there you go with the French. Though, seriously, I don’t think it’s supposed to rhyme with ‘boy.’”

“Are all Americans so pedantic?”

Now there was a question that didn’t require hours of research. “I’m gonna have to go with a big ‘no’ on that one.”

“You mean to tell me I caught the only pedant of the lot?”

“Wow, you make it sound dirty! But, yup, pretty close.” I started singing, “Don't know much about history. Don't know much biology.”

Her face assumed a pained expression and she let out a groan.

No reason to let her off that easy. “Don't know much about science book. Don't know much about the French I took.” I wiggled my eyebrows to make sure she got the connection to our conversation.

“At the risk of being rude, you don’t know much about singing, either.”

“No, no. You missed the point. As a nation – as a cultural grouping, if you will – Americans don’t know much about virtually any of those things. We are a determinedly, fiercely, and above all, proudly ignorant people. However, I am the exception.” I wagged my finger at her. “Plus, my singing could get me into the Cordon Bleu.”

“Tell me you know that’s a cooking school.”

“Yes. Of course I do. My singing is so farging amazing that they’d overlook my shortcomings in the cooking department.”

“I assume that means your cooking is execrable?”

“Oh, hell, yeah! Hey – that would make an amazing Scrabble word. Drop the “x” on a triple letter score —”

“It’s nine letters, Weej.”

“Yeah, but if you were to play ‘crab,’ or maybe ‘able’ —”

“Stop! Just stop! I will do no such thing. Now, will you get off your high horse and come with us to London?”

I chomped on a cookie. “Biscuit” my ass. These McVitties things are cookies, for crying out loud! They’re also really good. “Heather, I’m sorry. I really do want to go castle hunting this weekend.”

“Well then,” she said, “I suppose I shall have to go with, if only to make sure you don’t fall down a garderobe or something equally preposterous and fatal.” She got off the bed and stretched, looking for all the world like a martyr preparing to make the final sacrifice. “Diana and Sarah are going to be rather annoyed at you.”

I was about to say something . . . like, I don’t know, “Really, you don’t need to bother,” but she was already on her merry way.

“Ta-ta!” she said as she breezed out the door.

I shook my head. How does she do that? I really don’t understand Heather. Like, at all.

~o~O~o~

“Well . . . It’s certainly a fine example of a pile of old rocks,” Heather said, gazing at our destination. “Colorful, I suppose. If you’re fond of gray.”

“If you’re trying to tell me it’s not Harrod’s, you may rest assured that I got that.’”

“Don’t be absurd. I wouldn’t even think such a thing. But, really . . . .” she cast another practiced look at Castle Neuf before adding, “It’s not even Marks and Spencer.”

“Let’s have a look, anyhow.”

Heather threw me a doubtful glance and said, “Oh, very well. I expect they’ll have a car park by the entrance, these places always do.”

The one advantage to having Heather along was that she was generally accessorized in appropriate and useful ways, and today was no exception. One of her better accessories had five wheels, one of which was in the wrong place and allowed her to steer. She was currently using it to navigate a winding and difficult road up the small hill on which the castle was perched.

“A car park?” I asked. “How delightful! Will they have swings and teeter-totters so the cars can play while we’re out and about?”

“Behave, Weejie. It’s a long walk home.”

Sure enough, there was a parking lot by the front entrance, just as Heather had surmised. It appeared to have been designed with tourist buses in mind — the large, imposing kind that travel in flocks during the season, rather like Canadian Geese. Alas, however, this either wasn’t the season or the buses had found greener pastures. Or grayer pastures. There were only two other vehicles in the lot. At a guess, their owners worked here.

We decamped from Heather’s car – something that required a good bit of bending and twisting, on account of its, ehem, proportions. The entrance might have been imposing, I suppose, if the big drawbridge actually crossed something, but if the place had ever sported a moat, it had been filled in long since. A fussy looking woman, middle-middle in class, upper-middle in age, was sitting just inside what might once have been a guardroom. She waved us in. “It’s two pounds fifty for entrance, unless you can show student IDs. Oh, and five pounds will get you the tour.”

Heather looked dubious about the tour and I suppose I could see why. I mean, the whole place really didn’t look much larger than a decent-sized public library; it was hard to see how we might miss anything.

“Oh, the tour’s a must. An absolute must.”

I must have jumped half a foot; the voice came from behind me, and I hadn’t heard him come up. I spun around to see a young man; short and stocky with a mischievous smile and eyes that positively sparkled. “You’ll be the tour guide, won’t you, Mrs. Tibbets?”

“You will not be spoiling my tour, young man!” The woman behind the desk looked both incensed and affronted.

That decided me. “Well then, with this gentleman’s recommendation – and his company, of course – we’d be delighted to do the tour.”

“We might have a small difference of opinion,” Heather murmured in my ear, “about the meaning of ‘delighted.’”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” the young man said, as if Heather’s aside had been offered up for general consumption and comment. “His accent notwithstanding, I’m certain your young man meant it in the classic British sense.”

“Insincerely, you mean?” Heather snarked.

“Exactly so, my dear! Oh, we’re going to have a splendid time together!”

Mrs. Tibbets crossed her formidably fleshly forearms under her well-supported and thoroughly suppressed breasts. “I will not give a tour with this . . . person in the group!”

“Oh, that’s such a pity,” he replied. “Then I shall have to give them the tour without you!”

“You will do No. Such. Thing!” No smoke came from her nose, but I half expected to see it.

“Dear Mrs. Tibbets,” he said soothingly, “If the three of us buy entrance tickets – well, if I do; they’re clearly students and will get in for free – you can scarcely keep us from wandering around together, can you? Or prevent me from making whatever observations come to my mind?”

This was nearly as much fun as baiting Father. Nothing really quite compares, of course, but the young man was tying Mrs. Bluff and Bluster into knots that would make a sailor proud. I wondered which way she would finally topple.

“All right! All right! I shall give the tour. I shall expect reasonable behavior from you, young man! No interruptions. No snide asides.”

He smiled slowly. Almost . . . dangerously. “But darling, what earthly fun would that be?”

She glowered, but in the end, she probably had no choice. She took our money, put it in the till, and gave each of us a wholly unnecessary paper ticket. “Follow me, please,” she said shortly.

Leaving the front gate area, she walked into a small courtyard. Castle yard? Whatever. Brown grass. Directly in front of us was the keep, such as it was. There really wasn’t anything else inside the walls.

“Welcome to CastleNoof,” she said woodenly, going into her spiel. The long and short of story was that it was the ninth castle built by some greedier-than-average follower of William the Bastard. It had gotten lots of upgrades in the centuries after it started as simple motte-and-bailey, but the last of them must have been around the time of Columbus.

“The lower floor of the keep is the only remaining part of the original structure,” Mrs. Tibbets explained.

“If by ‘lower floor,’ she literally means the floor itself – as in, the flagstones,” our young gentleman explained sotto voce, but it was loud enough to carry. Naturally.

Mrs. T chose to ignore the commentary. “The outer walls were built during the Second Baron’s War in the Thirteenth Century. The license to crenelate is recorded in the Patent Rolls, and was signed by King Henry III.”

“Who probably thought he was ordering an execution. Or quite possibly a bit of breckie. Not a very bright chap.”

“Mr. Deavers!” Mrs. Tibbets voice was low with menace.

He just smiled.

Heather decided it was time to do something other than simply watch tennis. “Is there any sort of view from the battlements?”

“I shouldn’t think so,” Mrs. Tibbets said repressively.

“You mean you haven’t looked?” Deavers asked, with open-eyed faux incredulity.

“As you are perfectly well aware, Mr. Deavers, the upper battlements are unsafe, and access is strictly prohibited!”

I couldn’t let Deavers have all the fun. “Are you quite sure it isn’t loosely prohibited? I mean, ‘strictly’ seems like the only adverb that’s ever attached to that word.”

“Strictly. Most strictly.” Mrs. Tibbets was both firm and severe on this point.

“I see.” I looked around. From where I was standing, there wasn’t much to see that wasn’t strictly prohibited wall. “Then it's the keep, I suppose.” It didn’t look very promising.

“The ground floor’s off limits,” Mrs. Tibbets warned, “On account of its extreme age.”

“It’s just that they haven’t gotten around to cleaning it,” Deavers supplied happily. “Good help is so hard to find.”

“Aren’t the upper floors supported by the ground floor?” I asked.

“Certainly, young man. How else would they be supported?”

“Um. Okay. Never mind.” I was looking for stairs. Perhaps around back? “How do you get to the upper floors?”

“From the battlements, naturally,” Mrs. Tibbets replied.

Heather weighed in. “But you said – “

“Strictly prohibited,” Mrs. Tibbets said triumphantly.

“But . . . .”

“Strictly.”

I looked around again. “What do we, ah . . . you know? Tour?”

Deavers was happy to explain before Mrs. Tibbets put her spin on it. “This delightful plot of grass. You stand here – right here – and dear Mrs. Tibbets will talk. Expound. Declaim. Pretty endlessly, as it happens. It’s really a question of how much of it you can stand.”

“Doesn’t anyone live here?” I asked.

Three sets of eyes looked at me, bemused. Heather was first out the gate. “Whoever would want to?”

“The castle is owned by Viscount Chingleput,” Mrs. Tibbets explained. “But the family hasn’t lived here since the sixteenth century.”

“They pinched better digs when old King Harry stole all the church land,” Mr. Deavers added.

This straightforward explanation didn’t sit well with Mrs. Tibbets. “Acquisition of the abbey property was approved by Act of Parliament!”

“Making the theft entirely legal and proper,” Deavers replied, sounding pleased with the explanation.

“Stole it fair and square, eh?” I asked.

“It is not theft if it’s approved!” our guide hissed, scandalized.

“Mrs. Tibbets,” I asked diplomatically. “How long is this tour?”

“Oh, I could talk for hours about Castlenoof,” she said. It sounded like a threat. “History . . . architecture . . . legends. Even ghost stories!”

“How ‘delighted’ are you feeling, Weej?” Heather asked.

The thought of spending endless hours standing in the cold listening to Mrs. Tibbets tell ghost stories was acutely unappealing. “Actually, I was thinking I might be reaching my tolerance level for delight.”

“If you held on to your ticket, it will also get you into the family estate,” Deavers said helpfully. “It’s just three miles away. Shingles, they call it.”

It seemed like a strange choice for a name. “Like the virus?”

“A contraction of the title, I should think,” Mrs. Tibbets sniffed. “Chingleput . . . Singles. These things happen, over centuries.”

“Don’t you believe her,” Deavers said. “It’s the virus. The old man was riddled with it.”

“Mr. Deavers! That will be quite ENOUGH!”

But we decided that Shingles was likely to be the lesser of two evils, and opted to take our leave of the basilisk of Castle Neuf. Mr. Deavers invited himself along — something he managed with a smoothness and finesse that impressed even Heather.

Still, he had been good company, and quite useful for slaying dragons and such, so I wasn’t going to object. Even though somehow he got the passenger’s seat, and I ended up crammed into what was humorously called the “back seat.”

“You sorted back there?” Heather asked. “The car is grumpy when all the seatbelts aren’t fastened.”

I tried to move my arms to locate the device and failed. “I’m just exactly as ‘sorted’ as I’m going to get,” I said shortly. “Your Playmobile Car will just have to sulk for the five minutes it’s going to take us to go three miles.”

Deavers slid his seat back, neatly kneecapping me. “Ah! Much better!”

“Do you mind?” I asked, indignant.

“Not in the slightest,” he replied cheekily. “Oh — it’s three miles as the crow flies. A bit more of a trek for us, I’m afraid.”

I groaned, but Heather didn’t hear me as she got the engine to turn over and headed us down the hill.

It took seventeen and a half excruciating minutes to travel the three miles from Castle Neuf to Shingles. Between my captive knees and the contortions required to keep my head from hitting the roof, I was acutely uncomfortable the entire time. Heather and George were chatting merrily, but I just tuned them both out. Maybe being a portable clothes rack wouldn’t have been so bad.

But I’d had a hankering to see the “family estate,” even though I’d promised Father that I’d stay away. Well . . . especially because I’d made that promise, and I knew how deeply furious he would be when I cheerfully broke it. He had no sense of humor at all, and even less where his family was concerned. What better way to get his goat? So I endured the drive without groaning more than six or seven times.

“Well! Heather said suddenly. “Looks like the thieves and brigands did well for themselves!”

With several contortions of my back and neck, I managed to see what had caught her eye. Shingles — presumably it was Shingles — was certainly impressive enough, in a dark, gloomy, gothic sort of way. Much larger than Castle Neuf, with plenty of those deep, narrow windows that have pointy-arched tops and provide almost no light. The stone appeared to have come from a very different quarry than the castle. It had probably been a delightfully toasty golden brown originally, but was now the somewhat less appealing color of industrial sludge.

We parked by an ostentatious main entrance, smack in the middle of by far the largest structure in the complex. Although it looked like someone had gone to great lengths to disguise it, the main building had clearly begun its long life as a church of some sort before aging gracelessly into something a bit more tawdry.

Getting out of the car took even more work than getting in, but eventually I accomplished it to the accompaniment of groans and swear-words more common in the Bay Area of my youth than the North of England. I’m not saying Brits are more refined; their swear words are just weird. And they don’t seem to understand that simple, one-syllable synonyms for copulation and defecation can be employed endlessly and in virtually any situation.

The gate guardian of Shingles was a woman of around Mrs. Tibbet’s age, but considerably broader in the beam and far more cheerful. “Good morning, and welcome to Shingles!” she called out, as we stepped through the massive, dark door that must have been 12 feet tall.

We were in an antechamber of some sort – a decorative lump grafted onto the older main building, like a Gamay Beaujelais head on the rootstock of a Concord Grape. The stone in the ribbed vault over our heads had lots of fussy tracery and the side windows of the anteroom were large and colorful.

We got a big smile from the gate guardian, who came out from behind her high desk, positively beaming. “Such a lovely morning! Do come in! Let me give you the orientation, then you’re free to poke around, except in the areas marked ‘No Admittance.’”

I stepped forward, returning her smile. “I’m guessing that would be ‘strictly no admittance,’ right?”

“There’s no other sort, now is there?” she said, laughing. Spotting our companion, she said, “You’ve brought a personal guide with you, I see. Good morning, young George!”

“Mrs. Gee! So good to see you in such good humor,” he replied with a smile.

“Well, not that you need it, what with George and all, but we’ve just received these delightful pamphlets in full color, so you’ll have some idea what you’re looking at.” Seeing the tickets in our hands, she added, “Oh, and you’ve been to the castle, have you? Well, it won’t have taken you very long to figure out why no-one lives there anymore!”

And that was pretty much all the orientation we got. At the other end of the antechamber from where we entered, five shallow steps lead to a deep stone arch and very solid looking doors, one of which was open. Up we went, and entered a large, dark and forbidding great hall. According to the lovely brochure, it had originally been the nave of the monastery church.

“Holy ground, hmmm?” George said as we moved past the side aisle into the main area.

“Don’t they do a deconsecration or something, when they stop using it as a church?” I asked, looking around.

“Ostensibly. But surely . . . ground is holy or it isn’t, don’t you think?” There was, as usual, mischief in his voice – but something else, too.

And I’ll confess, I sure felt something. Maybe it was holy ground, or maybe it was just plain old spooky. The stone was dark and forbidding and the lancet windows were next to useless. Seven bays of tall arches and a simple cruciform ribbed vault, barely illuminated by clerestory windows. The flagstones were smooth with age.

The proportions were all wrong, naturally. The space was incredibly high relative to either the width or length of the hall – unsurprising, since the old church had been cut in half. The pamphlet explained that the transept and quire had been converted into living quarters for the family.

My family.

I hadn’t said anything to Heather – or to anyone else, for that matter – about my connection to the family that owned this heap of stone. The university had certain cliques, like any other education establishment, and the children of the aristocracy formed one of them. It was a small and obnoxious group, and I didn’t want anyone to think I belonged there. Even though it would have been a positively stupendous way of annoying Father. Some of life’s joys, great though they most certainly are, do not justify the sacrifice.

Although the stained glass windows all depicted scenes from the Gospels, the space was otherwise pretty secular. It had been set up as a feasting hall, I suppose – a long, narrow table running down what had been the length of the nave and a raised platform with an elevated table at the end in a “T” configuration. A monstrous big chair dominated the middle of the raised table, intricately carved, upholstered in red velvet. It even had a decorative canopy over it.

I shook my head. “Okay. Was the guy, like, morbidly obese? You could fit three normal humans in that thing!”

“Important to impress the masses, Weej,” Heather snarked.

“Impress? Any regular dude sitting in that chair is going to look like a five-year-old!”

“Ah,” said Deavers. “But he’ll look like a rich five-year-old, so age won’t matter! You should try it!”

“The sign says we’re not supposed to touch the furniture.”

“So, don’t touch it. Keep your hands to yourself. Just sit in it!” Deavers was, as usual, grinning wickedly.

“Go ahead,” I invited. “Let’s see how you look!”

He shrugged. “I shall look stunning, naturally. I always look stunning!” He hopped up onto the dais, sauntered over to the semi-throne thing, and sprawled gracefully on the seat. “As you see. Now, all you little people . . . bow and scrape, why don’t you?”

Heather laughed. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Naturally,” he replied. “And, of course, nobles are irresistible to the lower sorts, aren’t they? Admit it . . . You want me to throw you on the table and have my naughty, aristocratic way with you!”

Heather only laughed harder.

For myself, though . . . Deavers actually did look pretty good sprawled on the throne. Powerful, even. As if sensing my thoughts, he gave me a sardonic look.

“Now, George!” Mrs. Gee stood in the entrance, sounding like a mildly exasperated nanny. “You know you aren’t supposed to be there. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“By all means, ask away,” he said airily. “My lordship is in the mood for hearing petitions today.”

Despite herself, Mrs. Gee giggled girlishly. “All right, George. I’ll look the other way – this time – but for God’s sake don’t let the Colonel know!”

Deavers made little shooing motions with his hands, and Mrs. Gee vanished back the way she’d come.

“The Colonel?” I asked him. I had a very vivid memory of a Colonel.

Deavers confirmed it, as he rose gracefully from the oversized chair and came down off the dais. “My uncle Holweard. He looks after the place while the Viscount is off doing whatever it is he does.”

“The Viscount’s in the counting house,” Heather paraphrased, “Counting all his –”

“Vices,” I supplied.

“That should keep him occupied for a while,” Deavers said brightly. “Let’s finish looking around, while he’s tied up?”

We strolled around the courtyard, which had been a cloister back in the day. The Baptistry had been converted into a gazebo by the expedient of removing all non-load-bearing walls, and the former monks’ living quarters had been converted into guest accommodations that were, like the Viscount’s private quarters, off limits.

“The crypt is really the best part,” Deavers said.

“That’s something you don’t hear every day,” I snorted.

“Weej, it’s England,” Heather explained. “We always reserve the very best for dead people.”

“Certainly,” Deavers agreed. “It’s when they are at their finest, after all.”

The crypt was located where you would expect – under what had been the transept of the church – and was reached by a narrow stone stair to the side of the exit from the Great Hall. All of the former residents of the space, which presumably had been abbots and such, had been removed to literally greener pastures. The crypt was now reserved for Family.

Each of the Viscounts had his own niche and sarcophagus, as well as a portrait on the wall. All the portraits looked like Father, just with different facial hair and styles of dress. A dreary prospect indeed, from my perspective!

Deavers filled us in on all the gossip with respect to the former lords, and from his descriptions they were a sordid lot indeed. The first Viscount’s portrait depicted him in martial glory upon the battlements of some very foreign-looking fortress. “The battle of Chingleput,” Deavers said.

“I can’t say I’ve heard of that one,” Heather remarked.

“Why am I not surprised?” Deavers’ voice was dry. “A minor battle in the Second Carnatic War.”

I shook my head. “The second what?”

“Quite,” Deavers agreed.

“And, ah, what’s his name commanded the victorious British army?” Heather asked.

“Of course not,” Deavers said. “That was Robert Clive, and he commanded company troops.”

“Then why did . . .” She paused a moment to check the name, “Algernon Winthrop, here, get a title out of it?”

“He didn’t. He got a title out of forgiving a rather large gambling debt that embarrassed King George’s idiot brother, Cumberland. But he said he was present at Chingleput, and Clive got a nice round sum to confirm it, so it seemed like a good enough fit.” Deavers studied the picture critically. “He does look rather dashing up there on the battlement, don’t you think?”

“Moderately dashing,” I allowed.

“Positively irresistible,” Heather pronounced.

We made the circuit, with each Viscount looking less distinguished than the last. It must be a coincidence that they line up that way, I thought. Please let it be a coincidence! But the final niche was completely different.

“Weej, you’re gaping,” Heather scolded.

I ignored her. The woman in the full-sized painting almost leapt off the canvas. Long, raven-black hair, soft eyes, pale, perfect skin, a figure to die for in a dress that accentuated every curve – tight bodice showing full breasts and a trim waist, and an exuberant skirt that cascaded over wide hips like a fountain . . . .

“Weej! Wake up!”

I shook my head, as if to clear it of cobwebs. “Why would I want to?”

“Well, you do look a bit like an idiot, so there’s that.”

“Uh . . . right.” I looked at Deavers. “Who is she?”

“Well, you know what the nuns always say,” he responded.

I decided that I wanted to know who the woman in the painting was, even if I had to walk into his joke to find out. “No. I don’t really know any nuns. What do they say?”

“It’s a mystery.” He sounded smug.

“Seriously?”

“Quite. No one knows who she is, or what her painting is doing down here . . . other than livening the place up.”

“And attracting boys like honey attracts flies,” Heather added, acidly.

“Alright already,” I replied testily. “Can I help it? It’s by far the best piece of art in the whole place.”

“Your devotion to art history is an inspiration, Weej. Now, if I can pry you away from your girlfriend here, I don’t suppose you can be persuaded to find a place for lunch?”

I laughed and agreed, and we found the exit.

When we got back to the car, Deavers said his farewells. “If you want someplace local, the Victoria has a nice ploughman’s lunch and decent fish and chips. And, it’s right next to a really special shop for naughty underthings!”

Heather laughed and hopped in the driver’s seat. So she missed his broad wink and my ensuing scarlet blush.

To be continued . . . .

Author's note: Many thanks to RobertLouis and AlisonP for their help reviewing this story.

For information about my other stories, please check out my author's page.