A Brief History of Montmaray (6 page)

‘Aunt Charlotte would be
so
grateful if you could help me convince Veronica,’ I said, putting on what I hoped was a winning expression. ‘There’s going to be an awful battle otherwise – you know how stubborn they both are.’

I could see my pathetic attempt at scheming amused him. Still, if he was half as ambitious as Veronica claimed, he’d want to get on Aunt Charlotte’s good side. And regardless of everything else, at least he was
looking
at me, for once.

‘Very well,’ he said, leaning on his axe. ‘I’ll give you some reasons why
Her Highness
might want to leave Montmaray for England. And in return, you’ll convince her that Montmaray needs to take part in those nonintervention talks regarding Spain.’

‘But, but,’ I spluttered,
‘I
don’t know anything about ... and anyway, she doesn’t–’

‘I’m aware she doesn’t trust me,’ he said evenly. ‘But she ought to. I care about the same things she does. We
all
want the best for Montmaray.’

Had he been eavesdropping on Veronica and me in the library the day before? I was instantly ashamed of myself for having such an awful, suspicious thought. Meanwhile, Simon kept talking – about how Montmaray needed to regain its rightful place in Europe, about politics and diplomacy and the important role Montmaray played all those centuries ago during the War of Spanish Succession, and then later, when Napoleon invaded the Peninsula...

Well, to be honest, I can’t remember his exact words, even though I was listening very hard to his voice (so deep and rich – a bit like treacle, if treacle were a sound) and watching his eyes lighten and darken, and his brows raise and narrow, and his hands wave around in elegant patterns.

‘...a united front with Toby, don’t you agree?’

I blinked. What was I supposed to be agreeing to? ‘Yes?’ I ventured.

He sighed and I felt ashamed all over again.

‘So you’ll talk to her,’ he said with studied patience. ‘About the need for Montmaray to take part in these talks in London? She’ll listen to you.’

‘I ... all right,’ I said.

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Now, as for
your
problem. What might appeal to Her Highness? The British Museum. Westminster Abbey. Debate in the Houses of Parliament. Exhibitions at the Royal Academy. The Tower of London. St Paul’s Cathedral. Libraries. Bookshops. Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. Dozens of daily newspapers. Radios that actually work and regular news broadcasts, in English. Oxford University. Cornwall and the ruins of Bartholomew’s castle. Stonehenge. Hadrian’s Wall. Mind you, if she’s determined to stay here, then let her. It shouldn’t stop
you
from going wherever you please.’

‘She’s not stopping me! I just ... We do everything together and–’

‘You pay far too much attention to her opinions and not enough to your own,’ he said, taking up the axe again.

I gaped at him. ‘Well!’ I said, because he was so
wrong,
I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Of course I pay attention to Veronica’s opinions! That doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions of my own, just that hers are interesting and well-thought-out and...

Anyway, why
shouldn’t
she be the most important person in my life? I don’t have a mother or a sister (I can’t really count Henry) or neighbours my own age or school friends. Thank Heavens I
do
have Veronica. I can’t picture my life without her – truly, I can’t, because every significant memory of my life features her. I remember her hitting Toby after he threw the croquet mallet at me. I remember her sneaking into the Blue Room to read to me from
The Magic Fishbone
when I was quarantined with measles and going mad from itching and boredom. I remember curling up in her bed each night for weeks on end after Mother and Father were killed – it was the only way I could get to sleep. She’s part of all the big memories – and all the little ones, too. She was the one who taught me how to tie my bootlaces, how to extract bee stings, how to light Vulcan without setting my eyebrows on fire. But how could I explain all this to Simon? And anyway, he’d already turned his attention back to the woodpile. Oh, it’s just habit, his dislike of Veronica – he probably can’t help himself saying unfair things. He simply doesn’t know her as I do. I’m just going to ignore what he said.

Well, not his advice about England’s attractions, that was quite helpful. Oh, but I gave my word that I’d speak to Veronica about that non-intervention thing...

Bother.

MY ATTEMPT TO DISCUSS the Spanish situation with Veronica this morning was as unsuccessful as I’d feared. In fact, I didn’t even manage to get my first, carefully rehearsed sentence out. It was my fault – I interrupted her as she was going over the accounts.

‘Are they
very
bad?’ I asked. ‘I mean, worse than usual?’

I peered over her shoulder at the columns of numbers, but they might as well have been Ancient Greek to me – no, Ancient Greek I would’ve had more chance of understanding, thanks to all that practice decoding Kernetin.

‘Ten
pounds,
’ groaned Veronica, tapping her pencil on one of the red squiggles. ‘Why on Earth would Toby need ten pounds, before term had even started?’

‘Didn’t his friend Rupert invite him to their country house then?’ I wondered aloud. ‘Train fares? New shoes? Tips for the servants?’

Veronica started massaging her temples with her fingertips.

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘We’ll sell the Fabergé egg. Simon thought he might get a couple of hundred pounds for it.’

‘Oh,
Simon Chester
thought! Why hasn’t he left yet, anyway? He’s got his precious papers signed now. He could have gone back on the supply ship.’

‘But it was headed for Santander,’ I pointed out.

‘He’s up to something,’ she said, scowling at the accounts. ‘He and Rebecca.’

‘I thought you said he wasn’t interested in money,’ I protested. ‘Besides, we haven’t got any.’

‘And
why
don’t we have any?’ said Veronica, giving me a dark and meaningful look. Then she snatched all the papers up and went off to the library, muttering something under her breath about Uriah Heep.

It was this that made another nasty, suspicious thought pop into my mind. I suddenly remembered Simon’s watch, sitting on his folded-up jacket. I’d never seen him wearing a watch before, and it had looked so new and shiny. How had he been able to afford it on a clerk’s wages? Not that I have any idea how much a watch costs (or how much a clerk earns). It probably wasn’t real gold anyway – I expect it was brass or something. No doubt handed down from his father and he’s always worn it, and I haven’t noticed it before because it’s only been recently that I’ve paid much attention to him.

But why did it look so new?

Oh, but I
know
Simon would never take money from us. Especially as he understands far better than me how little we have. It hasn’t always been that way. In fact, at one stage the FitzOsbornes were very, very rich. For the record (I’m trying to be more ordered and objective about my writing, the way Veronica is, using proper footnotes and everything), this is how our family made its fortune:

I don’t think I’ll do footnotes any more, it took me half an hour to look up those ones. Also, reading back over this, I realise I make it sound as though we are poor. Which of course we
aren’t,
not the way that orphans in Dickens are poor. Well, I suppose we are orphans (at least Toby, Henry and I are, and Veronica might as well be for all the use her parents are), but it’s not as though we’re starving, or wearing rags, or forced to pick-pocket or worse on the streets. Not that there are any streets in Montmaray. (As I wrote that last bit, Henry wandered through the kitchen wearing an ancient jersey of Toby’s that is more holes than wool, but that’s because she idolises Toby, not because she is a Dickensian beggar child.)

Money, then – it would be nice to have more, so Veronica doesn’t have to worry about it all the time, but we have enough at the moment, as long as Aunt Charlotte keeps paying Toby’s school fees. Although I must say, I think it’s quite unfair the way interest works at the bank – that the more money one has, the more one earns. The bank ought to give more to people
without
much money in their savings accounts, they’d appreciate it far more than rich people. And I’ve just had another thought! I wonder if there’s anything valuable left in the Solar that Simon could sell? Just a moment...

Well, no, as it turns out, unless one counts two very tarnished silver photograph frames, a broken music box and a moth-ravaged hat, all of which I found under the bed. I must say it’s rather creepy in here – not in a lovely, shivery way as it is inside the Blue Room when the ghost strokes her fingers down one’s neck and whistles in one’s ear, but in a sad, dusty and abandoned way. Still, at least it’s quieter than the gatehouse (Henry and Jimmy are having sword fights along the top of the curtain wall) and the edge of the bedframe is quite comfortable now that I’ve padded it with the folded-up dustsheet.

I suppose I’d better describe where I am. If one were to climb the tower stairs from the kitchen and emerge at the top of the gallery, one would see ... actually, one wouldn’t see much of anything, because the walls and floor and ceiling are black granite, two feet thick at the narrowest bits, and there are no windows in the gallery and hardly ever any oil to spare for the lamps hanging on the walls. The blackness swallows up the light of a candle, so if all the doors are closed, one has to grope along the wall, counting steps.

But let’s suppose one had a good strong torch. Then one would see, on the right, the door to the bedroom Veronica and I share. Our room connects to the bathroom, which connects to the Solar (where I am currently sitting and in which Montmaravian Kings and Queens have slept for hundreds of years, until Uncle John started refusing to come upstairs). On the left side of the gallery, across from Veronica’s and my room, is Rebecca’s room, which connects to Henry’s room, which connects to the nursery. Next to that is the Blue Room, and then Toby’s room, which connects to the Gold Room. Most of the gold has flaked off its walls now, but Rebecca usually puts guests in there (on the rare occasion we have any), on account of the Blue Room being haunted.

As for the Solar, it used to be quite grand when Isabella lived here. She was constantly redecorating it according to the latest craze. She never got rid of the old stuff though, so the room ended up a fascinating, exotic muddle, with an antique kimono draped across one wall, Persian rugs, a Tutankhamen-inspired frieze, bedcurtains made out of Indian silk, Parisian etchings propped on the chimneypiece and a pair of Art Deco figurines holding up glass spheres. Even now, stripped of its decorations, the Solar is impressive – the largest room in the castle, apart from the Great Hall. There are two big mullioned windows fitted with windowseats, an enormous fireplace and a dais for the four-poster bed. Most of the furniture is gone now, but the bed is still here because no one could work out how to take it apart and it’s too big to fit through any of the doors.

I have propped the silver-framed photographs I found beside me, so I can look at them as I write. One is clearly of Toby and Veronica, their christening gowns trailing over the lap of someone wearing a long shiny skirt. (Isabella? My mother? Her face is blurred and shadowed.) Toby is gnawing at his fist and Veronica is either grinning or grimacing, it’s hard to tell. The only way I can distinguish them is that the little bit of hair Veronica has is scraped into a wisp and secured with an enormous bow. Along the bottom of the photograph, someone has written,
The twins, 1919.
(I can just hear Veronica exclaiming, ‘What if some poor future historian reads it and thinks we actually
were
twins? When in fact we were born
six weeks apart?
And are
cousins,
not siblings?’)

The other photograph is of a vaguely Moorish mansion with a fountain in front. I’ve never seen it before. Is it somewhere Isabella lived? Her family home? Does Veronica know it’s here? Peering closer, I see that what I’d imagined was flowering vine creeping up the walls is in fact mould. Ugh. It’s underneath the glass, too – it may be too late to save the photograph, but I’ll take it back to our room anyway, along with the other one. I don’t think Veronica will mind, even if the house does turn out to be Isabella’s. I don’t think Veronica cares any more.

Looking around at the blank walls and dusty flagstones of the Solar, remembering how it used to be, makes me wonder again at how little Isabella took with her. I was only eight when she left, but I recall sitting on her favourite rose-patterned rug afterwards and thinking that surely she could have rolled
that
up and strapped it to her suitcase. But she left in such a hurry. There’d been an argument between her and Uncle John, the sort involving shouting and smashed china (these had become depressingly ordinary). What was
out
of the ordinary this time was Isabella storming upstairs to toss some clothes into her little alligator suitcase. She’d caught sight of a ship making its slow way past the island.

‘Enough!’ she screamed, loud enough for the entire castle to hear. I remember standing in the bathroom in my striped pyjamas, shivering violently, while Veronica patted my shoulder, saying, ‘Never mind, Sophie, never mind.’ Toby, peering through a crack in the bathroom door, watched Isabella stalk out of her room in a swirl of calf-length mink, suitcase handle clenched in one hand. He was the last one of us to see her.

We were all certain that she would come back, or at least send for her things once she was settled in her new place. But she never did. We waited and waited, and we never heard a thing. And after a while, Veronica stopped going up on the roof with the telescope to scan the sea for ships; the fox fur Henry had taken to play with lost its Isabella scent and then its glass eyes and chunks of its fur; Rebecca and the villagers moved most of the furniture from the Solar into the other rooms and threw dustsheets over the enormous bed. Isabella’s remaining possessions scattered throughout the castle, and beyond. We sold the most valuable of her trinkets to pay for a new water pump in the village. We used bits of her old woollen bathrobe to block a draughty gap in the bathroom wall. Her white crêpe de Chine skirt came in handy for bandages when Jimmy broke his wrist. Mind you, most of Isabella’s clothes got burnt up in the stove one night. We never did find out whether that was Uncle John or Rebecca.

‘I expect it’s just that she’s still settling in to the new place,’ Toby whispered consolingly one evening to Veronica and me. We were all huddled under the covers of her bed (Henry was there too, but asleep). It was nearly summer by then, but Uncle John was on one of his rampages downstairs, so we’d decided we were better off invisible under a blanket. ‘It must take such a long time to buy carpets and furniture and all of that,’ Toby added. ‘I expect she’s awfully busy.’

‘She probably wants it to be all nice before she asks you to visit,’ I told Veronica. ‘You could take some of her things in your trunk when you go. The little things – the jade elephant and–’

‘No,’ said Veronica firmly. ‘She doesn’t care about any of this any more. About any of
us.
’ Then she turned over on her side, and Toby and I looked at each other and silently vowed not to mention Isabella again, at least not in Veronica’s presence. And as the months passed, this became easier and easier. We exhausted the subject of where Isabella might be (I thought Spain, Toby said Paris) and what she might be doing (being a mannequin for Schiaparelli, decorating rich people’s houses, learning to fly an aeroplane). We were too young then to understand what I now can guess – that back in Society, where she belonged, she’d found another lover. Perhaps he’d even been one of her former suitors (I imagine she’d had plenty of those), someone who’d waited patiently for her all those years. And when she’d protested that really, she was
married
now, he’d pointed out that she deserved better than life on an isolated island, in a crumbling castle full of someone else’s children (this was a year or two after my parents died and although Toby and I were fairly well behaved, Henry was still a toddler and given to throwing monstrous tantrums). Perhaps he was rich – perhaps he’d promised her exquisite gowns and diamond necklaces and champagne. Or perhaps he was good-hearted but poor, charming but middle-class, and she’d never really stopped loving him, had only married into the FitzOsbornes because her family had insisted on a properly aristocratic match...