The Triple Goddess (154 page)

A person who went to the library to look up a word in the dictionary, or consult an encyclopaedia, or remove a book—none of which happened often—might arrive to find the relevant volume of the
Oxford English Dictionary
or
Encyclopaedia Britannica
already on the lectern open at the relevant page, and the book on the table at the door, with a note written in an old-fashioned hand reminding one to bring it back in no more than three weeks; on penalty of a man’s shaving water arriving cold in the morning, or a lady finding holes in her stockings and moths in her dress.

The children had a seasonal favourite in the Green Giant, who at Christmas would let them chop off his head with a half-sized but effective axe; following which he would put his own nob back on his shoulders as if he were doing nothing more than putting on a hat, and give them each a shilling.

In the public areas of the house, for the most part impeccable manners were observed between domestics past and present, and argument rarely exceeded a debate between two butlers as to the difference between a Grande and Petite Champagne Cognac...as we already know, at present Lord Huntenfisch was agnostic on the subject, but sober he would have been of no help anyway because to him brandy was brandy.

In the kitchens, on the plus side it was true that Mrs Furness the cook’s shopping list kept itself without her having to remember to jot things down, and she was provided with another sheet containing recommended menus for the following week. This saved her no end of pencil-sucking, and juggling of her limited repertoire, which would otherwise have featured Brown Windsor soup at every meal.

But as is so often the case in households, the kitchen was a tinderbox of dissent. Generations of temperamental cooks had frequent and violent disagreements over recipes, preparation, measurements and proportions, consistencies, side dishes, seasoning, how hot an oven ought to be for a given dish, and which utensils were best for each task; over what was fashionable, desirable, and good or bad, in every sense except that of what was healthy to eat; over which supplier was better than another, whether the meat and fish and vegetables were hung long enough or as fresh as they ought to be, whether carp was superior in taste to perch, and how well done the Northmarches liked their beef.

Even the scullions, sewers, and kitchen maids had strong opinions, and did not hesitate to give them vehement expression. In the heat of open fires and tempers, not only was many a sharp word traded, but civil wars broke out, with each side hurling meat-cleavers, carving knives, chopping knives, skewers, skillets, copper saucepans, earthenware pots and china, ladles and basters, mortars and pestles, even a roasting spit—anything that came to hand—from behind upturned tables that, at the conclusion of the battle, were porcupined with lethal instruments and surrounded by dented pans and shards of pottery.

On such nights the Northmarches were served
oeufs en cocotte…
baked or shirred eggs…and toast soldiers for supper.

There were lighter moods in the Dragonburgh kitchen, too, and servants past and present would play practical jokes on each other. When Mrs Furness wanted to come up with something new, for example, she felt a painful tweak, as a recipe for snapping turtle was attached to her nose with a clothes-pin; and after someone helpfully tied her full-length apron on for her, she found the dough for two loaves rising in her already well-filled frontage.

When things were going smoothly, menu-wise tradition reigned. Mediaeval fare that was no longer commonly thought of as edible, such as swan, peacock, heron, crane, and stork; or had become distasteful to the palate of latter generations of Englishmen, including those in the Scottish Borders, such as mutton and kid, and ox or neat’s tongue, and goose, woodcock and snipe; remained current…or they did until Lord Huntenfisch’s arrival.

In addition to beef, wild boar—at the Yuletide feast the boar’s head, with an apple in its mouth, would be borne in
on a platter held high by four servants, and preceded by the mustard pot carried by a fifth
—, pork, veal, goat, venison, hare or leveret, and coney, there were sheep’s heads and stomachs; trout and salmon, and every locally caught variety of salt-water fish and shellfish; duck, pheasant, red and black grouse, partridge, quail, cock or capon, turkey, chicken, pigeon; and such toothsome delicacies as stewed pike, eel pie, and hedgepig baked in mud with Bordelaise sauce.

Cats, too, were common at table: as in days of yore they had to be buried for a day and a night before they were needed, up to a dozen at a time depending on how scrawny they were; after which the brains were removed so that those partaking didn’t lose their own, as the superstition was. While the cats were being roasted, the scullion turning the spit had to beat them with a switch.

There were drawbacks to the adherence to Elizabethan, or earlier, tastes in dining, and Jenny’s parents, who were accustomed to everything that was served, and never turned a hair at what was put in front of them unless it were to remove a boar bristle, were often perplexed as guests went white and held up their hands in horror when they saw what was on the table for them to grapple with, or the covers were removed from the plates.

For her delectation at the opening of a meal, a vegetarian duchess was offered a choice of stuffed honey dormouse, otter tail, or the squirrel meat of a Brunswick stew—it was a nice touch: the woman was descended from the Duchess,
later Queen Caroline, of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
.

Dishes of laverocks’, or larks’, tongues; plovers’ eggs; beccaficos, or the garden warbler
Sylvia hortensis
; nightingales; turtle doves; ortolans, or the bunting
Emberiza hortulana
—diners were provided with extra-large napkins to
cover their heads and faces with, so that they might absorb the buntings’ odour with the flavor—
were placed in front of her husband: who, being president of the Royal Ornithological Society, was already eyeing with dismay the central displays of a peacock, served with head and tail-feathers in place, a swan in aspic, and something that looked as though it might once have done business as a bustard.

Observing this and taking it as a sign of lack of appetite, the Earl of Northmarch cheerfully remarked, as he used the knife from his belt that he used to eat—he had no use for that modern invention, the fork—to stab a pullet that was just out of reach, and grabbed a slice of umble pie containing deer offal, and a chitterling of pig’s intestine, that ’twould be a pity if the birds had died in vain.

In this he was showing an insensitivity similar to that of his Northmarch ancestor, who, when Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, was staying overnight and breakfasting in bed, to make him feel at home he was sent up the type of sausage that his detractors had named after him, because he was the same shape and smelt of pork.

”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“

The efficiency of the storm in wreaking havoc at the castle having revived Lady Eugénie’s longing to solve the puzzle of the missing rooms, her priority was to survey the interior of the roof. For at the time that her husband had the renovations done, it had been a source of great anxiety to her that he had chosen as his personal private quarters the section of the castle in which the mystery area that had preoccupied her since childhood was located.

And she was doubly concerned now, because since it was his lordship’s wing that had sustained by far the majority of the damage, it was natural that he would wish to attend to its repair first, and with a much greater chance than before of unwittingly discovering the fortress’s ancient secret.

As extensive as the refurbishments conducted by Huntenfisch had been, to Jenny’s relief only a number of minor items of interest had been revealed, behind skirting boards and chimney-pieces and under floorboards. Among them were a bag of coins from the reign of Edward the Confessor; several love-letters to an eighteenth century Earl of Northmarch from an actress who had understudied Miss Verjuice in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s
The School for Scandal
, one of which included a lock of her hair, and another a handkerchief that still smelled of patchouli; an indiscreet diary that had been kept by one of the countesses; and a few Victorian children’s toys.

Given that her current plan involved a thorough search of her husband’s residence, Jenny was very glad to receive word of his indisposition from his lordship’s butler, Noggins; who, upon descending to the cellar that night to restore his shattered nerves with a draught from the same barrel as his master had been suckling on like a newborn babe since his return from Alaska, found his master sprawled on the floor and blowing bubbles as he snored.

Knowing the pattern of Otto Huntenfisch’s binges, Jenny expected that it would be several days before he came out of his funk and the cellar, and in a fit state to take things in hand.

At eighty-one years old, as Clerk of Works, Jock McJoist—a McJoist had slipped across from the Borders into Northumbria while the Northmarch attention was elsewhere—had been a member of Jenny’s original inspection team when she was a girl, and it was to him that she was now turning for assistance in prosecuting her endeavour.

Upon being so apprised, McJoist, thinking that Jenny meant for him to tackle the job from the top down by descending through gaping holes in the roof, informed his mistress that he was no longer suited to climbing ladders, and she was a right daftie for thinking otherwise. In fact, despite his fifty years as Clerk of Works, McJoist had always been afraid of heights, he said, referring to himself. Like a junior seaman sent up a ship’s rigging to reef the mainsail, as a young man, whenever tiles and slates needed replacing, McJoist had always been the one, he said, unlucky enough to be sent to contend with the treacherous winds that whupped around the castle walls. He had slipped many times, he said, especially in wet weather, and many times had risked falling hundreds of feet to an unlamented death upon the rocks.

So, at his present age, said McJoist forcefully, he wasn’t inclined to repeat the experience; but he did repeat the statement in case he had not said it forcefully enough the first time. He also took the opportunity to remind Jenny of the occasion when, as an eight-year-old, she had pulled away the ladder he was using—fortunately not when he was upon it—and gone off to have her tea, leaving him stranded on the roof and without his tea.

When Jenny assured McJoist that, no, no, Jock, they would be exploring together from the inside, he was equally unenthusiastic. There was nothing to be gained by reopening the investigation, he said. As familiar as he was with the old plans of the castle, which he had inherited from his Clerk of Works predecessor, and notwithstanding Jenny’s grandstanding ten or so years ago with towels, there was no doubt in his mind that every inch of space within each tower, turret, loft, garret, and attic was documented and known about.

McJoist’s personal opinion, if Jenny was interested, and even if she wasn’t, was that the window frames that had intrigued generations of Plantagenets were a trick. They had been painted on the stonework as a
trompe l’oeil
, or “trompery” as he called it, in an attempt to make the castle look more symmetrical.

Jenny, adamant in her strategy, pointed out that Dragonburgh was top of the list of the world’s most asymmetric buildings, and that nobody in his or her right mind would try and alter the fact, with the possible exception of her husband, and he was not an architecturally minded person.

Upon which McJoist, recognizing the look in her eye that indicated the futility of arguing further, with the grim resignation of the reluctant gunslinger played by Gary Cooper in
High Noon
, went to fetch a ladder and his tool belt.

The following morning, having spent a restless night in fear that another tempest would finish the castle and them off for good, or that Otto Huntenfisch would cast off his demons and arise from the cellar floor, ready to send another army of builders once more into the breaches, Jenny was delighted to ascertain that the weather was calm, and learn from butler Noggins that her husband was still in deep colloquy with Napoleon.

Further emboldened by the knowledge that the CCTV and alarm systems—which until the day before had been monitored by Huntenfisch’s ex-SAS bodyguard, who would have any intruder on the ground looking at the wrong end of an automatic weapon, or up the nostrils of a sawn-off shotgun, and inspecting the tonsils of his Alsatian dog—were out of commission, and the bodyguard had taken the opportunity to abseil down the rock and go to visit his mother in Skegness, Jenny and McJoist began the aerobic exercise of climbing every staircase in the suspect area and conducting their own search for the windows.

Jenny drummed her fingers impatiently on the banister at each landing…unreasonably, given that in addition to his advanced years the Clerk of Works was encumbered by a hickory trestle ladder…as she waited for him to catch up. Every time McJoist turned, the ladder chipped more chunks of plaster off the un-smoothed walls, which Jenny was pleased to note were sweating with damp again as they had in the good old days; already, promising patches of mildew and clumps of toadstools were showing. She kicked and dug her heels into the gaudy modern canvases that had fallen; and noted with delight that the Plantagenet portraits by Van Dyck, Kneller, Reynolds, and Gainsborough, which Huntenfisch had ordered consigned to the stables, were back in place and perfectly straight, as was a Stubbs horse that looked more equine than any of those in the stalls and less so than the Plantagenet dame next to it.