The Beasts of Clawstone Castle

CHAPTER SIX

Rollo was a faithful person. He did not forget to feed his caterpillars and he went on putting out saucers of milk for the hedgehog. Hardly a day passed when he did not visit the badger’s sett by the stream and he went on writing letters to his skink. But he had told his great-uncle that he would guard the cattle — and that was what he did. He knew he must not go into the park alone, that the animals could be dangerous, but he could stand by the gate in the wall that surrounded it, and watch, and this is what he did, often for hours at a time. And when he had to be indoors he went on watching. He had his special cow-watching places: the library steps in the book room and the old table in one of the attics, on to which he had put a kitchen chair. The book room faced east and the attic faced west so that he could follow the cattle as they wandered through their domain. It was only when they were deep in a cluster of trees that he lost sight of them.

The day after Rollo had first been to the park Sir George brought him a pair of binoculars, much smaller than the usual ones.

‘My father had them made for me when I was a boy. Try them,’ he said.

Rollo took the ancient leather case and lifted them out. Small as they were, he still found them hard to hold. Then suddenly he screwed the focusing knob the right way — and in an instant the face of a calf leaning against his mother’s side swam towards him, so close that he could have touched it.

‘Oh!’ said Rollo. ‘I can see his wet nose… and his ear.’

Sir George said no more but he had to turn away from Rollo because he was so moved. He had felt himself to be very much alone, but now it seemed that there was someone else — someone of his own blood — who felt as he did about the cattle. Perhaps if he could only hold out for a few years, Rollo would take over. Perhaps there would be another member of the family who would see the cattle as a sacred trust, to be protected and kept from harm.

George and Emily had been brought up to think that it was not polite to talk about money. They would not have thought it right to let the children know how desperately hard up they were and how important it was to get what they could from the visitors, so it was Ned who answered Madlyn’s questions.

‘It’s the cattle, you see. They cost the earth to keep up and Sir George’ll — he’ll never sell them or let them go. He won’t even charge people to go into the park and look at them. You could make quite a bit that way; there’s plenty of people ask to see them, but he’ll never take a penny when he shows them round.’

‘But why? Why are they so expensive?’ asked Madlyn. ‘They just eat grass, don’t they, and the grass is there?’

‘Well, it is and it isn’t. Grass is a crop like anything else. They can’t use any artificial spray or fertilizer on it because it might harm the beasts, Everything has to be done by hand, and that’s terribly expensive. And the walls of the park have to be repaired, and the warden paid.’

The warden, Bernie, was Ned’s uncle — and Ned knew as much as anybody about the upkeep of the cattle.

‘You don’t think Rollo’s too fond of the cows?’ asked Madlyn. ‘He’s sort of besotted. As though… they’re creatures from another world.’

‘Rollo’s all right,’ said Ned. ‘No need to worry about him. Come to that, there’s a lot of people who feel as though the cows are special. They’ve been here so long, it’s like having a bit of history right here. My Ma reckons if the cattle went, the village would become a sort of ghost town.’

Meanwhile the summer took its course; bees hung from the flowers, the lime trees gave off a marvellous scent, high white clouds rode across the sky. But if the countryside was beautiful, what was happening inside the castle was very worrying indeed. Because the Honourable Olive had been right: more and more visitors came to Trembellow and fewer and fewer came to Clawstone.

But it wasn’t till she went upstairs to help Aunt Emily sort out the things for the gift shop that Madlyn saw that something would have to be done.

Emily was sitting on the bed. Beside her on the quilt were the three lavender bags, the tea cosy made of Uncle George’s pyjamas, a glove with four fingers, and a bookmark stuck with pressed periwinkle flowers.

And Emily was crying.

When she saw Madlyn she hurriedly dabbed her eyes but it wasn’t easy to fool Madlyn, who came and put her arm round Emily’s shoulders and said, ‘What is it, Aunt Emily? What’s the matter?’

Emily waved an arm at the treasures on the counterpane.

‘Nothing has sold, Madlyn. Nothing. Not one thing. And I’m so tired, and I can’t think of anything else to make. It’s all hopeless, and it will break George’s heart if we have to sell the park. He seems to think the cows came to him from God.’ She groped for a handkerchief and blew her nose. ‘Before they opened up Trembellow we could just keep going, but now…’

Madlyn moved the lavender bags and sat down beside her aunt. Part of her was feeling rather cross. She had so many friends at school that she worried about and cared about, and there were her parents and Rollo. Loving people is hard work and she had not intended to start caring about her ancient aunt.

But she did care about her — and now it seemed that something would have to be done.

Only what? What would bring visitors flocking to Clawstone? Not more lavender bags, that was for sure, not more burnt scones or tea cosies… What would turn people away from Trembellow and bring them to Clawstone?

When she went to bed that night Madlyn tossed and turned for hours, racking her brains… Then suddenly she sat up in bed. Of course. She should have thought of it before. It was obvious.

When she had an idea now, Madlyn discussed it with Ned.

‘Well, I suppose you’re right. But I don’t know where we’d get them from. There aren’t any in the village as far as I know.’

‘Why not? You’d think there’d be plenty. People must have drowned in the horse pond or been murdered in dark lanes or buried in the wrong graves.’

Ned was pondering. ‘I dare say, but I suppose this is a quiet sort of place and they just stayed in the ground or wherever.’

‘I’ll have to ask Cousin Howard,’ said Madlyn. ‘He must know.’

Ned looked at her sidways. ‘I’d better come with you. He can be a bit moody like.’

‘All right. I’d be glad if you would, actually. I’ve never talked to him properly and Aunt Emily doesn’t realize that I know what he is.’

Cousin Howard was in his library and not pleased to be disturbed. They had brought Rollo also, and when he saw the three children he hurried away quickly and vanished through the door that led into his bedroom.

But this time the children took no notice. ‘Please, Cousin Howard, we need your help,’ said Madlyn. ‘We really need it.’

Cousin Howard reappeared through the door. He was wearing his usual dressing gown and leather slippers, and his face, which was always pale, had turned quite white with panic and alarm.

‘I’m not… I don’t talk to people I don’t know…’ he mumbled. ‘I don’t talk to people that I do know. I don’t talk.’

He took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. He had the long scholarly features of the Percivals, and his straggly grey hair was badly in need of cutting.

Howard had lived most of his life at Clawstone, but like all the Percival men he had been sent away to boarding school when he was a boy, where he had been most unhappy…

‘What’s the point of Percival, can anyone tell me?’ one of the prefects had sneered when he first saw Howard. ‘I mean, what’s he for?’

No one knew the answer to that, and all through his time at school Howard had been called Pointless Percival. That kind of thing can leave its mark and it was not surprising that Howard was so withdrawn and shy and spent his life sorting and cataloguing books. But though the children were sorry for him, they had no time to waste.

‘Cousin Howard, we’ve got to do something to make more people come to the castle. We’ve simply got to,’ said Madlyn. ‘Otherwise the cattle will have to be sold and maybe the castle too and—’

‘Oh, don’t say that!’ The thought of leaving his home made poor Howard tremble. ‘So we have to find a way of attracting more visitors, and we thought if we could show them some proper ghosts — real spectres — they’d come and tell their friends and—’

A heart-rending wail — a wail of true despair — came from Cousin Howard.

‘Oh, no… No! It’s impossible. It is quite out of the question. George has asked me, and Emily too — but I’ve had to refuse. Showing myself to all those people… Appearing and disappearing. I couldn’t. I absolutely couldn’t.’

And he began to shiver so badly that his outline became quite blurred.

The children looked at each other. They were very distressed by the misunderstanding, and the pain they had caused poor Howard.

‘We don’t mean you, Cousin Howard,’ said Madlyn.

‘We wouldn’t think of asking you,’ said Rollo reassuringly.

‘We need proper ghosts. Really scary ones with… oh, you know, heads that come off, and daggers in their chests, and that kind of thing,’ said Ned — and then blushed because it seemed rude to suggest that Howard was not a proper ghost.

But Cousin Howard was terribly relieved. ‘Oh, I see. Well, that’s all right then. I really don’t think I would do, you know. I tripped on my dressing-gown cord on the stairs and broke my neck, but it was a clean break — there’s no blood or anything.’ He bent his head and leaned forward to show them, and really there was hardly anything to see — just a slight dent in the ectoplasm. ‘And I have never felt inclined to gibber or howl or anything like that,’ Howard went on. ‘It isn’t what I do. But if it isn’t me you want, why have you come?’

‘We thought you might know where we could find some other ghosts. The kind that would be terrifying,’ said Madlyn. ‘We thought you might have friends.’

Howard was shocked. ‘Friends! Oh, dear me no! I don’t have friends. I don’t go out much, you see. I hardly ever go out.’

But the children just looked at him steadily.

‘Please could you try and help us?’ said Madlyn. ‘Please?’

‘It’s for the cows,’ said Rollo.