The Beasts of Clawstone Castle

CHAPTER TEN

With only three days to go till Open Day the children started rehearsals for the haunting straight away — and it was very hard work.

Brenda made it clear that she didn’t just want to drip blood on to people — she wanted to strangle them and put her icy hands round their throats and tighten them till they choked.

‘Round men’s throats,’ she said firmly.

Mr Smith was still in a muddle about his size.

‘I can’t fit in there,’ he said, when Madlyn suggested that he might like to lie in the oak chest in the Great Hall because it was the nearest thing they had to a coffin.

‘But, Mr Smith, you’re a skeleton,’ said Madlyn. ‘You can’t be thinner than that.’

‘Oh yes, I forgot.’

When you have been as fat as Mr Smith had been, it is difficult to realize how much you have changed.

Most skeletons are not interesting to talk to because they can’t use proper words; they just rattle their bones and grind their teeth. But Mr Smith, like all the ghosts that Cousin Howard had found, was special, and had kept the deep and matey voice he had had when he was a taxi driver.

Ranulf spent a lot of time buttoning and unbuttoning his shirt.

‘I could open it suddenly, with a flourish,’ he said, ‘so that the rat, so to speak, exploded in people’s faces.’

But when they said yes, that would be good, he thought that maybe unbuttoning it slowly might be better. ‘So that that the tail appeared first,’ he said, ‘and then the legs’…

Because she had worked in a circus, Sunita had a real feeling for special effects. What the children loved particularly was the little sigh she gave just before she separated herself into two halves; it made the whole thing very moving and beautiful.

Which left The Feet. No one knew quite what to do with them and they were standing about rather wearily when the kitchen door opened and a blast of sound from Mrs Grove’s radio came out towards them.

It was a Scottish reel. A special one. The reel of the 51st Highlanders played on the bagpipes.

For a moment nothing happened. Then the left toes began to tap, followed by the toes on the right… and The Feet began to dance. The toes rose and fell, they curled and uncurled. The heels thumped on the floor, the ankle stumps crossed and uncrossed… and all in perfect time to the music.

All Highland reels need to be practised if one is to do them well, but the reel of the 51st Highlanders is the most difficult of all. And here were these ancient hairy feet, with their corns and their calluses, dancing as if to the manner born.

Clearly these were Scottish feet — feet from over the border. Having feet like these at Clawstone could only be an honour, and they decided to bring up Ned’s CD player and let The Feet do what they felt like on the day.

Rehearsing a show too much can be as bad as rehearsing one too little.

The ghosts which Cousin Howard had found had one thing in common: all of them were homeless.

Ranulf’s dungeon had been blown up and a shoe factory built on the site. Brenda, who had liked to haunt the graveyard behind the church where she’d been shot, left it when a motorway was driven through it. Mr Smith’s flat near the taxi rank was bought by a couple who started doing what they called ‘improvements’, which meant knocking down perfectly good walls, putting up partitions and painting the woodwork in colours which made his skull ache. And Sunita’s family had washed their hands of her when she went to work in a circus.

So the first thing the children did was to try and make the ghosts feel comfortable in the castle and give them a place they could call their own.

They offered them the dungeon and the armoury and the banqueting hall — but the ghosts chose the old nursery at the very top of the house. There was a day nursery with a Wendy house and a dappled rocking horse and a tinny piano, and a night nursery with three small beds and a sagging sofa and a row of china chamber pots. There was also a pantry and a scullery where the children’s nannies had prepared their food and washed their nappies.

‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ Madlyn asked, because the rooms, though dusty and full of cobwebs, were light and cheerful. ‘You wouldn’t rather have somewhere damp and dark?’

But the ghosts liked the white-painted rooms, which had belonged to the Percival children long ago. It reminded them of the times before they had grown up, and suffered, and become phantoms. Ranulf spent much of the time on the dappled horse — he said that the rocking movement quietened the rat — and Brenda was pleased with the big sink where she could soak her veil and dab at the spots on her dress. She had told them that she had been a war bride and married at a time when clothes were rationed and one had to save up for them not only with money but with coupons.

‘Thirty-three coupons, this dress cost me,’ she said — and of course that made it understandable that she should be so cross about the blood.

As the big day approached everything seemed to be going really well. The ghosts kept thinking of new and interesting ways of frightening people. Ned had printed leaflets warning people to beware as some terrifying spectres had been found in Clawstone and anyone with heart problems should take care. There was even a small piece in the paper.

And then on the last evening disaster struck.

The children had gone up to the nursery to wish everybody luck — and found that the rooms were empty.

‘Are you there?’ they called.

But already they were alarmed. Ghosts do not usually become invisible when they are staying with friends.

At first nothing happened. Then, very slowly, the ghosts appeared. They were huddled together on the sagging sofa and they looked terrible.

‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ asked Madlyn.

Brenda cleared her throat. ‘We don’t think we can do it,’ she said ‘It’s too difficult. It’s not what we’ve been used to.’

‘We’ll never get it right,’ said Mr Smith.

‘Do what? What can’t you do?’

‘Haunt like you want us to,’ said Ranulf. ‘Give a proper performance. Scare people.’

The children looked at each other in dismay. They knew what they were dealing with and that it was serious.

Stage fright. The terror that can come out of the blue and attack actors and musicians before a show. Sometimes it passes, but it can be so bad that nothing on earth can make the person go on and perform. The careers of brilliant artists have been completely blighted by stage fright — and no doctor has yet found a cure.

‘We don’t feel we can stay,’ said Ranulf, ‘not if we cannot do what you ask of us.’

‘It wouldn’t be fair to stay if we can’t do our work,’ said Sunita.

Strangely, it was Rollo, who was usually so dreamy, who now took charge.

‘If you come with me I’ll show you why you have to help us,’ he said, ‘why you have to stay.’

The phantoms looked at him listlessly. The Feet stayed where they were, half buried in the sofa cushions, but the others followed him out of the nursery, down three flights of stairs and out of the castle.

He led them across the gardens, past the gate to the park and to the place where the elm tree leaned over the high stone wall. Rollo climbed up to his watching place; Madlyn and Ned followed — and the ghosts glided up and settled down beside them.

They were staring down on the soft green fields of the park; the hazel and birch trees of the copse; the silver ribbon of the stream. A thrush was singing. Wild roses glowed in the hedgerows.

‘There,’ said Rollo. ‘That’s the king in front.’

The ruler of the herd came slowly out of the trees: huge and vigorous and as white as milk. Close behind him came the oldest of the cows, with her scars and her crumpled horn, followed by the others with their skittering calves. The young bull, skinny and bad-tempered, who had challenged the king so often and so unsuccessfully, came last.

‘They’ve been safe here for a thousand years,’ said Rollo, ‘but if we can’t get more visitors to come to the castle they’ll have to be sent away — or even slaughtered. That’s why you have to stay and help us.’

Sitting beside her brother, her legs dangling over the ivy-clad wall, Madlyn held her breath. Could the phantoms be expected to see what Rollo saw: beasts so special that they had to be cared for whatever the cost?

No one spoke. The park was silent; even the thrush no longer sang.

It wasn’t going to work, thought Madlyn. Whatever Rollo hoped for wasn’t going to happen.

But now one of the ghosts had stirred. Sunita. She rose to her feet and tossed her hair back and for a moment she stood balanced on the wall. And then she floated down, down into the field. Not the top half of her and not the bottom. All of her.

No one knows whether animals can see ghosts but they can certainly sense them. The king bull pawed the ground once with his powerful hooves. The cows lifted their heads and stared. The smallest of the calves gave a sudden cry.

Sunita stood still and the cattle came forward to form a circle round her. Not crowding her, just gazing with their dark and gentle eyes. The calves stopped butting and playing and came to rest by their mothers’ side. The king’s great hooves were still. Every one of the beasts had its head turned to the place where she stood. Even the young and angry bull was still.

When she saw that all the animals were calm, Sunita walked up to the oldest cow, with her scars and her crumpled horn. She put her hands together and bowed down so that her hair touched the grass.

‘I salute you in the name of Surabhi, the Heavenly Cow who gave birth to the sky and was the mother and muse of all created things,’ she said.

Then she moved on to stand before the king bull, and on the wall the children held their breath for they knew how fierce he could be, and Sunita, down in the field, did not look like a ghost: she looked like a vulnerable girl.

‘And I salute you in the name of Nandi, the bull-mount who carried the Lord God Shiva safely through the universe.’

She bowed low again and it seemed as though the bull returned her salute, bending his head so that the muscles bunched and tightened on his neck.

But Sunita had not finished. She went round the herd and to each and every beast, even the smallest of the calves, she made the same bow and spoke a greeting.

Up on the wall, the children had remembered.

‘Of course,’ said Ned. ‘Cows are sacred in India. They wander all over the streets, and no one’s allowed to harm them.’

‘And when they’re old they don’t get slaughtered, they get sent to a place where they can live in peace. Sort of like an old people’s home for cows,’ said Madlyn. ‘Rani told me, at school.’

Sunita, when she had returned to her place on the wall, told them more about what these beasts meant to her people.

‘I was born in January,’ she said. ‘There’s a feast then called Pongal to celebrate the harvest and the end of the rains. It goes on for days and on the third day is the Festival of Cattle. The bulls get silver caps on their horns and the cows get bead necklaces and bells and sheaves of corn. And garlands of flowers — wonderful flowers: marigolds and pinks and hibiscus blossom.’

For a moment, as they looked down on the park, the children imagined the cattle of Clawstone decorated and garlanded, with jewellery on their horns. What would Sir George say if that was to happen? Something rude, that was certain!

But Sunita had shown the ghosts something bigger than themselves. A world where animals mattered, where living things were worshipped. A world where there was work to be done and one’s own troubles set aside.

‘We have been selfish,’ said Ranulf. ‘We have not been brave. We will help you and we will stay.’

And the other ghosts nodded, and said, ‘Yes, we will stay.’