We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“That was my dead wife’s chair on your left, young man,” Uncle Julian said. “I well recall the last time she sat there; we—”

“None of that,” Charles said, and shook his finger at Uncle Julian; he had been holding his chicken in his hands to eat it, and his finger sparkled with grease. “We’re not going to talk about it any more, Uncle.”

Constance was pleased with me because I had come to the table and when I looked at her she smiled at me. She knew that I disliked eating when anyone was watching me, and she would save my plate and bring it to me later in the kitchen; she did not remember, I saw, that she had put dressing on my salad.

“Noticed this morning,” Charles said, taking up the platter of chicken and looking into it carefully, “that there was a broken step out back. How about I fix it for you one of these days? I might as well earn my keep.”

“It would be very kind of you,” Constance said. “That step has been a nuisance for a long time.”

“And I want to run into the village to get some pipe tobacco, so I can pick up anything you need there.”

“But I go to the village on Tuesday,” I said, startled.

“You do?” He looked at me across the table, big white face turned directly at me. I was quiet; I remembered that walking to the village was the first step on Charles’ way home.

“Merricat, dear, I think if Charles doesn’t mind it might be a good idea. I never feel quite comfortable when you’re away in the village.” Constance laughed. “I’ll give you a list, Charles, and the money, and you shall be the grocery boy.”

“You keep the money in the house?”

“Of course.”

“Doesn’t sound very wise.”

“It’s in Father’s safe.”

“Even so.”

“I assure you, sir,” Uncle Julian said, “I made a point of examining the books thoroughly before committing myself. I cannot have been deceived.”

“So I’m taking little Cousin Mary’s job away from her,” Charles said, looking at me again. “You’ll have to find something else for her to do, Connie.”

I had made sure of what to say to him before I came to the table. “The Amanita phalloides,” I said to him, “holds three different poisons. There is amanitin, which works slowly and is most potent. There is phalloidin, which acts at once, and there is phallin, which dissolves red corpuscles, although it is the least potent. The first symptoms do not appear until seven to twelve hours after eating, in some cases not before twenty-four or even forty hours. The symptoms begin with violent stomach pains, cold sweat, vomiting —”

“Listen,” Charles said. He put down his chicken. “You stop that,” he said.

Constance was laughing. “Oh, Merricat,” she said, laughing through the words, “you are silly. I taught her,” she told Charles, “there are mushrooms by the creek and in the fields and I made her learn the deadly ones. Oh, Merricat.”

“Death occurs between five and ten days after eating,” I said.

“I don’t think that’s very funny,” Charles said.

“Silly Merricat,” Constance said.

6

The house was not secure just because Charles had gone out of it and into the village; for one thing, Constance had given him a key to the gates. There had originally been a key for each of us; our father had a key, and our mother, and the keys were kept on a rack beside the kitchen door. When Charles started out for the village Constance gave him a key, perhaps our father’s key, and a shopping list, and the money to pay for what he bought.

“You shouldn’t keep money in the house like this,” he said, holding it tight in his hand for a minute before he reached into a back pocket and took out a wallet. “Women alone like you are, you shouldn’t keep money in the house.”

I was watching him from my corner of the kitchen but I would not let Jonas come to me while Charles was in the house. “Are you sure you put everything down?” he asked Constance.

“Hate to make two trips.”

I waited until Charles was well along, perhaps almost to the black rock, and then I said, “He forgot the library books.”

Constance looked at me for a minute. “Miss Wickedness,” she said. “You wanted him to forget.”

“How could he know about the library books? He doesn’t belong in this house; he has nothing to do with our books.”

“Do you know,” Constance said, looking into a pot on the stove, “I think that soon we will be picking lettuce; the weather has stayed so warm.”

“On the moon,” I said, and then stopped.

“On the moon,” Constance said, turning to smile at me, “you have lettuce all year round, perhaps?”

“On the moon we have everything. Lettuce, and pumpkin pie and Amanita phalloides. We have cat-furred plants and horses dancing with their wings. All the locks are solid and tight, and there are no ghosts. On the moon Uncle Julian would be well and the sun would shine every day. You would wear our mother’s pearls and sing, and the sun would shine all the time.”

“I wish I could go to your moon. I wonder if I should start the gingerbread now; it will be cold if Charles is late.”

“I’ll be here to eat it,” I said.

“But Charles said he loved gingerbread.”

I was making a little house at the table, out of the library books, standing one across two set on edge. “Old witch,” I said, “you have a gingerbread house.”

“I do not,” Constance said. “I have a lovely house where I live with my sister Merricat.”

I laughed at her; she was worrying at the pot on the stove and she had flour on her face. “Maybe he’ll never come back,” I said.

“He has to; I’m making gingerbread for him.”

Since Charles had taken my occupation for Tuesday morning I had nothing to do. I wondered about going down to the creek, but I had no reason to suppose that the creek would even be there, since I never visited it on Tuesday mornings; would the people in the village be waiting for me, glancing from the corners of their eyes to see if I was coming, nudging one another, and then turn in astonishment when they saw Charles? Perhaps the whole village would falter and slow, bewildered at the lack of Miss Mary Katherine Blackwood? I giggled, thinking of Jim Donell and the Harris boys peering anxiously up the road to see if I was coming.

“What’s funny?” Constance asked, turning to see.

“I was thinking that you might make a gingerbread man, and I could name him Charles and eat him.”

“Oh, Merricat, please.”

I could tell that Constance was going to be irritable, partly because of me and partly because of the gingerbread, so I thought it wiser to run away. Since it was a free morning, and I was uneasy at going out of doors, it might be a good time to search out a device to use against Charles, and I started upstairs; the smell of baking gingerbread followed me almost halfway to the top. Charles had left his door open, not wide, but enough for me to get a hand inside.

When I pushed a little the door opened wide and I looked in at our father’s room, which now belonged to Charles. Charles had made his bed, I noticed; his mother must have taught him. His suitcase was on a chair, but it was closed; there were things belonging to Charles on the dresser where our father’s possessions had always been kept; I saw Charles’ pipe, and a handkerchief, things that Charles had touched and used dirtying our father’s room. One drawer of the dresser was a little open, and I thought again of Charles picking over our father’s clothes. I walked very softly across the room because I did not want Constance to hear me from downstairs, and looked into the open drawer. I thought that Charles would not be pleased to know that I had caught him looking at our father’s