We Have Always Lived in the Castle

with the crooked link, and I knew without seeing that our father’s watch was in his pocket. I thought that tomorrow he would be wearing our father’s signet ring, and I wondered if he would make Constance put on our mother’s pearls.

“You stay away from Jonas,” I said.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “come about a month from now, I wonder who will still be here? You,” he said, “or me?”

I ran back into the house and straight up to our father’s room, where I hammered with a shoe at the mirror over the dresser until it cracked across. Then I went into my room and rested my head on the window sill and slept.

I was remembering these days to be kinder to Uncle Julian. I was sorry because he was spending more and more time in his room, taking both his breakfast and his lunch on a tray and only eating his dinners in the dining room under the despising eye of Charles.

“Can’t you feed him or something?” Charles asked Constance. “He’s got food all over himself.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Uncle Julian said, looking at Constance.

“Ought to wear a baby bib,” Charles said, laughing.

While Charles sat in the kitchen in the mornings eating hugely of ham and potatoes and fried eggs and hot biscuits and doughnuts and toast, Uncle Julian drowsed in his room over his hot milk and sometimes when he called to Constance, Charles said, “Tell him you’re busy; you don’t have to go running every time he wets his bed; he just likes being waited on.”

I always had my breakfast earlier than Charles on those sunny mornings, and if he came down before I finished I would take my plate out and sit on the grass under the chestnut tree. Once I brought Uncle Julian a new leaf from the chestnut tree and put it on his window sill. I stood outside in the sunlight and looked in at him lying still in the dark room and tried to think of ways I might be kinder. I thought of him lying there alone dreaming old Uncle Julian dreams, and I went into the kitchen and said to Constance, “Will you make Uncle Julian a little soft cake for his lunch?”

“She’s too busy now,” Charles said with his mouth full. “Your sister works like a slave.”

“Will you?” I asked Constance.

“I’m sorry,” Constance said. “I have so much to do.”

“But Uncle Julian is going to die.”

“Constance is too busy,” Charles said. “Run along and play.”

I followed Charles one afternoon when he went to the village. I stopped by the black rock, because it was not one of my days for going into the village, and watched Charles go down the main street. He stopped and talked for a minute to Stella, who was standing in the sunlight outside her shop, and he bought a paper; when I saw him sit down on the benches with the other men I turned and went back to our house. If I went into the village shopping again Charles would be one of the men who watched me going past. Constance was working in her garden and Uncle Julian slept in his chair in the sun, and when I sat quietly on my bench Constance asked, not looking up at me, “Where have you been, Merricat?”

“Wandering. Where is my cat?”

“I think,” Constance said, “that we are going to have to forbid your wandering. It’s time you quieted down a little.”

“Does ‘we’ mean you and Charles?”

“Merricat.” Constance turned toward me, sitting back against her feet and folding her hands before her. “I never realized until lately how wrong I was to let you and Uncle Julian hide here with me. We should have faced the world and tried to live normal lives; Uncle Julian should have been in a hospital all these years, with good care and nurses to watch him. We should have been living like other people. You should…” She stopped, and waved her hands helplessly. “You should have boy friends,” she said finally, and then began to laugh because she sounded funny even to herself.

“I have Jonas,” I said, and we both laughed and Uncle Julian woke up suddenly and laughed a thin old cackle.

“You are the silliest person I ever saw,” I told Constance, and went off to look for Jonas. While I was wandering Charles came back to our house; he brought a newspaper and a bottle of wine for his dinner and our father’s scarf which I had used to tie shut the gate, because Charles had a key.

“I could have worn this scarf,” he said irritably, and I heard him from the vegetable garden where I had found Jonas sleeping in a tangle of young lettuce plants. “It’s an expensive thing, and I like the colors.”

“It belonged to Father,” Constance said.

“That reminds me,” Charles said. “One of these days I’d like to look over the rest of his clothes.” He was quiet for a minute; I thought he was probably sitting down on my bench. Then he went on, very lightly. “Also,” he said, “while I’m here, I ought to go over your father’s papers. There might be something important.”

“Not my papers,” Uncle Julian said. “That young man is not to put a finger on my papers.”

“I haven’t even seen your father’s study,” Charles said.

“We don’t use it. Nothing in there is ever touched.”

“Except the safe, of course,” Charles said.

“Constance?”

“Yes, Uncle Julian?”

“I want you to have my papers afterwards. No one else is to touch my papers, do you hear me?”

“Yes, Uncle Julian.”

I was not allowed to open the safe where Constance kept our father’s money. I was allowed to go into the study, but I disliked it and never even touched the doorknob. I hoped Constance would not open the study for Charles; he already had our father’s bedroom, after all, and our father’s watch and his gold chain and his signet ring. I was thinking that being a demon and a ghost must be very difficult, even for Charles; if he ever forgot, or let his disguise drop for a minute, he would be recognized at once and driven away; he must be extremely careful to use the same voice every time, and present the same face and the same manner without a slip; he must be constantly on guard against betraying himself. I wondered if he would turn back to his true form when he was dead. When it grew cooler and I knew that Constance would be taking Uncle Julian indoors I left Jonas asleep on the lettuce plants and came back into the house. When I came into the kitchen Uncle Julian was poking furiously at the papers on his table, trying to get them into a small heap, and Constance was peeling potatoes. I could hear Charles moving around upstairs, and for a minute the kitchen was warm and glowing and bright.

“Jonas is asleep in the lettuce,” I said.

“There is nothing I like more than cat fur in my salad,” Constance said amiably.

“It is time that I had a box,” Uncle Julian announced. He sat back and looked angrily at his papers. “They must all be put into a box, this very minute. Constance?”

“Yes, Uncle Julian; I can find you a box.”

“If I put all my papers in a box and put the box in my room, then that dreadful young man cannot touch them. He is a dreadful young man, Constance.”

“Really, Uncle Julian, Charles is very kind.”

“He is dishonest. His father was dishonest. Both my brothers were dishonest. If he tries to take my papers you must stop him; I cannot permit tampering with my papers and I will not tolerate intrusion. You must tell him this, Constance. He is a bastard.”

“Uncle Julian—”

“In a purely metaphorical sense, I assure you. Both my brothers married women of very strong will. That is merely a word used—among men, my dear; I apologize for submitting you to such a word—to categorize an undesirable fellow.”

Constance turned without speaking and opened the door which led to the cellar stairs and to the rows and rows of food preserved at the very bottom of our house. She went quietly down the stairs, and we could hear Charles moving upstairs and Constance moving downstairs.

“William of Orange was a bastard,” Uncle Julian said to himself; he took up a bit of paper and made a note.