“Excuse me?”
“You’ve lived here all your life, have you not? Apart from being away at school?
“Yes, I have, but I don’t know anything about sewers. Are you meaning the smell? I barely notice it any longer. Once you’ve been here a day or two, it does fade, you know. Except for Lady Buckshaw. She never seems to get used to anything.” His lip curled in distaste. Theodore assumed he was talking about Felicia, not the old Countess.
“Lady Buckshaw is sensitive, that’s all.”
Brodie merely replied with a grunt. He stabbed his hoe into the ground, a random and unskilled attempt at weeding the dregs of the vegetable bed.
“Well,” Theodore said, pushing himself away from the wall with a decisive gesture, “I shall let you get on with your gardening. Such a shame the castle’s gardens have fallen into disrepair. I don’t suppose you have inclinations towards garden design?”
“No, not a bit of it, sorry.”
“Shame, shame. Never mind. I really ought to persuade Percy to engage a man to oversee all this. Otherwise the next time we visit, we shan’t find the place at all! It will be like Sleeping Beauty’s castle, all hidden by briars, ha ha!”
Brodie smiled thinly. Theodore watched his eyes. Adelia had told him that true smiles wrinkle the skin around the eyes.
Brodie’s skin was smooth and clear. “Ha, ha.”
“Right. Right. Yes, well. Well then. I fancy I shall take a turn about the grounds and see what I can make of the drainage system here. If I am not seen again, send out search parties, will you? Ha ha!”
Not a flicker of amusement reached Brodie’s eyes. He said, “Ha. Ha. Be careful.”
“Of...?”
“The swamps, the rocks, the briars, my lord.”
“Yes, yes, quite. Oh, one more thing. We didn’t have any ices at dinner last night.”
At last an emotion registered on Brodie’s face. He looked confused. “My lord?”
“No ices. Which was a bit strange, you see, as there’s an ice house in the grounds. That’s what that lump is, isn’t it, in the woods?”
“It’s hardly a woods and no, sir, there isn’t really an ice house. It’s not used. I understand it was built by a previous earl who didn’t think about the situation very well. It’s in quite the wrong place, and as soon as they tried to dig down, it filled with water – of course it would. They couldn’t dig anywhere else due to the rocks. Rocks here, swamps there; none of this land is good for anything, sir.” He stabbed again with his hoe to emphasise his point. “And all of the soil itself is peaty and acid and nasty. So anyway, they built up the walls rather than dig down, and heaped soil all around it but it never worked as a place to keep things cool. It wouldn’t. An ice house is a feat of clever engineering, as you know, my lord.”
“So what’s in it now?”
“I don’t know. It’s a rancid place. Rocks, they say. Just full of rocks and slime. I don’t go down there. No one does.” He moved backwards, jabbing with the hoe and making no difference to the weeds at all.
“Well, thank you. I’ll be off.” Theodore looked up at the sky. “Good weather for gardening, at any rate,” he mumbled. “Good day to you.”
“Good day. Wait – sir – my lord, one last thing, if I might be so bold?” Now Brodie’s face was all pleading and hesitancy. “If you are staying for a little while, for the ball and so on, then if you would like to ride out on an afternoon, I should be more than glad to show you the ways and tracks on the moors.”
“I should like that very much.”
As Theodore strode away, he reflected that however starved he was of male company at Tavy Castle, things were far, far worse for the young Oscar Brodie.
THEODORE ATTEMPTED to make a circuit of the castle, but the way that it had evolved over the centuries meant he was often thwarted by sudden outcrops of rock, passages, doors and walls which joined to the tower or the Tudor part, and the whole enterprise was frustrating and confusing. If he had his way, he’d raze the whole thing to the ground and start again. He’d choose a nice, neat, regular style – the Georgians had it right – and fill it with modern conveniences like indoor water closets and the fancy type of bath that his daughter Dido had at Mondial Castle. It squirted water out of a series of pipes and once one got past the notion that one was being spat upon by hot metal snakes, it was a most relaxing experience. He disliked the fashion for ornate pseudo-gothic housebuilding with its pointy rooves and carved eaves and painted arches everywhere. He was of an older generation and longed for rectangular windows and wide corridors, with rooms full of lots of light and chairs littered everywhere so that one could sit whenever one’s aging knees demanded it.
He came around the corner of a red-brick addition to the kitchens area, which did not look at all right against the grey stone of the rest of the building, and found he was looking down a path that led through the willows to the ice house. That would make sense, he thought. The maids would expect to be able to get from the back of the castle to the ice house. He followed the path, looking this way and that for any clue as to the drainage of the place. Apart from half a bit of weed-clogged moat, he couldn’t work anything out, and if he were to be totally honest with himself, he didn’t have the first clue about sewers himself. He thought he’d see something obvious if he turned his trained scientific eye on things, but he didn’t. How deep did foundations go? Where did the sinks drain out to? Did they drain, or were the emptied by slop
