“Turn that around and look at it from my perspective,” was her reply. The conversation didn’t go anywhere productive from there but eventually we gave up and went to bed. She hadn’t had any more sleep than I had, despite my clever plan, so we both slept late the next morning.
As you might guess already, being the revered Count Cameron had not turned out to be quite the ‘happily ever after’ I had expected. Actually it was looking more and more like a lot of work. Since my grandfather’s untimely demise the estate had fallen into disrepair. The old castle had been gutted by fire; my father’s doing I am told. My uncle, the Duke of Lancaster, had taken over the rents and done his best to maintain the basic services required, but he had seen no need to restore the castle himself.
Now the Cameron lands consisted of one small village, and it was quite a stretch calling it a village. Mainly it was a collection of dwellings… most of the farmers traveled to Lancaster to sell their goods and barter. Penny and I had moved there shortly after I had received my title and we were currently in the most exalted building to be found. Luckily the good Duke had been keeping the rents and taxes for the past sixteen years, minus his portion of course. In practical terms that meant he had given me a sum amounting to slightly over nine hundred gold marks.
At first this had seemed a princely sum, especially on top of the two hundred I had won from the late Devon Tremont. How naive I had been! It truly was a lot of money, but the cost of restoring a feudal keep is considerable. I would have been quite happy just upgrading our cottage to a more traditional half-timbered, wattle and daub home with a field-stone foundation. Stone floors and solid walls; who could ask for more? But to my dismay, Penny had been taking lessons from Rose Hightower, who convinced her that this absolutely would not be satisfactory.
There had been a number of positives though, my parents had moved to Washbrook, which was the name of our village. They resisted my attempts to give them money but were more than willing to help in the restoration of Castle Cameron. Having a full time blacksmith in the area had been a boost to the economy all by itself. I had also hired a number of stone masons and carpenters, though I tried not to think about how much it cost.
Penny’s father had also moved to Washbrook and I had spent considerable time exploring my new talents repairing the injury to his back, so he was back at work again. The money I was paying to the various workers also seemed to have sparked a boom in Washbrook’s fortunes.
Over the past sixteen years the people’s taxes had largely vanished with nothing returning to stimulate the economy. Now that I had returned, most of the money that had been paid over those years was now being spent to rebuild and people had new hope. At least until some of those people started vanishing.
One of my responsibilities, as their liege, was protection. Ordinarily that would mean a place to hide in time of war, the castle, and guards to patrol the roads and keep the king’s peace. I had neither. The castle was a work in progress, but it was still uninhabitable. Guards? Ha! I could barely afford to pay the workmen I had already employed.
That’s not to say I was broke. I still had a sizable sum stored away in a hidden strongbox, more than half of what I had received. Yet my calculations had shown me already what the restoration would cost by the time it was done, and I would have to be frugal to avoid running short before the end.
While we’re on the subject, the strongbox was a work of stout craftsmanship. My father, Royce Eldridge had constructed it. Rather than being an ‘iron-bound’ box, this one was literally an iron strongbox. All kidding aside, he had actually made the entire thing of solid iron. In addition I had been studying magical wards, and my attempt to make it sounder had been successful. I pitied anyone that tried to steal from me. The whole thing, loaded, weighed over six hundred pounds. Breaking it open would require a team of men and with good tools and plenty of time; warded iron is amazingly strong. If someone did manage to force it, everyone in a large radius would wind up sleeping soundly for some time. Being a wizard did have its benefits.
Back to the matter at hand, protection, without guards or keep the only one left to handle our current situation was yours truly. I had no idea what might be behind the disappearances, but I was fairly confident that if I could find the perpetrators I would be able to handle them. My powers had grown during the past year. I spent several hours each day studying the books I had found, and much of the rest of my time was spent applying that knowledge.
I know, you’re wondering how? With a castle to rebuild and all the other projects going on you might think I should have been pitching in… lending my back etc... The Mordecai of a year ago would have done just that, but things were different now. Every time I got involved helping with something I found more ways in which magic could assist.
Take the carpenters for example, one of their biggest time consuming tasks was drilling holes for dowels. That took a lot of time with a traditional brace and bit. I had been helping them for less than an hour before I tried applying Devon’s
