CHAPTER SIX
COVIN
I still hated the cow. Not as much as I had the day before, mind, but our relationship would never be strong. Not enough for me to both milk the creature and keep the outcome, at any rate. After three overturned buckets I gave it up as a bad job, petted the then docile beast and washed my hands, literally.
Actually I showered a second time as I had milk in places milk should never be. Then I sat and studied at the desk I’d found in my first lone week at Witnot. My research through the family tomes lasted a full half a day before a small stack of tinned salmon that I swore I had not brought with me rattled from an adjusted windowsill in a stack that acted like a doorbell.
I turned in my seat, and addressed the tinned fish. “So it was you who woke me this morning, was it?”
The tins sat quietly, though one moved an inch off kilter.
A smirk grew on my face and faded just as fast. “Been stuck here a while, haven’t you?”
The tin moved back. I took that as a positive.
“Limited to this piece of land?”
The tin shifted again.
“And may I have the pleasure of your name, ma’am?”
The tins didn’t move.
“Sir?” I tried again.
The tin shifted, but only a fraction of before.
Moving slowly I took a pen, ripped a clean page free from my notebook, and placed them on the bench opposite. To demonstrate with the pen, just in case it wasn’t clear and that Polty—the damn name seemed intent on sticking—I made a swirl on the page leaving a splotch of ink, and wrote my name. Then I placed the pen down and stepped back, and waited.
And waited.
But no matter how long I stood back, my hands slid into my pockets, neither the pen nor the tins moved again.
Letting out a sigh I slipped from the room, leaving everything where it was, and headed downstairs. Polty seemed determined to remain evasive, and I’d had my head stuck in the histories I’d set myself to unravel.
Unfortunately the dead didn’t usually speak, at least, not the more recently dead as I suspect Polty came from a different century than the one I researched.
“Lindy?” I rapped my knuckles on the kitchen door frame before I stepped into the room, not wanting to create a repeat of this morning’s smoke filled debacle that ended in a messy ceiling that took me over an hour to clean up and a pan full of cremated omelets that still soaked in the sink.
What greeted me wasn’t a scarf wrapped artist but a swath of Christmas shopping and an excess of garlands and other decorations that spilled out of their bags and across the entire wooden kitchen table that sat in the center of the room. It looked like she had come in, dumped everything, and left again.
I picked at the corner of a crumpled garland that just kept on coming like a clown’s scarf trick when I pulled it out of the bag. Nearly fourteen impossible feet later times four I straightened the garlands spread across the table, and read the slip that said more would be delivered this afternoon.
Had the woman emptied her bank account in an attempt to decorate the castle? If she wanted to do that, she could have asked. I would have happily pitched in. It took all of a second’s decision to call the number on the delivery slip, reverse the credit charges and adjust the order.
Hanging up I checked the fridge. A bowl of cold meaty stew sat on the top shelf along with a bag of rolls that weren’t nuclear survival grade. I heated that up and ate at the table, listening for her but the castle was too big, the walls too heavy for any sound of her to travel through too easily.
“Lindy?” I called as I wandered the halls like a specter afterward. “The soup was great.” I found a wing of the castle I hadn’t bothered with and took a left, then a few rights and stopped counting after that. Lindy seemed like the sort to get herself well and truly lost. It made logical sense that to find her, I needed to be lost, too. “Lindy?”
I pushed open a door that stood ajar, and knew instantly this wasn’t a room she—or anyone—had been in for a long time. A generation, perhaps. Maybe I had wandered too far from the beaten track and become what she accused me of being, the Dustman.
White sheets hung over every ornament in the cluttered junk room. Some portraits and mirrors on the walls were covered; others had slipped their concealment and stared out at the world that left them in isolation.
Baleful, fading eyes accused while others looked sad, or lost. I stopped before the portrait of a young man who couldn’t have been more than his late twenties. A cravat was tied in an intricate knot at his throat, his clothes overly fancy, even for his era, all lace collar and cuffs and decorated waistcoat. Everything was tasteful and colored, except for his face.
That remained pale, wane, like he had lost something.
An interest in life, perhaps.
A small plaque, tarnished but not unreadable, held an etched name at the bottom of his gilded frame.
“Aloysius Benedict Rupert Lesley III,” I read in a soft voice. “1766-1792. Ah. Was it a war, old chap?” I stared up at the drawn, gentle face of the young man and hoped to God that no cannon ever met with him.
The frame rattled, ever so slightly.
“Tell me it wasn’t a war, Al,” I murmured, my heart panging for a man born some two hundred years before me I’d never meet.
Not in the conventional manner, in any case.
The frame stayed still.
I nodded. “I am glad.”
The frame banged not so gently. Apparently Aloysius was not.
“There is a story to be told,” I whispered. “Is it yours I was meant to find here?”
Neither the portrait nor its ghostly occupant gave me the answer I sought.
“I didn’t take you for the romantic type, Dustman.”
I closed my eyes. “I can’t have a meaningful conversation with you here, can I?” But I wasn't displeased to see her, either. “Did you catch that conversation?”
“It was impressive.”
In my periphery Lindy paraded into the room, a vision in blue. Paint, it seemed, when she reached for the frame with wet stuff from the cloying scent of her.
I slapped her hands away. “Don’t you dare sully his frame,” I warned her.
“Have you asked?” She looked up at me, indignant.
“I beg your pardon.”
“You were the one who pointed out the importance of pronouns. For all you know, Mister Aloysius prefers to identify as female. Or them. It wasn’t unheard of, in certain circles, for men to cross dress. And that is not a happy face, Dustman.”
I stared down at her. “You are incredible. Still, I don’t want to see a speck of blue paint on that frame. Clear?”
“Yes, sir,” she muttered, glowering just a little.
Damn, but that was cute. Like a kitten being told no that plotted its next move and thought it could get away with whatever trouble brewed for some future trouble.
I elected to ignore her brattiness as she raised a fine point. Linking my fingers through hers, I was pleased when she stilled but didn’t pull away.
“So, Al…” I paused, giving the frame enough time to rattle. I’d held some interesting interrogations in my time, but this took the whole cake. “How would you like us to identify you?”
Nothing.
Alright, Al wanted options, or else the nickname sucked. That’s okay. We shared a common problem.
“Is there a preference for they or them?”
Silence.
“She, her?”
Nada.
Lindy blew out a breath. “You’re a he after all that, aren’t you?”
The frame jingled merrily, and for the scantest moment, I had the impression that the young man pictured in the painting smiled.
Then the fragment of light passed with the moment and the shadow fell across his face leaving him as morose and alone as he had been before.
As he would be when we left.
I really need to work out that family history.
“I think Al,” I said carefully, “appreciates the effort and the entertainment factor we bring along.”
More frame jingling.
“Is there somewhere we can find out who you were?” Lindy asked, and winced. “Are?” she corrected herself.
I squeezed her fingers and waited, as intent on the answer as she was, but the ghost gave us no answer, and his frame remained still. I glanced about the rest of the room. Dust motes floated in the air leaving a slightly muted finish on every surface.
“This might be a room best left undisturbed,” I murmured, finding the cloth that had come loose from Al’s painting. I held it up, but Lindy’s pressed hand over mine as she strained on her tiptoes to reach, stopped me.
“No,” she said softly. “Let him see.”
We exited the room hand in hand and didn’t speak until we left the quiet wing of Witnot Castle where the air flowed freely and the portraits didn’t smile.
Even for a moment.