Chapter Two
In spite of waking so early, Theo managed to be late for breakfast. She made a beeline for Uncle Crudge.
Timothy Ambrosius Crudge was not actually her uncle, but he’d been coming to Hallewell House as a paying guest since before she was born, and had never minded a small girl in a muddy dress tripping at his heels.
He was an antiquarian and folklorist, a collector of the old and arcane.
Many of the stories Theo knew about her own family had come from him.
But as she approached, with her plate of bacon and tomatoes, he was dabbing at his lips and pushing back his chair.
‘Ah! There you are, Theodora – Miss Hallewell, I should say.’ He corrected himself, though it was unlikely Diana Hallewell could have heard.
‘Hello, Uncle Crudge. Bonjour, Mr LeRoy.’
Crudge’s new assistant gave her the briefest of nods.
‘You’ve just missed us, I’m afraid. I want to make a start before it gets any hotter – the fiery chariot of Helios had the better of us by noon, yesterday.’
‘Well, it is Midsummer’s Day,’ she said.
‘Indeed.’ After a beat, Crudge’s eyes widened. ‘Ah! Indeed! So it is.’
He tapped the side of his nose and gave her a wink.
‘May I come and help you later, Uncle?’
‘If your lady mother can spare you, then we should be delighted.’
Theo watched him walk the length of the room, saluting people here and there. Tall and slump-shouldered, with thick white hair and whiskers. Then, she had no choice but to sit next to the young couple who’d arrived the day before, whose names she had forgotten.
Diana had coached her thoroughly on what to say to strangers over breakfast, though she sometimes wondered whether they might prefer to keep their own company so early in the day.
She knew she would. She missed taking her meals in the nursery with her bears, while her nanny read a novel and ignored her.
An unwelcome fourteenth birthday present had been the end of that peaceful existence, and she’d eaten every meal since en masse.
It was excruciating. Practice makes perfect, her mother often said.
Hallewell House was not an hotel of the common sort.
The people who came to stay were visitors, guests of the house, even though they were strangers and paying.
The hall, where the dining table was fully twenty feet long, was not a restaurant, let alone a refectory, so everybody in residence sat down to eat together, with the family.
The guests were invited, sometimes via notices in the press.
Accounts were settled with the utmost discretion, and there certainly wasn’t anything as vulgar as a tariff card, let alone a front desk with a bell.
‘Good morning,’ Theo said. ‘I trust you passed a restful night?’
The young couple stared at Theo. There was something still and serious about them.
‘I don’t tend to sleep a great deal, Miss Hallewell,’ the woman said.
This explained the brown smudges beneath the woman’s eyes. Theo still couldn’t think of her name. She sipped her tea to buy time.
‘Oh . . .’ she said. ‘Sorry.’
The husband glanced at Theo impatiently. He had a neatly clipped moustache, more gingery than the hair on his head, and tapped his thumb on his folded newspaper as though he wished to be allowed to read it. Theo tried to eat quickly without appearing to, and nearly choked on a piece of bacon fat.
‘Are you here to solve the riddle?’ she tried.
‘The riddle?’ The woman looked blank. ‘Oh – the treasure?’ She made it sound like a sweet absurdity. ‘No.’
Diana appeared beside Theo’s chair, much to her relief. Swathes of auburn hair piled high on her head, and her waist laced in hard. Diana was ageless and immaculate, and would remember the couple’s name.
‘Dr Mackie, Mrs Mackie, a very good morning to you,’ she said. ‘I trust everything is to your liking?’
‘Very much so, thank you, Mrs Hallewell,’ said Mrs Mackie.
‘Theo, Dr and Mrs Mackie wish to tour the castle and grounds. I have told them that you are quite the best person to guide them.’
Her hand landed on Theo’s shoulder – a gesture of apparent affection, though her grip said otherwise.
‘Nobody knows more of our history, and our legends, than my daughter,’ Diana went on.
‘It would be my pleasure,’ Theo said, sinking inside. ‘Though I have promised to help Uncle Crudge, and—’
Diana tightened her grip. ‘Mr Crudge isn’t your uncle, dear. And he has his new assistant. I’m sure he doesn’t need you.’
Theo surrendered. ‘When would you like to go?’
Mrs Mackie cast her hooded eyes at her husband. ‘As soon as you are free to take us, Miss Hallewell,’ she said.
They took an hour to change their shoes and rest after breakfast, so Theo dawdled in the quiet parts of the house.
A whole section of the building could only be reached through a single door beneath the east stairs.
It wasn’t a smart door – no reason to suppose it led anywhere but to service areas, but in fact it marked the boundary between the original dwelling and one of its less baronial additions, where she and her mother had their rooms. There were no dreary tapestries there; the floors didn’t slope, and the windows let in a bit more light.
It was where Theo’s father, Seymour Hallewell, now six years in his grave, had made it his business to have as little to do with people as possible. Including his own daughter.
Theo drifted through the busy kitchen to the back door, hearing sloshing and chatter from the walled courtyard beyond.
Outside, she spotted Missy’s dark curls and broad hips, which Cook called saucy.
They swayed as she plunged a wooden dolly into the laundry tub.
Theo had completely forgotten it was wash-day.
A work party from the Friendless Girls’ home was always sent up to help with all the bedsheets.
Missy caught sight of Theo and grinned. Her face was built for a grin – short nose, round cheeks, a dimpled chin and a wide mouth with deep-red lips.
The most beautiful lips, in fact, like one of Rossetti’s paintings of William Morris’s wife.
Theo sometimes caught herself wondering what it might be like to be that beautiful.
Cook – and if Cook had a proper name, Theo had never heard it – said it was no wonder Missy was trouble.
‘What did you do this time?’ Theo asked.
Missy gave a petulant shrug, then laughed. ‘Seems someone put soap in Matron’s tooth powder. You should’ve heard her cough and spit!’
‘Missy!’ Theo was shocked.
‘Someone did, I said – wasn’t me, was it?’
‘Then how come you’re doing laundry again, three weeks in a row?’
‘’Cause she says she knows it was me. Says she can see it writ large on my face, and I should be sure my sins’ll find me out, and some other things besides. Which is rot.’
Missy scratched her forehead with a wet thumb.
‘But, Missy,’ said the other girl who was with her, ‘it was—’
‘What would you know?’ Missy snapped.
She stopped plunging the sheets and put her hands on her hips.
Melissa Cartwright was actually a year younger than Theo, though she seemed older.
Where she’d been before St Agnes’s Theo couldn’t guess, and nobody was willing to say.
Nor could she find out who had found her a place at the home rather than leaving her to sink into ruin.
Once, and only once, Missy had let something slip: caught by an unguarded memory, she’d said: He never once let me— But then her mouth had snapped shut, and Theo had been too afraid to ask who he was.
Mischief right down in her gypsy bones, Cook said.
Theo didn’t think it was mischief, but something far better than that – something that filled Missy up and spilled out all around her.
Bravery, perhaps. Standing there now, with her wet arms alight in the sun and long curls of hair the colour of treacle escaping from her cap, Theo didn’t see how anyone could think badly of Missy.
Least of all if she really was a gypsy, which was impossibly romantic.
‘Lord, I’m fagged,’ Missy said.
Theo eyed the heap of laundry, and began to worry. ‘I hope you won’t be too worn out for . . . you know. Later,’ she said.
It simply wouldn’t work if Missy wasn’t there. Missy was her armour.
She heard her mother calling. ‘Meet me on the hill after lunch,’ she begged, as she hurried away. ‘I’ll bring strawberries!’
Guests of Hallewell House didn’t have to pay the ha’penny entrance fee to the castle, which day trippers dropped into a slotted box at the gate.
Mrs Mackie, clinging to her husband’s arm, was panting by the time they reached the ruins.
The heaving of her chest was almost convulsive, and Theo looked away.
She’d already relayed the chronology of the castle, and a few of the tales about her distant Anglo-Saxon forebear, Lord Abrecan of Hallewell.
He’d been an Aetheling, a kingling under Alfred the Great, and supposedly a sorcerer and alchemist.
She pointed to a spot on the wooded hill opposite.
‘Over there, in an act of vile treachery, he was set upon by his own cousins while they were hunting. Bright light shone from his wounds, to banish the darkness, and—’
‘Why were they hunting at night?’ Dr Mackie said.
‘Hush, Bertie,’ Mrs Mackie whispered, but Bertie didn’t.
‘You said his blood banished the dark. So, it must have been night-time.’
‘I don’t know,’ Theo said. ‘Maybe they were hunting something that only comes out at night.’
‘A unicorn, perhaps?’
Theo reddened, but pressed on. ‘He fled towards the spring, but they never found his body. It is said that he did not die, and will return one day when—’