‘At least there’s not much chance of being bored for the next few weeks.’
‘Boredom can be a good thing, given the alternative,’ Peters said with a sigh, but Tom turned to greet his head groom and managed to ignore him.
‘There’s good news and bad, Dacre,’ he informed the man cheerfully once Dacre reported a smooth journey and they had compared notes on the roads and the state of the horses after the easy run they’d had today.
‘I can see the bad part of it, milord, so what’s to be happy about?’
‘Mr Peters and I have swept and scrubbed the unused stables as best we can, so we can house the horses in reasonable comfort and safety. If your lads go and fetch bedding and feed from the barns over yonder, I dare say the nags will be as happy as we can make them, even if I don’t hold much hope for the rest of us. I trust you didn’t push the teams so hard we can’t water them when you find a few more buckets?’
‘Not I, but it’s as well we brought plenty with us, my lord,’ Dacre said with a disapproving look at their handiwork.
Tom’s head groom always disdained anything he hadn’t ordered himself on principle, but, since Amazonian Miss Trethayne had sent her three young brothers and other assorted urchins to ‘help’, Tom knew they had achieved a lot. Luckily the lads had soon grown bored with sweeping up choking clouds of ancient dust and cleaning windows and melted away to find more amusing things to do.
‘Never mind, Dacre. Barnabas will be here with the riding horses any moment, he can help you restore order in the morning,’ Tom said.
‘I’ll try to be grateful for small mercies then, my lord.’
‘For now the horses need your attention and I hope you find all their gear on the wagons in the dark. A few moth-eaten brushes and a curry-comb with every other tooth missing won’t do the job after their journey.’
‘Very true, my lord. Now you leave the beasts to me while you go and turn yourself back into a gentleman.’
‘Of course. Why else would I pay you so handsomely? Even when you think it’s your duty to set me down like a scrubby schoolboy with every other word.’
‘Somebody has to do it, my lord,’ Dacre replied dourly. ‘Her ladyship trusted me with the job when you was a lad, and I’m not done hoping you’ll toe the line one day quite yet.’
‘Do let me know when you consider me mature enough to run my own life, won’t you?’ Tom said cheerfully.
Knowing he could relax and leave his horses and men in good hands now, he wondered if he and Peters would have to make do with a very quick dip in the still not-very-warm April sea he could hear whispering against the foreshore of the cove below the castle. There was no chance of him getting a wink of sleep if he tried to bed down in all this dirt, even if it was in a stable, so the sea it would have to be and what else had he expected of the wreck he’d made of his former home?
‘Polly said we were to bring lanterns to light you and Mr Peters inside,’ little Joshua Trethayne’s childish voice piped up as the glow of them softened the fast falling darkness in the stable yard. ‘But you’re to be careful because the whole place will go up like a tinder box if you let one fall, or so Lady W. says. Oh, and you’re not to be late for supper if you have to scrape the dirt off to be in time.’
‘Bagpipe,’ Master Henry Trethayne condemned his little brother in his halfway between child-and-man voice. ‘Lady Wakebourne said we’re to say there’s enough hot water for two baths in the coppers, but you’ll have to take them in the laundry house, because there’s nobody to carry water up and down stairs for you.’
‘And there’s the biggest pie we ever saw ready for dinner and we’re starved,’ the boy Tom thought was called Joe said from behind the three brothers.
‘We’d best hurry, Peters,’ Tom told his filthy companion, wondering if he had that much dust and dirt on his once-immaculate person as well. ‘Do you know if there’s any soap to spare, boys? Or must I search the wagons before we come in?’
‘I sincerely hope not, my lord,’ Peters said as if he’d experienced quite enough misplaced optimism for one day, ‘you would get dust and dirt on everything.’
‘Aye, there’s soap all right,’ one of the skinny urchins Tom thought more at home on a London street than rural Dorset said gloomily, ‘more of it than a body should have to put up with in a whole lifetime, if you asks me.’
‘That’s because you’re a mudlark,’ Henry Trethayne said cheerfully.
‘Then at least I ain’t a pretty little gentleman.’
‘D’you still think I’m pretty now?’ Henry asked as he lunged for his friend and wrestled him to the ground.
‘Please ignore them, my lord,’ his elder brother said loftily, but Tom’s night vision was good enough to see him eyeing the pair with the wistfulness of an adult looking back on the pleasures of his youth. ‘They know no better, I’m afraid.’
‘Clearly,’ he said as solemnly as he could. ‘Now, about that soap and water? Could you point us in the direction of it so we’re rid of our dirt before the ladies see us? We’ll get a fine scolding if we venture inside looking like this.’
‘Hmm? Oh, yes, Josh will take you, won’t you, Josh?’ the boy said absently, weighing up how best to intervene as a third boy launched himself into the fray and maturity felt less important than evening the odds.
‘Come on then, Mr Lord,’ the youngest Trethayne ordered cheerfully.
‘You don’t want to join in?’ Tom couldn’t help asking as they walked towards the castle with the noises of battle fading behind them.
‘I’m the smallest and weakest. It would be foolish and painful to do so,’ the boy informed him as if he was the grown up.
‘True,’ Peters said with a heartfelt sigh.
‘Younger son?’ Tom couldn’t help asking.
‘Something like that,’ his companion replied in his usual guarded tone when Tom tried to learn more about this enigma of a man than the enigma really wanted him to know.
Tom forgot his companions and everything else when Dayspring Castle loomed ever closer out of the half-dark. Its air of down-at-heel raffishness was hidden by the coming night and the feeling of malevolent power he recalled all too well from his childhood was in command once more. Then it had seemed to have a real, beating heart tucked away somewhere, hellbent on showing him he was as nothing compared to the grand history of Dayspring and its warrior lords.
His breath shortened and his heartbeat began to race, as if he was on the edge of the same panic he’d felt every time he was dragged back here from an attempt to run away as a boy. Back then he’d usually betrayed his terror by being physically sick or, on one terrible occasion, losing control of all his bodily functions as his guardian and that terrifying pack of dogs bayed at him from the castle steps and he felt the snap of savage jaws held just far enough off not to actually bite, but close enough to be a boy’s worst nightmare come horribly true. Thank Heaven Peters knew nothing of that awful moment of weakness as he remarked what a fine place it was and how he might envy its owner, if it wasn’t close to ruin.
‘It’s not a ruin,’ Joshua Trethayne said as if he loved it. ‘The North Tower is dangerous and Poll says we’re not to go there, even if someone could die if we don’t. Jago says it’s haunted, so I don’t want to go up there anyway and Toby can say I’m a coward as often as he likes, but I really don’t want to know who the ghost is.’
‘Quite right,’ Tom said dourly. ‘He’s not worth meeting.’
‘I would consider meeting any ghost a memorable experience, even if their very existence is beyond the realms of logic to me,’