Page 22 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle

‘She’s been in the woods. Sniffs about in there all day long,’ said Axe. He watched indulgently. Dolly’s stump of a tail was a blur of ecstasy as Alice scratched behind her ears.

‘So she likes it here,’ Alice said.

‘She likes you. She says she’s not seen you for a long while. Thought you’d forgotten her.’

‘Never! Not for a moment,’ Alice said emphatically, looking up at him. ‘What’s this secret of yours?’

‘I’ll show you,’ he said.

He led her to the stable. Inside there were two stalls, one of which was occupied by an enormous, glossy chestnut rump. ‘You’ve got a horse!’ Alice exclaimed in delight.

‘Comes with the job,’ Axe said. ‘Name’s Della.’

The mare turned her head at the sound of his voice, showing a neat, fine face with a kind dark eye and a long mane and forelock that were almost blonde. ‘She’s lovely!’ Alice said. ‘What sort is she?’

‘Suffolk Punch. Best horses for working in woods.’ He laid a friendly hand on her rich gold-brown buttock. ‘Dragging logs in the chain harness. She pulls the big wagon and the pole tug too. But I’ve got an old pair of wheels I bought from Mr Rowse, and I’m going to knock up a little trap for myself for when I want to drive down to the village. Mr Rowse, he said he’d do the ironwork for me. So you see,’ he smiled down at Alice, the thin sunlight slanting in through the doorway illuminating his red-gold hair and the fine floating dust in the air, ‘I shan’t be stuck far away from civilisation, like my sister thinks.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Alice said. ‘But I don’t think you’re far away from civilisation. This is civilisation to me. A place all your own, a horse and a dog – what more could anyone want?’

‘Quite a lot, I should say, if you’re born Lady Alice in a castle.’

‘As if that matters. It’s not really a castle, anyway, and it isn’t mine. I can’t help where I was born.’

He heard the discontent in her voice, and felt a stab of pity. She envied him his freedom – and, just then, he saw how very good it was, and how little of it she had, probably would ever have. She’d be watched and told what to do all the time, and then be married off to some old lord she didn’t even like. (He had absorbed vague ideas about how the nobs went on from Ruthie’s eldest, Polly, who read penny novels.)

Alice’s cage might be golden, but it was a cage all the same. He looked down at her seriously. ‘You can come here any time you like,’ he said. ‘You’re always welcome. And anything I’ve got is yours.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, from the heart. Then, ‘Can I see the rest of your animals? Have you still got the goshawk?’

‘He’s long gone. But I got three baby hedgehogs. You can help me feed ’em.’

Crooks hurried from the church and round to the side door to catch the choir as it left. The tall figure and sunburst hair of Axe Brandom stood out above the lesser heads like a beacon, but he was striding away, and Crooks, panting, ‘So sorry . . . ! Excuse me . . . ! May I come through?’ had to thrust his way past impeding bodies to try to get to him before he was out of sight. Bursting free of the press like a cork surfacing, Crooks saw his quarry turning down Back Lane, the narrow road that ran alongside the graveyard to the sexton’s yard at the back. He didn’t like raising his voice in a public street, but decided running was even more undignified at his age, and called Brandom’s name.

Axe stopped, turned, and waited for him, looking a trifle put out. ‘Morning, Mr Crooks.’

‘There you are,’ Crooks said, coming to a halt and catching his breath. ‘Are you quite well? I was worried about you.’

‘I’m very well, thank you, sir,’ Axe said stolidly. ‘Hoping you’re the same.’

‘But you weren’t at church last Sunday, and you never miss. And then I – I went to your cottage, and you weren’t there. It was all shut up, as if you’d gone away. So I was afraid you might have been taken to the hospital, or some terrible accident had occurred.’ He hadn’t liked to go enquiring of Mr Rowse at the forge, but that would have been his next recourse, had Axe not appeared this morning.

Axe didn’t speak, seeming to be unsure what to say. He looked away, over Crooks’s head, and his Adam’s apple bobbed awkwardly.

Crooks prompted him. ‘Have you been ill?’

Axe cleared his throat, and though he addressed Crooks, his eyes were fixed on a spot over his shoulder. ‘Truth is, Mr Crooks, I gotter new job, and I don’t live at the cottage any more. Last Sunday, ’twas the only day I could manage with moving my things to my new place, and Rector and Mr Arden said I could be excused church for the once. My brother-in-law helped me move.’

‘A new job? And a new house? You didn’t tell me.’

The reproach was in the words, not the tone. Axe felt guilty, but the fact was he hadn’t known how to tell the old gentleman, who had been helping him with his reading, that their lessons must end. He knew that, for some reason, Mr Crooks valued them as much as Axe had – if not more. ‘It’s quite a step away, the new place, up at Motte Woods,’ he said apologetically.

‘Motte Woods? That is a distance,’ Crooks said, dismayed. It was too far for him to walk there, as he had walked to the cottage at Ashmore Carr.

‘I was meaning to write you a letter to say thank you when I’d got settled. And to send you back the book you kindly lent me, about the time machine.’

‘Oh, but I didn’t lend it, that was a gift,’ Crooks said.

Axe reddened. ‘That’s a deal too good of you, sir. You shouldn’t’ve spent money on me.’