The Triple Goddess (150 page)

Masts bearing direct-broadcast satellite dishes and parabolic antennae, and radio aerials, and fibre-optic cables, were erected and run in so that plasma televisions, mobile phones, Wi-Fi laptops, and handheld devices would work as they did in town.

The quality of the cooking by the new chefs in the new kitchens was superb, and the contents of the wine cellars were beyond reproach; in the enjoyment of which one was able to admire the three hundred and sixty degree vista—on a clear day one could see forever—from the plate glass-windowed room that had been added at the top of the castle, without moving a muscle: a rotating lounge and dining facility had been constructed in which, as soon as the safety inspector had pronounced himself satisfied with his gratuity and left, his lordship sat down and went round for three days without stopping.

Around the estate the facilities were equally magnificent. A golf course rivalling the best of those north of the border was laid out on imported grass, to a design commissioned from that year’s repeat winner of The Open, Lionel Irons, at double his normal fee. The contours of the greens were adjustable, so that a clubhouse caddie with a radio device could alter the slope to suit his client, or not, and guide the worst putt into the hole, or away from it, depending on whom Huntenfisch was most or least anxious to cultivate.

The rivers were stocked with hatchery salmon that had been implanted with microchips: at the press of a gillie’s button on a net handle, the fish rushed to impale themselves on any artificial fly—Jock Scott, Usk Grub, Alexandra, General Practitioner, or Yellow Parson—in the vicinity, even if it wasn’t in the water.

Aerials on the heated butts on the moor broadcast signals that the game birds, at the time of their rearing in the pens, had been taught by the keepers to associate with feeding time. To pamper the guns in their Hackett shooting suits as they took their breaks together between marauds and battues, a mobile rest station with chef, butler, and masseuse also contained bathrooms, a lounge, a snooze area, and stock ticker monitors for up-to-the-minute money-market prices.

What his guests didn’t know was that, having discovered the Northmarches’ perfidy in exaggerating the estate’s mammalian, avian, and piscine inventory, Huntenfisch was obliged to continually restock the moors, woodlands, and rivers with thousands of ungrateful creatures that wasted no time in abandoning their new home in favour of more fauna, et cetera, -friendly zones in the million or so acres that constituted the county of Northumberland.

The anguish and frustration that this caused his lordship, he heaped as recriminations on Lady Eugénie’s head, as he ordered additional consignments of wildlife to replace those that had decamped the premises. If his project were to be a success, and those he desired to impress were not to be disappointed, he had no choice but to do so; but the necessity made him grind his teeth so much that the gold wore off and they had to be recrowned.

Jenny was soon sick of acting as hostess to a lot of fat drunken replicas of Lord Huntenfisch, who ignored her quiet attempts to talk about anything except hunting, shooting, and fishing, and money; who resented her non-admiration of their artificially aided sporting triumphs, and her lack of interest in their nefarious financial dealings. The austere but distinguished atmosphere of the castle was polluted by party after party of obnoxious peers and businessmen, and their gaudy and imperious wives, and tittering totties; who, as if they were royalty, expected to be waited on hand and foot; who expected that their toothpaste would have been squeezed onto their brushes when they picked them up, and their newspapers ironed and orderly when they came down, late, for breakfast; who threw a tantrum if their faddish dietary requirements weren’t catered to.

Fortunately, Lord Huntenfisch didn’t give a fig for what his wife did with herself, so long as she stayed out of his way. Although he was a notorious Lothario when he was not committing faun, et cetera, -icide, Otto Huntenfisch was no Othello. It didn’t bother him that Eugénie refused to participate in the entertainment of the spouses, partners, mistresses, and girl- and boyfriends, and rented companions of his guests, and would not attend his brunches, lunches, cocktail parties, dinners, soirées, and screenings. The invitees preferred their own company anyway, and Huntenfisch was content to live the life of a bachelor so that he might indulge himself as he pleased…and he pleased himself greatly.

Despite her good breeding, Jenny had never been surrounded by the trappings of privilege; and now that she was living with a man whom she wasn’t in love with, and who grew more offensive, if that was possible, as time went on, she longed for the idyllic life that she had led as a child. She dreamed of the old days, when the castle was unreclaimed from the wilderness; when it was one with the crashing waves and flung spume far below, and the sea fogs, and the wind that soughed about the pinnacle turrets and terraces.

Instead of living a hermetically sealed and soundproofed existence behind tinted triple-glazed windows and electric blinds, she longed for draughts and rattling panes; to hear the cries of seamews, and the screams of terns, whose rounding, jinking, and diving flight patterns gave the eye an extraordinary depth of perspective at every level; to see the plundering Viking surf, and peregrine falcons stooping towards the swell of—in the Old English kenning terms for the sea—the gannet’s bath, the swan’s road, and the whale’s way.

She stayed aloof as much as possible in her own quarters, which she maintained as they always had been, spare and simple, and resigned herself to living as a prisoner.

Because it was impractical for more than the public areas and private suites, kitchens, and storage areas at Dragonburgh to have been subjected to Huntenfisch’s passion for renovation and upgrade, Lady Eugénie was able to preserve a considerable amount of privacy for herself, even when she was around and about the castle. For in addition to the priests’ holes, and hidden rooms behind sliding sections of wall, and trap-doors between floors, there was a warren of secret passageways that only Jenny and the oldest castle retainers knew about, which ran between double stone walls and behind the tapestried wooden panels of the galleries, halls, drawing-rooms, and corridors.

If she heard someone coming, at the touch of a finger on a spring or pressure point on a wall, fireplace or section of furniture, she could noiselessly retire behind a revolving bookcase, or invisible door, into a network of spaces that was as extensive as that of the public rooms. Dozens of peepholes made it possible to spy out from sanctuary, and tell when it was safe to emerge.

There were other, less substantial, observers: members of Lord Huntenfisch’s entourage were often alarmed to hear whispered conversations and footsteps when nobody was present; or turn to find that a decanter had moved, or a cigar been extinguished in a brandy glass. Not a few of the guests had to his lordship’s chagrin departed early, after swearing to having seen ghostly figures floating down halls and through walls, and leering in at windows; after spending restless nights listening to creaking furniture and floorboards in their rooms; hearing manic laughter, and bloodcurdling shrieks, and groans; witnessing doors open and shut of their own accord; feeling sudden cold spots in the air; and smelling odours that had no discernible source.

Jenny, who was on a first-name basis with all of the castle’s phantom residents, enjoyed hearing about these disruptions, and plotted with them as to how best to put the frighteners on as many guests as possible, rattle their nerves, and play upon their phobias and superstitions. They all had a good laugh after Otto, who was himself immune to such conturbations, vowed that he wasn’t going to allow ectoplasm to ruin his grand project, when the exorcist whom he had hired to rid him of the plague was found gibbering on the platform at the railway halt waiting for the next train…which wasn’t due for two days.

But such amusements were diversions only, and did nothing to improve Lady Eugénie’s lot.

”

Chapter Twenty-Five

“

When it seemed that she couldn’t endure another day, Lady Eugénie Beauvais Plantagenet came up with a brilliant idea to ease her plight, and take revenge upon those who were invading her home, along with the man responsible for inviting them.

Since she would never desert Dragonburgh, she would assert herself by writing books; not literary books, but murder mysteries and thrillers, such as would appeal to the general public, by describing in intimate detail the grisly torments and unnatural deaths of the sort of people she was surrounded by: minor royalty and peers, tycoons, and wealthy socialites.

For just as the saying goes that there is more than one way to skin a cat, an empowered feline might also devise imaginative ways of dispatching its oppressors.

Jenny quickly proved that she was no slouch as an author, and she circulated the first few chapters that issued from her typewriter amongst the servants, with requests for their honest opinion. Most of them had known her all her life, and they were alternately appalled and delighted as they consumed the pages—and clamoured for more. Not that Jenny had ever been the sort to spend her days sighing with ennui, or sitting at an escritoire writing notes to her friends in violet ink on perfumed stationery; but for the daughter of an earl to be demonstrating such an aptitude for writing prussic prose was a real eye-opener.

The book was completed in a fortnight, and printed by the castle chaplain, Father Anselm, on an ancient press that Jenny had discovered years before while exploring the dungeon, where it had been consigned when it was no longer needed to print orders of service for Mass, banquet menus, and flyers warning poachers and the more pusillanimous descendants of Picts and Scots of the dangers of risking the mantraps and tripwired shotguns that surrounded the pheasant nurseries.

Father Anselm proved to be as proficient in removing oxidation from old machinery, and restoring it to working order, as his theology was rusty. Manifesting an energy in pedalling a bicycle that he had never demonstrated in his religious duties, which were not onerous because the earl and countess had only employed him for silent appearances, at dinners and other social occasions, and Huntenfisch wasn’t aware that he existed, the chaplain distributed copies around the estate.

These were passed on in ever-widening circles to friends and relatives; and it wasn’t long before a copy sent to a cousin in Edinburgh found its way to another cousin, once, or it might have been twice, removed who was a writer’s agent in London.

That was on a Monday; by Wednesday Jenny had agreed to be represented by an energetic agent, Aimée Papp; and on Friday she received a call to say that a bidding war was taking place amongst the London publishing houses.

The book was bought for a sizeable advance on royalties by Vigilante Press, an imprint of Random House that specialized in what was known in the trade as “Retributive Literature”.

Word of mouth made the book notorious before it was published; which it was, the following Thursday after the senior editor of Vigilante, Moira Bloodgood, had taken advice from her legal department, and made judicious name and sex changes to avoid substantial and incontestable actions for libel by the most briefly life-like or instantly recognizable in death characters—actually, all of them; except for one where Ms Bloodgood failed to get her way with the authoress, and persuaded her corporate boss to overrule the legal department, by convincing him that if they did not pump up the division’s earnings that quarter they would fail to meet the bloody budget.

From the moment that the book hit the chain store shelves, supply couldn’t keep up with demand, requests for discounts were scorned, pirated editions flourished, and second-hand bookshops did a roaring trade at double the list price.

The first edition of
The Acid Bath: A Dissolute Dynasty
was immediately followed by a second and third, in greater printings, and one in large print for the edification of her older fans.

By the end of the month, Ginny Plunkett—for that was the nom de plume that Eugénie chose for herself, selecting as her author’s photo a portrait presumed to be of Lucrezia Borgia, with her left breast bared, by Bartolomeo Veneto—had eclipsed readers’ memory of the previous Retributive doyenne, Lotta Gore; hit number one on both hard- and paperback best-seller lists, where she looked set to stay; and was half way through her next book, a haematological hymnal of hatred called
His Lordship Goes to Pieces
.

Ginny was also on her tenth typewriter ribbon, for she wrote like a woman possessed and hit the keys very hard.

Because Otto Huntenfisch was decent enough to neglect his wife from the day of their marriage, so that she had no distractions, and was generous enough to keep her provided with a ready supply of source material for her books, the well of Ginny Plunkett’s inspiration never ran dry. His lordship was often abroad with his cronies, hunting larger and fiercer game than was available locally, and leading parties who were as eager to deplete Africa of its lions and rhinoceroses as they were to shoot tigers from elephant houdahs in India; when no more tigers were to be found, they released the elephants and went after them on foot, taking care to send the servants and gun-bearers on ahead.

Little did Huntenfisch suspect that massacres on an even greater scale were taking place in the study in his wife’s quarters at home.

Reams of author’s copy were boxed up and sent down the cliff to be driven to the railway halt, where a locomotive that Vigilante Press rented from the Aln Valley Steam Train Society was waiting to puff across the moors to connect at Alnmouth railway station with the overnight express to London.