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Yvette slipped away with a whispered goodbye, as if she was floating out of the window into the distance.
Mum had sent me a text. I had ignored it until now, hoping that the emotions it forced upon me might lessen. Instead, the sense of guilt grew. My great-aunt, Granny Izzy’s step-sister, had taken a turn for the worse. The timing was bad; the long expected event was due to happen in the coming weeks, and Mum wasn’t prepared for Beryl’s departure.
Mum’s message was blunt.I’m dreading the call.
We both were. Auntie Beryl had better cling on for a little longer for both our sakes.
Twenty-Three
Middleham
She sat on a nearby wall and watched me paint. It didn’t bother me. While I worked at a comfortable pace, she had darted here and there, snapping away, switching cameras and lenses. She finished within a couple of hours.
I didn’t ask why she had been given the whole summer for this assignment. We tiptoed around the subject of patronage, not knowing where it might lead us. I loathed knowing the answers in case we exposed some malicious person, a mastermind of deceitful games and trickery. I couldn’t condone working with somebody that unscrupulous, even one called Medici. I was unenlightened by the subject of our current location too.
Middleham Castle was another box, two in fact, with an inner keep and an outer shield of a massive wall. We were between those sandwiching walls in the shade, looking up at the towering shell of the keep. Away from direct sunlight, the sense of claustrophobia intensified. This wasn’t where I wanted to be. I would have to relocate and move outside the walls and try again.
Robyn was unperturbed by the snare of walls and shadows. She had her guidebook, a hardback pocketbook with chewed corners and bleached cover, and was reading Middleham’s entry aloud. My education of castles had begun.
‘The original castle was a wooden palisade and when the new one was built, the old was abandoned. The groundwork is still visible to the southwest of the current castle.’
She lifted her nose out of the pages. ‘Ooh,’ she said. ‘I’ll take a look in a bit from up there.’ She pointed to the uppermost ramparts.
A shiver went along the ridge of my shoulders. Memories of grim passageways and concrete balconies, my fearless brothers jeering each other on, squealing with excitement as they lined up their missiles.
I remembered the screaming. God, the agonised screaming.
My head ballooned with pain. I gritted my teeth, said nothing, and dabbed a bead of mulch green onto the canvas. It dribbled in a precarious fashion. A small group of people stopped in the space between the two walls, which resembled a gargantuan roofless prison corridor. My concentration was utterly broken into pieces. I dropped down onto the grass and crossed my legs.
‘Go on,’ I said, plucking at the grass with a violent gesture.
She stared at the mingle of colours on the paper and pursed her lips.
‘It’s okay,’ I added. ‘I need a break.’
‘Oh, all right.’ She opened the book.‘The stone curtain was added in 1300 and the castle, which had been in the possession of the Neville family, was granted to Richard, Duke of Gloucester by his brother Edward IV. Richard made Middleham Castle his principle base in the north of England, and home to his son and heir, Edward…’
Robyn’s voice trailed off, then rebounded. ‘Odd to think of kids raised in a castle. On the one hand, it might be gloomy, and on the other, a great big adventure playground, lots of hide and seek. My brother probably would have found it fun.’
‘And you?’ I asked.
‘Teeming with life is how I think of castles. I don’t think I would ever have been lonely.’
She had never spent time in a mega block of council flats where being lonely while surrounded by people living on top of each other was entirely feasible and equally tragic.
She read on.
‘Tragedy struck when he –that’s Richard– lost his young son at Middleham, dying of an unknown disease. The mourning couple were described as mad with grief, and their son’s final resting place is disputed. Missing graves is something for which Richard became renowned: where did his nephews end up?’Robyn licked the page and turned it.
‘An infamous tale,’ I said. ‘I heard of the Princes in the Tower when I visited the Tower of London, yonks ago.’
‘How exciting,’ she said.
I wanted to say children dying was never exciting. Then realised she meant the tower itself. I sighed quietly to my pessimistic self. ‘Go on.’
She resumed her reading.‘The giant keep reveals how the floors were divided into different levels: kitchen on the ground floor, great hall on the second. The staircase ascends to the upper level, providing the visitor with excellent views of the surrounding countryside and village. It’s worth the climb. Although the castle is imposing and threatening in its structure, Richard spent his childhood here and grew fond of the place. Upon his death on the field of Bosworth, the castle passed into the hands of his rival, Henry Tudor. From then on, Richard’s legacy and reputation was like the castle, ruined by his successors.’
‘Do you want to climb up there?’ she asked abruptly.
