Songs of Love and War Read online

  ‘Just because she had a cauldron and a cat doesn’t mean she was a witch,’ Bridie argued.

  ‘Maggie O’Leary was a witch and everyone knew it. She put a curse on Barton Deverill.’

  Bridie’s laughter caught in her throat. ‘What was the curse?’

  ‘That Barton Deverill and every male heir after him will never leave Castle Deverill but remain between worlds until an O’Leary returns to live on the land. It’s very unfair because Grandpa and Father will have to hang around here as ghosts, possibly forever. Grandma says that it is very unlikely that a Deverill will ever marry an O’Leary!’

  ‘You never know. They’ve come up in the world since then,’ Bridie added helpfully, thinking of Jack O’Leary whose father was the local vet.

  ‘No, they are all doomed, even my brother Harry.’ Kitty sighed. ‘None of them believes it, but I do. It makes me sad to know their fate.’

  ‘So, are you telling me that Barton Deverill is still here?’ Bridie asked.

  Kitty’s eyes widened. ‘He’s still here and he’s not very happy about it.’

  ‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’

  ‘I know it,’ said Kitty emphatically. ‘I can see him.’ She bit her lip, aware that she might have given too much away.

  Now Bridie was more interested. She knew her friend wasn’t a liar. ‘How can you see him if he’s a ghost?’

  Kitty leaned forward and whispered, ‘Because I see dead people.’ The candle flame flickered eerily as if to corroborate her claim and Bridie shivered.

  ‘You can see dead people?’

  ‘I can and I do. All the time.’

  ‘You’ve never told me before.’

  ‘That’s because I didn’t know if I could trust you.’

  ‘What are they like, dead people?’

  ‘Transparent. Some are light, some are dark. Some are loving and some aren’t.’ Kitty shrugged. ‘Barton Deverill is quite dark. I don’t think he was a very nice man when he was alive.’

  ‘Doesn’t it scare you?’

  ‘It used to, until Grandma taught me not to be afraid. She sees them too. It’s a gift, she says. But I’m not allowed to tell anyone.’ She unconsciously rubbed the palm of her hand with her thumb.

  ‘They’ll lock you away,’ Bridie said and her voice quivered. ‘They do that, don’t you know. They lock people away in the red-brick in Cork City for less and they never come out. Never.’

  ‘Then you’d better not tell on me.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t.’

  Kitty brightened. ‘Do you want to see one?’

  ‘A ghost?’

  ‘Barton Deverill.’

  The blood drained from Bridie’s cheeks. ‘I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Come on, I’ll introduce you.’ Kitty blew out the candle and pushed open the door.

  The two girls hurried along the passageway. Regardless of the disparity of their colouring, they could have been sisters as they skipped off together for they were similar in height and build. However, there was a marked difference in their clothes and countenance. While Kitty’s dress was white, embellished with fine lace and silk, tied at the waist with a pale blue bow, Bridie’s was brown and shapeless and made from a coarse, scratchy frieze. Kitty wore black lace-up boots that reached mid-calf, and thick black stockings, while Bridie’s feet were bare and dirty. Kitty’s governess brushed her hair and pinned it off her face with ribbons; Bridie received no such attention and her hair was tangled and unwashed, almost reaching as far as her waist. The difference was not only marked in their attire but in the way they looked out onto the world. Kitty had the steady, lofty gaze of a child born to privilege and entitlement, while Bridie had the feral stare of a waif who was always hungry, and yet there was an underlying need in Kitty that bridged the gap between them. Were it not for the loving company of her grandparents and the sporadic attention lavished on her by her father when he wasn’t out hunting, shooting game or at the races, Kitty would have been starved of love. It was this longing that gave balance to their friendship, for Kitty needed Bridie just as much as Bridie needed her.

  While Kitty was unaware of these differences, Bridie, who heard her parents and brothers complaining endlessly about their lot, was very conscious of them. However, she liked Kitty too much to give way to jealousy, and she was too flattered by her friendship to risk losing it. She accepted her position with the passive compliance of a sheep.

  The two girls heard Mrs Doyle grumbling to one of the maids in the kitchen but they scurried on up the back staircase as quiet as kittens, aware that if they were caught their playtime would be over and Bridie summoned to wash up at the sink.

  No one ever went up to the western tower. It was chilly and damp at the top of the castle and the spiral staircase was in need of repair. Two of the wooden steps had collapsed and Kitty and Bridie had to jump over the gaps. Bridie breathed easily now because no one would find them there. Kitty pushed open the heavy door at the top of the stairs and peered around it. Then she turned back to her friend. ‘Come,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t be frightened. He won’t hurt you.’

  Bridie’s heart began to race. Was she really going to see a ghost? Kitty seemed so sure. Tentatively and with high expectations, Bridie followed Kitty into the room. She looked at Kitty. Kitty was smiling at a tatty old armchair as if someone was sitting in it. But Bridie saw nothing besides the faded burgundy silk. However, the room was colder than the rest of the castle and she shivered and hugged herself in a bid to keep warm.

  ‘Well, can’t you see him?’ Kitty asked.

  ‘I can’t see anything,’ said Bridie, wanting to very much.

  ‘But he’s there!’ Kitty exclaimed, pointing to the chair. ‘Look harder.’

  Bridie looked as hard as she could until her eyes watered. ‘I don’t doubt you, Kitty, but I can see nothing but the chair.’

  Kitty was visibly disappointed. She stared at the man scowling in the armchair, his feet propped up on a stool, his hands folded over his big belly, and wondered how it was possible for her to see someone so clearly when Bridie couldn’t. ‘But he’s right in front of your nose. This is my friend, Bridie,’ Kitty said to Barton Deverill. ‘She can’t see you.’

  Barton shook his head and rolled his eyes. That didn’t surprise him. He’d been stuck in this tower for over two hundred years and in all that time only the very few had seen him – most unintentionally. At first it had been quite amusing being a ghost but now he was bored of observing the many generations of Deverills who came and went, and even more disenchanted by the ones, like him, who remained stuck in the castle as spirits. He wasn’t keen on company and there were now too many furious Lord Deverills floating about the corridors to be easily avoided. This tower was the only place he could be free of them, and their wrath at discovering suddenly, upon dying, that the Cursing of Barton Deverill was not simply a family legend but an immutable truth. With the benefit of hindsight, they would have gladly taken an O’Leary for a bride and subsequently ensured their eternal rest as a free soul in Paradise. As it was they were too late. They were stuck and there was nothing they could do about it except rant at him for having built the castle on O’Leary land in the first place.

  Now Barton turned his jaded eyes onto the eerie little girl whose face had turned red with indignation, as if it were somehow his fault that her plain friend was unable to see him. He folded his arms and sighed. He wasn’t in the mood for conversation. The fact that she sought him out from time to time did not make her his friend and did not give her permission to show him off like an exotic animal in a menagerie.

  Kitty watched him stand up and walk through the wall. ‘He’s gone,’ she said, dropping her shoulders in defeat.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s quite bad-tempered, but so would I be if I were stuck between worlds.’

  ‘Shall we leave now?’ Bridie’s teeth were chattering.

  Kitty sighed. ‘I suppose we must.’ They made their way back d
own the spiral staircase. ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’

  ‘I cross my heart and hope to die,’ Bridie replied solemnly, wondering suddenly whether her friend wasn’t a little over-imaginative.

  In the bowels of the castle Mrs Doyle was expertly making butterballs between two ridged wooden paddles, while the scrawny kitchen maids were busy peeling potatoes, beating eggs and plucking fowl for that evening’s dinner party, to which Lady Deverill had invited her two spinster sisters, Laurel and Hazel, known affectionately as the Shrubs, Kitty’s parents, Bertie and Maud, and the Rector and his wife. Once a month Lady Deverill invited the Rector for dinner, which was an obligation and a great trial because he was greedy and pompous and prone to spouting unsolicited sermons from his seat at her table. Lady Deverill didn’t think much of him, but it was her duty as Doyenne of Ballinakelly and a member of the Church of Ireland, so she instructed the cook, brought in flowers from the greenhouses and somewhat mischievously invited her sisters to divert him with their tedious and incessant chatter.

  When Mrs Doyle saw Bridie she pursed her lips. ‘Bridie, what are you doing loitering in the corridor when I have a banquet to cook? Come and make yourself useful and pluck this partridge.’ She held up the bird by its neck. Bridie pulled a face at Kitty and went to join the kitchen maids at the long oak table in the middle of the room. Mrs Doyle glanced at Kitty, who was standing in the doorway with her long white face and secretive mouth that always curled at the corners, as if she had exclusive knowledge of something important, and wondered what she was thinking. There was something in that child’s eyes that put the heart crossways in her. She couldn’t explain what it was and she didn’t resent the girls playing together, but Bridie’s mother didn’t think any good would come of their friendship when, as they grew older, their lives would inevitably take them down different paths and Bridie would be left feeling the coldness and anguish of Kitty’s rejection. She went back to her butter. When she looked up again Kitty had gone.

  Chapter 2

  Kitty’s attention had been diverted by the loud crack of gunfire. She remained for a moment frozen on the back stairs. It sounded like it had come from inside the castle. There followed an eruption of barking. Kitty hurried into the hall to see her grandfather’s three brown wolfhounds bursting out of the library and heading off up the staircase at a gallop. Without hesitation she ran after them, jumping two steps at a time to reach the landing. The dogs raced down the corridor, skidding on the carpet as they charged round the corner, narrowly missing the wall.

  Kitty found her grandfather in his habitual faded tweed breeches and jacket at the window of his dressing room, pointing a rifle into the garden. He gleefully fired another shot. It was lost in the damp winter mist that was gathering over the lawn. ‘Bloody papists!’ he bellowed. ‘That’ll teach you to trespass on my land. Now make off with you before I aim properly and send you to an early grave!’

  Kitty watched him in horror. The sight of Hubert Deverill shooting at Catholics was not a surprise. He often clashed with the poachers and knackers creeping about his land in search of game and she had eavesdropped enough at the library door to know exactly what he thought of them. She didn’t understand how her grandfather could loathe people simply for being Catholic – all Kitty’s friends were Irish Catholics. Hubert’s dogs panted at his heels as he brought the gun inside and patted them fondly. When he saw his granddaughter standing in the doorway, like a miniature version of his wife with her eyebrows knitted in disapproval, he grinned mischievously. ‘Hello, Kitty my dear. Fancy some cake?’

  ‘Porter cake?’

  ‘Laced with brandy. It’ll do you good. Put some colour in those pale cheeks of yours.’ He pressed the bell for his valet, which in turn rang a little bell on a board down in the servants’ quarters above the name ‘Lord Deverill’.

  ‘I was born pale, Grandpa,’ Kitty replied, watching him open his gun and fold it over his arm like her grandmother held her handbag when they went into Ballinakelly.

  ‘How’s the Battle of the Boyne?’ he asked.

  She sighed. ‘That was last year, Grandpa. I’m learning about the Great Fire of London now.’

  ‘Good good,’ he muttered, his mind now on other things.

  ‘Grandpa?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you love this castle?’

  ‘Minus point for a silly question,’ Hubert replied gruffly.

  ‘I mean, would you mind if you were stuck here for all eternity?’

  ‘If you’re referring to the Cursing of Barton Deverill, your governess should be teaching you proper history, not folklore.’

  ‘Miss Grieve doesn’t teach me folklore, Grandma does.’

  ‘Yes, well . . .’ he mumbled. ‘Poppycock.’

  ‘But you would be happy here, wouldn’t you? Grandma says you love the castle more than any Deverill ever has.’

  ‘You know your grandmother is always right.’

  ‘I wonder whether you’d mind terribly living on—’

  He stopped her before she could continue. ‘Where the devil is Skiddy? Let’s go and have some cake before the mice eat it, shall we? Skiddy!’

  As they made their way down the cold corridor to the staircase they were met by a wheezing Mr Skiddy. At sixty-eight, Frank Skiddy had worked at Castle Deverill for over fifty years, originally in the employ of the previous Lord Deverill. He was very thin and frail on account of an allergy to wheat and lungs scarred by a chest infection suffered in early childhood, but the idea of retirement was anathema to the old guard who worked on in spite of their failing bodies. ‘My lord,’ he said when he saw Lord Deverill striding towards him over the rug, followed by his granddaughter and a trio of dogs.

  ‘You’re slowing down, Skiddy.’ Hubert handed the valet his gun. ‘Needs a good clean. Too many rabbits in the gardens.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ Mr Skiddy replied, accustomed to his master’s eccentric behaviour and unmoved by it.

  Lord Deverill strode on down the front stairs. ‘Fancy a game of chess with your cake, young lady?’

  ‘Yes please,’ Kitty replied happily. ‘I’ll set up the board and we can play after tea.’

  ‘Trouble is you spend too much time in your imagination. Dangerous place to be, one’s imagination. Your governess should be keeping you busy.’

  ‘I don’t like Miss Grieve,’ said Kitty.

  ‘Governesses aren’t there to be liked,’ her grandfather told her sternly, as if liking one’s governess was as odd an idea as liking a Catholic. ‘They’re to be tolerated.’

  ‘When will I be rid of her, Grandpa?’

  ‘When you find yourself a decent husband. You’ll have to tolerate him, too!’

  Kitty loved her grandparents more than she loved her parents or her siblings because in their company she felt valued. Unlike her mama and papa, they gave her their time and attention. When Hubert wasn’t hunting, fishing, picking off snipe around the estate with his dogs or in Dublin at the Kildare Street Club or attending meetings at the Royal Dublin Society, he taught her chess, bridge and whist with surprising patience for a man generally intolerant of children. Adeline let her help in the gardens. Although they had plenty of gardeners, Adeline would toil away for hours in the greenhouses, with their pretty blancmange-shaped roofs. In the warm, earthy air of those glass buildings she grew carnations, grapes and peaches, and nurtured a wide variety of potted plants with long Latin names. She grew herbs and flowers for medicinal purposes, taking the trouble to pass on her knowledge to her little granddaughter. Juniper for rheumatoid arthritis, aniseed for coughs and indigestion, parsley for bloating, red clover for sores and hawthorn for the heart. Her two favourites were cannabis for tension and milk thistle for the liver.

  When Hubert and Kitty reached the library, Adeline looked up from the picture of the orchid she was painting at the table in front of the bay window, taking advantage of the fading light. ‘I suppose that was you, dear, at your dressingroom window,’ she said, giving her husb
and a reproachful look over her spectacles.

  ‘Damn rabbits,’ Hubert replied, sinking into the armchair beside the turf fire that was burning cheerfully in the grate, and disappearing behind the Irish Times.

  Adeline shook her head indulgently and resumed her painting. ‘If you go on so, Hubert, you’ll just make them all the more furious,’ said Adeline.

  ‘They’re not furious,’ Hubert answered.

  ‘Of course they are. They’ve been furious for hundreds of years . . .’

  ‘What? Rabbits?’

  Adeline suspended her brush and sighed. ‘You’re impossible, Hubert!’

  Kitty perched on the sofa and stared hungrily at the cake that had been placed with the teapot and china cups on the table in front of her. The dogs settled down before the fire with heavy sighs. There’d be no cake for them.

  ‘Go on, my dear, help yourself,’ said Adeline to her granddaughter. ‘Don’t they feed you over there?’ she asked, frowning at the child’s skinny arms and tiny waist.

  ‘Mrs Doyle is a better cook,’ said Kitty, picturing Miss Gibbons’s fatty meat and soggy cabbage.

  ‘That’s because I’ve taught her that food not only has to fill one’s belly, but has to taste good at the same time. You’d be surprised how many people eat for satisfaction and not for pleasure. I’ll tell your mama to send your cook up for some training. I’m sure Mrs Doyle would be delighted.’

  Kitty helped herself to a slice of cake and tried to think of Mrs Doyle being delighted by anything; a sourer woman was hard to find. A moment later the light was gone and Adeline joined her granddaughter on the sofa. O’Flynn, the doddering old butler, poured her a cup of tea with an unsteady hand and a young maid silently padded around the room lighting the oil lamps. Soon the library glowed with a soft, golden radiance. ‘I understand that Victoria will be leaving us soon to stay with Cousin Beatrice in London,’ said Adeline.

  ‘I don’t want to go to London when I come of age,’ said Kitty.