Page 14 of One More Christmas at the Castle
‘Good idea. I know I’d still need some more income coming in, but there are always jobs for good cooks.’
The sky, which had been a clear if icy blue in Cheshire, seemed to have grown steadily more leaden as we drove endlessly on up the motorway, singing along to old Christmas pop songs to get us in the appropriate festive frame of mind.
I took over the wheel after the lunch stop, while Henry, who was unfamiliar with this part of the country, looked out of the window and occasionally asked Brian Blessed, who was the chosen voice of his satnav, and who had been remarkably silent for what seemed like hours, if we were nearly there yet.
‘There’s nothing for him to say for ages,’ I told him patiently. ‘We just drive north until we hit Carlisle, then turn right and drive along the road that runs more or less parallel with the Roman Wall, until we get to Rowenhead.’
Brian woke up in time to direct us off the motorway andalong a rather narrow, bleakly scenic road. At Henry’s request, I stopped to let him get out to admire a bit of the crumbling Wall on the skyline, but he was soon back in the van, shivering.
‘It’s a different climate up here!’
‘So was Scotland when we did that booking there one winter, so you should have expected it.’
‘I’m prepared for it … or I will be when I’ve unpacked,’ he said. ‘It was just a bit of a shock to the system.’
We carried on, though Brian suddenly threw some kind of hissy fit and attempted to tell us our destination was in an empty field.
We ignored him, but he’d beenalmostright, for a sign for ‘Rowenhead Roman Fort and Visitor Centre’ soon appeared and then a small cluster of stone cottages.
‘The entrance is to the right here, somewhere,’ Henry said, and I slowed down.
Luckily, there was no other traffic in either direction. In fact, there was no sign of life, other than some smoke issuing from a couple of the cottage chimneys and an escaped hen high-stepping through the yard in front of a small barn-like building.
‘The Poor Relation said we couldn’t miss the entrance to the drive, because it’s flanked by stone pillars with eagles on top …’
‘I see it,’ I said, ‘though they look more like vultures from this angle, don’t they?’
‘I think they’d look like vultures from any angle,’ Henry said, eyeing them critically as I turned the van between them and found myself at the top of a dark woodland tunnel, heading steeply downwards.
Henry reached over and unplugged the satnav, so that Brian, who was now trying to tell us to do a U-turn and go back to the field he favoured as our destination, spluttered into silence.
‘Pity he got it wrong this time,’ I said. ‘I always like it when he bellows: “Congratulations! You’ve arrived at your destination!”’
‘But we haven’t yet,’ Henry said. ‘And this drive must be difficult when the weather’s bad.’
‘The trees are so closed in overhead, it probably never gets really icy or snowy,’ I pointed out.
The day was slowly darkening now and I’d put the headlights on to see where the drive was going, but then light literally appeared at the end of the tunnel.
And all at once, just as I was feeling like I was trapped in some giant helter-skelter, we shot out on to a sweep of gravel, where I slowed to a stop.
We were on a sort of plateau overlooking the valley, with a lawn to our left and, to our right, the imposing, battlemented tower we’d seen on the internet, though it looked infinitely more impressive, and perhaps even a little forbidding, with the dark backdrop of trees and the lowering sky.
But the tower had been grafted on to an older and mellower manor house, which wore the appearance of a surprised mother standing next to a suddenly enormous teenage son.
‘It’s quite something, isn’t it?’ Henry said. ‘The tower is an early Victorian monstrosity, but it sort of works.’
‘Where do we go?’ I asked.
‘Round the far corner of the old part of the house, to the tradesmen’s entrance, darling, where someone will be waiting to greet us. The Poor Relation, possibly.’
‘You’d better stop calling her that, or you’ll do it to her face,’ I warned him, as I rounded the corner and drew to a halt in front of a large, old studded door.
It was as if we’d gone back a few centuries, with a stretch of lichen-spotted grey paving instead of the gravel, though that continued on after it to some outbuildings at the back.
Across from the house was a small knot garden, probably for herbs, reached by a stone slab bridge over a stream.
When I turned the engine off I could hear rooks making uncouth noises in the trees.
