There Are No Children In The Castle, Page 2

offered him protection will prove only a minor hindrance in comparison to my wrath. I know – I will challenge him to a duel!”

  “Oh brave, true sir, those are the words that make my heart sing!” Demelza replied, taking his hands in her own and meeting his gaze with a look of open adoration. “For though he has not eaten her, it was not for want of trying!”

  “She still lives?” Cedric said uncertainly.

  “He surprised her one night after she stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. If it had not been for her screams and the prompt response of our soldiers –” Demelza allowed a small shudder to convulse her ample frame.

  “She was injured?”

  A grimace of irritation crossed Demelza’s handsome features. “Not exactly, but the scars, though invisible, run deep. She has never spoken of what took place.”

  Cedric rose to his feet. “Perhaps if I was to talk to her.”

  Only minutes ago he had felt himself on solid ground. Not anymore. There was a certain evasiveness about the two women that made him uneasy.

  “I had her sent away, for her own safety’s sake,” the old queen snapped. “Will you kill the accursed creature or not?”

  Cedric sighed. “I must think on it. As I have already said, protocols must be observed. I cannot simply venture down into your orchard and butcher a creature that is your husband’s guest.”

  The old queen rolled her eyes. “Then you must stay the night, I suppose.”

  As he ate the meager fare provided to him by the queen – two small and oily fish and a tankard of weak ale – Cedric decided there was nothing else for it. He would have to confront the ogre in its lair that very same evening. Perhaps (if he was lucky) his appearance alone might be enough to provoke its wrath, ogres being notoriously short-tempered. He would then be justified in killing it, if only in self-defense.

  The land directly behind the keep – the land sloping away from the cliffs and down towards the moors – was enclosed by high stonewalls which shut out most of the prevailing wind. This was divided in two, the enclosure closest to the keep constituting an herb-garden, the second – which could be accessed through a low archway – being an orchard.

  After he had eaten, Cedric made his way back out into the gray evening, still wearing his armor (which he was finding increasingly uncomfortable) and with his sword at the ready.

  If the first enclosure provided some protection from the wind, this was even truer of the second, and stumbling through long grass, littered with apples, while pushing branches out of his path with his sword, Cedric suddenly felt ridiculously, inappropriately, attired.

  His discomfort was not helped when he reached the stables – a small shed with a single window, built against the back wall – and knocked on the door. There was a grunt, the sound of a chair being pushed back and then the door opened to reveal an individual that Cedric recognized instantly (if only from the many descriptions he had read) to be an ogre. The small, pointed ears set close against either side of the immense, hairless head, the height – some nine feet – and sheer physical size and ugliness all being important indicators. Not allowing for the faint shiver down his spine which told him that – despite its uncanny resemblance to a man in many important respects – the creature facing him was not a man.

  Yet the ogre was not dressed as one might expect an ogre to dress. He wore a loose-fitting linen shirt and a pair of soiled, velvet knickerbockers that might once have been black. Furthermore he was clutching an ink quill in one gigantic fist. He studied Cedric for a second with tiny, deep-set gray eyes, then barked – “Good evening to you, sir! Sitric Grundhammer at your service! Are you not – dare I say it – a trifle overdressed for what I take to be a social call?”

  Cedric could only mumble about how he had not yet changed from his journey.

  “Well do come in,” the ogre boomed.

  Cedric found himself in a tiny, raftered room, lit by a single wicker candle that suddenly made the fading day outside seem very dark indeed. There was a battered wooden desk just inside the door along with a chair, crudely built, but of ogre-sized proportions. The desk was littered with sheets of paper while dozens of leather-bound books crowded the shelves directly above it, the shelves themselves being little more than pieces of driftwood. The only other item of furniture was the wooden cot taking up the entire back wall.

  “Sorry I can’t offer you a seat. You’re staying in the castle, I take it?”

  Cedric mumbled some affirmative, but the ogre’s thoughts were already elsewhere. He was picking a sheet of paper off the desk even as he stuck his quill behind one ear. “Tell me what you think of this –

  I crunch,

  And I munch,

  I lick

  And I groan,

  Sucking the marrow

  From the bone.”

  The ogre read this short piece in a loud, somewhat declamatory style, one hand gripping the collar of its shirt. When it had finished it cocked one eyebrow enquiringly. “Well?”

  “Vivid. Exceptionally so,” Cedric stammered, privately thinking that there was at least one thing on which he and the old queen could agree, that being their estimation of the ogre’s talent.

  “Thank you, sir! You are clearly a person of no small cultural discernment! And how are things up in the castle, eh?” The ogre’s tone was carefully neutral as it put its sheet of ‘poetry’ to one side, but those small gray eyes were studying him intently again. “How is her aged majesty? The ever-beautiful Demelza?”

  “Demelza is well,” Cedric replied, thinking quickly. “Although she misses her daughter terribly.”

  “Ah yes,” the ogre’s florid features flushed a deeper red. “An unfortunate business, and all my doing, I’m sorry to say.”

  “I understand you frightened her.”

  The ogre held up his immense hands. “It was not my intention. I thought we had reached an….understanding. You see on certain occasions, while the old queen and her retinue are still in their beds, I make use of the herb garden. The acoustics make recitals particularly effective. I was doing so one moonlit night when a small voice called down to me. She said she had been listening to me for some time and was much impressed. The voice was unfamiliar to me and she explained that her name was Isobel and that she was Demelza’s daughter. Seemingly she had spent most of her life in a school for young ladies in the south and had only just returned home. We exchanged various pleasantries over the course of subsequent nights, but I did not see the child in person until a week or so later. She had ventured out into the herb garden, perhaps because she was unable to sleep. She was wearing one of those hooded thingamummys. I only knew it was her because I heard her hum a song I had taught her. Indeed it was this which encouraged me to reveal myself – I had just been about to step from the orchard into the herb garden when I saw her. I hesitated at first (not every human is comfortable with being unexpectedly confronted by an ogre, for obvious reasons) but then, hearing that familiar air, was suddenly reassured. A most unfortunate error on my part! She screeched like a banshee. I must give the old girl some credit, for her soldiers do their job splendidly. Never have I seen men pour so promptly out of a castle door, all dressed for war and all armed to the teeth. And if that was not enough, the local villagers had heard the commotion and came up to investigate too. They have never cared for me much. Do you know?” (and here the ogre let out a hearty bellow of laughter) “They were convinced I intended to eat the poor little thing! By the end of the week the story had spread far and wide.”

  Cedric laughed, then asked as if it were the most natural question in the world – “And did you?”

  The ogre’s face instantly became most solemn. “I wish I could tell you that it is a common fallacy that ogres do not enjoy the taste of human meat, the taste of young human children in particular. Alas, it is not. But I assure you sir, that was never my intention.”

  Cedric felt the same curious chill down his spine that he had felt on first encountering the ogre. He could not t
ell if it was lying or not.

  But maybe it did not matter either way. A sudden dark suspicion was burgeoning in his mind.

  “You cannot help us?” There was no mistaking the fury in the old queen’s voice.

  Morning. Cedric swallowed hard and did not lift his gaze from the slate floor. Not twenty-four hours earlier he had set forth from his father’s castle, his head filled with visions of a future spent slaying dragons and rescuing damsels in distress. Who could have known that life could be so complicated? That he would end up fearing the old queen more than he feared the ogre?

  Why else was he so afraid to voice his suspicions?

  The shepherd’s words came back to him. There are no children in the castle. It was true. And it had been true the night the ogre thought he had encountered Demelza’s daughter. Demelza’s daughter was no doubt still in school in the south. She had never returned home on whatever pretext, never stepped out into that garden.

  The simple truth of the matter was that the ogre had been making a nuisance of itself and some reason had to be found to get rid of it. A good reason. Or what would Demelza’s husband say when he returned? He who had promised it would be safe while a guest in his home?

  Cedric wondered which of the two had cooked up the scheme in the first place. The old queen, more than likely: she hated the ogre even more than her