Kestrel put his hand into the oven and, to their surprise, produced a small, snuffling hedgehog.
‘Thisis Hotchi-Witchi.’ He held the little creature out towards Hal, whose eyes were lit up with excitement. Hal opened up his hand; Hotchi-Witchi let out a hiss of indignation at the scent of a stranger, and hastily curled up into a spiky ball.
‘Ouch!’ Kestrel laughed and passed Hal an oven glove. ‘Here, try wearing the gauntlet – she might be a bit more friendly.’
Hal placed the glove on his tiny hand and held it out again. Kestrel gently rolled the hedgehog onto the glove and she cautiously unrolled to reveal a white furry chest and tiny pink feet. Her snout twitched from side to side as she started to assess Hal with dark beady eyes. Hal held her up at eye level in order to inspect her more closely.
‘Hello,’ he said softly. She continued to warily sniff the air.
‘She got stuck in a cattle grid and broke her leg. That was back in the autumn. She is all mended now but decided to winter here at Rasaay all the same. I let her sleep in the Aga as otherwise she’d get cold and start to hibernate – and we don’t want that, because she’s still quite small and unlikely to make it through a big, long sleep. Would you like to feed her a mealworm?’
Kestrel spoke to Hal with natural ease, not talking down to him but still allowing for his age. He had a high intellect that worked on a slightly different frequency to other humans and this manifested itself in rather an awkward manner. He was out of the habit of making troublesome small talk, being more or less a self-imposed recluse, but was anxious to make Sage and Hal feel welcome; he would do anything for his beloved cousin. Rafe was the one person who seemed to understand Kestrel, to whom he had always been unfailingly kind, especially when the two of them had been boys. Kestrel had been a thorny and ungainly child, never fitting the mould he was supposed to inhabit and frequently, unwittingly upsetting those around him with his acidic, outspoken observations. Despite being handsome and – on the whole – charming, he had never been able to keep a girlfriend for very long either. He always ended up telling them, far too candidly, what he thought of them. He did not really mind though; he was more interested in being outside and immersing himself in nature than chasing girls.
He watched as an enchanted Hal fed the suspicious hedgehog a worm.
Kestrel was desperate for a drink, but as it was barely two o’clock and he had promised to take Hal out in the boat, he was valiantly resisting the siren call of the bottle standing on the sideboard next to him.
‘Hal and I will go and catch something for supper, Sage – leave you to settle in quietly. You’re in the master bedroom, on the first floor. I’ll put your things up there. Hal can sleep in the dressing room next door.’ Kestrel was edging out of the kitchen, determinedly avoiding eye contact with the bottle, when Sage called him back.
‘Wait – where do you sleep? You haven’t given up your room for us, have you?’
‘Oh no, no,’ said Kestrel reassuringly. ‘I sleep up in thenursery, which I’ve always done in this house. I never moved into what you might call a “grown-up room”. Mrs M and I sleep in bedrooms at opposite ends of the attic.’
‘Right,’ Sage said hesitantly. ‘Well, if you’re sure?’
‘To be honest, Sage, these walls will be glad to have some life inside them again. Mrs M and I rattle about but it’s all been rather dreary since we moved here permanently. I rarely see anyone any more – it’s good for me to be reminded how to live more normally again.’ Kestrel smiled bashfully at her. ‘I am regarded as something of an eccentric around here. I have strange pets and keep unusual hours. A hermit who lives with his childhood nurse. I do hope you and Hal won’t find me too strange. Rafe calls me a “character”.’ Kestrel let out a bark of laughter and sloped off to take the bag upstairs, calling back to her, ‘We used to have footmen and butlers to do all this – now it’s just me, I’m afraid.’
Sage listened to him trudging up the stairs, whistling Vivaldi. She shook her head, trying to clear it, then turned to her son who was stroking Hotchi-Witchi’s quills gently with a cautious finger.
‘Hal, darling. Leave the poor creature alone now. Go and put your boots and coat on – you’re going fishing again. Twice in one day!’ She thought back to earlier that morning in Cornwall; it seemed like days ago.
Hal carefully transferred Hotchi-Witchi from the glove back into the warming oven and trotted off to dress for the weather. Sage followed him out into a stone passage and came upon a room filled with fishing paraphernalia and an assortment of stags’ heads and taxidermied salmon on its walls. Kestrel ambled in and pulled a child-sized yellow life jacket and a horse’s tail bandage down from a cupboard.
‘My dear Papa always used to tie me into the boat when I was a small boy. I had a tendency to frequently topple in,’ Kestrelsaid, brandishing the green bandage. ‘Right – I think we’re all set. Ready?’ he asked Hal, who had dressed himself in his waterproof coat and wellington boots. He nodded eagerly.
‘Weather has cleared already,’ Kestrel continued, peering out of the window. He grabbed the nearest rod and a little box, then opened the back door and whistled for the dogs. ‘Let’s go.’
Sage watched them make their way down to the beach, where a little boat was sitting on the shore. There were rocks and seaweed everywhere. Kestrel lifted Hal into the wooden vessel and then stooped to roll his trousers up, stepping easily into the frigid water. He steered the hull through the greyish-blue boulders covered in their sludge-green, shining algae mantles until the water was deep enough for the boat to float, then deftly leapt in and began to row out into the middle of the loch, with the dogs leaping and splashing beside them. Hal was soon tethered to the wooden seat and Sage watched as he leant over the side to look into the water’s depths. The dogs retreated to terra firma and began barking encouragingly at their master from the shore. Sage decided to investigate their rooms.
Although Rasaay House was apparently not as grand as Kestrel’s ancestral seat, it was still a substantial home, having been designed for a large family and their retinue of household staff. On reaching the first-floor landing, Sage had no fewer than seven heavy oak doors from which to choose. She tentatively approached the one that stood ajar and, feeling like an intruder, peeped around it. She was glad to find their bag at the foot of a magnificent four-poster bed that was dressed in thick drapery, faded by the sun. The room’s walls were lined with tartan fabric, making it feel cosy and warm despite the enormous window looking out over the grey loch and the slumbering mountains with their wrap of ethereal mist and low cover of storm-brewed clouds. A fire had just been lit and it crackled comfortingly in the grate. Sage stepped through another open doorway and foundherself in an adjoining dressing room, traditionally furnished with two dusty wardrobes and a huge chest of drawers with silver brushes regimentally laid out on top of it. A single bed was made up with sheets and blankets.
Perfect, she thought, and breathed a deep sigh of relief. She and Hal were safe, for now.
The infamous Mrs M arrived back at about six o’clock. Kestrel and Hal were outside, cooking their mackerel on a hastily made campfire. Each sat on a log seat, while the two wolfhounds stood like slavering sentinels either side of them, watching the seaweed-wrapped fish bake in a tin tray. Kestrel had asked Sage to lay the table for four places. After some investigation, she found a large oak canteen that contained a copious amount of silver cutlery. She made her discovery in the softly lit library, which, it transpired, doubled up as a dining room. A long, shining dining table stood incongruously amidst the thousands of books that lined the walls, imprisoned behind wire doors. There would be room for twenty places if they needed it, Sage thought, and wondered how to position only four settings without making it look comical. Kestrel’s ancestors looked down from their oil canvases set above the bookshelves on the high walls, their solemn eyes watching her as she moved about the room. She shivered slightly as a cold draught whipped about her ankles.
‘Hello. You must be Sage.’ The greeting came out of the gloom in brusque, no-nonsense tones. Sage spun around to find a small, sturdy woman dressed all in tweed. She had a head of wiry grey hair and was shrewdly observing Sage through large, gold-framed spectacles. ‘I am Mrs M,’ she volunteered, striding across the room to offer Sage a hand. ‘Now, have the boys cooked anything to go with the fish?’
Sage, quite taken aback, shook herself mentally and remembered her manners.
‘How do you do?’ She took the woman’s rough hand, then went on, ‘No, that’s a very good point – I don’t believe we’d thought that far yet, it’s just the fish that’s being cooked at the moment.’
Mrs M began to bustle about, pulling tablecloths, napkins, plates and crystal glasses out of sideboards and laying them efficiently at one end of the table, along with the cutlery, which she had taken from Sage’s hand with a smile.
‘I will go and put some rice on in the kitchen. Come with me.’
Sage followed meekly, glad to be given direction. Mrs M pushed the lid of the Aga up and put some water on to boil.
‘I see no vegetables have been picked.’ She sighed. ‘Kestrel is a good boy – he will always be “the Little Lord” to me, even though he is now the Duke – but he cares more for the bottle than for food. The sweet boy … I thought of leaving when we learnt that the house was to be sold but I know that he needs me, so here I am.’ Mrs M spoke softly, almost to herself, and Sage did not know whether to answer or not. Instead, she sat quietly watching Kestrel and Hal through the window, their faces glowing from the firelight throwing shadows into the half-light. When Mrs M fell silent, bending down to check on the hedgehog in her makeshift nest of towels in the oven, Sage stood up.