Free Midwinter Nightingale by Joan Aiken Page B

gone and
bought
the place, Fogrum Hall, so he can't be turned out. What next?”
    “Bought
it?” Jorinda exclaimed in a tone of slightly overdone astonishment. “How could he buy a whole school?”
    “That perditioned father of his—yours—came out of jail, as you may have heard.” Jorinda nodded. Her eyes were very bright and she had trouble holding her tongue.
    “Well, it seems there is a law—Hogben's Law—prevents prisoners in the Tower from making use of any funds they may have in banks—but that don't apply once they are let out, parently Anyhow, it seems your father, Baron Magnus, seems he has assets, estates, overseas in Midsylvania. Settled a sum on your brother Lothar, bought up Fogrum Hall. And the two of them are living there.”
    “Well, is not that convenient! Are you not delighted? Now Lot and I have somewhere to live and we need not trouble you anymore,” Jorinda suggested innocently.
    “I'm still your guardian till you are of age, miss!” he growled. “And a pesky thankless task it is, let me tell you!”
    “Oh, Granda!” She twitched his wig aside and planted another kiss on the red-hot brow. “You know that you love us, really”
    “Not that diabolical half brother of yours, I don't! I don't love him at all. He's no kin of mine, I thank my stars. The sooner I'm quit of him, the better I'll be pleased. I wish the foul fiend would carry him to Tophet.”
    “But, Granda, if my papa is now so rich from estates in Midsylvania, have you not considered he might be of some
help
in the Saxon uprising? Or is it the Burgundian?”
    “Fiddle-de-dee, girl!”
    But just the same, despite her grandfather's snub, Jorinda observed a thoughtful gleam come into his eye.
    The kitchen of Edge Place was a modern installation; that is to say, it had been improved by Sir Thomas's wife, Theodora, after their marriage fifty years earlier. The lady came from the ancient Palaeologos family and could trace her forebears clean back to the tenth century, when they were Highnesses of Byzantium. She wished her food to be properly cooked and demanded a high-class Roman cuisine requiring charcoal braziers instead of an open fire in the middle of the kitchen. When she had come to Edge Place, the stable was next door to the kitchen, screened off only by a wooden partition, and sparks frequently set fire to this. Theodora had the kitchen moved upstairs to the living quarters and insisted on a granite sink, cupboards and a table made from a four-legged tree fork with a slab of oak the shape and thickness of a mill wheel jammed between its boughs. There were also wooden stools, for the comfort and respite of the kitchen workers, and on a couple of these, eating oatcakes spread with honey and drinking flagons of mead, were Mrs. Smidge and Nurse Mara.
    “Vegetablarian now, is it?” said Mrs. Smidge. “That won't last. Do you mind when she wouldn't eat any food that had wheat in it?”
    “Ay, and before that she wouldn't touch honey because she said it was robbing the bees?”
    “And the same caper with eggs and hens before that?”
    “And when she was in love with Dr. Fribble she would only wash in water that had been boiled?”
    “That was one of the quickest. Came to a stop when he had to lance a boil on her backside.”
    “And the dentist? Remember the dentist?”
    “Ah. She brushed her teeth five times a day for three weeks.”
    “With a shredded birch twig.”
    “What brought this one on, then?”
    “She fancied a young fellow on the train. He saved her from a mouse.”
    At this the two ladies laughed so heartily that they were in danger of spilling their mead. “But where does the vegetablarianism come in?”
    “Seems he was one. Offered our good game pie, turned up his nose. Only ate an apple. And then, lord! Didn't he kick up a dust when he saw Old Sir's sheep on their way to Marshport. You'd a thought they were his aunts.”
    “Fancy! What did he do?”
    “Turned them loose.”
    “The sheep?”
    “Ay.