Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle

branches and I saw the snowy moon trapped in a fiery cage. Then smoke swept over her as the logs caught at last. I scrambled up, and sat

back watching them blaze high. All my thoughts seemed drawn into the

fire- to be burning with it in the brightly lit circle of stones. The whole world seemed filled with hissing and crackling and roaring.

And then, far off in the forgotten dusk, someone called my name.

"Cassandra!"" Did it come from the lane--or from the castle? And whose voice was it? Dead still, I waited for it to call again, trying to

shut my ears to the fire noises. Had it been a man's voice or a

woman's his When I tried to remember it I only heard the fire. After a few seconds I began to think I must have imagined it.

Then Heloise began barking, the way she barks when somebody arrives.

I ran across the mound and peered down. At first my eyes were too full of the flames to see anything clearly, then gradually the pale light of evening spread round me again; but I couldn't see into the lane or the courtyard because a thick mist was rising from the moat.

Heloise sounded so frantic that I decided to go down. Just as I

started off, she stopped barking--and then, floating across the mist, came the voice again: "Cas-sandra--a long, drawn-out call. This time I knew it was a man's voice but I still couldn't recognize it. I was

sure it wasn't Father's or Stephen's or Thomas's. It was a voice that had never called me before.

"Here I am" I called back.

"Who is it?"

Someone was moving through the mist, crossing the bridge.

Heloise came racing ahead, very pleased with herself.

"Why, of course--it'll be Neil!" I thought suddenly, and started to run down to meet him. Then at last I saw clearly. It wasn't Neil.

It was Simon.

Oh, strange to remember- I wasn't pleased to see him! I had wanted it to be Neil--if it had to be anyone at all when I was just starting the rites. I wouldn't blame anybody who caught a grown girl at them for

thinking her "consciously naive."

As we shook hands, I made up my mind to take him indoors without

referring to the fire. But he looked up at it and said:

"I'd forgotten it was Midsummer Eve--Rose told me about the fun you always have. How pretty your garland is."

Then, somehow, we were walking up the mound together.

He had driven down to see the Scoatney agent;

had been working with him all day: "Then I thought I'd come and call on you and your Father--is he out? There are no lights in the castle."

I explained about Father- and said he might possibly have turned up at the flat.

"Then he'll have to sleep in my room--we're like sardines in that apartment. What a glorious blaze!"

As we sat down I wondered how much Rose had told him about the rites--I hoped he only knew that we lit a fire for them. Then I saw him look at the basket.

"How's Rose ?" I asked quickly, to distract him from it.

"Oh, she's fine--she sent you her love, of course. So did Topaz.

Is this the Vicar's port that Rose told me about ?"

The medicine bottle was sticking right out of the basket.

"Yes, he gives me a little every year," I said, feeling most selfconscious.

"Do we drink it or make a libation ?"

"We?"

"Oh, I'm going to celebrate too. I shall represent Rose--even if she does feel too old for it."

Suddenly I stopped feeling self-conscious. It came to me that Simon

was one of the few people who would really find Midsummer rites

romantic--that he'd see them as a link with the past and that they

might even help with those English roots he wants to strike.

So I said: "All right--that'll be lovely," and began to unpack the basket.

He watched with much interest: "Rose never told me about the packet of cooking herbs. What are they for ?"

"We burn them--they're a charm against witchcraft.

Of course they oughtn't to be shop herbs--they should have been

gathered by moonlight. But I don't know where to find any that smell

nice."

He said I must get them from the Scoatney herb-garden in future:

"It'll be grateful to be used, after being a dead failure in salads.

What's the white stuff?"

"That's salt- it wards off bad luck. And turns the flames a lovely blue."

"And the cake ?"

"Well, we show that to the fire before we eat it. Then we drink wine and throw a few drops into the flames."

"And then you dance round the fire ?"

I told him I was much too old for that.

"Not on your life, you're not," said Simon.

"I'll dance with you."

I didn't tell him about the verses I usually say, because I made them up when I was nine and they are too foolish for words.

The high flames were dying down; I could see we should need more

kindling if we were to keep the fire spectacular.

I had noticed some old wood in the tower--a relic of the days when we often had picnics on the mound. I asked Simon to help me get it.

As we came to the tower he stood still for a moment, looking up at its height against the sky.

"How tall is it ?"

he asked.

"It must be seventy or eighty feet, surely."

"Sixty," I told him.

"It looks taller because it's so solitary."

"It reminds me of a picture I once saw called "The Sorcerer's Tower."

Can you get to the top?"

"Thomas did, a few years ago, but it was very dangerous; and the upper part of the staircase has crumbled a lot more since then. Anyway,

there's no place to get out on, if you do get to the top--the roof went hundreds of years ago. Come in and see."

We went up the long outside flight of stone steps that leads to the

entrance and climbed down the ladder inside. When we looked up at the circle of sky far above us it was still pale blue, yet filled with

stars--it seemed strange to see them there when scarcely any had been visible outside.

Enough light came down through the open door for Simon to look around.

I showed him the beginning of the spiral staircase, which is stowed

away in a sort of bulge. (it is up there that I hide this journal.) He asked what was through the archway that leads to the opposite bulge.

"Nothing, now," I told him.

"It's where the garde robes used to be." They should really be called privy chambers or latrines, but garde robes are more mentionable.

"How many floors were there originally ?"

"Three--you can see the staircase outlets to them.

There was an entrance floor, a chamber above it and a dungeon below

--here, where we are."

"I bet they enjoyed sitting feasting while the prisoners clanked in chains below."

I told him they probably feasted somewhere else-there must have been

much more of Belmotte Castle once, though no other traces remain: "Most likely this was mainly a watch tower. Mind you don't bump into the

bedstead."

The bedstead was there when we first came--a double one, rather fancy, now a mass of rusty iron. Father meant to have it moved but when he

saw it with the cow-parsley growing through it, stretching up to the

light, he took a fancy to it. Rose and I found it useful to sit

on--Mother was always complaining because our white knickers got marked with rust rings from its spirals.

"It's pure Surrealist," said Simon, laughing.

"I can never understand why there are so many derelict iron bedsteads lying about in the country."

I said it was probably because they last so long, while other rubbish just molders away.

"What a logical girl you are--I could never have worked that out." He was silent for a moment, staring up into the dim heights of the tower.

A late bird flew across the circle of stars and fluttered down to its nest in a high arrow-slit.

"Can you get it--the feeling of people actually having lived here ?" he said at last.

I knew just what he meant.

"I used to try to, but they always seemed like figures in tapestry, not human men and women. It's so far back. But it must mean something to

you that one of your ancestors built the tower. It's a pity the de

Godys name died out."

"I'd call my eldest son "Etienne de Godys Cotton," if I thought he could get by with it in England--would you say he could his It'd

certainly slay any American child."

I said I feared it would slay any child in any country. Then Heloise

appeared above us in the doorway, which reminded us to go on with our job of getting wood.

I dragged it out from under the rustic table and handed each branch to Simon, who stood half-way up the ladder- the technique Rose and I

always used came back to me. When I climbed the ladder at last, Simon helped me out and said: "Look-there's magic for you."

The mist from the moat was rolling right up Belmotte;

already the lower slopes were veiled.

I said: "It's like the night when we saw the Shape."

"The what ?"

I told him about it as we carried the branches to the fire: "It

happened the third year we held the rites, after a very hot, windless day like today. As the mist came towards us, it suddenly formed into a giant shape as high as--oh, higher than--the tower. It hung there

between us and the castle; it seemed to be falling forward over us--I never felt such terror in my life.

And the queer thing was that neither of us tried to run away; we

screamed and flung our selves face downwards before it. It was an

elemental, of course- I'd been saying a spell to raise one."

He laughed and said it must have been some freak of the mist:

"You poor kids! What happened then?"

"I prayed to God to take it away and He very obligingly did-Rose was brave enough to look up after a minute or two and it had vanished. I

felt rather sorry for it afterwards; I daresay no one had summoned it since the Ancient Britons."

Simon laughed again, then looked at me curiously: "You don't, by any chance, still believe it was an elemental ?"

Do I his I only know that just then I happened to look down towards the oncoming mist-its first rolling rush was over and it was creeping

thinly--and suddenly the memory of that colossal shape came back so

terrifyingly that I very nearly screamed. I managed a feeble laugh

instead and began to throw wood on the fire so that I could let the

subject drop.

Rose believed it was an elemental, too--and she was nearly fourteen

then and far from fanciful.

When the fire was blazing high again I felt we had better get the rites over. My self-consciousness about them had come back a little so I

was as matter-of-fact as possible; I must say leaving out the verses

made things rather dull. We burnt the salt and the herbs (in America

it is correct to drop the h in herbs-it does sound odd) and shared the cake with Heloise; Simon only had a very small piece because he was

full of dinner. Then we drank the Vicar's port--there was only one

wineglass so Simon had his out of the medicine bottle, which he said

added very interesting overtones; and then we made our libations, with an extra one for Rose. I hoped we could leave things at that, but

Simon firmly reminded me about dancing round the fire. In the end, we just ran round seven times, with Heloise after us, barking madly. It

was the smallest bit as if Simon were playing with the children, but I know he didn't mean it, and he was so very kind that I felt I had to

pretend I was enjoying myself--I even managed a few wild leaps.

Topaz is the girl for leaping; last year she nearly shook the mound.

"What now ?" asked Simon when we flopped down at last.

"Don't we sacrifice Heloise?" At the moment, she was trying to give us tremendous washings, delighted to have caught us after her long chase.