Haunted Hearts

Chapter 7: The Arrival

Stonegate Castle was a terrible beauty. Its gray, mossy battlements perched on chalk-white cliffs like a gargoyle crouched by the sea. The castle was enormous, the sprawl caused by a millennium of military architecture and bloodshed. End to end, it took near a quarter of a mile of coastline. It was a breathtaking homage to greed and the human need for protection.

The modern age had yet to dawn upon Stonegate's fearful visage, yet peace had long settled upon the coast. Romans, Vikings, they were no more. Still, the castle seemed tensed for battle.

"Quite impressive," Raeliana announced, nudging Isabella, who sat next to her as silent as a freshly dug grave.

"I can't change your mind, so I guess I'll just have to keep my mouth shut," Isabella said, sourly watching the driver dismount.

A mousey, black-garbed woman appeared at the doors that opened to the castle from the bailey. Her brilliantly white, starched collar seemed to pronounce her as the housekeeper. She stared at the two girls with large, confused eyes as if their presence had proved a terrible shock.

"Is Dr. Ackerman arriving later, James?" she asked, lifting her skirt and nearly running down the marble stairs from the front doors, her face showing a mask of worry. She looked at Raeliana and said, "He didn't say there would be others. I thought it was assumed the doctor would be traveling alone."

"There had been a mistake," Raeliana said, holding out her hand for James to help her down from the carriage. "I am Raeliana Ackerman. I'm the one for whom Lord Wainwright sent. This is my friend who will be accompanying me, Isabella Mayfield."

The housekeeper stared at both women as if she were stunned in disbelief. "Oh dear," she murmured, the shock on her face melting into a faint despair. "Oh dear," she repeated as she turned to James with a worried expression..

"She's insistent his lordship sent for her," James muttered, helping Raeliana to the ground.

"But we thought... his lordship thought you were to be a man," the housekeeper resumed, staring at Raeliana.

Raeliana straightened her cream lace cuff, a nervous habit she was beginning to pick up. "Lord Wainwright called for my father. My father is dead, and I offered my services. So here I am."

The housekeeper's eyes darted to James, and Raeliana swore she saw the carriage driver give an almost imperceptible shrug.

"Would you be so kind to show me to my room so that I may freshen up before I meet with Lord Wainwright?" Raeliana hated the supercilious tone she was forced to take, but she didn't know what other recourse to take.

The housekeeper gave another surreptitious glance to James. "Lord Wainwright won't be here until tomorrow. Follow me; I'll take you to your rooms," the housekeeper said.

Raeliana, arm in arm with Isabella, followed her through the front entrance. Still, Raeliana was unable to hide her gasp of awe as she took her first steps inside the castle.

"What is this room?" Raeliana asked reverently, her gaze darting around as she tried to absorb the scope of the enormous chamber in which she stood.

"This is the Great Hall. His lordship sometimes has dinner here for five hundred guests," the housekeeper walked through the enormous cavern, ignoring her awestruck behavior.

Raeliana tried to keep up, but everywhere she looked, there was distraction. The room's four walls were entirely lined with armor, and as she stumbled along, she found a gruesome display of maces and the rusting chest plates they had gouged.

Ancient triangular wooden shields marked one section of the wall, then flowed into a field of small Spanish fist shields. Sentineling the banquet table stood pedestaled displays of armor, each knight holding a raised broadsword inside a locking, or as she had come to learn of them through Sir Walter Scott's novel, a "forbidden gauntlet."

Raeliana was particularly disturbed by the last sword on display. It was nicked and battered by the armored bodies it had cut down. Engraved on its pommel was the motto of the ancient Barony of Stonegate: Sunt hic etiam sui praemia laudi. "Here too, virtue has its reward." There was a certain incredulity to the motto that disturbed her.

She followed the as-yet-unintroduced housekeeper through the shadowy torchlit passages of the castle while Isabella, her face drained of blood after the view from the Great Hall, brought up the wake. Raeliana tried to keep her thoughts from wandering to Lord Wainwright, but it was impossible.

She didn't know how he was going to react to the surprise of her womanhood, but she was determined to play her role to the finale. There was nothing her father could do for Wainwright's brother that she could not do with equal skill and intelligence. Audiology was in its infancy, there was just not a large number of practitioners upon whom he could call. The Right Honorable Lord Wainwright had to accept her services, or toss his deaf brother to the amateurs.

Her abilities were strong, and she must keep her head high. It would probably behoove her to keep his family motto in mind also, should he disparage her weaker s*x. All in all, the Stonegate motto, haunting as it was, was eminently truthful.

Here too, virtue has its reward.