Chapter 5
As Edmund entered Moulde Hall, Ung stepped forward to address Mrs. Kippling. “Matron’s guests have all decided to have their meals in their rooms.”
Mrs. Kippling’s face turned bright red as her hands began to wring themselves back and forth. “And I suppose they all think I can just fix it all up, no trouble? My gracious, I couldn’t take a tray to each of them — I have to start dinner soon!”
“A good soldier makes do. Matron desires the Young Master to bring her lunch.”
Mrs. Kippling heaved a sigh while waving a hand in surrender. “Well, alright then not-my-place. I suppose you’d better follow me, Master Edmund.”
Now prepared with a map in his mind, Edmund traced their path as they wandered through the hallways of Moulde Hall. Before long they found their way to a plain door with no ornamentation at all, behind which was a long descending staircase. At the bottom of the stairs was another maze of corridors, smaller than the ones upstairs and full of deep shadows that quivered in the hissing and sputtering gaslight.
They didn’t have to walk far before they reached a big black room full of iron and copper. A massive pantry with large tapped barrels sat at one end of the room next to dark cabinets of cookware and serving utensils. In the middle of the room, pots and pans dangled from the edges of a large circular multi-tiered hanging rack, with the smallest tier covered with knives pointing inwards like a sailing ship’s wheel. A large oven dominated the center of the far wall.
Mrs. Kippling jumped into the room, twisted a knob on the wall, kicked two valve handles on the floor, and tossed a lit match into the oven. The oven was ablaze in an instant, burning bright and hot like a forge.
The room now aglow, Mrs. Kippling made her way over to the pantry. It was full of kegs — large, small, and in-between — made from oak, ash, yew, and pine. Most of them had spots of ancient mold and dark crusty lichen. They all had large copper labels etched with a large and languid hand, each hanging over thick brass spigots.
Mrs. Kippling pulled a pot from its hook and held it firmly as she twisted one of the brass handles. A dribbly stream of rich red spilled into the pot until it was almost full. With a grunt, Mrs. Kippling twisted the spigot closed and hoisted the tall pot on top of the burning oven.
“There,” she said. “A few minutes to warm up, and we’ll have luncheon. Now, for dinner…”
Mrs. Kippling spun like a whirlwind, food and utensils flying. Vegetables were diced in seconds and tossed into copper pots. Meat and potatoes were sliced into strips and laid out to be covered with dry seasoning. In Kippling’s hands, knives, forks, and metal pans flailed about the room like a threshing machine.
The wisdom of entering the maelstrom of cutlery eluded Edmund. He glanced around for a relatively safe place to stand, but there didn’t seem to be one. He waited in the doorway instead.
Edmund rarely asked questions; he preferred to learn by watching the world around him. Even so, the world of the Mouldes still eluded him, and there was a talkative — if erratically submissive — servant here who could help.
“Excuse me,” he said. “May I ask you a question?”
Mrs. Kippling gasped as she spun about, her eyes wide and her cheeks pale. “Young Master, it’s not at all proper for a member of the family to address a servant like that!”
“How should I address you?” Edmund asked.
Her face paled again. “Nor like that!
Had Edmund been of more common mold, he might have continued to explore methods of communication, like a poor castaway struggling to connect with a non-plussed native. Instead, he opted for a more direct option.
“Tell me how to address you,” he said.
“Of course, Master Edmund,” color returned to Mrs. Kippling’s cheeks and her breathing began to calm. “Just like that will be fine. It’s-not-my-place to say, but it ain’t proper for a servant to be spoken to in anything but a firm and clear voice. Keeps us in our place.”
In later years, Edmund would use this conversation as the cornerstone of his Quid Pro Status Quo study of economic theory. In brief: the upper-class keeps the lower-class in its place, and in return, the lower-class keeps the upper-class in theirs. (It wasn’t until the invention of Imperialist Caste Theory that scholars recognized the ironic subtext in Edmund’s work)
“I have questions,” Edmund tried. “I need them answered.”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t know what answers I could give you, not-my-place. But I’ll answer what I can, if you like.
“Was that my entire family?” he asked, as authoritatively as he could.
“That was barely any of them,” Mrs. Kippling twittered. “The Moulde family has hundreds of cousins, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, nephews, and nieces, all with some not-my-place thread-thin connection to the Moulde fortune. Nothing unusual for a Founding Family.”
Edmund digested this new information; The returning orphans, when spinning tales of their adopted lives, never mentioned families larger than a hundred people. They’d never mentioned families larger than ten. he didn’t just have a new family, he had a dynasty.
“What is a Founding Family?” Edmund asked as Mrs Kippling sliced a carrot in half from top to tip.
“Oh, begging-your-pardon that’s nothing for a Young Master to worry about. All you need to know is that the Moulde Family is one of nine different families that helped found Brackenburg. They’re all very important and powerful, and now you’re the heir to one of them.”
Nine? There were eight other houses as large as this one?
“Oh! Will you look at that!”
Edmund looked at the bowl Mrs. Kippling had pulled from a shelf. It looked like every other bowl Edmund has seen at Moulde Hall, with a bit of black dust at the bottom.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Oh, just one of the family trying to poison Matron again,” Mrs. Kippling sighed, brushing the dust away with a quick wipe of her apron. “I’ve told them, time and time again; it just makes more work for me begging-your-pardon. I think she’s eaten more poison than all the dead rats in the Empire, and it hasn’t made a lick of difference not-my-place. I think they only bother anymore out of habit.”
“Will they try to poison me?” Edmund asked.
“Oh, don’t you worry about that, Master Edmund. There are lots of things they’ll probably do first before resorting to poison.”
That was comforting; he wouldn’t have to worry about poison for a while, then. “Like what? What sort of things do Mouldes do?”
“Do?” Mrs. Kippling raised her eyebrows. “Not-my-place, begging-your-pardon. I just count myself lucky they’re all nice enough to the help.”
“No one was nice to Ung,” Edmund said. “They wouldn’t even talk to him.”
“You saw that, did you?” Mrs. Kippling sighed. “Ung fought in the last war, you see, and some think he chose the wrong side. The families hold grudges, see. Everyone has their own little feuds with this cousin or that one, and it carries on for ages. The Rotledges and the Mouldes have been fighting with each other for generations; probably since before the city was founded.”
“Why?”
“Such questions!” Mrs. Kippling shook her head. “Begging-your-pardon, but I have no idea…there’s no telling with the families; they’re a capricious lot. Subject to whims and fancies just like the rest of us, not-my-place.”
Punctuating her statement, Mrs. Kippling tossed a silver tray onto the countertop with a loud clatter. A napkin, plate, and utensils soon followed, and with a flourish she set a small bowl full of thick red soup onto the plate with a piece of dry bread. Two cups and saucers were next, along with a heavy iron kettle that bubbled and boiled with thick steam coming from the nozzle.
“Here you are,” she said. “Matron always has lunch alone in her room. Begging-your-pardon I’ve got a few more things to do, so I won’t be going with you. Be careful with the tea, Matron likes it boiling. Third floor of the east wing; head up the main staircase and take the left hallway, then follow the suits of armor that lead you northwesterly. Turn right at the bear head, and if you see a painting of a horse and carriage you’ve gone too far begging-your-pardon not-my-place.”
Edmund picked up the tray, and did his best to follow her barked directions.
With the muted daylight slipping through gray windows and under closed doors, the mansion was less terrifying then it had been the night before. The shadows were not nearly as sharp or deep, and the quaking of the hour was less ferocious. The oil and gouache paintings were more sad than foreboding, and the tapestries looked less like they hid monsters and more like they were simply wrinkled with age.
Edmund wound his way through the twisting passageways of Moulde Hall, struggling to keep the heavy tray balanced. Was this how rich parents treated their sons? He had assumed that servants were the ones who carried lunch, since they did everything else.
Truth be told, he had no idea how poor sons were supposed to behave, never mind rich ones; Mrs. Mapleberry had given all her orphans lessons on the subject, but nothing that Edmund could remember applied to Moulde Hall.
Edmund resolved himself to ask his new mother. He had learned how to find his way through Moulde Hall, he had learned to talk to the help, and he had learned how to ask questions. He could simply ask Matron what she expected him to do.
What was this new feeling? It wasn’t just melancholic, it was…it was almost confusion. Edmund had been confused before; nearly everything Mrs. Mapleberry had ever done had been confusing for Edmund, but now he was acutely aware that this feeling somehow stretched ahead of him. He wasn’t just confused, he was confused in the future.
Ah, he realized in a flash of inspiration, I’m Nervous.
As he walked, the heady smell of proper British tea began to seep into Edmund’s brain, popping and sparking in his skull. What would the inside of Matron’s room look like? Perhaps it was covered in soft black silk, and elegant wafting curtains overlooking the grounds outside. Maybe it was cold and dark; with iron furniture, no windows, and a single hanging tapestry emblazoned with an ornate design of a raven. Perhaps a room full of gold and glass, glittering like diamonds in the dim gaslight until no one could tell which glitters were glass, and which were Matron’s eyes. A massive web of thick black string, with Matron climbing about the walls like a spider and drifting down on heavy drafts with her open umbrella.
It was fortune, of a sort, that as Edmund walked past Matron’s door, completely lost in thought, he was pulled up short by the sound of Matron’s angry voice. He turned just as a small and plain pine-wood door burst open, and Kolb stumbled out into the hall, his face ashen.
Upon seeing Edmund, Kolb’s face cleared instantly. “Good lad! A spot of lunch will do the old gel good…” he gestured back at the pale door. “She’s in a bit of a mood, I’m afraid. Not quite susceptible to a softly spoken salutation yet.” With a wink, Kolb spun about and vanished around the corner.
Edmund moved to the pale door. It had a simple trim, less like a door to Matron’s bedchamber than a pantry or closet. Edmund knocked just the same.
“Come in.” The sharp piercing crackle of Matron’s voice made his heart beat faster.
Curious, he thought, because there was no reason to be nervous; Matron was his mother and Mrs. Mapleberry had insisted children should never be afraid of their mothers. After all, what was the worst thing she could do to him?
His imagination gladly supplied him with ample possibilities, none of which encouraged him to open the door; but she had told him to come in, so he did.
What he saw was nothing like what he imagined. It was a room not much different from his own; small, simple, and only three chambers: the sitting room, a bedroom through an open doorway, and another door that could have been a bathroom. The carpet was a clean white and the decorations were a faded yellow that made the whole room feel, if not comfortable, at least used.
The jarring difference from his imagination was made all the more unnerving by what he imagined correctly: Matron sitting in a single wooden chair in the center of the room, dressed all in black, her hands clutching the top of her weathered umbrella; exactly the same as when he had first met her.
Matron pointed to a small chair-side table in the corner of the room. Edmund walked over to it, lay the tray down, and stepped away from it respectfully, like he had placed a child in its crib.
“How brown is whiskey?” she asked.
Edmund’s ignorance of the subject was obvious, so his mind struggled to find not the answer to the question, but it’s purpose. Why ask Edmund about whiskey? Why its color? Was this something she expected him to know? Did being a son mean he needed to know the colors of alcoholic drinks?
“Well?” Matron snapped.
Edmund swallowed and opened his mouth. He closed it again. She expected an answer, but he had none. His brain spun through a thousand words and phrases, but his mind was lost in a swirling sea of raven wings and battered umbrellas. Finally he managed a small shrug.
Matron frowned even more, her black eyes glittering like gemstones. “I shall expect you to bring me lunch every day. Is that understood?”
Edmund nodded, and Matron waved him away. Needing no second offer, Edmund left the room, closed the door as quickly as he dared, and walked briskly back to the safety of his room.
Yes, he thought as he ran, I’m very, very nervous.
When Edmund reached to the relative comfort of his chambers, he found a small tray with a bowl of red soup and a crust of dry bread oustide his door. After shoving the tray inside, he threw himself onto his massive bed. He lay there, desperately trying to coax his heart back to a stable and steady rhythm.
When he could breathe steadily again, Edmund ate his lunch and opened his notebook to a clean page.
He liked poetry; it was exactly like maths or science. With maths, you combined certain numbers in certain ways to get different numbers. With science, you combined different chemicals or minerals to get different chemicals or minerals. With poetry, you combined certain words in certain ways to create a smell, a sound, a picture in the mind, or a memory creeping through the brain like a fog. He loved connecting words on the page like cogs in a clock or bones in a body. He couldn’t dissect animals, or study the ebb and flow of clouds in the sky, but he could study sound and language and how thoughts became words and back again.
He finished two poems about soup before lying back down on his bed.
He was doing it all wrong. He didn’t know what it was, but that didn’t matter; he wasn’t behaving properly…but Matron wasn’t behaving properly either, was she? She had adopted Edmund, which meant, according to Mrs. Mapleberry, that they were wanted and appreciated as fine and upstanding children, but Matron didn’t seem to even want him, now that she had him.
As Matron moved further into the past, his thoughts shifted to the dinner that was speedily approaching. This was to be the first dinner he would have with his cousins, and only his second dinner as a Moulde. What was he to do? How was he to behave? What did they expect of him?
The periodically returning orphans never liked their families, painting pictures of horrible houses and vile relatives. All the same, Edmund’s situation was nothing like theirs, so he wasn’t going to run back to the orphanage any time soon.
Was he?
He could escape the endless twisting maze of huge hallways and empty rooms. He could leave behind the strange clothes and stern disgust of Matron, the snide patronizing of her cousins, and return to the familiar, if chaffing, smile of Mrs. Mapleberry.
In his mind’s eye he saw the orphanage door open wide, threatening to pull him back to the same old walls and rafters, the weevils and creaking floors calling to him.
A thunderous crack echoed through the mansion. Edmund shot up, startled out of his fevered imaginings, only to see a steady patter of summer rain begin to strike the windows. Gradually, the soft hiss of the dark rain grew louder as the drops grew larger, breaking up the faint sunlight with black sooty splotches, until the whole mansion was echoing with the din.
It made him feel better, somehow, to know the clouds shared in his melancholy.
There was a knock on his door. Thinking back over how long he had spent in his room, Edmund realized it must have been nearly six. His suspicions were proved correct when he opened the door to see Ung bowing his way into the room.
“Matron wishes me to tell you that she will be unable to attend dinner this evening,” Ung rumbled as he moved to Edmund’s closet and pulled a long thin shirt from its hanger. “She is expecting you to host the dinner.”
Edmund barely moved as Ung helped him slip into his shirt, pants, and over-sized dinner jacket. Host? Edmund wasn’t even sure he could guest properly, and Matron wanted him to host? What did a host do during dinner?
“I don’t know how,” Edmund protested as Ung did up his buttons. The butler sighed, his deep chest swelling and deflating like a massive bellows.
“If I may be so bold,” he said, rubbing Edmund’s shoulders with a thick-bristled brush that scraped like sharp needles, “Matron does little besides eat when entertaining guests. If the Young Master were to simply keep silent, his cousins may not notice a difference.”
Edmund breathed a sigh of relief. Sitting still and quiet was his forte.
The rain was still pouring down at six sharp.
Considering everything that Edmund had seen Mrs. Kippling throw into her cooking pot, he had expected something more interesting than the bland soup he’d had at last night’s dinner. Or for breakfast. Or lunch.
But what Ung carefully ladled into his bowl was green, thick, creamy, and smelled a bit like grass and a bit like mushroom. As Edmund was unfamiliar with the qualities of upper-class British cuisine, he suspected it would taste better than it smelled; and, in the fine tradition of English Gourmets everywhere, he was disappointed. He had one more taste, just to be sure.
He had just set down his spoon when a faint conversation filtered through the far door.
“Nonsense! She wouldn’t…do that!” came the first hissing voice. “You must have…um…misheard.”
“He introduced himself as her son,” came another voice. “She adopted him yesterday.”
“No, but not…um…adopted, surely?” the first voice whined. “He’s a new…uh…servant, perhaps?”
“He looked neither smart enough nor stupid enough to lie to me. I’m afraid that, as unpleasant as it may be, she’s found a way to make sure we don’t —”
The doors opened, and the conversation stopped abruptly. Mrs. Junapa Knittle and Mr. Pinsnip Sadwick stared at Edmund in shock. In accidental but no less direct defiance of appropriate behavior, Edmund stared back.
Junapa moved first, sweeping into the room and settling in a chair with a sharp creak.
“Master Edmund, how wonderful to see you again. I hope you have been keeping out of trouble? Pinsnip, do be a dear and step all the way into the room; you look like a sick rabbit.”
Pinsnip startled at the mention of his name, almost tripping over himself as he stumbled towards the table.
“Oh!” he gasped, stammering while slipping gracelessly into the chair next to Junapa. “Um! Master Edmund! Hello! I suspect you’re…wondering exactly what we were talking —”
“I am curious to see what has been prepared for dinner,” Junapa said, a bit louder than necessary. “I’m most dreadfully famished.”
“Yes… yes, me too,” Pinsnip smiled, leaning forward towards Edmund. “In fact, that’s…that’s exactly what Junapa and I were just — ow!” He twisted, reaching down to rub his leg.
“Oh dear, are you feeling quite well, Pinsnip?” Junapa asked as Ung wheeled the soup tureen over. “You simply can’t keep wandering about the mansion all day, poking your nose into shadows. It can’t be conducive to a healthy future.”
Pinsnip’s mouth twisted into a sneer, but any reply was cut off by Wislydale walking into the room, his hand gripping a half-empty glass of amber-brown liquid.
“Well, well!” he yawned, tipping the glass into his mouth. “Here we all are again, what? Jolly grand to see you all.”
“You as well, Wislydale,” Junapa said as he staggered into the room and sat with a symphony of creaking wood. “You arrived just in time.”
“Soup again, I’ll wager, what?” Wislydale smirked viciously as the cart approached. “That daft old maid of Matron’s doesn’t know a bisque from a biscuit.”
“It could…um…use a little salt,” Pinsnip waved at Ung, who turned to the sideboard for the salt cellar.
“Seasoning it yourself?” Wislydale drawled. “How proletarian.”
The door burst open once more, revealing Kolb in splendid dinner dress. He strode three steps into the room, raised his hand above his head, and slammed his foot down on the floor like an actor making his entrance. He held the pose for a few seconds before striding to the table. Flicking his coat-tails out of the way with a twist of his wrists, he sank into his chair without a single squeak.
“My fine facinorous family!” His sudden shout startled the room. “I’m honored to join you at repast!”
“Melodramatic twat,” Wislydale muttered into his glass before emptying it and waving towards Ung.
“And what foudroyant feast do we have to look forward to this evening?” Kolb snapped his napkin into the air like a whip and tossed it into his lap. “A gathering of grouse? Perhaps a rack of rabbit or a brisket of beef? Or… yes! A soupçon of soup!” He clapped his hands as Ung ladled the cream of green into Kolb’s bowl. “How undeniably unexpected!” He dipped his spoon into the bowl, and delicately placed the soup onto his tongue, moaning with delight. “Astonishing! Another culinary victory of unparalleled beauty. Now, forgive my repellent rudeness —” with a flash of silver he pointed his spoon at Edmund’s nose like a sword, “but does Matron know one of her servants is eating upstairs?”
“He’s not a servant, what?” Wislydale held out his glass as Ung refilled it. “This young chap is Matron’s new son.”
“I beg your pardon?” Kolb was nonplussed.
“Matron adopted a son,” Junapa said, slowly and clearly, as she gestured to Edmund with a genteel hand.
Kolb stared at Edmund again, before bursting into laughter. When no one joined in, he stopped. “You’re serious?” His bemused face held for only a second before blossoming again into charming elan. “Oh! Of course, I should have guessed immediately! I see…things have changed since last I visited. What are we going to do about that?”
“Don’t be a bore, old boy,” Wislydale’s voice was punctuated by creaking as he shifted in his seat. “We have plenty of time to discuss family business later…after we’ve enjoyed each other’s company, what?”
“And such enjoyment it shall be,” Kolb’s smile widened as his hands made several magician’s passes over his bowl, vanishing and reappearing the spoon with a flick of his wrist. “Now where was I…I believe I was praising the cook?”
“I’m sure I don’t know why,” Junapa sniffed, shaking her head. “She’s the house-keeper too. It’s not proper, a servant doing two jobs like that. She’s liable to get them mixed up.”
“A dreadful thought,” Kolb gasped in horror, his hand flying to his mouth. “Making soup from soap? Washing our stockings with stock? Bathing with broth? Our bedding breaded? One shudders to imagine.”
“As painful as it is, I must agree with Junapa,” Wislydale drawled, glancing at his own spoon. “It simply isn’t right to have servants doing more than one job what? I saw the butler heading outside with a rake after lunch.”
“Ung is always gardening,” Kolb smiled, his piercing eyes scanning the table, “I do so hate to disagree, especially with you, my cousin, but they all seem to be managing quite well. What do you think, Pinsnip? You’ve been surveying the estate, yes?”
“Survey? Oh!” Pinsnip nodded furiously. “Yes…I…that is, I am nearly finished…I just have the grounds outside to cover…the rest is —”
“Jolly good!” Kolb spread his arms. “You see? Pinsnip obviously agrees.”
“Balderdash,” dismissed Wislydale. “I say that Matron needs a proper gardener, wait-staff, and cook, what? By Jove, she couldn’t even rustle up a proper greeting party when we arrived. It’s reflecting poorly on the family, what? People are starting to talk.”
“I’m quite certain, my dear Wislydale, that most of what is said about our family is said by you and the rest of the Rotledge family.” Junapa smiled brittlely, her delicate hands bringing a spoonful of cream of green to her lips. “As for the others —”
The doors flew open as Tunansia stepped into the room, sitting down with no flourish or grace. She glared as she sat and began to eat as soon as Ung had served her.
There was a pause, then: “Are we to expect Tricknee this evening?” Kolb asked as he demurely mopped his mouth with his napkin.
Wislydale snorted. “I doubt it. Probably fussing over that girl, or fiddling with that limb he’s been hauling around ever since that accident at Ninnenburg…dashed queer if you ask me, what?”
“I don’t believe anyone did,” Tunansia muttered.
Junapa purred. “I’m sure none of us can blame dear Tricknee for his nature. We each of us have our own…compulsions.”
“Some more productive than others,” Wislydale said.
“Now then,” Kolb laughed, “Let’s not have our first dinner together be a meal of murderous malcontent. Let’s enjoy each others exuberant and enlightening elocution! We can fall on each other like wild dogs tomorrow, yes?”
“I agree,” Pinsnip nodded. “Let’s put aside the…the sniping for a bit. It’s too much…I mean, it —”
“Then let us eat in silence,” Tunansia said, finally looking up from her bowl and casting an icy glare over the table. The others made no comment before returning to their repast, eating their soup with, if not contentment, at least resignation.
Edmund was grateful. He had been trying to think of something a host would say, but nothing had come to mind.
Edmund was used to silence, but as he ate his dinner he realized that this silence was different than all the other silences he’d ever experienced. Some silences were like a cloud that pushed sound away, while others were like a hole that begged to be filled. Even accounting for the sounds of soup-spoons and the near constant requests for the salt, this was the noisiest silence Edmund had ever heard. He could almost feel the thousands of words pointedly not being said.
Wislydale finally broke the silence, setting his glass down and blinking blearily across the table; “I say, what is this I hear, Kolb, about you begging funding for some trip up the Amazon?
“Oh dear,” Pinsnip moaned. “I thought you had…given up all that nonsense?”
“I had,” Kolb shrugged. “I was forced back to my knight errant ways, due to a particularly pernicious problem from my past. Our mistakes do tend to follow us long after they seem dead…and buried…do they not?”
Pinsnip’s eyes narrowed.
“Yes, quite,” Wislydale drawled, his head rolling about his shoulders, “but it’s hardly appropriate to run off someplace…foreign. My dear chap, there are all sorts of contagious diseases out there!”
“Fear not,” Kolb’s smile broadened. “When I return, I shall stay as far away from you as possible.”
“I think,” Junapa smiled in return, “Wislydale is less concerned with his health than what it says about the family.”
“A dashed silly business, what?” Wislydale grumbled. “I say, if you want adventure, go on Safari. Or Quail hunting. something respectable!”
“I’m sorry if you think the noble name of Moulde has been sullied,” Kolb smirked. “Please feel free to return to that horrible little hovel of hedonists you call a family…if the Rotledges will let you back, of course.” He turned towards Junapa. “I would love to hear about your trip to Fallingbell Grange. I hear the gardener is threatening to leave.”
“Oh really,” Wislydale rolled his eyes. “Is he still bearing a grudge?”
“The sentence was seven years, Wislydale,” Tunansia grunted, sipping her soup. “Maybe he thinks it’s a grudge worth bearing.”
“Justified?” Wislydale snorted. “I say, what a quaint concept, what?. After all, It wasn’t Junapa’s fault his boy didn’t have a convincing alibi. You’d think he didn’t realize murder is a serious business.”
The table paused to nod the nods of people who knew this to be true.
“I must say, the trouble in South Dunkin has taken a turn for the worse, hasn’t it?” Junapa offered.
“It’s to the south.”
Edmund froze. He hadn’t meant to say that; it had just leapt into his mouth, like a sneeze or errant cough. Why? He had been content to sit and eat unobtrusively while listening to these strange adults converse in the most poetical ways, saying any number of things without actually saying anything.
Slowly, like two rows of owls, every head in the room turned to face Edmund, their eyes flickering in the dim gaslight.
“My dear Master Edmund,” Junapa lips parted with a slick smile. “I simply must apologize. Here we are talking about adult matters and ignoring you completely. It was dreadfully rude of us, and I do hope you can forgive our poor manners. How are you finding your time at Moulde Hall?”
Edmund set down his spoon as his mind spun through hundreds of words and phrases, constructing and deconstructing everything he could say, searching for something — anything — to say.
“I find the Hall a strange and thrilling place,” he said, falling back on his poetic instincts. “There is, I fear, a lot I still don’t know.”
“Well,” Junapa smiled kindly, “We should fix that, shouldn’t we?” Everyone’s attention shifted to her, and she met each gaze with a look that brooked no opposition. “What would you like to know?”
Edmund’s tongue stuck to his suddenly dry mouth. How could he pick just one thing?
But really, there was only one thing.
“Why did Matron adopt me?”
The cousins looked at one another, exchanging glances that held entire conversations in painful silence. Finally, Pinsnip cleared his throat.
“You see…well…I think Matron wants to…that is…is trying to keep to her estate,” he said, clasping his hands in front of him. “I’m sure she thinks you’ll…be able to help her.”
“I’m afraid we’re as surprised as you,” Junapa clasped her hands in front of her. “Adopting is such a…/pedestrian/ thing. I’m sure none of us expected her to be so…”
“Trendy,” Tunansia spat, like she had just swallowed a bug.
“You’re a pawn, my boy,” Kolb leaned over the table. “A soldier in Matron’s army, maybe her only one. You’ll have to deal with sharp tongues and sharp minds, even sharp blades before your time is done. I don’t suppose she mentioned anything at all to you about why exactly she adopted you?”
“It’s obvious, you oaf,” Tunansia sneered. “Now that Matron has an heir, he gets the inheritance. All of it — no questions asked. If we’re not written into the will, we’ll get nothing.”
“I get the mansion?” Edmund asked, latching on to the one part of the conversation he understood.
“Obviously!” Tunansia’s frustration with Edmund burned in her charcoal eyes. “If Matron dies you’ll become head of the family, and you don’t even have to do a single thing to get it!”
“Patron Edmund Moulde!” Kolb laughed loudly, tossing his spoon back into his bowl, splashing cream of green on the tablecloth. “Heir to the title, the land, and the mansion! Head of one of the Nine Founding Families, and all duties and titles thereto invested.”
“And all the money,” Pinsnip sighed, his spoon aimlessly swirling the cream of green in his bowl. “Don’t…um…forget the money.”
Kolb leaned towards Edmund. “If it seems overwhelming, don’t worry; there are a lot of people who are going to go to great and terrible extents to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
“I’ll be Patron?” It sounded absurd to his ears.
“It’s all…/depressingly/ legal,” Pinsnip sighed. “There is quite a lot of law surrounding the Founding Families and their legal standing. Matron has no husband, no children, no parents, no immediate cousins, nieces, nephews, or siblings. As it stands, without an Heir —” There was a sharp throat-clearing from Kolb, “— present company excepted — The estate will likely go, in whole or in part, to…well…one of us.”
“Hence,” Junapa waved in Edmund’s direction, “you.”
“She’d rather…burn the mansion down then let us get one splinter, even after all the… kindness we’ve shown her!” Pinsnip grumbled into his soup.
“I beg your pardon?” Wislydale asked, his eyebrows high on his forehead.
“Well…of a sort,” Pinsnip shrugged. “We’re here, aren’t we? It’s more respect than…than anyone else in the family is showing. And in spite of it all, she’d rather see us all…uh…starve in the streets than give us a…a single pound!”
“Some of us are counting it already,” Junapa smirked. “I’m surprised you aren’t suveying with him, Wislydale. Patron Rotledge must be quite impatient; How much debt have you sunk the Rotledges into now? I can’t imagine all the eighty year-old brandy and eighteen year-old girls come cheap.”
“No cheaper than keeping the neighbors quiet,” Wislydale said softly, his blurry eyes shifting to meet Junapa’s. Her mouth twitched as she slowly raised her glass in a mock toast.
“She doesn’t expect anything of me?” Edmund had been prepared to believe her expectations were subtle, or perhaps incomprehensively adult, but the idea that they were absent had never occurred to him.
“Well, save the one thing all heirs are expected to do,” Junapa’s smile curled viciously.
“What is that?”
“Survive,” Tunansia spat.
“As long as you live,” Kolb rubbed his hands together, “you are fulfilling every obligation Matron has placed on you. You’re keeping her reviled relatives from the luminous lucre and ostentatious honorifics we so richly deserve; apart from that, I doubt she gives a single damn what you do.”
“You’re reviled?” Mrs. Mapleberry had tried to explain familial obligation, but Edmund didn’t remember any lessons about families hating each other. “But you’re her cousins.”
“Well, not quite,” Wislydale swirled his drink in his hand. “Bit of a natty little ball of twine, what? Matron and Tricknee are quite distant cousins, and I’m regrettably his son. Tunansia is the daughter of Matron’s second half-cousin once removed, Kolb is Matron’s second nephew-in-law, and Junapa is her third cousin twice removed from her grandmother’s side. Pinsnip there is a bit further off — he has a relative in Matron’s great-grandmother’s cousin-in-law.”
“What does that make you?” Edmund asked.
“Family,” Junapa smiled smoothly. The others around the table all nodded their agreement.
“My dear child,” Kolb grinned, “Moulde is so much more than a name. It’s a title! A badge of honor borne proudly when strolling among the teeming masses to set oneself apart from the multitudes. One need not be born a Moulde to become a Moulde, (“Evidently,” Tunansia muttered) much as being born a Moulde does not make you one.”
“Though if any of us had…had the name,” Pinsnip interjected, “that would make it…easier.”
“A right nasty bunch of fiends, all of us, what?” Wislydale sniffed. “Matron doesn’t like any of us, and we don’t like any of us either. You’ve been thrown into the lion’s den, my lad, and no mistake.”
“Why do you all hate each other?” Edmund asked.
A ripple of exasperated laughter shivered around the room. “Hate?” Pinsnip snickered. “That’s not…um…not the right word, is it?”
“Loathe, perhaps,” Kolb coughed, downing his water in a single gulp. “Despise, detest, degrade and deplore. We have quite a few words for how our family feels about each other. Better to ask why wolves eat sheep, or dogs chase cats.”
“It’s become sort of a family tradition,” Junapa smiled.
“Then do I have to hate you?”
Again, the room fell silent. Edmund looked at each of them in turn and a chill ran down his back as he saw them staring like how butchers might study a cow that was ready for the chopping block.
“You’d be smart if you did,” Tunansia said, bluntly.
With a bang that made everyone jump, the door thudded open as Tricknee staggered in, glaring about him like an angry hawk.
“Tricknee!” Junapa stood from her chair and walked over to him. “We were just wondering if we would see you this evening. How marvelous you could make it! We’re all really quite delighted.”
“Don’t be,” muttered Tricknee, his one open eye locked onto Edmund. “I didn’t come for you all, now did I? I came to size up the enemy.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Junapa said icily, taking Tricknee’s arm to usher him to a chair. He jerked away from her grasp and threw himself with a loud crack into the nearest seat.
“I ain’t invalid yet, hag!” He snapped angrily. “I’ll sit here! Now bugger off, and let me eat!” His eyes spun back Edmund. “So, you think you can stop us, boy?”
“No,” Edmund shook his head. He didn’t even know what he would be stopping.
Tricknee nodded slowly. “Good,” he muttered as Ung slowly poured Tricknee his cream of green soup. “You can’t. You just sit there and let the building fall to bits around you. Show the sense Matron hasn’t got and give up.”
For minutes, the only sound was Tricknee sucking loudly at his teeth, making a sound like a sick whale.
“So much for our pleasant family evening, what?” Wislydale smiled, sipping at his drink.