Chapter One

 

I woke early on my third day at Castlebridge Hall although, in truth, I'd only slept fitfully all night at best. The other girls in my dormitory were still asleep. I suppose that was something of a blessing. Two of the girls had crawled into bed with each other at some point of the wee early hours and they'd been so pleased to see each other that they'd woken everybody else up and caused Lucy to swear and throw a pillow at them. Not that Lucy was entirely without sin when it came to keeping folks awake, however. She had a persistent snore that was quite cute to begin with but became downright irritating after an hour or two.

I lay in my little corner bunk and took stock on my first two days at the Hall. It wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination, a positive review. If you'd assigned two people to keep tally of the pros and cons then the person charged with the latter would have been rushed off their feet whilst their colleague would have fallen asleep in boredom. Normally I can brush off adversity and find some sort of silver lining. I'm a cup half full sort of person but, in this instance, I wasn't looking at a cup half empty but more one in which it was increasingly difficult to detect more than a few dregs at the bottom of it. The past two days had been almost uniformly wretched and the day to come promised to live up to the high standards of its two predecessors.

To summarise my Castlebridge Hall career so far, for the benefit of those of you who haven't caught up yet, I had come to the Hall straight from St Margaret Clitheroe's Catholic Girls Boarding School to serve a half term work placement in domestic service under the philanthropic care of my patron and sponsor, Lord Castlebridge. I had set off for Castlebridge Hall afflicted with a broken heart having been victimised by that most malevolent deity, Cupid, who had seen fit to loose one of his blasted arrows in my direction and caused me to fall in love with a beautiful exchange student from India called Priya. Priya, it had turned out, had been a Maharani who had come to St Margaret's to case the joint for her fabulously rich daddy's foreign scholarship programme for deserving Indian students. At half term, she had duly skipped off back to the sub-continent to report her findings and hanging my injured heart out to dry. I expect that the afore mentioned Cupid was highly amused with his handiwork and, if I ever get my hands on the little shit, I will wring his blasted neck for him.

The net result of this malady d'amour had been to cause me to dally in self-pity en route and I'd arrived at Castlebridge Hall very late. Lord Castlebridge had been less than amused and, in a spirit of reformatory zeal, had decided to start my Castlebridge Hall career as he intended it to continue by ordering me straight to the library where, strapped down naked over the infamous and venerable caning stool, I was to be instructed in the virtues of punctuality with the aid of fifty hard strokes of the butler's cane across my youthful rump. From that inauspicious beginning, things had only got worse.

I had fondly believed that I was only at the Hall for a short sojourn for half term... ten days at tops. I had since learned that, instead, I was stuck at the dump for a month and that, furthermore, I would be back again at Christmas and every subsequent school break for the foreseeable future. In fact, unless I could find some way out of the blighted place, I was liable to be stuck with it, as part of the Castlebridge Hall workforce, for years to come. It was a frightful prospect. That first thrashing in the library had been merely a foretaste of the horrors to come. I had had most of my clothes and possessions confiscated and was confined to the Hall's environs, in maid's livery, where I was to be employed in the disagreeable function unpleasantly known as "honest hard work". If this distasteful activity was not bad enough, there had been a further malicious refinement added to my regime. Lord Castlebridge had made it a condition of my employment that I was to receive a routine strapping or caning at least once a week and he was seriously considering a policy of having me in the library for a thorough thrashing on a monthly basis.

These beatings were to be, you understand, merely routine maintenance discipline; a sort of on-going corrective penance, supplementary to whatever other punishments I incurred as a result of any misconduct. I had already suffered one additional punishment, having had to drop my knickers for the cane in the Hall's entrance hall after losing my way in the interminable corridors of Castlebridge Hall and turning up late for an appointment with Lord Castlebridge. In addition to this I was facing another uncomfortable interview with His Lordship regarding my school work and liable to face another dose of the cane if, as seemed likely, he was dissatisfied with it. Then again there were the events of the previous night. I shall have more to say about this in due course but suffice it to say, for the moment, that it was odds on to be another ticket to the caning stool.

As if this regime was not bad enough, life had become even more complicated. I had hoped to keep a low profile at Castlebridge Hall; slip under the radar as it were. I'd thought that if I could just keep out of trouble, I could simply melt into the scenery; be just another anonymous maid dusting shelves or something in the background. I'd only expected to be there for ten days and I hadn't thought it would be too hard to keep my head down and evade notice until such time as I could be rid of the place. Well the wheels had come off that wagon in no uncertain fashion and my hopes of avoiding attention had ultimately proved futile.

It hadn't helped, of course, that I'd been frogmarched off for a thrashing in the library barely the minute I had taken my coat off. With an entrance like that, any hope I'd had of melting into the background was effectively dead in the water. Now the entire Hall was talking about the new girl who had scarce managed to wipe her feet before finding herself prostrate over the caning stool for a sound hiding. The story was further enriched by the fact that I hadn't exactly received my caning with fortitude. The entire Hall had heard my manic shrieks from the library and there was a story doing the rounds that I'd scared the crap out of the peacocks in the gardens. My initiation into Castlebridge Hall domestic service was already accumulating the status of a legend.

Naturally, therefore, there was a good deal of talk about me. This was fuelled by the fact that many of the small army of maids in the Hall were old St Margaret's girls who knew me from school. My notorious reputation preceded me, therefore, and those in the know nodded their heads in smug satisfaction that they, at least, were not surprised that the old man had had me thrashed the minute I walked in. The maids were all looking at me as if I was some sort of exotic curiosity and there was already a sweepstake in progress as to the exact number of days it would be before my next punitive visit to the library.

Nor was I able to escape the attention of those in positions of authority either. Lord Castlebridge himself had already taken a particular interest in me and warned his senior staff to monitor me closely as well as mandating the regular, routine disciplinary measures I have already mentioned. Greenwood, the butler, regarded me with an acerbic eye and his caning hand started to twitch involuntarily at the mere sight of me. The Head of housekeeping, Heather Barrington was another who eyed me with deep suspicion and was doubtless making an inventory of the silverware in any room I happened to have set foot in. Any hope I'd harboured of a clean slate at Castlebridge Hall was obviously wishful thinking.

Of all the people who had taken due notice of me since my arrival, perhaps the most worrying of all was the first lady of the household, the spectacular Lady Castlebridge herself. Lady Cynthia had taken an altogether too keen an interest in me. As yet, her motives for doing so remained unclear but I think I can recognise a ruthlessly scheming madam when I see one, however beautiful they may be. I suspected that she had plans for me. What those plans might be were, as yet, still hidden but I had a nasty feeling that they would trump any horror yet.

To cap it all, I had also crossed paths with a pair of guests in the Hall and they, believe me, were not the sort of acquaintances whose company I would normally seek. One of these was a certain Priscilla Armstrong and, you may take it from me, even on first acquaintance, she was as foul a witch as ever drew breath. She was an old school mate of Lady Cynthia's. Well I use the term "mate" in the loosest possible terms here because Lady Cynthia despised her with a passion. Since her arrival, her reasons for inflicting her presence on Castlebridge Hall had become somewhat clearer. Apparently Priscilla presided over a dirty great estate up in Yorkshire which she had laid her mitts on following the unsurprising death of the geriatric husband she had married for his brass. This enormous property still bore the traces of its previous master, her late husband, and Priscilla, with a view to personalising the place, was having the place gutted to suit her own tastes. Presumably this renovation included the fitting of dungeons, torture chambers and crypts for the bodies. Whatever the exact nature of the refurbishment was, the latest manifestation of it was causing some domestic disturbance since the house was full of workmen. Priscilla, unwilling to tolerate the inconvenience, had therefore decided to decamp southwards and had imperiously demanded accommodation at Castlebridge Hall for a few weeks while the current round of renovations was completed.

Now personally I couldn't see why Lady Cynthia hadn't told her to take a hike; a very long hike since you'd want the pier to be long enough to extend out into deep water. Lady Cynthia, however, had been constrained by the requirements of civility and noblesse oblige of the upper classes and, when Priscilla had announced her imminent arrival, had had to bite the bullet even though she would rather have housed an infestation of vermin. Priscilla had duly arrived the previous day with her sidekick, an obnoxious personal maid who one dearly hoped would be accompanying her mistress on her seaside promenade.

Now having the sinister Priscilla Armstrong on the premises would have been bad enough but, when it came to stock villains, we'd been given a two for the price of one deal. Priscilla had turned up in the company of the foul and lecherous Lord Stansbury. There was currently an unholy alliance between these two since Stansbury, eager to lay his paws on the Armstrong millions, was wooing Priscilla avariciously. Priscilla was not averse to his overtures. It wasn't that Stansbury had any particular charm per se but he did have the advantage of a grandiloquent title which, to a nauseatingly class conscious, social climber like Priscilla, was worth putting up with any amount of personal repulsion to obtain. It was Priscilla's deepest regret that the old man had shucked off the mortal coil before making the New Year's honours list and had bequeathed her nothing more than the humble handle of Mrs Armstrong. Priscilla had been a prefect in her St Margaret's school days and had looked down contemptuously on Lady Cynthia. It got under her skin something rotten that Cynthia had eventually walked off with a countess's coronet leaving her to suck on the hind tit of a title that even the humblest shop assistant could boast. Lord Stansbury, recently divorced, appeared a means by which to partly redress the imbalance.

Now of course this all beggars the question of why Priscilla, upon deciding to migrate south for the duration of the domestic renovations, hadn't installed herself at Stansbury's digs. Stansbury was possessed of a perfectly impressive ancestral gaff some sixty odd miles from Castlebridge Hall and he could have surely found a room for the girlfriend in it somewhere. Priscilla, however, hated Stansbury Castle and wouldn't entertain the idea. One of the reasons she so despised the place was that the Castle was a ghost of its former glory. The previous Lady Stansbury had pretty much gutted the estate in the divorce settlement leaving Stansbury to penny pinch in the wake of the disaster. It wasn't that the place was impoverished exactly but there was a definite aura of austerity in the new era. It could not match the opulence of Castlebridge Hall and its small army of domestic servants.

There was possibly another reason why Priscilla turned her nose up at Stansbury Castle. It was, after all, Stansbury's own personal hunting ground; the domain in which he kept his own harem of pretty young maids and spent his leisure time in lecherous pursuit of. Now I don't suppose that Priscilla entertained any illusions about her prospective husband or gave so much as a rat's hind leg about what he did in his spare time but it was likely that she preferred not to have it shoved in her face. Whatever the reason, Priscilla wouldn't be seen dead in the place at the current time though she doubtless had plans for its reformation once she had laid her claim to her marital title. The net result of all that was that, with Priscilla taking up a base of operations at Castlebridge Hall, Stansbury thought it prudent to invite himself along as well. It is, when all is said and done, only sensible to ride close escort on somebody whose fortune you are eager to acquire.

Stansbury had another motive for being in residence at Castlebridge Hall as well. There was an outstanding matter of an 18^th century Roland Bartholomew portrait between him and Lord Castlebridge. This painting was currently residing in the library having been removed from its frame and mounted on an easel for the purpose of restoration. I had encountered this "objet d'art" on the occasion of my visit to the library on my first day in the Hall and thought it quite the most repulsive application of oil on canvas that I had ever clapped eyes on. Now it may be argued that my appreciation of the picture might have been coloured by the fact that I was first exposed to it while strapped down over the caning stool having my rear end blistered by Greenwood and thus unable to make a valued judgement of its finer points. I maintain vigorously, however, that I could have come upon that painting under the most agreeable of circumstances and it would still have cast a blight over my happiness. It really was hideous; the kind of thing to bring you awake in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat.

Its appearance notwithstanding, the painting had some considerable value, however. Apparently there was somewhat of a resurgent interest in Bartholomew's work of late. God knows why. If that monstrosity was at all typical of his work, you would have thought that any art historian would have been all too happy to consign the perpetrator to happily forgotten obscurity. Nevertheless the painting was provisionally valued at over £100,000. Lord Castlebridge had picked up the painting at auction, as part of a job lot of lesser works, at a price less than a tenth of the picture's worth and had been rubbing his hands together in glee at having procured a bargain, however ghastly it might be. Unfortunately the portrait had turned out to be a rendition of one of Lord Stansbury's reviled ancestors and provenance seemed to suggest that it had originated at Stansbury Castle and only fallen into the private collection, from whence Lord Castlebridge had purchased it, under questionable circumstances. Naturally, Lord Stansbury, not willing to see a hundred grand slip from his grasp, had claimed the painting as the rightful property of Stansbury Castle. The matter was, as yet, unresolved, but Stansbury was sticking close to the disputed painting.

So Castlebridge Hall was lumbered with Stansbury's unwelcome presence as well. Lord Castlebridge and Stansbury were bitter enemies of long standing, and, with Lady Cynthia and Priscilla Armstrong on less than cordial terms with each other too, the atmosphere in the Hall was not exactly conducive to good will and bonhomie. It was just my luck to be the currently favoured whipping girl at a time when, with the enemy infiltrated into the home camp, everybody was in a foul mood.

Having said that, I could well understand the enmity that Stansbury inspired for if ever there was a prospective spouse, worthy of the amorous machinations of Hades, for Priscilla Armstrong, it was the loathsome figure of the 13^th Marquis of Stansbury. I had first made the acquaintance of this blot on the nobility under inauspicious circumstances. He had walked into the main entrance hall of the Hall the previous day when I had been present. It hadn't been a moment when I would have wished to greet a peer of the realm for, as he'd come slithering in, I had been touching my toes with my fingertips and, with my skirts raised above my waist and my knickers lowered to my knees, I had been displaying my youthful derrière to public gaze, newly adorned with fresh stripes compliments of Mr Greenwood who was in the process of correcting my latest erratum with the aid of a length of cane. Stansbury had been most taken by the sight, had leered openly in unholy delight and may have gone so far as to twirl a finger in his handlebar moustache roguishly. He had seemed most disappointed when Greenwood, hastily and prematurely terminating my corrective measures, had ordered me to stand and cover my modesty and was doubtless counting the days until he could renew his enjoyment of the spectacle. Worryingly, his lecherous fancy had been seemingly tickled by the youthful charms of your humble narrator and I had been warned most seriously to steer well clear of him; I being just the sort of fresh, tender fodder to attract his predatory eye.

This brings me nicely to the other person whose acquaintance I had made and the one who was making my life more complicated than ever. I had been befriended by a pretty maid by the name of Jessica Walker and it was she who had most earnestly warned me about the perilous attentions of Lord Stansbury. Jessica herself was relatively new at Castlebridge Hall for, until fairly recently, she had been a maid in the employment of Stansbury himself. Close familiarity with Lord Stansbury hadn't endeared him to Jessica. Lord Castlebridge might have been on less than cordial relations with him but he might have been on best mate terms in comparison to Jessica's feelings about the man. She loathed Stansbury with every fibre of her being and would have danced joyfully in the street at the news of his contracting a horribly deforming, terminal illness. Compounding her distaste for the man was the fact that there was, still under employment at Stansbury Castle, a certain Daisy Pebble; a young lady of whom Jessica was enamoured and whom she feared was the target of his lecherous Lordship's vile intentions. Jessica had unsuccessfully attempted to extract her Daisy from Stansbury's clutches and her fears for her had fuelled an already vitriolic hatred for him.

Now you may wonder what all this had to do with me. Well it's a good question to be honest. In fact I had become somewhat entangled with Jessica's world through no real fault of my own. I had worked with her all the previous day and, after we'd downed tools at the end of our shift, we had both been summonsed for a bafflingly enigmatic interview with Lady Cynthia concerning our earlier encounter with Lord Stansbury. After this, Jessica had kindly offered to take me down to the village for a drink in the pub for the rest of the evening. Now this was technically in contravention of the restrictions confining me to the Hall but, since it was about the only friendly overture I had received since arriving, I had allowed myself to be persuaded. Jessica had even leant me some of her clothes since my own non-working clothes had been confiscated.

Now I had presumed that Jessica's offer was nothing more than a gesture of friendship but there had been ulterior motives involved. We'd left the Hall's grounds by a clandestine route, designed to bring us to a place where we could scale the perimeter wall undetected. In the shadow of said wall, I had stripped down to my undies to change into my borrowed clothes and it had been akin to waving a red flag at a bull for, catching me by surprise, Jessica had leapt on me, pressed me against the wall and proceeded to have her wicked way with me, as the saying goes.

Of course there was nothing "wicked" about Jessica and that was really the root of the problem. Had my assailant merely been some bad girl with lustful designs on me then we could have just had a little slap and tickle, brushed ourselves off and gone for that pint of beer afterwards without any drama or further repercussions. Nice girls like Jessica come with consequences attached, however, and I'd had to put up with a lot of sentimental mooning and romantic intimacy as a result of the encounter. Jessica seemed most struck with me which, coming on the heels of my parting with Priya, was probably the last thing I needed. To cap it all, Jessica's buddies, particularly her friend Susie, regarded Jessica's relations with me with deep misgiving and, in a total misrepresentation of the facts, suspected me of taking advantage of her. Susie had even gone so far as to warn Jessica that I would only be trouble. I had indignantly protested to Susie that I had no intention of getting Jessica into trouble and then, to the confirmation of everybody's worst fears, had proceeded to do exactly that.

We had been caught coming back into the Hall by Miss Barrington and Jessica, unable to lie to save her life, had pretty much confessed all. Heather Barrington had torn a strip off the pair of us and sent us to bed, deferring punishment until morning when we were told to present ourselves at her office. She had already informed us that she would need to refer the offence to Mr Greenwood, the butler, inferring that the likely outcome would be that the pair of us would be ordered to the library to be formally caned. Thus had ended my second day at Castlebridge Hall on such a dismal note and with such gloomy prospects for the day to follow.

This then was the story up until now. I'm sorry to all those already abreast of all this for taking so long but I thought it best bring anybody just joining us up to speed with events so far. In short, my career as a Castlebridge Hall maid was off to a bad start and with no real sign of improvement in the offing.