‘Yes, I see.’
Even in the few days she had been at Clawstone, Madlyn had heard about Trembellow Towers.
‘You could come to my house this afternoon if you like,’ said Ned. ‘There’s a programme about whales for your brother. And you could email your parents if you wanted to.’
Madlyn’s face lit up. If there was one thing she wanted more than any other it was to make contact with her parents, and she knew that she’d been right about Ned. He was going to be a true and proper friend.
The children felt at home straight away in Mrs Grove’s bungalow. It was a small modern house, with just three rooms and a tiny garden, and it was marvellously warm and clean and comfortable. The TV chuntered away to itself quietly in the corner, there were geraniums on the window sill and from the kitchen came the smell of unburned scones and flapjacks baking in the oven.
Mrs Grove’s husband had been killed two years earlier, when a drunken lout in a Jaguar had run into his delivery van, but if she was sad she kept the sadness inside — and she still had Ned.
While Rollo settled himself down in front of the whales, Ned took Madlyn off to his room and sent a message to New York, and they were lucky: by the time they had finished tea there was a reply saying all was well.
When they got back to the castle they found Aunt Emily riddling the kitchen range. There was a smudge of soot on her nose and her hair was coming down.
‘Isn’t it the dearest little house?’ she said wistfully when they told her about their afternoon. ‘I’ve always wanted to live in a house like that. No stairs and you just turn a knob and the fire comes on.’
‘Well, couldn’t you, Aunt Emily?’ asked Madlyn. ‘Do you have to go on living here?’
Aunt Emily sighed. ‘I’m afraid we do,’ she said. She rubbed her nose, spreading the soot a little further. ‘One has to do one’s duty.’
There were now only two more days to Open Day. Mr Jones in the village had sent another jigsaw puzzle; it was a picture of a town councillor on a platform making a speech. Aunt Emily stayed up till midnight finishing the tea cosy, and Madlyn sprayed fresh disinfectant into the toilets and arranged a posy of wild flowers to put on the table in the entrance hall.
But on the morning of the actual day, Sir George came down from the battlements holding his telescope and looking grim.
‘Cars streaming off to Trembellow,’ he said. ‘Dozens of them. Hardly a one coming this way.’
Sir George was right. By eleven o’clock only four people had bought tickets and made their way up the front steps of the castle.
Madlyn was sitting beside Mrs Grove at the table where the tickets were sold, ready to help with giving change and handing out booklets. She had taken over from Mrs Grove’s sister who now had a morning job in the village shop.
Now, as the big clock in the courtyard ticked up the minutes, she turned to her and said, ‘Mrs Grove, why does it matter so much that people come to the castle? Couldn’t Uncle George sell it and he and Aunt Emily go and live in a bungalow? Then they wouldn’t need nearly so much money for themselves.’
Mrs Grove turned to her. ‘Why, bless you, it isn’t the castle they want the money for and it isn’t for themselves. I’ve never met two people who spent less.’
‘Well, what then? What do they have to have the money for? Why is the money so important?’
Mrs Grove patted her hand. ‘I thought you knew. It’s for the cows. It’s the cows they need it for. Everything at Clawstone is for the cows.’
CHAPTER FOUR
It was not till the following day that Madlyn really understood what Mrs Grove had told her, because that was the day when she and Rollo were driven through the gates of Clawstone Park. They went in Sir George’s ancient Land-Rover and, as he stopped to take out a large iron key and unlock the padlock, it seemed to Madlyn that a change came over her great-uncle. He seemed to become taller and more upright, less stooped and weary-looking, as if he knew that what he was to show them could be equalled nowhere in the world. They moved forward, and as the gates in the high stone wall closed again behind them they seemed to be entering a kind of Paradise. It was silent except for the calling of the curlews on the hill; the trees standing in full-leaved clumps looked as though they had stood there since the beginning of time; the stream beside which they drove was as clear and clean as rivers must have been in the Garden of Eden. No artificial sprays or chemicals were allowed inside the park, so that the grassy banks were studded with wild flowers, and the blossom on the gorse bushes dazzled with their gold.
They bumped their way across the fields, and crossed a shallow ford.
Then: ‘Oh!’ said Rollo.
Sir George nodded.
‘Yes, there they are.’
And he stopped the engine and they sat in silence, and looked at a sight one could see nowhere else in England: the Wild White Cattle of Clawstone Park.
Madlyn had never been interested in cows. If she thought of them at all she imagined stolid, square-rumped animals who stood humbly in stalls with machines clamped to their udders and said ‘Moo’.
But these creatures were not like that. They were not like that at all.
They stood in the shade of a clump of oaks and every line of their bodies — the graceful lift of their heads, the long legs of the calves standing beside their mothers, the proud strength of the wide-horned bulls — spoke of grace and nimbleness and speed.
‘I was stupid,’ said Madlyn to herself. ‘I didn’t understand.’
Where they had come from, these fabled beasts, no one knew. Some said a ship from Spain had been wrecked on the coast and the cattle had swum ashore and made their way across the hills to Clawstone. Others said they were descended from the wide-horned aurochs who had lived in the primeval forests of the north. Whatever their beginnings, the cattle had roamed free inside the seven hundred acres of Clawstone Park as long as anyone could remember — and the owners of Clawstone had protected them.
But they protected them from a distance, for the creatures were as wild as wolves. No one milked them; they were never brought inside in bad weather or to have their calves; no one fed them cattle cake or took them to the vet — indeed, it could be dangerous to handle them; they could not endure the touch of human beings.
And each and every one was as white as snow.
‘Can we get out?’ asked Rollo.
‘No. But we can go closer.’
It was like an African safari as they drove slowly towards the herd, hoping they would not take flight.
‘They were the cattle of the ancient Druids,’ said Sir George, and it was easy to imagine how those wise wanderers would have prized such a herd, both as givers of food and as a source of sacrifice. It was always white bulls that the gods wanted when they thirsted for blood.
They had come very near to the herd. Sir George turned off the engine and they let down the windows as far as they would go. The king bull stared at them, unafraid, knowing that nothing could threaten him. Beside him grazed the oldest of the cows, with her scars and her crumpled horn. Two calves butted each other, playing; another drank from its mother, who flicked the flies from him with her tail. One cow was lying down a little way from the rest; a salad of dark green plants hung from her mouth.
‘Are those stinging nettles she’s eating?’ asked Rollo.
Sir George nodded. ‘Cows know what plants are good for them, especially when they’re going to have their calves. She’s due any day now.’