CASTLE HILL
or MacNab’s Folly
By Samuel Taylor Andrews
illustrated by Christina Andrews
Copyright 2011 Bill Osborne
Smashwords Edition
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CASTLE HILL
Copyright © 2011 Bill Osborne
All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
ISBN978-0-9869584-1-0
Christina’s illustrations transcribed by Trix Boyd and Bill Osborne.
A Preview of Castle Hill
The Andrews family, recent immigrants from Scotland, move into an old stone farmhouse in the Ottawa Valley. They rapidly find rural life far from boring. Thirteen year old Sam’s first night was one he would never forget. In fact it is Sam who tells the story of their adventures, about forty years later, with the help of Christina, his year older sister who contributes the sketches she made back then.
Sam’s dream is to put a Space Game he has invented on the market while Christina is determined to establish a Wild Animal Hospital in the farm buildings. Rescuing their cat from the attentions of a skunk introduces her to the local vet and her two daughters while Sam finds a fellow games enthusiast in a First Nations boy with an amazing mind for mathematics. Sam becomes an amazing cyclist with the help of the sons of the next door farmer. These new friends, along with a black ‘cousin’, daughter of the local innkeepers, form an Explorers’ Club and before a couple of weeks go by they are involved in fishing for trout, surviving a violent storm, logging a great tree brought down by lightning, overcoming a mother’s phobia about bike riding, investigating a strange tower behind the farm buildings built by a previous, eccentric, tenant, helping to land a monster pike and learning that previous Scottish immigrants to their beautiful valley were not so lucky as themselves. In fact their new home, Castle Hill, contains some pretty bleak secrets connected to the notorious Laird MacNab who treated his clansmen most appallingly back in the early 1800s.
However, more exciting for the two young entrepreneurs is the unexpected help they have towards making their dreams come true.
The little town of Pakenham in the Ottawa Valley really does exist and surprise, surprise, Canada also has a Mississippi River! However most events and characters portrayed in ‘Castle Hill’ are fictitious apart from the historical ones, such as the accounts of the settlement of the Ottawa Valley and the exploitation of his settlers by the infamous Laird MacNab. Other than that, any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental - though the heroes and heroines in the tale may provide those on whom they were modeled, if they recognize themselves, a little amusement.
Dedicated to:
my sister Christina, (the original one)
my daughter Sian and my grand - daughter Christina, and
especially to my dear wife Anne, all of whom have had to tolerate
my eccentric writing and game making habits for so many years.
Also to Ruby and Gordon Andrews of Pakenham who made us
so welcome on our arrival as immigrants to Canada and to
Trix and Tom Boyd for editing & help with illustrations.
My love and thanks to you all.
A Chapter Tour of Castle Hill
(Illustrations – in italics)
Introduction Thurs 19th June 1975
Mattress troubles
Chapter 1 Thurs 19th Something’s Snoring in my Room
Four New Friends
Chapter 2 Fri 20th June Early Explorers
Count Otter Age Map of Castle keep
Castle Hill from the cedar
Chapter 3 Sat 21st June (a.m.) Byrdland
Byrdland
Chapter 4 Sat 21st (p.m.) Castle Hill
Hill top Byre
Chapter 5 Sat 21st (Teatime) Contact!
Grumpy and Dopey
Chapter 6 Sat 21st (evening) Map Making & Orbit
Courtyard Map
Castle Hill and Camelot Maps
Chapter 7 Sun 22nd June Sunday Treat
Chapter 8 Mon 23rd Iune (early). Renovations
Chapter 9 Mon 23rd (a.m.) Mossy meets her Match
Stone Bridge at Pakenham
Chapter 10 Mon 23rd (p.m.) The Printers
sketches of top of the tower
portrait of Sam and Christina
Chapter 11 Tues 24th June Animal Shelter & Big Fish
Sam climbing down to pool
Muskellunge
Chapter 12 Tues 24th (contd.) The Investor
Fire at the Forge
Chapter 13 Tues 24th (later) The Ark
Chapter 14 Wed 25th June(a.m.) Pumping Practice
Jack & Jill
Chapter 15 Wed 25th (p.m.) Fly Fishing
Chapter 16 Thurs 26th June(a.m.) Old Beth
Hanging the gate at Beth’s cottage
Chapter 17 Thurs 26th (p.m.) Dinosaur Eggs
Looking down on the Seven Dwarves
Chapter 18 Thurs 26th (later) Stormy Weather
Storm seen from kitchen doorway
Chapter 19 Fri 27th June (a.m.) Loggers
Loggers at work – 160
Chapter 20 Fri 27th (mid day.) Club Considered
Chapter 21 Fri 27th (p.m.) Business Discussions
Fathers of Confederation
Chapter 22 Fri 27th (evening) The Darts Match
Alexandra shows how it’s done
Chapter 23 Sat 28 th June Impossibilities
High Tea with Old Beth
Chapter 24 Sat 28th(evening) The Venture Capitalist
Characters found in ‘Castle Hill’.
The Family History of the Andrews Clan
A Message from Sam forty years later
The real History of MacNab of MacNab
ORBIT how to make and play your own game
INTRODUCTION
CASTLE HILL
or MacNab’s Folly
Excerpt from Sam’s journal for Thursday 19th June 1975:
We’ve moved into Castle Hill at last. What a day! It started with the furniture van arriving at seven o’clock this morning. Except for us – and Mossy, our black cat, looking a bit bewildered in her cage - everything was on its way by eleven o’clock. Dad told the van driver to stop for lunch at the Bridge Inn in Pakenham and we’d meet them there and direct them to our new house. By midday, our Ottawa apartment was not only empty, but, thanks to slave driver Mom, clean as a whistle. After a forty minute drive, west along Hwy 417 to Arnprior, we turned south to Pakenham and caught up with the furniture van at the Bridge Inn. The Innkeeper and his wife, Uncle Gordon and Aunt Ruby, were the ones who told Mom and Dad about the old farmhouse waiting to be rented. We left Mossy with them and drove ahead of the van about a mile out of the little town to our new home, Castle Hill.
Talk about love at first sight! At the end of a long curving drive, we came across a marvellous old grey stone house with a huge yard enclosed by whitewashed farm buildings. Behind the farmhouse, a steep mound was topped with a grove of tall trees. Dad says the mound is the real Castle Hill but it gives its name to the whole farm. The furniture van was empty by late afternoon. No accidents, but they almost lost control of Mom and Dad’s mattress going up the narrow stairwell!
My room is huge. I’m writing this by the window looking out onto the farmyard. Christina’s room is as big as mine but its window has little square panes with dark green shutters and looks out onto the front garden. We share our own bathroom. Mom and Dad have an ‘en-suite’ next to their bedroom at the other end of the house. It sure beats our pokey little apartment in Ottawa!
Enough from Mr. Pepys the Second. Time for bed.
Thirty five years later and I’m still Sam Pepys the Second though my diary days are done so I should revert to my own name of Samuel Taylor Andrews and my sister Christina is now Mrs. Dougan but she keeps her name C. Andrews when she signs her paintings!
That entry was written on the night we arrived at Castle Hill almost half a century ago. Christina’s grandchildren came across my old diaries recently while playing in the attic in Castle Hill. In the same box were some of her old sketch books and they all had fun looking at her early drawings and reading through my thirteen year old attempts at being a great writer. I still remember my teacher telling us about the diaries of Samuel Pepys. He made us keep our own journals for the rest of the term. Maybe it was because I had the same first name as Mr. Pepys that I kept a journal for the next few years. Reading those old diaries again brought back a flood of memories!
As a lad, I was fascinated with the Space Race between Russia and the USA. It was the thought of travelling to the Moon, and further into the Solar System, which prompted me to make “Orbit”, which I was sure would be the successor to Monopoly as the world’s greatest board game. “Orbit” had been two years in the making when we moved to Castle Hill and Dad and I had tried to interest Parker Bros and other Games Makers, but to no avail. Still ‘Uncle’ Gordon Poole and ‘Aunt’ Ruby also thought it was a winner so I kept trying to improve it.
It was the Poole’s daughter, Alexandra, who first made me question whether we had any real uncles and aunts. I asked her how we were related, as she and her parents were black and we were all white. Alex, a ‘no-holds-barred’ fifteen year old, gave me my first lesson about the birds and the bees in no uncertain terms! Christina laughed when I told her and said I should have asked her. Of course, Christina, almost a year older than me, was already quite an authority on birds and bees – and mammals, reptiles, bugs and insects - even fish for that matter. Ever since reading ‘My Family and Other Animals’, by Gerald Durrell, she had wanted to be a naturalist. She was already a pretty good artist, taking after our grandfather in Scotland, and she filled many notebooks with sketches of wildlife as well as landscapes and people.
Still living in Castle Hill today, Christina, now a proud grand-mother, suggested I expand my diary entries into a story for our grand-children and let them see what fun and excitement we had before the days of computers and cell phones and the like. She said I could use her old sketches if I thought they would help. Unfortunately many of the pencil ones had faded but I could still use them. She thought they weren’t; too bad for a thirteen year old! Her husband, Tom, and my wife, Anne, both joined in twisting my arm, saying it would give me something to do in my retirement other than playing golf and wheeling and dealing with my ill gotten gains! Then our own children said they’d like to hear all about it too. That was a year ago, so guess what Santa’s giving them all for Christmas this year. That’s right! An e-book reader with ‘Castle Hill’ already loaded to go into their stockings.
Christina suggested I should write the story as if I were an invisible spectator reporting the events and conversations. She had been reading ‘Alice in Wonderland’ to the grandchildren and said Alice had the right idea in the first chapter. ‘What is the use of a book’, thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversation?’ Well, that story seems to have done pretty well so I’ll make sure the story has plenty of ‘dialogue and pictures’ – thanks for the idea, Christina and Alice. I’ll use my journal entries (in bold type) at the head of each chapter, and add comments in italics (like these!) from my vantage point in the future. So! Here’s what happened after I’d written in my journal on the evening of 19th June all those years ago.
Chapter 1
Something’s Snoring in my Room!
The furniture movers had gone, and the long day was coming to an end. Supper in the big shadowy kitchen was not only late but a little spooky, with only one bare light bulb hanging from a rafter. “I’ll get some more light in here tomorrow,” promised Dad. “Meanwhile you’ll have to put up with the bats.” Christina looked up eagerly. Mom looked up too with a startled expression on her face. “Just kidding!” said Dad. “Anyway, once Mossy gets here, she’ll look after any bats or mice. We’ll pick her up from Ruby and Gordon tomorrow. Now then, Sam, it’s time for bed.” For a change Sam didn’t argue. He was feeling as if he’d been going for two days non stop, and he still had his diary to write with the day’s events.
***
It had been cool that day, with a North wind blowing down the valley. The furnace wasn’t on yet and the stone walls kept the house almost chilly. By the time Sam had brushed his teeth, and written a description of the day in his journal, he thought that being curled up in bed wasn’t a bad idea after all.
‘Brrr!’ he thought, ‘I need a carpet in here.’ He hadn’t bargained on bare linoleum floors when he kicked off his slippers. However, after five minutes buried in his blankets, his teeth stopped chattering and he poked his nose out like a mole sniffing the air. ‘Drat! I’ve left the light on. Oh well, Mom can switch it off when she comes up to say goodnight.’
He looked around his room with pleasure. The Space Game he had been working on for the past two years was set out on the big table by the window. His telescope was assembled on its tripod. ‘Not a bad start for the first day,’ he thought, ‘and plenty of shelves for my books and models. That big wardrobe will do for clothes, the cupboard for games and …’
Suddenly his comfortable world shuddered to a halt. All his senses went on full alert. He could hear somebody breathing – a long soft breath in, a pause, followed by a long sigh. It was very faint but the more he listened, the more obvious it was that someone was trying not to be heard. Maybe it wasn’t a ‘somebody’ at all. Childhood terrors of creatures lurking under the bed threatened to come crowding back. The breathing seemed even louder…No! He’d grown out of monsters, hadn’t he? He was almost thirteen for pity’s sake. Still, even if it wasn’t a monster, it could be a wild animal. After all, they were living in the country now and Canada had some pretty fierce beasts. Maybe it was a burglar or an escaped convict. It made little difference, though some ‘body’ hiding in your room was possibly scarier than some ‘thing’.
Sam’s heart was hammering and his stomach was in a knot. The breathing went on and on, in with a faint whistling noise, a pause, then out with a soft throaty snore. Sam held his breath to hear better. ‘Where is the sound coming from? ’ he wondered. He had a horrid suspicion it really did come from under the bed.’
Cautiously he stood up, trying to keep his balance on the springy mattress. He looked at the distance to the door. ‘Could he leap across and get through it before whatever was hiding below him realised he was escaping?’
In…out…in…out…the breathing went on and on. It was now or never. Taking a deep breath, he bent his knees and launched himself towards the door, terrified that a hand would snake up to catch his foot. Not daring to look round, he yanked the door open. It banged into a pile of boxes and bounced back. Squirming round the edge of the door, he pounded, barefoot, along the corridor and dashed down the stairs. He took the stairs two at a time, praying he wouldn’t twist an ankle or worse. He burst into the kitchen, much to the astonishment of Mom, Dad and Christina. “There’s something snoring in my room!” he gasped. Christina laughed, thinking Sam was kidding, but Dad held up his hand and shook his head. He could see Sam was upset. “Wait here with Mom” he told her. He walked over to the fireplace and picked up a large iron poker. “Come on, son.” he said. “Let’s go see.”
Upstairs again, they stopped outside the door. It had swung shut after he had dashed out. Dad put his finger to his lips. The breathing was fainter but both of them could hear it. Dad raised his eyebrows and looked round at Sam. “Stay there,” he whispered. Pushing open the door, he jumped through, poker raised, and spun round to look behind the door. Nothing! He looked all around with a frown on his face. The intruder was well hidden. Bending down, he looked under the bed. There were only Sam’s slippers, which he threw across to him.
“Listen” croaked Sam. The quiet breathing went on relentlessly. Dad moved softly to the wardrobe and jerked the door open. There was nobody hiding in there. The raspy breathing was as persistent as ever. The corner cupboard was next, flung wide by Dad, poker at the ready. There was nothing but bare shelves. Dad cocked his head to one side, listening intently. “Hmmm!” he said. “Let’s go back to the kitchen”.
With Sam safely beside Mom and Christina in the big old-fashioned kitchen, Dad went outside, poker in one hand and a large flashlight in the other. A few minutes later he returned, smiled at the worried looks on their faces and whispered, “Put on your coats. Don’t say anything. Just follow me – really quietly.” They put on their raincoats, which had been hung behind the kitchen door. Then out into the cold dark night they crept, quiet as mice, to the back of the house, and stopped under Sam’s window.
“Listen!” whispered Dad. The breathing was even louder. “That’s what you thought was under your bed,” he said, pointing his flashlight at the top of the barn wall. There, on a ledge high above them, were four fluffy white birds, perched side by side, blinking in the light and crooning all together, “In…out…in…out.”
“Oh,” said Christina, “Aren’t they adorable? Those are baby barn owls. They make that snoring noise to let their parents know they are hungry. It also helps their bigger brothers and sisters find their way home when they first start practising to fly. I’ll have to make a sketch of them”
“Wow! You’re amazing!” said Sam. “How do you remember all that stuff? And how can you take a quick look at something and then draw it later from memory? You must have a camera for a brain. … You know, I was sure there was someone in my room.”
She smiled. “Maybe they were just trying to make you welcome!”
Sam grinned at her. “I guess so. It seems I’ve made four new friends to keep me company at night.”
Friday June 20th Woke early but the owls had gone to bed for the day. What a noisy bathroom! Dad set off to Ottawa early. Pity he couldn’t move his engineering shop here. Uncle Gordon brought Mossy back. Mom explained what the huge hooks in the beams in the kitchen were for. Grounds explored today. We’ll do the farmyard later – and that strange glass topped tower in the field behind the farmyard. We named the stream at bottom of the orchard ‘The Nile’. Saw ‘Count Otter Age’ (?) going up the drive. Climbed the big cedar. Great for a tree house? Unpacking boxes all afternoon.
***
We thought we’d make an early start and explore before breakfast – no such luck. Christina had not only decorated her room with her animal posters, while I was quietly sorting out my own things, but she had made me a sketch of my four new friends. We were each trying to be quiet so as not to wake anyone. When I tapped on her door, she was about to come and wake me. She showed me her room – walls completely covered with her wildlife posters. I suggested she stuck her bird pictures on the ceiling and the fish on the floor! Our bathroom was full of ancient equipment, a basin that stuck out from the wall on ugly iron brackets and a huge cast iron bath, green on the outside, rusty enamel inside with lion’s paws for feet, and brass taps that would give a fire hydrant an inferiority complex. The toilet was a massive blue and white porcelain throne with an iron tank full of water, way above our heads. I remember to this day the first time I pulled the chain hanging from the tank. The water rushed down the pipe sounding like Niagara Falls in full flood. I thought I’d wake the whole village, never mind Mom and Dad, but when we crept downstairs we found Dad had already gone to work an hour before. Mom had unpacked all the china and cutlery and the kitchen was in apple pie order. Uncle Gordon Poole had brought Mossy back to us and she was prowling around investigating everything. They were our favourite ‘relatives’ even though they only met Mom and Dad at a rehearsal of the Ottawa Choral Society, four years before. Anyway here’s how our second day went…
Chapter 2
Early Explorers
“Come and have your breakfast,” said Mom as her children crept into the kitchen with surprised looks on their faces. The table was already laid for the two of them. “I had mine with Dad an hour ago before he left for Ottawa. Eat your corn flakes while I do you some bacon and eggs.”
Twenty minutes later, two large bowls of corn flakes had been demolished, eggs and bacon were a happy memory and toast and marmalade had filled in the remaining cracks. “I’ll dry,” said Sam as he took his dishes to the counter by the sink.
“O.K.,” said Christina. “I’ll dry this evening.” Dishwashing was the bane of their lives!
“No, you can both dry,” said Mom who was already scraping the frying pan. “I’ll have to get a new sink. This old thing is big enough to swim in! It’s too ugly for my liking. I do like the old Aga range, though, but only as an antique. I wouldn’t like to clean that every day. Thank goodness we brought our electric stove with us and had it connected yesterday.”
“How about a dish washing machine?” asked Sam. “You’ve lots of room for one now.” But Mom just shook her head. The kitchen, in Sam’s opinion was big enough for a herd of elephants. The floor was made of wide flagstones. A huge fireplace was in the middle of one wall. The wood-burning stove that Mom thought looked so attractive was on the right of the fireplace and a built in sideboard with shelves up to the ceiling was on the other. The shelves were already full of Mom’s collection of blue and white china plates. A big brass fender stood in front of the fireplace, and the mantelpiece above it looked as if it had been made from half a tree. Their old birch table with the drop leaves was by the window, which looked out over the front garden. There were solid wooden beams over their heads and the walls were whitewashed plaster.
“This is a fun kitchen,” Sam said. “Why are there all those hooks in the beams?”
“I think the farmer would have hung hams on them,” said Mom. “Did you notice the pigsties at the end of the farmyard? Well, in the old days, when the family needed some meat, the farmer would slaughter one of the pigs. In those days, the only way they could preserve the meat for any length of time was to cook, salt, dry or smoke it to kill the little bugs which cause meat to go bad.”
“How on earth can you smoke meat?” said Sam, wrinkling his nose. “Ugh!”
Mom laughed. “Not that kind of smoking,” she said. “They would first soak the meat in a salt solution or just rub dry salt into the surface of the meat to pickle it. Then they would hang it in a smoke house where there was a slow burning fire giving off lots of smoke. After that they would put it in a bag or net and hang it in the kitchen until they were ready to eat it, weeks or months later. Those hooks up in the beams are where they would hang the hams.”
“When did Mossy get here?” asked Christina, who was stroking a lapful of purring cat.
“Uncle Gordon brought her last night after you’d gone to bed. It seems their cat didn’t get on too well with her! He sat outside the room Mossy was in and spent all day peering underneath the door and hissing to himself! As Uncle Gordon said, his old Tom probably thought there were quite enough black cats in the house! Anyway, you two go and explore and leave me to get on with sorting things out. Just make sure you don’t let Mossy escape when you open the door.”
“Sure thing’” said Sam. “We wouldn’t want her to go on a ‘Fantastic Journey’ all the way back to Ottawa – or Britain for that matter! That would make an even better story!” Mossy had been given to them by their Aunt Mary Moss, when they emigrated six years before. Aunt Mary’s cat, ‘Pussy Galore’ had produced a litter of seven wonderfully assorted kittens – the first one white, followed by a tortoiseshell, a smoky grey, an orange marmalade, a fluffy Persian, a black and ginger striped ‘tiger’, and finally the pure black Mossy.
“She doesn’t need to go out,” said Christina. “Her litter box is beside the stove. We’ll be back at one for lunch.” So at last, rather later than they had intended, the “Early Explorers” set off to discover their new world.
Outside the back door, Christina looked up at the barn. “I wonder how the owlets are doing?”
“I guess they’ve gone back to bed!” Sam replied. “I wonder if they snore when they’re asleep. Come on. Time to explore. I feel like Dan Dare setting off into the Swamps of Venus.”
“I think we’re more like ‘The Swiss Family Robinson’ cast away on a desert island,” she said. “We dragged everything ashore yesterday.”
Sam agreed the Swiss Family was a better idea as they had just left Mom putting what they’d ‘saved from the shipwreck’ in some sort of order in their new house. “We’ve a good idea of what’s close to the house. We can leave the buildings behind the house for later as well as that funny looking silo beyond them How about we explore further afield?”
“Suits me,” said Christina. “Let’s start with the jungle.”
A long path straight ahead of them ran between neatly spaced trees on the hillside sloping down to their left and some thick bushes in front of a stand of tall trees on the top of the hill to their right. One look at the brambles on their right made their decision easier. “How about downhill?” Sam suggested.
“Good idea,” agreed his fellow explorer.
As they picked their way through the long grass, ducking under the low branches of the neatly planted trees, Sam suddenly stopped and called to Christina. “Look. These are apple trees. They’ve the same knobbly branches as the apple tree in our back yard in Ottawa.”
“So they are,” said Christina. “Not all of them ’though. Look at this one. It’s much bigger and has a smooth bark. Here’s one with pointy-ended oval leaves. Those have round leaves. I think they’re all different kinds of fruit trees.”
“Maybe we’ll have our own coconuts,” said Sam.
“Oh sure! How about bananas? Come off it. This is Canada, not Fiji.”
“Hey! What happened to the Swiss Family Robinson and the desert island?”
“Oh! Sorry. You’re right,” said Christina. “We’ll have to keep an eye open for pineapples and date palms! Seriously though, there’ll be all kinds of fruit coming up later in the year. This is a huge orchard. There must be over a hundred trees. Maybe Dad can become a fruit farmer instead of an engineer and then he can stay at home instead of dashing off to Ottawa every morning.”
At the bottom of the hill they found a stream with a wire fence on the opposite bank. The water wasn’t very deep but they thought they might build a dam and make a swimming pool. On the other side of the fence was an embankment with the road to the village running along the top. “How can you have a river in a desert?” Sam asked.
“Easy,” she replied. “Just think of that picture in the living room of the boats on the river with the Pyramids in the background. Egypt is mostly desert and you couldn’t want for a bigger river than the Nile. How about we name this one after its Egyptian cousin?”
“OK, The Nile it is,” said Sam. “But I’ve another problem. How can a desert island be covered in lush jungle?”
“Good question. We’ll ask Mom, or Dad when he gets back.”
“I don’t know about you, but I always forget what I mean to ask,” said Sam. “We should write our questions down. Are you the same? I mean, do you mean to ask about something then forget what you were going to ask?”
“Too often,” she said. “Usually, I write down important things in my notebook. It’s the same with dreams. You wake up with the dream vivid in your head and a few minutes later it’s all gone! Which reminds me. There was something about Mossy I was going to ask. What was it?”
“Who knows? I can’t see inside your head. Have you got your notebook with you?”
“Just a floppy one,” she said. “She rummaged in the pockets of her wind-breaker and brought out a rolled up notebook and a stump of pencil. “What was it you wanted to ask?”
Sam shook his head. “Drat! … I’ve forgotten already.”
Christina laughed. “Maybe I can see inside your head! You were wondering how a desert island could be covered in jungle! Oh, now I remember. I woke up thinking about our tiny rooms back in Ottawa with no room to swing a cat. Now, why would anyone want to swing a cat? I’m sure Mossy wouldn’t like it.”
“Something else we forgot,” said Sam. “We were going to put butter on Mossy’s paws. Why was that?”
“Enough cat questions! But the butter trick was to make her lick it off. When cats sit down and clean their paws, it means they’ve decided they like where they are. Then they won’t run away back to their old home.”
“That’s neat! Put ‘building dam’ on your list and why the silo has a ‘greenhouse’ on top.”
“I was wondering about that, too,” she said. “But I don’t think it is a silo, not with windows round the top. Maybe it’s a lookout for forest fires or something.”
“Let’s see if there’s a good place for a dam,” said Sam as he set off down-stream along the bank.
At the end of the orchard, the stream turned right, through a large culvert under the road. That was obviously the end of their property as it was fenced off with more barbed wire. Looking up through the bushes in front of them, they could see the driveway up to the house. A panel truck had just turned into the drive from the road. “What’s that on the truck?” She peered up at the van as it drove past. “It’s so dirty, I can’t make it out, but I think it says ‘COUNT OTTER AGE’ whatever that means. We’ll maybe find out when we get back to the house.”
On their left, at the top of the slope, they could see the huge cedar tree, which Dad had pointed out the day before. “There’s the medicine tree,” Christina commented.
Dad had told them that the Indians, who lived in the area long before any settlers came from Europe, used the red cedars for many things, from clothing to building materials. Mom had become quite fascinated with the history of Canada ever since they had landed in Quebec when they emigrated from Britain six years ago. She said the Iroquois Indians had saved Jacques Cartier’s sailors from certain death when his men were suffering from scurvy and their teeth were dropping out through lack of vegetables on the long voyage from Europe. The Indians knew that a brew, made by boiling cedar bark and foliage, cured toothache and swellings. They gave some to Cartier’s men to drink and it turned out to be a huge success as a cure for scurvy. “We should call it The Cider Cedar,” Sam said.
Scrambling up the bank and over the fence, they looked up into the massive cedar. It was too tempting for words. Glancing at each other, they grinned and nodded. The next moment they had heaved themselves up onto the long low-lying branch beside them and in no time, they were way above the other trees. Christina as usual was faster than Sam. Ever since she was small, she had been like a monkey swinging back and forth on the ladders in the playground and had developed some pretty impressive muscles in her arms.
“Wow, what a lookout!” he said, settling on a branch just below her. “You can see for miles. Look. There’s a big river way across the fields. That’s where the Nile must be going.”
“That’s the Mississippi,” she said. “Don’t you remember? Dad told us yesterday.” She wriggled round to look back towards the house way below their feet. “Gosh! ‘Castle Hill from the Air!’ I must make a sketch of this.”
“But the Mississippi’s in the USA, not Canada.” Sam objected.
“True” she agreed. “But this is a different Mississippi – much smaller. Remember the bridge we came over yesterday morning when we drove through Pakenham? Dad told us it was the only five-arched stone bridge in North America. He said we were crossing the Mississippi and we’d be at Castle Hill in a few minutes.”
“I missed that. I was too busy thinking about fishing. I wonder if Dad would help us build a tree house up here.”
“Hang on, I’ll put it on the list. I must remember to bring a notebook as well as a sketchbook. I’ll have no room for pictures at this rate. Oh, another thought, I’ll add ‘maps’ to the list.” She continued drawing the house and farmyard below them after making her notes.
“Maps?”
“The stockade and the jungle. All explorers make maps. That’s your department. I’ll do the pictures of the castle, and things we find, but you’re the map expert.”
“What castle?” he asked, thinking his sister was being even stranger than usual. He realised it was his own fault. He shouldn’t have started off with the idea of exploring a jungle on Venus!
“The house,” she said. “We live on Castle Hill after all.”
“Oh! All right, but…” he scratched his head, “… castles are built on the top of hills and our house isn’t. Anyway if we’re living in a castle then the farmyard will have to be the courtyard and the house should be the keep.”
“Good thinking. So let’s make the map look like one from the Middle Ages. Hang on till I finish this sketch. I’m going to do a proper painting and send it to Newton and you can add a copy of your map.”
Newton, their step-brother, was fourteen years older than they were. He had gone to Australia the previous year to work on a sheep farm owned by an old wartime buddy of their dad.
Faintly in the distance, they heard their mother calling their names. “Coming!” they shouted back.
“Race you to the ground,” said Sam.
“No way!” His suddenly serious sister, who might be accused of being in fantasyland at times, was pretty sensible when it mattered. “If we fell from up here, we’d break our necks. Just take it easy.”
Sam gulped as he looked down between his knees then looked across at the house and realised he could see the back of the farmyard over the roof. “Hmm!” he said. “Maybe you’re right.”
Climbing down, surprisingly, took them longer than climbing up. There were some awkward moments when their feet waved around in thin air looking for the next branch, or when their clothes got caught in unseen snags but after a few minutes they were back on the ground brushing off needles with their hands. They tramped through the long grass in front of the house and round to the kitchen where lunch was all ready for them.
During the afternoon, they helped unpack boxes of books, china, ornaments and pictures. Dad had taken the afternoon off from work so he could help. Mom and Christina worked in the sitting room while Sam and Dad dealt with the ‘library’ and rumpus rooms. After dinner, Christina put the grand piano through its paces, as her exam was in about three weeks. Sam started on his map of “The Castle”. He showed it to his sister after she had finished practising.
“Since when do we have a library?” she said.
“Dad says that’s where we’ll be doing our homework. We have to be quiet in there, just like the school library. The rumpus room next door is where we can play games.”
“I thought we were going to put names like ‘The Keep’ and make it sort of medieval,” she said. Sam licked the point of his pencil. “No prob.,” he said. “I’ll put ‘Keep’ after ‘The Castle’ in the title.” After much erasing, the master bedroom became the ‘Royal Bedchamber’, Dad’s office became ‘The Counting House’ and Mom’s Den ‘The Queen’s Retiring Room’. The rumpus room was changed to ‘Minstrels’ Gallery’ as that was where they had put the old upright piano. “There,” he said, “That looks more Arthurian. We’ll do a map for the ‘Courtyard’ when we’ve explored it.”
“I see you've put in the owls,” she said. “By the way, why do you keep licking your pencil?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It seems to make it blacker.”
“Maybe you should change your name to Chow.”
“Now what are you talking about?”
“Well, Chow Chows are dogs with black tongues.” Seeing his puzzled frown, she said, “You just said it makes it blacker when you lick your pencil.”
“Dingbat!” he said. “It makes the pencil marks on the paper blacker, not my tongue.” Sam suddenly realised she was pulling his leg. Christina grinned and made a checkmark in the air.
“What do you think of my picture of the Courtyard?” She showed him the sketch she had made while they were in the cedar tree.
“Wow!” he said. “It makes me dizzy but it’s a super picture.”
“Thanks,” she said. “It’s a bit rough at the moment as I was having to balance on the branch and hold on with one hand and my notebook kept trying to slip off my knees. I think I’ll make it into a painting and send it to Newton. Let’s hope he’ll think our farm is better than his sheep farm in Australia and come home. When he sees your map of the castle, he’ll see we each have our own room. That should make him change his mind. Your map’s terrific, by the way. I like the ‘throne room’.”
“Isn’t the plumbing something else!” he said, and they both burst into giggles.
Saturday 21st June: Met Mrs. Byrd, our landlady, in the cottage beyond the maple trees. The Nile already has a dam. Mrs. B told us some of Castle Hill’s history. Mom and Dad added more during lunch (Dragon Soup). Mossy enjoyed her butter and is feeling quite at home…
***
“ Saturday was a busy day so I’ll chop my diary entry for our third day into four pieces – morning, afternoon, ‘teatime’ and evening, and make a chapter for each. Here’s how the morning went …”
Chapter 3
Byrdland
The next morning, being a Saturday, Dad didn’t have to go to Ottawa so he and Mom went off to do some shopping in the village. Sam and Christina decided to explore more of the grounds. This time they continued down the long path to the end of the orchard and found some trees they both recognised.
“Hey,” Sam said. “Look at the leaves. Just like the flag.”
“So they are,” said Christina. “They’re Sugar Maples. Look at those little tubes in the trunks. In the Spring, the farmers drill holes in the trees and drive those little pipes into the holes so the sap can run into buckets which they hang underneath. That’s what gets turned into Maple syrup.”
“Will we be doing that? I suppose the trees belong to us now.”
“Search me,” said Christina. “Just a minute. I’ll write it down. How do you spell bucket?”
“B-u-c-k-e-t,” said Sam.
“Hmm! That’s what I had,” she said, “But it looked funny.”
At the end of the maples, the path divided. They took the left fork leading down to the stream. “Look,” said Sam. “The Nile’s in flood.”
“Somebody’s built a dam already.” Sure enough, there was a wide pool behind a concrete weir with a little waterfall where it flowed out into the Nile.
“Maybe we can swim there,” he said, “if those swans don’t mind.” A couple of large white birds were swimming in the middle of the pond and about a dozen ducks were paddling round the edge. Beside the pool was a cottage where an old lady was sitting on the porch in a rocking chair.
“Hello dears,” she said, as they walked down the path. “You must be the Andrews children. Sam and Christine, isn’t it?”
“Christina!” she replied in the prim voice she used when people left the ‘a’ off her name.
“Sorry, dear,” said the old lady. “Isn’t it annoying when people don’t say your name correctly. Mine’s Alison, and I used to growl when people call me Ali. Then they started calling me Baba so I stopped complaining about the Ali. I don’t mind it now. But I guess you’d be more comfortable calling me Mrs. Byrd. That’s Byrd with a ‘y’, not an ‘i’, which is another growler.”
“I’m sorry Mrs. Byrd,” said Christina with a blush. “I didn’t mean to growl. And we didn’t mean to barge in on you. There wasn’t a gate or anything. We’ve just moved into Castle Hill and we’re exploring.”
“That’s all right, dear,” she said. “You and Sam are welcome to come down here any time you like. By the way, the whole property is known as Castle Hill. The actual castle, so called, was a log cabin that used to be on top of the hill where the rookery is. There’s nothing left of it now. Early settlers burnt it down about a hundred and fifty years ago because the villains who lived there had been making their lives impossible. They were hired by a Scottish laird called MacNab to collect his rents from his settlers in the south end of his township. They were a nasty pair of thugs who took it upon themselves not only to collect rent for the old Scottish scoundrel but to line their own pockets at the same time. Eventually they were chased away when the settlers revolted. The property was taken over by one of this township’s mill owners who built the house you are in now, using stone from the local quarry. He didn’t build on the old site as he thought it would be unlucky. Do you like fishing Sam?”
“Yes,” said Sam, surprised at the sudden switch from rookeries and Scottish noblemen. “But I’m not very good at it.”
“That’s all right,” the old lady replied. “The pond’s a great place to learn. Just don’t catch too many of my ducks. Oh, seriously, keep away from the old gander. He’s a bad tempered old thing and very jealous of his wives. That’s the big goose beside the hen house on the other side of the pond. I call him Goosie-Gander and you can see his wives, Jemima and Puddleduck in the middle of the pond. How about you, Christina? Do you like fishing? I can see you’re no wallflower, judging by the rip in your jeans!”
Christina looked down and saw the tear in the right leg of her jeans where Mrs. Byrd was looking. Fortunately it wasn’t too big. She could mend it herself. She must have ripped it when they were coming down the cedar the day before. “Oh! Yes,” she said. “Sam’s better at some things, like inventing games, making maps, and playing Monopoly. I’m better at others, like sewing, drawing, climbing trees, and playing the piano, but we both like fishing and exploring.”
“So how do you like your new home?” asked Mrs. Byrd.
“Very much, thank you,” said Christina.
“We love it,” said Sam “But we seem to have landed on your property by mistake. Do you know where ours finishes?”
“You’re all right. I actually own all of Castle Hill but your mother and father are renting the house and farmyard as well as the farmland and woods, while I live here with my vegetable garden and the Sugar Maples and the pond. I also have a flower garden and I can come and go by the little lane at the front of the cottage. It joins onto the driveway from the Dougan’s Farm next door and that lets me get out onto the road to the village. By the way, I’ll be helping your mother once a week so you’ll see me quite often.”
“Oh! That’s nice,” said Christina. “Well, we’d better get on and leave you in peace.” “Fine, dears,” she said. “Drop in any time you want to know anything about Castle Hill. I’ve lived here for about fifty years, ever since I was married, so I can tell you most of what you might need to know about the place.” She picked up her knitting and started to rock contentedly.
Sam and Christina ran back up the path to the fork where the maple trees ended and stopped to decide what to investigate next. “This must be the edge of her bit of the forest,” said Christina. “Obviously she’s the one who collects the sap from the maples. How about we call her bit of Castle Hill ‘Byrdland’?”
“And we can call the pond ‘Swan Swamp’, even though there are only ducks and geese on it,” said Sam. “After all we did think Jemima and Puddleduck were swans at first.”
“Better still,” said Christina. Let’s call it “The Swan Dam” like the one on the Nile.”
“Er, I think it’s called the Ah-Swan Dam,” said Sam who was a stickler for accuracy. “I’ll look it up when we get home. But it was nice of her to say we could go fishing there.”
“Let’s explore a bit more of the jungle,” said Christina. “This path seems to lead into thick bush. It’s probably full of cannibals with blowpipes and poisonous darts. I’ll lead the way. You guard our backs.”
“You know, I think we’re getting our story mixed up. Castles were in forests like Sherwood, not in jungles. Besides, we have cedars and maples, not palm trees and coconuts.”
“True,” said Christina. “But if we call our river the Nile, it would have palm trees…hmmm! Still you’re right. No more jungle! This is now the Savage Forest full of highwaymen, and wild boars, and cruel giants…so be careful.”
The path wound through tall pine trees and ended at a gate leading into a ploughed field. The path continued to their left through the wood and to their right alongside the fence. They turned right as that seemed to lead towards the house. At the end of the pinewood, they saw the silo sticking up behind the hillside so they knew they were coming round to the back of the house. The top of the hill was to their right. The trees which ringed the top looked about a hundred feet tall with branches that started way above their heads. There were untidy looking nests high up with big black birds flying around making a huge racket.
“Vultures,” said Sam. “They’re probably discussing where to find a dead elephant for their supper. Oh, sorry. I forgot. No elephants in the Forest, just deer … and dragons of course. They must be Carrion Crows telling each other where the battlefield is, with all the dead knights and men-at-arms and gloating about their feast of eyeballs. Four and twenty blackbirds pecked off a nose. “
“Yuck!” said Christina. “Maybe that’s why a whole flock of them is called a murder of crows! But now you’ve brought up the subject, it is lunch time. Come on. Race you back. Over the top of the hill.”
The crows must have thought they were being attacked as a great cloud of them rose out of the treetops, cawing and squawking. They didn’t settle down till Sam and Christina had dashed through the gate into the back yard and into the kitchen. Mom and Dad were back from their trip to the village. Mom had a large saucepan of soup simmering on the stove. Mossy was curled up on one of the armchairs and she rolled over asking to have her tummy rubbed. She seemed quite at home already.
“Well hello! Are you hunters or explorers today?” Mom asked, as they flopped down on the rug in front of the fireplace.
“Actually, neither. We’re both apprentice knights of the Round Table,” said Christina. “We’re also the tremendously intelligent, absolutely beautiful, and amazingly modest children of you and King Arthur.”
Dad pointed out that King Arthur never had any children but he was over-ruled!
“Of course, and I’m Queen Guenevere. Well, that’s a relief,” said Mom. “Today we have Dragon Broth on the menu. King Arthur here brought back some soup bones from a pesky dragon that’s been terrorising the villagers for the last few weeks. I’m told that Knights of the Round Table think Dragon Broth is quite the delicacy so go and wash your hands and faces in the sink while I pour it out.”
“It was easy enough,” said Dad, modestly. “The monster was about to eat one of the local lasses but one swing of ‘Excalibur’ and off came its head.”
“Come on,” said Mom. “Your broth’s getting cold.”
Sam looked at Christina. “Ugh!” he said. “Eating a dragon that’s been munching maidens! That’s not too appetising.”
“It’s all right. It was a young dragon,” said Dad. “It had only eaten cattle up till today. I whopped it just before it had its first gobbet of girlie.”
“Oh! That’s all right then,” said Sam. “Pour me out a big bowl.”
“That’s the stuff,” said Dad. “Serpent soup is marvellous for muscle making.”
“You may be a Princess,” Sam told his sister, “but you’ve been secretly trained by the master-at-arms so when we’re knighted we can catch our own dragons. I’m sure they’d be terrified of a female knight.”
“Like Joan of Arc, or Boadicea,” she said. “Maybe we should call the village Camelot”
While they were having their lunch, they asked about the old lady who lived at the bottom of the hill. Mom told them that Mrs. Byrd was their landlady. She had been leasing her land to local farmers but she rented the house and buildings separately. All she wanted was her own area round her cottage.”
“What I’d like to do is to buy the whole farm except for the part she lives on now,” said Dad. “She’s interested in the idea but she wants to talk it over with her family first. If I could develop it into a golf course, I could retire from active work in the company, even though I’d still own it. My second-in-command could operate it just as well without me around. With Mom helping to run the golf club, I suspect we’d make far more money than I earn from making farm machinery.”
“The only trouble,” said Mom, “is that we’d first have to find a huge amount of money to develop the property into a golf course even if we could afford to buy the farm.”
“Why not sell shares?” Sam said. “That’s what you told me when we thought of putting my game on the market. I know it wasn’t ready then and I know board games are too risky a venture for most people, but surely a golf course would appeal to some rich investors.”
“True enough,” said Dad. “But let’s see what the bank manager says to the mortgage proposal. If that sounds favourable we’ll look for some of those rich investors you think are lurking in the bushes! Anyway don’t give up on your game. It really has developed into something quite remarkable. We’ll take another look into the costs of producing it – I think it is good enough to interest other people apart from Uncle Gordon who I suspect is rather biased in its favor.”
“I used to run Grandpa’s business in Scotland when I was a girl,’ said Mom, “so I’m used to accounting and secretarial work. You might see Castle Hill as a golf course one of these years with me as the underpaid manager but what I really like about this place is that there’s a perfect place for all my plants. You may have noticed the tower in the paddock behind the byres. With all those windows at the top, it would make a marvelous greenhouse.”
“My father had a huge garden in Edinburgh,” said Dad. “He had a lawn you could play bowls on, you know, like the bowling green behind our apartment in Ottawa. With what he taught me, I’m sure I could oversee the maintenance of a golf course.”
“But if Mrs. Byrd owns the house, why doesn’t she live here herself?” asked Christina.
“She much prefers her little cottage down by the pond,” Mom said. “This house is too big for her now. All her children are married and living in different parts of Canada.”
“I gather,” said Dad, “that this house was built about a hundred years ago by one of the early settlers from Britain He had a big family and with them to help they not only farmed the land but they also worked in his lumber mill in the village near where the stone bridge is now. The first settlers were from Ireland, followed some years later, by people from Scotland, the same as us. The local people still have names like Dickson and McGregor, but we’re the first Andrews I think. The settlers had to clear all the pine trees off their land so they could grow crops. The logs were roped together into rafts in the pool just beyond the waterfalls below the bridge and the raftsmen rode on them down the river to Hull and Bytown, where our capital Ottawa is today. The lumber mill here prepared the settlers’ logs making planks and beams so they could build better houses. The water rushing down the rapids in the village drove the water wheels for the mills. That’s when the village was called ‘Little Falls’. I don’t know when its name changed to Pakenham.”
“We’re calling it Camelot,” said Christina. “I wonder if Mrs. Byrd is descended from that mill owner?”