The Beasts of Clawstone Castle

Real lice are nasty and ghostly lice are nastier still, but all the same the old woman did not look very interesting. Nasty, yes, but not interestingly nasty, and the children were very relieved when she said she’d decided that Clawstone wouldn’t suit her and she was going back to live with her cronies in the bus shelter behind the slaughterhouse in town.

The next candidate surprised the children very much.

She was a truly beautiful girl, with masses of jet-black hair and lustrous dark eyes ringed with kohl and she was wearing a short embroidered bodice, loose trousers of shimmering silk and brocade slippers.

‘This is Sunita,’ said Cousin Howard. ‘Her parents came from India but she has lived here all her life. And worked here too.’

The three children stared at her and Sunita smiled, a lovely friendly smile, and put her hands together in greeting. Everybody liked her at once; you couldn’t not like her. But Rollo spoke for all of them when he said, ‘Would she frighten people? She seems so nice.’

‘Watch,’ said Cousin Howard.

He nodded at the girl, and she took a step forward, so that they could see the jewel in her tummy button and her golden-brown midriff. Then, as they stared, a sudden jagged line appeared round her middle – an irregular streak, like lightning, which turned darker and more sinister as they watched. And slowly . . . very slowly . . . the top half of Sunita floated upwards to the ceiling, leaving the bottom half still firmly on the ground.

‘She was sawn in half,’ whispered Cousin Howard. ‘The man she worked for did it. It was a trick in a circus – you know . . . sawing a girl in half. It’s often done, but this time it went wrong and he really halved her. Poor man, he was dreadfully upset, but it was too late.’

Everyone, of course, wanted Sunita; she passed the audition straight away. After her came a very boring ghost, a hoity-toity lady in a hooped petticoat who didn’t seem able to do much and whom they had to send away. But after that came Ranulf de Torqueville.

Ranulf was dressed in old-fashioned clothes: velvet breeches and a loose white shirt. His hair was long and he looked romantic, like the people one sees in swashbuckling films having sword fights and leaping from high walls.

‘What does he do?’ asked Rollo.

They were soon to know. With an agonized grimace, Ranulf opened his shirt. And there, hanging on to his chest, its front legs scrabbling at the bare skin, its scabrous tail thrashing, was a huge black rat, gnawing at his heart.

‘He was cursed,’ explained Cousin Howard. ‘His evil brother said, “May rats gnaw at your heart till you die,” and threw him in a dungeon. Only in this particular case the rat died too. It is not usual for a rat to hang on like that, but you can’t separate them; it never lets go.’

‘It’s a proper plague rat,’ said Rollo. ‘Rattus rattus. The kind that first came over in ships and caused the Black Death. The brown rats came later.’

But even Rollo, fond of animals as he was, could hardly bear to look at the twitching, yellow-toothed creature tearing and scrunching and clawing at the young man’s heart.

‘I think we’ve got enough now,’ said Ned when they had agreed that Ranulf would do splendidly. ‘Four ghosts seems about right,’ and the others agreed. But just as they were getting up to go, a pair of feet suddenly appeared from behind the wall. They were large feet: hairy, bare and not very clean. And nothing at all was attached to them. No ankles, no knees, no thighs, and certainly no body. They were simply feet.

‘Oh dear, I told them they wouldn’t do. I told both feet.’ Cousin Howard was looking worried. ‘I didn’t see what could be done simply with feet.’

But the feet were obstinate. They were determined. Every time they were told to go away they returned.

‘I suppose we could make room for them,’ said Madlyn. ‘I mean, just feet don’t take up a lot of space.’

‘Maybe they feel they’ve been chosen,’ said Rollo. ‘It’s a thing that happens.’

So the final list contained the Bride called Brenda, Mr Smith the Skeleton, Sawn-in-half Sunita, Ranulf with his rat – and The Feet.

There was nothing left now except to thank Cousin Howard for finding the ghosts, and this they did again and again.

‘You must have taken so much trouble,’ said Madlyn.

And Cousin Howard said, no, no, not really, he had been only too glad to help.

Aunt Emily and Uncle George had of course noticed the change in Cousin Howard. No one now would have called him Pointless Percival – or Pointless anything at all. He spent more and more time out of his room; he glided round the castle looking busy and purposeful. The Hoggart was forgotten.

‘When did you realize that Cousin Howard was . . . not quite like us?’ Aunt Emily asked the children.

‘Oh, quite soon,’ said Madlyn. ‘After a few days – only we didn’t like to say anything.’