Lucy stood on the platform with the Baron’s daily missive. He was feeling sad-hearted, and his mind wished to wander to its darker corners. As the train approached, the familiar hand emerged, only there was something quite different about the appendage on this morning, which was that it held a letter of its own. The incongruousness of this was such that Lucy failed to lift his letter, but merely stood by gawking at the flapping pink envelope in the engineer’s fist. As the train passed, the engineer dropped the letter, and Lucy watched it twirling through the air. When it came to rest down the platform, he cast the Baron’s letter to the ground and hurried to scoop up this other, making for the castle at a dead run. As he wended his way up the hill, the engineer sounded his horn, a half-dozen staccato blasts. Of course he had been reading the letters all along, before Lucy was, even.
Lucy found Agnes cutting Mr. Olderglough’s hair in the scullery, the latter sitting sheet-wrapped in a low-backed chair, while Agnes stood at his rear, scissors poised. Here was a scenario smacking of the domestic, so that Lucy felt the intruder; and indeed, his superiors wore the look of the intruded-upon, but he offered not so much as a passing apology, as there was no time to linger over faux pas. He pressed the letter into Mr. Olderglough’s hand. “She’s written, sir,” he said.
Mr. Olderglough studied the envelope: front, back, front; he peered up at Agnes, and nodded. He opened and read the letter, sternly, and with the index finger of his right hand pointed upward. When he finished, he stood away from the chair to pace the room, addressing Lucy and Agnes in an earnest monotone. “The Baroness will arrive here in twenty days’ time,” he said.
Agnes emitted an actual gasp. “She cannot.”
“She is coming, Agnes.”
“She must not. You will write her at once and explain the impossibility of it.”
“She is traveling, and so unreachable. I’m sorry, but it is down to us.” He folded the letter into the envelope. “And I’m afraid that’s not the worst of it.”
Agnes blanched. “Don’t you say it.”
Mr. Olderglough nodded. “We will be entertaining.”
Here Agnes hung her head.
“The guests will arrive two days after the Baroness,” said Mr. Olderglough.
“Who?”
“The Duke and Duchess, Count and Countess.”
Mr. Olderglough and Agnes shared a look of dire understanding.
“And for how long?” she asked.
“Until the end of the month.”
Agnes was quiet as she took this in. “Well,” she said at last, “obviously the Baroness doesn’t understand the state of things here, otherwise she wouldn’t be returning. Certainly not with thoughts of entertaining she wouldn’t.”
“I believe she does understand,” Mr. Olderglough replied, and he read a line from the letter: “‘I ask that the Baron be made to look presentable, so much as is possible in his current state of mind.’”
“She’s after ruin, then,” Agnes declared. “Or else she’s gone mad as well.”
“She appears sanguine.” Mr. Olderglough glanced at the letter. “Her penmanship is as elegant as ever.” This proved a small comfort, though, and Agnes all but fell into the chair, looking as one succumbing to witless panic.
“It’s beyond me,” she admitted. “Where might we begin, even?”
“I won’t deny it seems a task.”
“A task?” said Agnes wonderingly.
“Task is the word I used.”
She looked to Lucy. “We are living in a graveyard!”
Mr. Olderglough moved to stand before her, resting a hand on her shoulder. He spoke firmly, but not without tenderness. “Take hold of yourself, Agnes,” he said. “The castle has been dormant; we must bring it back to life. Why do you act like we haven’t been through it before?”
“Never so bad as this, though.”
“I shan’t disagree with you there. And it may well come to pass that we fail. But we have only two choices: to try, or not to try. And I know that you will try, my dear, just as you know that I will.”
Agnes sighed the sigh of the damned, then trudged from the room. She had much planning to do, she said, but wanted to spend some time alone before starting out, that she might wallow stoutly, and without intrusion or distraction. After she’d gone, Mr. Olderglough turned to Lucy; all the kindness had left his face. “Now, boy, let us talk about tomorrow,” he said.
“Tomorrow, sir?”
“Tomorrow, yes.” Mr. Olderglough cleared his throat. “Tomorrow is not going to be a day where we will be visited with thoughts of praising God on His throne.”
“No, sir?”
“Tomorrow will not be a day we’ll later cherish or clasp particularly close to our bosom.”
“Will it not, sir?”
“Tomorrow will be a not-pleasing day for us.”
“But why is it so, sir?”
Mr. Olderglough tucked the letter away in his breast pocket. “Tomorrow we must locate, apprehend, and restore to normality the Baron.”