A Brief History of Montmaray Read Online Free PDF Page B

term,’ he said. ‘With some left over for next.’ Toby tries to be as thrifty as he can, but there are all sorts of things outside school fees to pay for – sweets and postage stamps and bootlaces and so on. Although he does spend most of it on presents for us, I must admit.
    ‘I want to see the accounts,’ Veronica said, swinging the cast-iron frying pan down from its hook in a rather threatening manner.
    ‘Of course,’ said Simon, and they glared at each other a bit more.
    Meanwhile I was wishing I could tidy my hair (it must have looked a complete fright), but my hairbrush, lying on the draining board, was matted with Carlos’s black curls. So I switched to thinking about what we could sell next. All the good china and crystal went a long time ago, along with the small, valuable bits of French furniture and the coin collection and the Ming vases. Despite the various antiques cluttering the Great Hall, I couldn’t think of anything that a stranger, or even a FitzOsborne, would pay good money for. But then I remembered Great-Aunt Elizabeth’s Russian suitor.
    ‘What about the egg?’ I wondered aloud. Veronica frowned down at her mixing bowl. ‘The Fabergé egg,’ I added quickly.
    ‘Oh, yes,’ said Veronica. ‘I’d forgotten about that.’
    ‘What are you talking about?’ said Simon.
    So I took Simon into the Great Hall to show him, snatching up Rebecca’s shawl to wrap around my top half as we passed her chair. I have to say that the Great Hall is probably my least favourite part of the castle. The portraits all seem to glare, and there is simultaneously too much cold empty space and too much clutter, most of it ugly. There are moth-eaten bear rugs, five enormous clocks (none of which work properly), an elephant’s foot bristling with walking sticks and broken umbrellas, dozens of uncomfortable chairs, a Steinway grand badly in need of tuning, and a vast collection of battle-stained halberds and maces (and I don’t care what Veronica says, it’s blood, not rust, on that dented mace over the chapel door).
    It’s such a chore keeping the place tidy, too. Rebecca has been making us tackle it bit by bit over the past week and yesterday we had to do the flagstones. Henry sat on a rag and tried to get Carlos to pull her up and down on the section of floor she was waxing, but Carlos got over-excited and ran into the suit of armour. After we put it back together again, we found we had a bit left over, but Henry hid it inside the piano before Rebecca could find out. Not that it would be any of Rebecca’s business if we decided to toss the entire thing off South Head at high tide, but she does get rather worked up about certain family possessions – generally souvenirs of that time, long past, when we were rich and powerful. One would think Rebecca was a FitzOsborne herself, the way she fusses about the family heritage.
    Anyway, I dusted the egg two days ago, so I knew exactly where it was – in the big glass-fronted cabinet, tucked away behind Montmaray’s only Olympic medal (fencing, Paris, 1900) and an old silver hurling ball engraved with the words ‘Guare wheag yu guare teag’ (‘Gentle play is handsome play’, according to George, who can remember the hurling matches that used to be held each Shrove Tuesday, Castle versus Village, and were anything but gentle). I opened the cabinet, picked out the egg and held it up for Simon’s inspection. It was the size and shape of a hen’s egg, but enamelled red, green and blue, studded with a swirling pattern of tiny rubies and emeralds.
    ‘Great-Aunt Elizabeth always thought it was rather vulgar,’ I told Simon. I flicked the catch at the side and the top swung open, revealing a hollow lined with blue velvet. ‘There used to be a miniature portrait of her in here, on a little gold easel, but I don’t know where it’s got to. What do you think it’s worth?’
    Simon peered at it, sunlight glinting off the gems and streaking his black hair gaudy