The Beasts of Clawstone Castle Read Online Free PDF

should be grazed over by cows was ridiculous. It was an outrage. Something would have to be done, Lord Trembellow told himself – and he was the man to do it.

C HAPTER S IX
     
    R ollo was a faithful person. He did not forget to feed his caterpillars and he went on putting out saucers of milk for the hedgehog. Hardly a day passed when he did not visit the badger’s sett by the stream and he went on writing letters to his skink. But he had told his great-uncle that he would guard the cattle – and that was what he did. He knew he must not go into the park alone, that the animals could be dangerous, but he could stand by the gate in the wall that surrounded it, and watch, and this is what he did, often for hours at a time. And when he had to be indoors he went on watching. He had his special cow-watching places: the library steps in the book room and the old table in one of the attics, on to which he had put a kitchen chair. The book room faced east and the attic faced west so that he could follow the cattle as they wandered through their domain. It was only when they were deep in a cluster of trees that he lost sight of them.
    The day after Rollo had first been to the park Sir George brought him a pair of binoculars, much smaller than the usual ones.
    ‘My father had them made for me when I was a boy. Try them,’ he said.
    Rollo took the ancient leather case and lifted them out. Small as they were, he still found them hard to hold. Then suddenly he screwed the focusing knob the right way – and in an instant the face of a calf leaning against his mother’s side swam towards him, so close that he could have touched it.
    ‘Oh!’ said Rollo. ‘I can see his wet nose... and his ear.’
    Sir George said no more but he had to turn away from Rollo because he was so moved. He had felt himself to be very much alone, but now it seemed that there was someone else – someone of his own blood – who felt as he did about the cattle. Perhaps if he could only hold out for a few years, Rollo would take over. Perhaps there would be another member of the family who would see the cattle as a sacred trust, to be protected and kept from harm.
    George and Emily had been brought up to think that it was not polite to talk about money. They would not have thought it right to let the children know how desperately hard up they were and how important it was to get what they could from the visitors, so it was Ned who answered Madlyn’s questions.
    ‘It’s the cattle, you see. They cost the earth to keep up and Sir George’ll – he’ll never sell them or let them go. He won’t even charge people to go into the park and look at them. You could make quite a bit that way; there’s plenty of people ask to see them, but he’ll never take a penny when he shows them round.’
    ‘But why? Why are they so expensive?’ asked Madlyn. ‘They just eat grass, don’t they, and the grass is there?’
    ‘Well, it is and it isn’t. Grass is a crop like anything else. They can’t use any artificial spray or fertilizer on it because it might harm the beasts, Everything has to be done by hand, and that’s terribly expensive. And the walls of the park have to be repaired, and the warden paid.’
    The warden, Bernie, was Ned’s uncle – and Ned knew as much as anybody about the upkeep of the cattle.
    ‘You don’t think Rollo’s too fond of the cows?’ asked Madlyn. ‘He’s sort of besotted. As though ... they’re creatures from another world.’
    ‘Rollo’s all right,’ said Ned. ‘No need to worry about him. Come to that, there’s a lot of people who feel as though the cows are special. They’ve been here so long, it’s like having a bit of history right here. My Ma reckons if the cattle went, the village would become a sort of ghost town.’
    Meanwhile the summer took its course; bees hung from the flowers, the lime trees gave off a marvellous scent, high white clouds rode across the sky. But if the countryside was beautiful, what