PodCastle

* Author : Rebecca Buchanan
* Narrator : Nicola Chapman
* Host : Matt Dovey
* Audio Producer : Devin Martin
*
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Previously published by Sherlock Holmes and the Occult Detectives 1 (Belanger Press)


Rated PG

~ Five ~
Dinner was not silent. While we sat in the kitchen, sipping soup and munching on bread and mutton, Miss Couper maintained an animated lecture on the tumuli and barrows of the British Isles and the Continent.
“Wayland’s Smithy being a prime Neolithic example. And then there’s Maeshowe up on Orkney. Chambered cairn. Unique to the Orkneys. Don’t see that anywhere else. Well, that we know of. Could change at any moment. Always making new discoveries. Even the Americans are doing good work, digging up Indian mounds —”
“Miss Couper, could you pass the salt, please?” I held out my hand, smile stiff.
“Eh? Oh, aye.”
Miss Baxter hid a smirk behind a bite of mutton.
Ailis and the other two students, whom I now knew to be Judith Fleming and Beatrice Gordon, sat across the table from me. They remained alarmingly quiet, their gazes fixed on their plates. Like Ailis, Judith and Beatrice also wore older dresses: all charity students, then, without the funds to travel home for the holiday.
Mrs. Fearghasdan sat at the head of the table, frowning with concern.
Holmes hovered around the edges of the room, watchful.
I cleared my throat, shaking some salt into my soup. “How will all of you be celebrating the holiday, then? Cider and carols after church? Will you be bringing a tree in?”
Miss Couper raised her spoon. “Interesting history to that —”
“No tree, I’m afraid,” Mrs. Fearghasdan interrupted. “But we plan for a Yule log in the main hearth in the great dining hall. Dawn services at St. Giles, of course.”
“And you, Miss Morstan?” Miss Baxter smiled at me, her eyes gleaming. “Will you be burning a Yule log?”
I set aside the salt, folding my hands in my lap. From across the table, Ailis watched me through her hair.
“I do recall that you and . . . oh, what was her name? Weaver? Walker?”
“Mrs. Webster.”
Miss Baxter clapped her hands. “Yes, that’s right! Webster! The two of you would slip away at the oddest times of the year.” She turned to Miss Couper and continued in a loud whisper, “Did you know that Miss Morstan here was the only student at the Academy who had her own nanny? The rest of us, of course, had long outgrown our nannies, leaving them behind in the nursery. But, well, I suppose when one is born in a distant heathen land, one needs some sort of comfort when one rejoins civilization.”
Miss Couper shifted uncomfortably, her expression uncertain.
“You are quite right, Evelyn.” I smiled thinly, holding my back and shoulders so stiff that they began to ache. Breathe. In, out. “It was a shock to leave the beauty and warmth of India for Scotland. It took me some time to come to appreciate the lochs and moors and heaths — beautiful, but a spare and striking beauty in comparison to India. And, of course, I had just lost my mother. My father, loyal down to his marrow, would not abandon his duty to the Queen. And so Mrs. Webster kindly agreed to accompany me back to my homeland, to love and care for me as if I were her own daughter. And I came to care for her as a second mother — but more, as a role model, an example of compassion and honor and courage. The sort of woman I could only hope to become myself,