Читать книгу Treasure of the Romarins - Ronda Williams - Страница 3

Natalie Romarin stood in the middle of her uncle’s library and sighed heavily. She gazed with tender recollection at the familiar books that filled the shelves surrounding her, and was flooded with memories of the pleasant times she and her brother had spent with her uncle in this very room. This was the only real home she had ever known; a grand, sprawling structure, built in the seventeenth century by an unknown architect who possessed a curious penchant for narrow passageways, hidden nooks, and multitudes of tiny closets. It sat a good distance back from the road and was surrounded by witch elms, poplars, rose gardens, graveled walks, and all the other charms an English countryside could offer.

She could still imagine her uncle sitting in his big comfortable armchair in front of the fireplace. He was playing a low, soft tune on his harmonica while she and her brother Calvin sprawled across the floor at his feet, puzzling through their schoolwork.

Those days were long past, and her cares were never to be so simple again. She glanced at her brother, who sat brooding at the same antique mahogany desk that had stood in the corner of the room for as long as she could remember.

He suddenly sneezed, giving Natalie a start and breaking her reverie.

“I just can’t believe he’s gone,” she said for the third time that morning. “He was so vital!”

“I know. He was always there for us whenever we needed him, and I don’t think we’ll have that kind of support ever again.”

Natalie took a chair across from her brother and wiped the stray tears from her face. “Well, don’t forget about Uncle Julien. We still have him, thank goodness! But we can’t fall into dejection now. We’ve a lot of work ahead of us. Uncle Richard’s will was very specific.” She glanced at the document Calvin was perusing.

“Some of his wishes seem rather odd,” he remarked, polishing his glasses. “It says we’re to clear out his office at the Bodleian as soon as possible–that seems reasonable enough, but not until after we take care of the library here.”

“We’ll make it our business to carry out every minute detail of this document,” Natalie said with finality.

“I just remembered what Uncle Richard said to me a while back,” Calvin said, frowning. “I guess it was about a week before he died. It was an unusual comment, or at least, it struck me that way at the time. He said, ‘Always remember that you’re a Romarin, my boy. And remember, Romarin means rosemary, and rosemary is for remembrance.’ I just laughed and told him I didn’t think I’d have any trouble remembering my last name. Then he said, ‘I’m being serious. Remember who you are!’ I feel like he knew he wasn’t going to be with us much longer, but that’s impossible. He was so healthy. He would’ve told us if he was ill.”

“He said something similar to me,” Natalie added, “about our name, I mean.” She attempted an imitation of her uncle’s gruff and booming voice. ’The name is the thing, Natalie. Now mind you don’t forget it!’ I thought he was being terribly snobby at the time, like he was trying to instill pride in our lineage or something. I teased him about it and even called him pompous, but he became almost cross with me and said that some day I would understand.” She shook her head, thinking back to one of her last conversations with her uncle. “It just struck me as out of character for him, you know? He never used to show much concern about our family history before.”

“Why do you think he wants us to clean this place so thoroughly?”Calvin asked, changing the subject. “It’s not like we’re going to sell the house. It says here, ‘Please take every single book off the library shelves and dust. Replace the books as you see fit, but you must remove every single book and dust everything.’” Calvin looked around the room and shuddered. “I say! That’s rather hard of him, don’t you think? There’s probably close to 5,000 books in here. It will take us forever to get to them all!”

“Well, he was the head librarian at Oxford. What do you expect? Books were his lifeblood.” She laughed. “Well, that and wine! But if we work together, it shouldn’t take more than a week or two. And don’t forget, Mrs. Murphy said we needn’t worry. She will stay on and help us with whatever we need. Uncle Richard’s will provided handsomely for her, so she won’t have to leave us anytime soon.”

“Thank God. I can’t live without her rumbledethumps!” Calvin gave her a pained look and clutched his stomach. “Now I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry, dear brother,” Natalie said with affection. ”But your belly will have to wait. We must get started on these books!”

She looked around the library, considering where to start. Warm autumn light rested on the burnished oak furniture like honey. The books themselves were waiting like old friends to be visited once more. Silver filigreed lamps with glass, amber-colored shades were scattered about the room. Three squashy brown velvet chairs were arranged in front of an enormous stone fireplace, which was adorned by a carved mantle. This was Natalie’s favorite room in the house. Uncle Richard had raised them since they were young, barely out of diapers, in fact. Calvin was only two when they first came, but Natalie was five and remembered the day perfectly. It was one of her first real memories, besides one or two hazy, half-formed recollections of her mother and father.

It had been raining fiercely, that long-ago night. Natalie remembered feeling tired and very frightened. She was holding the hand of a well-dressed man in his early forties, her Uncle Julien, as it turned out, Richard’s younger brother. He had fetched them from some far-away country that Natalie had long forgotten. She only knew that it was a great distance from England. Julien carried her baby brother in his other arm, and the three of them stood before the great front door of Richard Romarin’s country house. Julien shifted Calvin’s weight in his arms and rang the bell. When the door opened, there stood her other uncle, a broad, leonine figure of indeterminate age whom she had rarely seen up to that point in her young life.

He was wearing an ancient and decidedly tattered brocade robe, and appeared just as tired and wretched-looking as they were themselves. When he saw his niece’s small, wary countenance peering up at him in frightened bewilderment, his heart softened immediately. He crouched down and hugged her gently, saying, “You poor little creature. Come in the house and get warm. You are not to worry any more. I’ll take good care of you and baby brother. You’ll see!”

Natalie remembered feeling a great weight being lifted from her young heart at that moment, and she knew, somehow, that she and Calvin would be all right. Their parents were forever lost to them, but he would see to it that his sister’s children were cared for and loved.

Recalling that melancholy night long ago, the first night spent under the sheltering roof that had become so dear to her, was bittersweet. After those first few, difficult months in the strange house, she and Calvin felt as if they’d never lived anywhere else. Uncle Richard showed them secret closets and passageways. He taught them to play chess and poker next to the fire in the library. Mrs. Murphy was their cook and nanny. She made sure they brushed their teeth and didn’t stay up all night reading while their uncle was away on business.

His absences were frequent, and took him to every corner of the globe. He was often gone for weeks at a time, but invariably returned with some unique or rare bauble for the children that he was wont to find on his travels. And of course he always brought back books and more books! Very often they were in foreign languages, and Richard took it upon himself to instruct his young charges in a variety of languages, including, but not limited to Latin, French, Spanish, Greek, and even Hebrew.

“Some day you’ll thank me,” he told them one day, when they had complained about the strict course of study he had imposed. “It’ll come in very handy, I assure you,” he insisted. “You will be glad to be familiar with so many languages.”

Calvin, seeing that his sister was daydreaming again, poked her playfully.

“Snap out of it, Nat! Let’s get started so we can eat!”

It was dark by the time they finally emerged from the library, dusty and disheveled. They trudged tiredly down the stairs to the kitchen, where Mrs. Murphy was pulling a shepherd’s pie out of the old Aga oven. If Natalie’s favorite room was the library, Calvin’s was the kitchen. It always smelled of spices and warm bread. The sprightly widow prided herself on her cooking and insisted that her two favorite young people eat heartily while at the table. In Calvin’s case, there was no need to insist. His love of food was well established, and Mrs. Murphy was by far the best cook he had ever encountered.

“I’ll not have my wee ones eating that store-bought garbage!” she often expounded. Natalie and Calvin were long past being wee ones, and in fact now towered over Mrs. Murphy’s petite little figure, but she was blind to the fact. She still considered them her children and treated them as though they were yet toddlers, pulling insistently at her apron strings.

She was a tiny woman but deceptively strong, and was often seen hauling lumber for the manor’s five fireplaces by herself, though Richard chastised her heatedly when he caught her at it. She invariably argued with him in return, using language much more colorful than his own. When Natalie and Calvin were big enough, they took over the task of chopping and carrying the firewood into the house. Their uncle made it his business to ensure that his niece and nephew did their share of the housework.

“I’ll be hanged if I’m going to raise a couple of brats!” he told them rather too often, and indeed, they grew to be as unspoiled and warmhearted as he could have wished.

“Wash your hands, both of you!” Mrs. Murphy commanded when they entered the kitchen. “You’re covered in cobwebs. Ach! That library is nothing but a trap for filth and grime!” She was a very tidy woman, and considered the presence of dust in the house a personal affront.

Natalie and her brother jostled elbows at the sink. Working together was a lot of fun, and they’d always gotten along rather better than other siblings. Only three years apart, they had studied at Oxford together for a couple of years, and though each had their own set of friends and separate interests, they found time to see one another almost every day and spent many hours together at the Bodleian, working on various research papers. Calvin was studying zoology and history, while Natalie majored in botany and music.

Surrounded by such an astounding variety of books their entire young lives, they found it almost impossible, once they attended university, to focus on any one subject. Their uncle finally forced them to choose an area of study.

“Learning is never-ending,” he told them. “Just because you have to choose a major doesn’t mean that you can’t learn about all the other wonderful mysteries of the universe. But for goodness sakes, choose! I don’t want a couple of career students on my hands. You will have to earn your own living some day!”

Sitting at the scarred pine table, Natalie and Calvin spooned out big dishes of the shepherd’s pie. Mrs. Murphy poured them some milk and joined them. “So, tell me how you fared up there in the library,” she said.

Natalie and Calvin glanced at each other. Both were thinking the same thing; how much should they tell her? Natalie spoke first.

“Well… we didn’t get very far, to tell you the truth. We kept stopping to read the books.”

Calvin nodded in agreement. “I never realized all the crazy stuff Uncle Richard kept in there! There was one book all about cosmic flora. I thought it was real at first. I couldn’t believe there were flowers in space and I didn’t know about it.”

Natalie laughed. “I found a book about book critics called Fire the Bastards! It was refreshing to see the tables turned on those…people.” She was thinking about her own book, The New Leaf, of which she had worked so hard, but had still gotten mixed reviews.

“Well, if you children are going to read every book you dust, you will be there ‘till there actually are flowers in outer space!” Mrs. Murphy gathered the dishes, muttering to herself. It was one of her more endearing habits, though when they were younger, they hadn’t appreciated it as much as they did now.

“Why don’t you let us wash up?” asked Calvin.

“Ach, no! You always leave specks of food on the pans! No, run along. You’ve got your work cut out for you upstairs.” With that, Natalie and Calvin ran eagerly back up to the library, their hunger abated for the time being.

“Do you think we should have said something about what we found?” Calvin asked after shutting the door behind them.

“Not yet. We better figure out what it means first.”

Earlier, Calvin had been cleaning the bottom row of shelves on one side of the library, which ran from floor to ceiling on all four walls, only breaking where there was a window, tapestry or a painting. They had decided to start from the bottom and work their way up. For the first hour or so, it was boring and tedious work. Calvin had been thinking about how quiet the library was, the only sounds the crackling of the fire and the occasional comment from his sister, who, upon finding an interesting title, put it aside with a thump to be read later.

He reflected gloomily that the worst thing about his uncle’s absence was the relative silence of the house. Richard was a very unlikely man to be a librarian. For one thing, he was loud. He spoke loudly, and flailed his hands around when he got excited about something. He played his music loud, so loud that large parts of the house fairly reverberated with sound. Calvin smiled when he thought back to all the heated arguments his uncle had with Mrs. Murphy on the subject.

“You’ll break my crockery and my eardrums with that racket, you daft bag of wind!” she yelled, just as loudly as his music, it will be noted. Richard never got angry at her outbursts. In fact, he quite relished them, and even encouraged her to lose her temper more often than was her wont.

Calvin sighed. Now the house was much too quiet, in his opinion. Uncle Richard had been larger than life, and now that he was gone, it was very clear that things were never going to be the same. He forced the sad thought from his mind and pulled five or six books off the shelves, dusted their spines with a dry cloth, cleaned the shelf with oil soap, and replaced the books. Natalie did the same thing on the other side of the room. He kept at the task until halfway through the bottom shelf, when he gave a sudden shout. “Nat, I found something!”