King of the Castle by Victoria Holt Page A

stepped into a large hall and from an open door a voice called:
    “Bring the English lady in here, my children.”
    In a rocking chair sat an old woman; her face was brown and wrinkled, her plentiful white hair piled high on her head; her eyes were bright and very dark; her heavy lids fell like hoods over them; her thin veined hands, smudged with brown patches which at home were called ‘the flowers of death,” gripped the arms of her rocking-chair.
    She smiled at me almost eagerly as though she had been expecting my coming and welcomed it.
    “You will forgive my not rising, mademoiselle,” she said.
    “My limbs are so stiff some days it takes me all of the morning to get out of my chair and all of the afternoon to get back into it.”
    “Please stay where you are.” I took the extended hand and shook it.
    “It is kind of you to invite me in.”
     
    The children had taken a stand on either side of her chair and were regarding me intently and proudly as though I was something rather rare which they had discovered.
    I smiled.
    “You seem to know me. I’m afraid you have the advantage.”
    “Yves, a chair for mademoiselle.”
    He sprang to get one for me and carefully set it down facing the old lady.
    “You will soon hear of us, mademoiselle. Everyone knows the Bastides.”
    I settled in the chair.
    “How did you know meY I asked.
    “Mademoiselle, news travels quickly round the neighbourhood We heard that you had arrived and hoped that you would call on us. You see we are so much a part of the chateau. This house was built for a Bastide, mademoiselle. There have been Bastides in it ever since. Before that the family lived on the estate because Bastides were always the wine growers. It is said there would have been no Gaillard wine if there had never been Bastides.”
    “I see. The vines belong to you.”
    The lids came down over her eyes and she laughed aloud.
    “Like everything else in this place the vines belong to Monsieur Ie Comte.
    This is his land. This house is his. Everything is his. We are his work-people, and although we say that without the Bastides there would be no Gail lard wine, we mean that the wine produced here would not be worthy of the name. “
    “I have always thought how interesting it must be to watch the wine-growing process … I mean, to see the grapes appear and ripen and be made into wine.”
    “Ah, mademoiselle, it is the most interesting thing in the world … to us Bastides.”
    “I should like to see it.”
    “I hope you will stay with us long enough to.” She turned to the children: “Go and find your brother, my children.
     
    And your sister and your father, too. Tell them we have a visitor.
    ”
     
    “Please you mustn’t disturb them on my account.”
    “They would be very disappointed if they knew you had called and they had missed you.”
    The children ran away. I said how charming they were and that their manners were delightful. She nodded, well pleased; and I knew that she understood why I had made such a comment. I could only be comparing them with Genevieve.
    “At this time of day,” she explained, ‘there is not so much activity out of doors. My grandson, who is in charge now, will be in the cellars; his father, who cannot work out of doors since his accident, will be helping him, and my granddaughter Gabrielle will be working in the office. “
    “You have a large family, and all engaged in the wine growing business.”
    She nodded.
    “It is the family tradition. When they are old enough Yves and Margot will join the rest of the family.”
    “How pleasant that must be, and the whole family live together in this lovely house! Please tell me about them.”
    “There is my son Armand, the father of the children. Jean Pierre is the eldest of them and he is twenty-eight- he’ll be twenty-nine soon. He manages everything now. Then there is Gabrielle, who is nineteen a gap of ten years, you see, between the two. I thought Jean Pierre would be the only one