Robin Cook - Acceptable Risk

Leaving the parlor, they mounted the stairs. At the head of the stairs was a small study built over the front hall. Above the parlor and the kitchen were bedrooms, each with its own fireplace. The only furniture was a few more beds and a spinning wheel.

Returning to the kitchen on the first floor, Kim and Edward were both struck with the size of the fireplace. Edward guessed it was almost ten feet across. To the left was a lug pole, to the right a beehive oven. There were even some old pots, fry pans, and kettles.

“Can you imagine cooking here?” Edward asked.

“Not in a million years,” Kim said. “I have enough trouble in a modern kitchen.”

“The colonial women must have been experts at tending a fire,” Edward said. He peered into the oven. “I wonder how they estimated the temperature. It’s fairly critical in bread making.”

They passed through a door into the lean-to part of the house. Edward was surprised to find a second kitchen.

“I think they used this during the summer,” Kim said. “It would have been too hot to fire up that massive fireplace for cooking during warm weather.”

“Good point,” Edward said.

Returning to the main part of the house, Edward stood in the center of the kitchen, chewing on his lower lip. Kim eyed him. She could tell he was thinking about something.

“What’s going through your mind?” she asked.

“Have you ever thought about living here?” he questioned.

“No, I can’t say I have,” Kim said. “It would be like camping out.”

“I don’t mean to live here the way it is,” Edward said. “But it wouldn’t take much to change it.”

“You mean renovate it?” Kim questioned. “It would be a shame to destroy its historical value.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Edward said. “But you wouldn’t have to. You could make a modern kitchen and bath in the lean-to portion of the house, which was an add-on anyway. You wouldn’t have to disturb the integrity of the main part.”

“You really think so?” Kim said. She looked around. There was no doubt it was a charming building, and it would be a fun challenge to decorate it.

“Besides,” Edward said, “you’ve got to move out of your present apartment. It’s a shame to leave this whole place vacant. Sooner or later the vandals will get in here and possibly do some real damage.”

Kim and Edward made another walk through the building with the idea in mind of making it habitable. Edward was progressively enthusiastic, and Kim found herself warming to the idea.

“What an opportunity to connect with your heritage,” Edward said. “I’d do it in a flash.”

“I’ll sleep on it,” Kim said finally. “It is an intriguing idea, but I’d have to run it by my brother. After all, we are co-owners.”

“There’s one thing about this place that confuses me,” Edward said as he glanced around the kitchen for the third time. “I wonder where they stored their food.”

“I imagine in the cellar,” Kim said.

“I didn’t think there was one,” Edward said. “I specifically looked for an entrance when we walked around the house when we first arrived, but there wasn’t any. Nor are there any stairs leading down.”

Kim stepped around the long trestle table and pulled aside a heavily worn sisal mat. “There’s access through this trapdoor,” she said. She bent down and put her finger through a hole in the floor and pulled the trapdoor open. She laid it back on the floor. A ladder led down into the darkness.

“I remember this all too well,” Kim said. “Once, when we were kids, my brother threatened to close me in the cellar. He’d been enchanted with the trapdoor.”

“Nice brother,” Edward said. “No wonder you had a fear of being cooped up. That would have terrified anyone.”

Edward bent down and tried to look around the cellar, but he could only see a small area.

“He had no intention of actually doing it,” Kim said. “He was just teasing. We weren’t supposed to be in here at the time, and he knew I was already scared. You know how kids like to scare each other.”

“I’ve got a flashlight in the car,” Edward said. “I’ll run out and get it.”

Returning with the light, Edward descended the ladder. Gaining the floor, he looked up at Kim and asked her if she was coming down.

“Do I have to?” she questioned half in jest. She came down the ladder and stood next to him.

“Cold, damp, and musty,” Edward said.

“Well said,” Kim remarked. “So what are we doing here?”

The cellar was small. It only comprised the area beneath the kitchen. The walls were flat fieldstone with little mortar. The floor was dirt. Against the back wall was a series of bins made with stone or wood sides. Edward walked over and shined the light in several of them. Kim stayed close at his side.

“You were right,” Edward said. “Here’s where the food was kept.”

“What kind of food, do you suppose?” Kim asked.

“Stuff like apples, corn, wheat, and rye,” Edward said. “Maybe dairy products as well. The flitches of bacon were hung up, most likely in the lean-to.”

“Interesting,” Kim said without enthusiasm. “Have you seen enough?”

Edward leaned into one of the bins and scratched up some of the hard-packed dirt. He felt it between his fingers. “The dirt is damp,” he said. “I’m certainly no botanist, but I’d wager it would be great for growing Claviceps purpurea.

Intrigued, Kim asked if it could be proven.

Edward shrugged. “Possibly,” he said. “I suppose it would depend on whether Claviceps spores could be found. If we could take some samples I could have a botanist friend take a look at it.”

“I imagine we could find some containers in the castle,” Kim suggested.

“Let’s do it,” Edward said.

Leaving the old house, they headed for the castle. Since it was such a beautiful day they walked. The grass was knee-high. Grasshoppers and other harmless insects flitted about them.

“Every so often I can see water through the trees,” Edward commented.

“That’s the Danvers River,” Kim said. “There was a time when the field went all the way to the water’s edge.”

The closer they got to the castle the more awed Edward became with the building. “This place is even bigger than I had originally thought,” he said. “My word, it even has a fake moat.”

“I was told it was inspired by Chambord in France,” Kim said. “It’s shaped like the letter U, with guest quarters in one wing and servants’ in the other.”

They crossed a bridge over the dry moat. While Edward admired the gothic details of the doorway, Kim struggled with the keys just as she’d done at the old house. There were a dozen keys on the ring. Finally one opened the door.

They passed through an oak-paneled entry hall and then through an arch leading into the great room. It was a room of monumental size with a two-story ceiling and gothic fireplaces at either end. Between cathedral-sized windows on the far wall rose a grand staircase. A stained-glass rose window at the head of the stairs filled the room with a peculiar pale yellow light.

Edward let out a half-groan half-laugh. “This is incredible,” he said in awe. “I had no idea it was still furnished.”

“Nothing has been touched,” Kim said.

“When did your grandfather die?” Edward asked. ‘ This decor looks as if someone left on extended vacation in the nineteen twenties.”

“He died just this past spring,” Kim said. “But he was an eccentric man, especially after his wife died almost forty years ago. I doubt if he changed anything in the house from when his parents occupied it. It was his father who built it.”

Edward wandered into the room while his eyes played over the profusion of furniture, gilt-framed paintings, and decorative objects. There was even a suit of medieval armor. Pointing to it, he asked if it were a real antique.