The Beasts of Clawstone Castle by Eva Ibbotson Page A

next morning the three ladies set off in their small black motor car. They had been careful not to clean the car because they wanted to merge into the background (banshees are very fond of merging) and they had packed it with food for the journey and rugs and a change of underclothes.
    But the most important thing they took was an enormous cardboard box crammed full of clean and freshly ironed handkerchiefs, and this was sensible. A working banshee cannot have too many handkerchiefs – and the job they were going to do in the distant north was one of the biggest they had ever taken on.
    Rollo went on behaving well. Seeing Madlyn in such despair and anger had shaken him badly.
    But he was not the same as he had been before. He was very quiet; no one heard him laugh; and he spent a lot of time with Sir George in his study, listening to stories of what it had been like to be a soldier in the war.
    ‘You obeyed orders,’ said Sir George. ‘Sometimes it was very difficult and you thought the orders were wrong, but you obeyed them because you knew that the men who gave them were doing their duty. And it’s the same now. The men who took the cattle were obeying orders from the government. They were doing their duty. When they killed the animals in the big foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2001, people screamed and threatened to shoot themselves, but making a fuss doesn’t help. We have to obey orders and we have to do it quietly,’ said the old man.
    But when he was alone he would stand by the window, not moving, wondering if there was any point in going on.
    It was a sad time everywhere. Cousin Howard went back to his library to see if he could find out something about the Hoggart – but, to tell the truth, he found researching Hoggarts a lot less interesting than helping to set up Open Days. Madlyn went down to Ned’s bungalow and played computer games and tried to cheer up Ned’s uncle, who had come out of hospital and blamed himself for not having noticed that there was something wrong with the cattle.
    ‘I can’t think why I didn’t see it,’ he said. ‘They seemed just fine to me.’
    The village too was quiet – a listless, sad quietness. And in the park the uncropped grass grew long, and longer; the roses in the hedges smelled of disinfectant; and it rained and rained and rained.
    When the cattle had been gone for more than a week, Ranulf called the children up to the nursery.
    ‘It’s Sunita. She thinks there is something we should do,’ said Ranulf. ‘Go on, Sunita, you tell them.’
    Sunita had been looking out of the window at the empty park. Now she turned and, though she spoke gently as she always did, they could see that what she was saying mattered to her very much.
    ‘I think we should go and say goodbye to the cattle. I think we need to go and see the place where they are buried and wish their spirits a safe journey.’
    ‘Pray over them, you mean?’ asked Madlyn. ‘Like a funeral service?’
    ‘Well, yes … but not only like that.’ She hesitated. ‘In India cows are sacred because they provide milk and give their hides. But they’re sacred too because ...’ She looked down, suddenly embarrassed. ‘Because they carry the souls of the dead to heaven. They’re sort of connected with heaven. In the old days people’s bodies were sometimes taken for burial on the back of a bull or a cow to help them on their journey. I can’t put it into words, but they’re … special. And I don’t think they should just be buried and forgotten without a ceremony.’
    ‘A sort of leave-taking,’ said Ned.
    ‘Yes. And I think we wouldn’t feel so wretched ourselves if this were done. Saying goodbye is important.’ She paused and looked at the children. ‘What do you think?’
    Rollo was the first to speak. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said firmly. ‘We were silly not to do it before. We must go as soon as we can.’
    Lord Trembellow had made no secret of the fact that the cattle were buried in his gravel