Clean up.

"The McNorries, by the time my great-grandfather bought this pile from them, had become proper Victorians. Ashamed of their ancestors' habits. Dropping people into a hole and leaving them to die. After the McNorries became respectable the oubliette was seldom opened, by them or us. Anyway"--Peter Carswell laughed, a little uncomfortably--"it's pretty well full." He poured me a whiskey.

"An odd thing for you to grow up with," I said. We were eating in the great hall in a sort of indoor-camp style while the interior and exterior renovations went on. The lip of the oubliette, with a great iron-bound sliding stone lid, was there in the centre of the room, and conversation had turned to it inevitably. "Especially knowing it's full of skeletons."

"I grew up taking it for granted," he said. "As, I suppose, I grew up taking for granted the title our family bought. I don't think my parents wanted me taking a morbid interest in either of them. They themselves were almost excessively mentally healthy.

"I wasn't shown it until I was in my late teens," he went on. "Father had the cover taken off. It was daylight--I guess he made sure of that, so as to minimise any chance of giving me the horrors--a summer day like today. There are bones, but you couldn't see much. It didn't seem very deep, but perhaps that was because it was nearly full. I'll show you. Well, there are, or were, plenty of old cathedral and church crypts full of human bones. A couple were cleaned out in London recently so they could be used as shelters for the homeless or rock-concerts or something. So what? I forgot about it, more or less.

"Then when I was visiting Winchester Cathedral--to see Jane Austen's grave as a matter of fact--I saw how the old crypt there had been cleaned out and cleaned up. It was rather disappointing, actually. I thought of it as a symbol of the blandness that's taking over so much of life--at least Tewkesbury Abbey still has the bones of the Duke of Clarence in a glass box in the Clarence Vault. But by that time I was thinking of doing this place up into a hotel. Obviously, along with new kitchens and plumbing, and your landscaping, a very major interior clean-out and renovation was needed."

He led me over. The heavy cover had already been moved partly aside. Below was a tangle of bones, a few still articulated. I stared at it for a few minutes. It was unpleasant, yet, after the first sight, not particularly interesting. I'd seen human bones before. They weren't going to do anything. It was hard to know how to comment on such an exhibit. "They don't seem to have had any clothes," I said after a while.

"Oddly enough, great-grandfather said the same thing when he was shown it the first time. They were thrown in naked. The McNorries were thrifty folk: clothes and possessions could be used again. Given to servants, at least, I suppose. Don't forget how precious everything was in the Middle Ages, before factory production. Waste not, want not. But also, clothes would have filled it quicker. And naked, your death would probably have been a bit more horrible, lying cold on the sharp bones of those who had preceded you. Think about it."

I didn't really want to think about it. But I had no disagreement with his point that it would have to be cleaned up as a pretty essential first step in converting the castle for paying guests. No doubt they would enjoy its bloodthirsty and haunted reputation, but without too much realism. "I told you, didn't I?" said Carswell. "I'm hoping to get Tony along for the opening."

Despite the ghastly history of the place, I slept pretty well in my room. Stories of ghosts had revived with its re-occupation by Carswell's people, and the beginning of restoration, but no ghosts came tapping for me.

We all breakfasted together next morning. The place had been run down, but since its purchase it had never been entirely deserted by the family--indeed Carswell had used it quite often for entertaining City contacts even in its unrestored condition (I guessed that for some this would create a not-unattractive frisson of spookiness) and there was a good kitchen. Carswell had brought up some of his personal staff, including a cook and two of his security guards.

The local clergyman and a Catholic priest--I remembered the oubliette had been in use before the Reformation--arrived and said some sort of prayer standing at the edge of the terrible hole while we stood round with heads bowed, praying or at least looking respectful. I had had a vague idea the Catholic Church opposed cremation but the priest told me it would probably be for the best in this case. There was, he reminded me, no supernatural significance to human dust. Then a couple of workmen, with masks, gloves up to their elbows and disinfectant sprays, began shovelling the bones into bags.

"I was tempted to have the media along," Carswell said as the clergymen departed, "You can guess how they'd be all over something like this. Not to mention archaeologists or historians of one sort or another. Terrific advertising! But then I thought: 'Don't make a spectacle of these poor bones. They died about the most appalling death imaginable. Let them go quietly, in peace, and with as little indignity as possible.' They'll be cremated, and their ashes scattered on consecrated ground. I'm glad I was able to arrange that."

"And the law's happy?"

"Of course. They're not interested in murders from the Middle Ages, however ghastly. The council had one look and gave a certificate for cremation without any trouble." (They would be reluctant to give Carswell any trouble, I thought, considering his almost feudal network of business and political connections.) "British Heritage is more interested in promoting diversity and the history of minority groups than Medieval Britain, thanks to political correctness, and these are British bones. No museum or university can actually compel me to turn the bones over to them for study--at least, not if I'm quick. How could they frame an injunction or a preservation order? Especially if I give them no time." The workmen's heads sank out of sight in the oubliette as they shovelled the bones out from around their feet. There were steps winding down the inside wall (for a silly moment I had wondered how they would get out). I watched for a while, trying to count the skulls as they were bagged, but eventually felt a kind of mental or aesthetic indigestion with the business, and a kind of embarrassment. They had brought up and stacked quite a row of bags by the time I left.

I was glad to get out into the open with the breeze and birdsong and see my own landscaping designs taking shape. Looking back at the Castle, half-covered in scaffolding where stone-masons, painters and cleaners were busy, I thought how pleasant it might look when restoration was complete. There would have to be ivy, of course, lots of ivy, and, it suddenly occurred to me, some beds of tea-roses on the terraces. I made a mental note to tell Carswell about that. The old maze was to be re-planted and, I thought again, looking at my plans, would be made rather more challenging. I was giving Carswell value for his money. There was a path to be laid through the ancient water-meadow and I had ideas for restoring the boat-house by the river. A hint of The Wind in the Willows, and Toad Hall for the guests? Rides in punts and rowing-boats like Mole and Ratty? But it would never do to Disneyfy it. Perhaps a hint of Tolkien's Gladden Fields, where the evil ring had lain unguessed until Deagol came upon it. More willows to be planted along the banks, certainly.

Twenty-first-century Britain. What was it Tony had said, back in Cool Britannia, before his Prime Ministership had developed its first wobble? That Britain was no longer "living in the world of a hundred years ago, when guys wore bowler hats and umbrellas, all marching down Whitehall". Post-modem. A lot of the recent news had been about the widespread but curiously anaemic celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, with its politically-correct reenactment between "Red" and "Blue" fleets, and an actor playing Nelson forced by regulations to wear a life-jacket when stepping into a boat on the calm waters of the Thames, though apparently some of the private celebrations had been livelier. A new Britain beyond history. Beyond, as far as I could see, even the political rivalries and divisions that had shaped it since the Act of Settlement. A strange new world where nothing of the past was assured, but where people like me might still find a place recreating some sanitised simulacrum of that past, for the sanitised present. There were worse things than pandering to nostalgia.

I was called away by Wilson: the trench I had planned for the avenue of fruit trees had run into an old pipe. We worked out that it must supply the great ornamental fountain. That was still working, and probably dated from Edwardian times. The pipe was still pretty solid-looking but it was lucky a back-hoe blade hadn't gone into it. There was also some dressed stone uncovered, which looked disturbingly like something archaeological. There was, unpleasantly unmistakable, tessellation exposed in the dark soil. We didn't want work stopped by a preservation order now, and ancient buildings could attract one more easily than dusty bones. I called Carswell out of the castle, and after some discussion we decided to cover it up again. I quietened my conscience by marking it on a map. Let it lie there for the future, perhaps to be explored later in a non-intrusive way by ground-penetrating radar or other modern techniques.

Anyway, by the time we got back to the castle the oubliette was cleared out. The last of the bags of bones were stacked in the back of an unmarked white van and driven off to the local crematorium. The workmen, shedding their masks, looked tired and, understandably, glad the job was done. I guessed they had a good bonus and I guessed they had quitted the oubliette with relief and without looking back as soon as the last shovel-load went into the bag. Carswell looked pleased, too.

Indeed, with the bones gone, it was as if something which we had not previously noticed had been taken from the atmosphere indoors--auto-suggestion, of course. True, I thought, the castle had lost something in terms of history and authentic colour, but on the whole it was a change for the better. And Carswell was right--those poor remains deserved dignified disposal.

The re-decoration was also progressing in the banqueting hall. The walls were to be steam-cleaned, new banners hung, new suits of armour positioned along with spears and stainless-steel battleaxes. The mouth of the oubliette itself, whether open or closed, would be the centrepiece, as it had been in the distant past. It would, of course, be thoroughly, industrially, cleaned and disinfected first. The underground hall below, through which its outer trunk passed like a great circular pillar, was to be a bar and disco.

With practically everyone busy at one thing and another, and trying to make the most of the long summer twilight (Carswell paid well, for all his reputation as a hard man), we were serving ourselves with meals as we had time, and I found myself left alone while the others went off to get food. The oubliette was open and, of course, now empty.

I stood looking down into it for a moment. There were bright lights rigged, and still plenty of summer light. It was difficult to feel much more than a vague memory of menace or horror about it now. But curiosity. Like any of the tourists who would be coming soon, I descended the winding steps to the bottom, and tried to imagine ...

My fingers touched holes in the walls--rat-runs. That gave me a shiver. They had been put there for a purpose: rats would have stripped flesh from bones and helped the mass of them settle down quicker, as well as being an added horror for the still-living victims. Any lingering doubts I had had about the clean-out vanished. Carswell was right to have everything burned, to leave nothing of his predecessors' horrors. I suddenly felt that, history or no, the whole ghastly thing should be removed. There was something to be said for post-modem Britain, even if it had lost some colour. When actually down here, I noticed now, there was still a nasty smell, combined with the castle-smell of ancient stone. I looked up at the light a man's height and more above my head, trying to imagine. I looked down at my feet.

The floor was somewhat concave, and there was a pool of small stuff left with the coarse pale dust (dust that might have once been the tiny bones in knees and elbows) in the bottom, fragments that had sifted down and missed the last shovelling-up. Rats' bones, human vertebrae, metacarpals and metatarsals, a round bullet some unfortunate might have carried in his body, a few bean-like and gravel-like gall-stones or kidney-stones, and small things overlooked when victims had been stripped and thrown in--rings, tooth-fillings, a digital watch.