The Witch from the Sea (17 page)

And Jennet: “Sometimes she feared he’d do away with her.”

Why had he married her in the first place? Had he been in love with her? A fair innocent young girl. He liked innocence. He had liked it in me. He took some savage delight in destroying that innocence as he had on that first night I had spent in Castle Paling.

I was thinking about him, this man who was the father of my child. What if I had failed as Melanie Landor had? I had delighted him only because I had given him what he wanted.

I could not get her out of my mind. I looked for signs of her about the place. When I walked the ramparts and looked out at the sea I thought of her standing there and the fear that would have hung over her. It was as though she walked beside me, appearing at odd moments, a shadowy presence to haunt me, to cast a shadow over my happiness. Poor frail Melanie who had failed to please him and who had died because of it!

No, not because of it. She had died in childbed. Many women did. A husband could not be blamed for that.

I kept hearing her mother’s fierce murmur: She was murdered. I must make allowances for a mother’s grief. And how strange that she should have been Fennimore’s sister. But was it? They were not distant neighbours. Marriages were arranged between people of their position.

What were the Landors thinking now? They would know that I, whom they had chosen to be Fennimore’s wife, was now married to the man who had been their daughter’s husband.

What had they thought? How strange that my mother who had seen them since my marriage had not mentioned this fact to me. It would have been so natural for her to do so.

I was betraying too much interest in my husband’s first wife. Jennet, quick to realize this, garnered knowledge for me.

“It were in the Red Room she died, Mistress,” she told me. And I must go to the Red Room.

How dark it was. How full of shadows, and there was the big four-poster bed. I went to the window and looked out to the stark drop to the sea. I could almost feel her then. It was as though a voice whispered: Yes, I thought often of throwing myself down. It would have been quick … anything better than my life with him.

Fancy, sheer fancy! What was the matter with me? It was the room with the dark red bed curtains—heavy, embroidered in red silk of a darker shade than the background. I pictured her shut in behind those curtains, waiting for him to come to her.

“Her room were the Red Room,” Jennet told me. “He would go to her there. She didn’t share a room with him, like. They did say he were with her only to get a son.”

I was ashamed of allowing Jennet to tell me so much; but I had to know; it was a burning curiosity and more. It was not so much that I wished to discover the truth about Colum’s relationship with his first wife as to learn more of him.

I pictured his hatred of her. He despised weakness. He liked me best when I fought against him. She was too gentle, too meek, and she was terrified. His only interest in her would be that of procreation. Because of her position she was his wife and on the material side it would have been a suitable marriage; it was only those two who were unsuitable.

He would have his mistresses there in the room which I shared with him now doubtless, and in the dark Red Room she would be visited now and then.

There was terror in this room. It lingered. I could imagine her so well. When she was pregnant she would be afraid of death and when she was not she would be afraid of him.

And how was she equipped to fight against her fate? Poor child, brought up in the gentle Landor home where life went on smoothly and people were kind and polite to each other. I had seen something of life. I knew and had grown to love my father who was such another as Colum. I was prepared. I was the fortunate one, the loved wife who had not failed him and in less than a year had given him the son on whom he doted.

I wished that I could get her out of my mind. I could not. I could never go near the Red Room without looking in.

“Poor Melanie,” I would murmur. “I hope you are at peace now.”

Edwina who was descended from a witch on her mother’s side had certain powers. Once when Carlos was at sea and involved in a fight with a Spanish galleon she had had a vision of it and known that he was in danger; sometimes she foresaw events. It was a strange uncanny gift. I remember Edwina’s telling me once that if people experienced violent emotions in a certain spot they left behind them some disturbance which was apparent to those with special insight.

I now wondered whether Melanie had left something of this behind. I lacked those special powers but perhaps because I was in her place, I could sense something here.

I half hoped and half feared that she would return in some form. Perhaps that was why I went to the Red Room so often.

I liked to go there at dusk, at that time of day when the daylight is fast fading and it is not quite time to light the candles. Then the room was at its most ghostly.

It was November, the anniversary of that day when Colum had brought me here. He remembered it and had said: “You and I will sup alone together as we did on that day. It is a day I regard as one of the luckiest in my life.”

I had dressed myself in a russet velvet gown, and wore my hair loose about my shoulders—quite unfashionable but the style most becoming to me; and on that very day I could not resist going along to the Red Room at dusk.

I stood there. There were dark shadows in the room. Soon the light would be gone altogether.

“Melanie,” I whispered, “are you there?”

And as I stood there, I felt the hair rise from my scalp for the door was slowly opening.

I stood watching it. Then it was flung back and there stood Colum.

“In God’s name,” he cried, “what are you doing here?”

For a moment I could not speak. He came to me and taking my by the shoulders shook me.

“What ails you? What is wrong?”

“I thought you were a ghost.”

He caught my hair in his hands and tugged it hard. Colum liked to mingle a little pain with his caresses.

“Who has been talking to you?” he demanded.

“I pick up bits of gossip here and there.”

“I’ll have any whipped who have been pouring poison into your ear.”

“You will do no such thing,” I said, “or I shall tell you nothing.”

“You will tell me what I ask,” he said.

“Not here in this room.”

“Yes,” he said. “Here in this room, with your ghost smirking in the shadows.”

There was something grand about him. He was not afraid of anything or anyone. One of the Seaward men had told Jennet that the master feared neither God nor man—and it was true. He would be defiant no matter what he faced. So he could not be expected to fear poor Melanie’s ghost—if the idea should occur to him that it existed, which I doubted.

“I know that this was the room in which your first wife died.”

“Well, she had to die somewhere.”

“You never told me that she was a Landor.”

“She had to be someone.”

“But the Landors … Fennimore Landor’s sister!”

“Of course. At one time you had plans to marry that man.”

“How strange that you should have married his sister.”

“Not strange at all. It was a suitable marriage in some ways. The girl was of good family and brought a good dowry with her.”

“And you took the dowry and cared nothing for her.”

“I had no reason to care for her.”

“She was your wife.”

He grasped me firmly and pressing me backwards kissed me firmly on the mouth.

“There is only one wife for me,” he said. “Praise God I have her.”

“I wish you had told me that she was a Landor.”

“Why? It meant nothing to me that you once had a fancy for that lily-livered boy.”

“You malign Fennimore. He was not that. He is brave and dedicated to his work. He has ideals.”

“Much good will they do him.”

“There speaks the buccaneer.”

“This is a buccaneer’s world.”

“It is changing,” I said. “Trade will take the place of war and those who persist in making war will suffer and those who live peacefully will prosper.”

“By God,” he said, “you repeat your lessons well. I will have no more of Fennimore Landor in this house. You are well rid of him. I do not wish to hear his name mentioned again.”

“Why? Does your conscience fret you?”

“My conscience?”

“Yes, for what you did to the Landors.”

“You are mad, wife. What I did to the Landors was to marry their daughter. She died in childbirth as others have done before her.”

“But she was sick and ill and you persisted that she should give you a son.”

“God’s teeth, girl! Has a man no right to a son?”

“Not if he must kill his wife to get one.”

There was a brief silence; the ghostly shadows had crept farther into the room. For a few seconds—and a few only—Colum was shaken. I knew then that he had ignored Melanie’s pleas, that he had forced her as in the beginning he had forced me. His will was law in Castle Paling and if he had to trample over the heart and body of any who stood in his way he would do so.

In those seconds I seemed to have a vision of the future. It was as though Melanie was warning me. He wants you now. You are important to him, but for how long?

Just that and no more. The moment passed.

He was laughing. “I can see someone has been talking too much.”

“Nay,” I said quickly, fearing his wrath for the servants. “I have worked this out for myself. This was the room where she suffered. This was the room where she died. Do you not feel that she is still here?”

“You have gone mad,” he said. “She lies in her grave. She is no more here than your pretty Fennimore is.”

“She is dead, Colum, and the dead sometimes return.”

“Nonsense,” he shouted. “Nonsense.”

I saw his eyes look about that room. It would be full of memories for him. His step in the corridor, Melanie shrinking in her curtained bed; the onslaught that she feared—cruel and crude to such a defenceless creature, asking herself what she feared most, his intrusion into her privacy or that pregnancy which kept him away and could bring death closer.

I was full of pity for her.

“You are morbid,” he accused.

“I feel drawn towards this room.”

“On this night of all nights!”

“Yes, because it is this night.”

“You want me to stand in this room and ask forgiveness of her. For what? Because I asked that she should perform her duties as a wife? Because I wanted sons? In God’s name, for what other reason should I have married a silly simpering girl who brought me no pleasure?”

“You made a mistake in marrying her. We have to abide by mistakes.”

“Nay,” he said. “If we take a false step we right ourselves and go in another direction. Enough of this.” There was a satanic gleam in his eyes. He pulled me towards the bed.

I said: “No, Colum, please, not here …”

But he would not heed me. He said: “Yes. Yes. I say yes and by God and all his angels I will have my way.”

Later we supped in that room where we had on the first night I came to Castle Paling.

When I was in my chair he came round to me and in his hands was a solid chain set with diamonds on which hung a locket of rubies and diamonds. He put it about my neck.

“There,” he said, “it becomes you well. It is my gift to you, my love. It is my thanks for my son and for giving me that which I have looked for in my wife.”

I touched his hands and looked up at him. I had been shocked by what had happened in the Red Room. He had meant to lay the ghost, to superimpose on my fantastic imaginings a memory of our own. I think he was right in believing that I would not want to go there for some time. I would not want to think of us—which I must—on the bed on which Melanie had died.

How characteristic of him thus to defy the enemy which in this case was the memory of Melanie.

“You like this trinket?” he asked me.

“It is beautiful.”

He kissed me then with that tenderness which always moved me deeply.

“You are glad of that night? Glad a brigand saw you in an inn and decided that you should be his.”

“Yes, glad.”

I took his hand and kissed it.

“I will tell you something,” he said. “There was never a woman who pleased me as you do.”

“I hope I shall always do so.”

He laughed lightly. “You must make sure that you do.”

“I shall grow old,” I said, “but so will you.”

“Women grow old before men.”

“You are ten years older than I am.”

“Ten years is nothing … for a man. It is only women who must fight off age.”

“You are arrogant.”

“I admit it.”

“Vain.”

“True.”

“Selfish and sometimes cruel.”

“I confess my guilt.”

“And you expect me to love such a man?”

“Expect and demand,” he answered.

“How could I?”

“I will tell you how. You love me because you know you must. You know my nature. It is all you say it is. But know this too. I am a man who will have my way and if I say this woman is to love me, then she has no help for it. She must do so.”

“You imagine you are a god and all other men are nothing beside you.”

“I know it to be so,” he said.

“You believe that all you have to do is command a woman to love you and she must needs do so.”

“That is true too,” he said. “You began by hating me. Now you are as eager for me as I for you. Is that not proof?”

I smiled across the table at him.

“I think it must be,” I said.

I was happy that night. It was only in the morning that I thought again of Melanie and wondered whether in the beginning when they had first married she had supped with him in that room and whether he had spoken of love to her.

Had it been only when she failed to give him what he wanted that he grew to despise her?

Into my mind had crept an uneasy thought: What if you should cease to please him?

Christmas came. My little Connell was four months old, lusty as ever, doing, as Jennet said, all the things a boy ought to do. Showing temper, showing interest, growing plump and healthy. I wouldn’t allow him to be swaddled and Colum agreed with me. If he had not I should have prepared to fight against him on this point. I couldn’t bear to think of my baby bound up in swaddling clothes for weeks. “I want his legs to grow long so that he will be as tall as his father,” I said.