The Witch from the Sea (26 page)

I was not sure how this had come about. Colum and I rarely ate alone but when we did it was in the room which I called the winter parlour—after the one at Lyon Court—the small intimate kind of room which people were beginning to use instead of the great halls where all the household sat together.

There were occasions when we dined in the hall. If there were visitors—which there were quite frequently—and on special occasions—then it was natural that Maria should be there. What was strange was that when we dined in the winter parlour she should join us. I could not understand why Colum accepted this.

I guessed that in a way either his conscience worried him—although that was difficult to believe—or that she was threatening him in some way. It was hard to imagine his allowing anyone to threaten him, but she had accused him of being a murderer. He had been responsible for the death of her husband—for I must believe she was travelling with her husband—and perhaps even he would feel he should make some amends.

Colum kept me with him a great deal after that encounter. He seemed determined to make me accept him for what he was. He told me, soon after that scene, that if I attempted to leave him, he would come to Lyon Court and get me, no matter if he had to kill my father in the attempt.

He said: “Don’t provoke me, wife. Never provoke me. You would find my anger terrible. I would stop at nothing to gain satisfaction. Is that something you have learned yet?”

“I begin to,” I said.

“Then be a good wife. Deny me nothing and you will be cared for. I want more children. Give them to me.”

“That is hardly in my hands.”

“You gave me Connell that first night. That was because you and I were made for one another. You responded.”

“How could I, drugged as I was?”

“Nevertheless you did. That was when I knew that I’d make you my wife.”

“I thought it had something to do with my dowry.”

“That came after. But that first night I knew. And look how soon we got ourselves our daughter. But all this time you have been barren. Why?”

“That question must be answered by a higher power.”

“Not so. You have slipped away from me. You have become critical of me. I will not have that. Take care, wife.”

“Take care of what?”

“That you continue to please me.”

What did he mean? I wondered about slipping away. Had I during that first year or so of marriage loved him not only with this physical passion of which I was so acutely aware, or had my feelings for him gone deeper than that? Had I built up a false image? Had I seen him as the man I wanted him to be? I could do that no longer.

And he allowed Maria to join us. Those meals
à trois
were not easy. Colum and I talked in rather a forced fashion; she appeared to watch us thoughtfully and contributed very little to the conversation.

I had a feeling that this state of affairs could not continue. We could not go on day after day sitting thus at table together. Something was going to happen. Then suddenly I was aware.

I caught his gaze fixed on her and he looked just as he had looked at me on the memorable night when I had first seen him at The Traveller’s Rest.

I felt a wild twinge of alarm.

I was deeply aware of them. They were playing a kind of game together. She was haughty, aloof, scornful of him; and he was maddened by her attitude. It was something of a repetition of what had happened between him and me.

There was an occasion when she stayed in her room and sent one of the maids down to say she was indisposed, for all the world as though she was the mistress of the house. We ate alone on that night. Colum was moody, speaking scarcely a word.

She had taken one of the horses from the stables and made it her own. I had supplied her with riding clothes; I had set the seamstress to make garments for her. That was in the beginning when I was sorry for her and wanted to make up for the wrong which had been done to her by my husband.

She never hesitated to take these things. She herself designed her clothes and was with the seamstress while she was working. When they were completed they were beautiful in an exotic way. She walked gracefully and held herself so proudly that she looked like a queen. Her beauty seemed to intensify with the passing of the months. She loved the sun and on hot days rode off and sometimes did not come back all day.

Colum continued to watch her broodingly; and he had ceased to mention her to me.

When we entertained she joined the company. She would seat herself at the table on the dais and even though Colum and I were in the centre she would have given the impression to a stranger that she was the mistress of the house, not I.

There was often something jaunty about her manner; it was as though she were secretly amused. One of the neighbouring squires had fallen in love with her and implored her to marry him. She would not give him a definite answer and consequently he made pretence after pretence to visit us.

“Young Madden is here again,” Colum would say. “Poor lovesick fool! Does he think she will have him?”

Once I said: “Colum, how long will she stay here?”

He turned on me angrily. “I thought it was your pleasure that she stayed. Was it not you who were so eager to make up for my cruelty?”

“Yes, but she doesn’t belong here, does she?”

“Who shall say who belongs where? Once you did not belong, now you do.”

“Surely that is different. I am your wife.”

“Remember it,” he said rather sourly.

That was a strange long summer. The heat was intense. The sea was as calm as a lake and from the turret window looked like a sheet of silk shot with blue and grey light; its murmur was gentle as it washed the walls of the castle. I would often look out at the sharp teeth of the Devil protruding above the water, and the dark smudge of battered vessels there. I wondered what Maria thought when she looked out and saw the remains of the
Santa Maria
. Did she think of her husband who was lost to her forever? One could never tell; she glided about the castle with that aloof look in her eyes and no one could know what she was thinking.

Colum was different. He talked often about another child. What was wrong with me? Why did I not conceive? He had changed towards me. I was sensitive enough to realize that. There was a certain lack of spontaneity in his passion. I thought I knew why.

I wished that my mother would visit us. In the months of June I wrote and asked her to come. I told her how I missed her and how long it seemed since we had been together.

There must have been a plea in my letter for she wrote immediately and said she was making plans to leave. I felt relieved then. I had decided that I must confide in her. I knew that was the last thing Colum wanted but I did not care. I felt I must talk to someone. But she did not come. Damask had a fever and she neither dared leave her nor bring her.

“When she is well, we will come, my dear Linnet,” she wrote. She told me what was happening at home. My father had returned from his second voyage and this time he had been equally successful as far as trading was concerned and had achieved this without the loss of ships. The Landors had visited them and they had talked most of the time about the success of the venture.

“Fennimore’s little boy is the pride of his life,” she wrote. “He is called Fenn and must be a month or so older than our own little Tamsyn.”

Her letter brought back so clearly to me the great hall in Lyon Court and my father at the head of the table talking of his adventures and my mother, watching him and now and then bickering with him.

There was a great comfort in thinking of my mother and father. I imagined that Colum and I were rather like them. Their marriage had survived the years and it was clear that they could not live happily without each other. We should be like that, I promised myself, perhaps rather too vehemently.

I watched Maria walking to the stables. She swayed as she walked, so graceful was she. When she sat a horse she looked like one of the goddesses from Greek mythology. I thought that so much beauty concentrated in one person was disconcerting.

I wondered where she went on her long rides. That was a mystery. Mystery must always surround Maria.

July came and the heat had turned sultry.

“There’ll be thunder,” said the weather-wise; but they were wrong. The heat persisted. St. Swithin’s Day came and we watched for the rain. It did not come.

I remember my mother’s quoting to me:

“St. Swithin’s Day, if thou dost rain

For forty days it will remain.

St. Swithin’s Day, if thou be fair

For forty days ’twill rain nae mair.”

But what did I care whether it rained or the sun shone? The weather could not alter the strangeness in the Castle.

Then came August—hot nights when the bed curtains were drawn back to let in a little air. There was a swarm of wasps. Connell was stung and I treated the sting with a remedy Edwina had given me. How I wished I could see Edwina. I remembered then how she had said that there was something evil in the house.

Evil. Yes it was evil. There was no mistaking it. In my heart I thought: It was brought here by the woman from the sea.

I awoke in the night. It was too hot for sleep. Colum was not there. How many times had I awakened and found him gone. I went to the window and looked out to sea. It was calm and still. A shaft of moonlight made a path on the still waters. I could see the tips of the Devil’s Teeth clearly. There was no ship in sight.

Some impulse made me take my robe and wrap it round me. I opened the door and stepped out into the narrow corridor.

It was dark for there were no windows to let in the moonlight. I went back into the room and lighted a candle.

I knew where I was going and if I found what I felt I might find, what should I do? I would go to my mother. I would steal out of the house in secret and take the children with me. Or I might write to her and tell her that she must come for I needed her even as Damask did. Damask was recovering now. She could come to me and she must.

The candlelight threw shadows on the thick stone walls. I stood outside the Red Room, my fingers on the latch, yet I could not bring myself to open the door. In my mind’s eye I could picture them. It would be as it had been with us, for she had bewitched him.

Why did I use that word? Bewitched. It was wrong. There was no question of witchcraft. She was a beautiful and voluptuous woman, he was a sensual man. He desired her as he had once desired me, and did I not know that he would allow nothing to stand in the way of his desires?

The room of ghosts and shadows, I thought. She suffered here, poor Melanie. And if he visited Maria here, what did the poor sad shade of Melanie think? Could it be true that unhappy people walked, as the servants said? Did they hope to regain some happiness by so doing? Did they seek revenge on those who had made them suffer?

How like him it would be to join Maria in that room, on that bed where Melanie had died! … just as he had made me share it with him. I remember then his passion had been not only desire for me but a need to show Melanie’s ghost if it existed that he cared not a jot for it. It seemed that in Colum’s passion there must always be double motives.

Quietly I opened the door. The curtains were drawn back from the bed and a shaft of moonlight shone straight on to it.

It was empty.

I felt ashamed as I tiptoed back to my bedchamber. I lay on the bed. Colum did not join me. It seemed strange that they were both absent on that moonlit night.

September had come and the heat was still with us. I had to see my mother. I told Colum that either she must come to me or I would go to her.

He did not answer me; his thoughts appeared to be on other matters.

There had been no disasters at sea during the summer months. Colum rode off on long journeys by himself and often stayed away for several days. He never told me where he had been. Maria was at the castle—quiet, brooding almost; there was a secret smile in her eyes.

Colum came back after one of his long journeys. It was September—nearly a year since that night when I had gone out and rescued Maria from the sea. Senara was taking notice now. Her eyes would light up when I entered the nursery; I wondered what happened when Maria did. But of course she rarely did. She had borne her daughter and passed her over to us, as though it were our duty to care for her.

Soon the autumn would be with us. A whole year would have passed. At the end of October it would be Hallowe’en again.

When I rode inland I saw the birds congregating ready to leave for a warmer climate. The butcherbird, the nightjar, the chiffchaff and the common sandpiper were leaving us. Our ever-faithful gulls would remain to wheel over our coasts and utter their mournful cries.

I said to Colum: “I have written to my mother. It seems so long since I saw her. I am insisting that she comes.”

He looked at me steadily, his dark eyes cold.

“You have not heard,” he said. “I did not wish to disturb you. The sweat is raging in Plymouth.”

“The sweat!” I cried. “Then she must come to us at once.”

“Nay, that she will not. Dost think I will allow my children to run the risk of catching it?”

“She may be ill.”

“You would have heard had she been.”

“I must go to her.”

“You shall stay here.”

“But if she is in danger?”

“I doubt she is ill. But she is near the sickness and it spreads like wildfire. You must stay apart.”

“I want to see her so much,” I said.

“You talk like a peevish child. You have your home to think of. Know this. She shall not come here nor shall you go to her, I’ll not have danger brought to the castle.”

I was worried about my mother, but letters came. The sweat was taking toll of many people in the neighbourhood, she wrote. She did not go into the town. She had feared that Damask was sickening, but it turned out to be only a return of the fever she had had earlier.

She wrote that she thought it unwise of her to come to see me or me to go to her.

“I shall write often, my dearest child,” she said. “And until this terrible thing passes, we must be content with our letters.”