The Witch from the Sea (27 page)

She sent me a pair of stockings such as I had never seen before. The art of weaving had been introduced by a gentleman of Cambridge. He was the Rev. Mr. Lee and my mother wanted to know if I had ever seen such stockings.

See how they mould themselves to the leg as stocking never did before (she wrote). I have heard from your grandmother in London that they are always worn by the quality and she says that soon there will be no other kind. I have more news from London. A Mr. Jansen who has been making spectacles has invented an instrument which makes things far off seem close. It is called a telescope. What will happen next, I wonder. What times we live in. I would instead they could find some means of preventing this terrible sickness breaking out every few years—and a cure for it when it comes.

To read her letters offered me some comfort; but I wanted so much to talk to her. I wanted to tell her of the strange atmosphere which was slowly creeping into the castle.

That it had something to do with Maria I was certain; and Colum was involved in it.

Are they lovers? I wondered. If they were, that would explain so much.

It was Hallowe’en again. Now the weather had changed. There was rain—a light drizzle which was little more than a mist.

Jennet’s eyes were dark with her thoughts. I wondered what she knew.

“’Tis a year,” she said, “since she came here. ’T’as been a long year … a long strange year.”

So Jennet had felt it too.

“And little Senara is ten months old.”

“A proper little miss,” said Jennet, her eyes softening and the mysterious look going out of them. “It does me good to see young Tamsie with her. Proper little mother. And Senara, she knows her too. Screams for her. I swear she said ‘Tamsie’ the other day. Mark my words, that’ll be the first word that one says.”

I was glad that my daughter was kind to the baby. It showed a pleasant trait in her character that there was no jealousy, for I knew that Jennet spoiled Senara. How far away that nursery world seemed from what was going on in the rest of the castle!

Hallowe’en was with us. A dark and gloomy day—quite windless; the mist hanging over the castle, shrouding the turrets and penetrating into the rooms. The coastline merged into a bank of mist. It would be hard for any ships who were near our coasts in this. They would not need the lights from Colum’s donkeys to deceive them. They would not be able to see anything through the mist.

It was a silent world—chill and dark. I thought of the raging storm of last year. I wondered whether Maria was remembering too.

There was no bonfire that night.

I asked Jennet why.

“Weather bain’t fit,” she told me.

But I didn’t think it was only the weather. Many of the servants believed there was a witch among us and it might have been that they feared to offend her.

So the night of Hallowe’en passed quietly.

But in the morning we discovered that Maria was missing. The bed in the Red Room had not been slept in. All that day we thought she would come back. But she did not. And as the days began to pass, we began to realize that she had disappeared.

She had left us Senara as a memento of that night a year ago, but she herself had gone as suddenly as she had come.

W
HAT A STRANGE TIME
that was. Christmas came and passed. My mother did not visit us because of the threat of the sweat. Silence had settled on the house; the servants whispering together. None of them would go to the Red Room.

Every day I waited for something to happen. Sometimes I would go to that room and quietly open the door, expecting to find her returned. The room was empty, silent; yet I sensed a presence there. Was it Melanie or did some mysterious aura of Maria remain?

The servants were convinced that she was a witch. She had come and gone on Hallowe’en. I could imagine that that was some wry joke of Maria’s; for I had often had the feeling that she was laughing at us in a contemptuous kind of way.

I thought during the first days that she would be back. In the first hours I had thought she might have eloped with James Madden. That was soon dispelled when he arrived at the castle. The news had reached him that she had gone and he had to discover for himself. I had rarely seen a man so stricken. At least it proved the theory wrong that she had gone to him.

A month later he had killed himself. He was found hanging in his bedchamber.

When we heard the news at the castle the servants were horrified. They were certain then that she had been a witch.

I myself wondered if this were true. Once I spoke to Colum about it. He did not seem disturbed by her departure. In fact, at times I thought he seemed relieved that she had gone. He had been attracted by her without doubt, and when I think of that incomparable and rather strange beauty, I was not surprised. I knew it must have been irresistible. I warmed towards Colum. It was amazing how easily I could. I believed that he had been attracted against his will and that now temptation had been removed he was glad.

With each day I felt myself growing away from the horror the first revelation of his way of life had brought to me. Could one grow accustomed to such things? My mother had. Was I the same?

I suppose in fact we were women with deep physical needs. There was nothing of the retiring female in either of us. Physical contact brought us that pleasure which is said to be somewhat repulsive to women of refinement. I knew from my mother’s revelations that she was of a similar nature. Colum could give me complete physical satisfaction as I knew I did to him. It was as though my relationship with him was on two levels. But for this physical relationship I should have been horrified by what he did—and indeed I was—and yet he was my husband, I could not leave him for he would not allow it, and even had I found a way of doing so it would have meant losing my children. Perhaps I was weak in suppressing my revulsion. I was certainly not happy and it haunted my life. On the other hand I could not leave him.

As that year progressed we settled into a way of life which did not change much. There were one or two wrecks but I tried not to think about them. While the storm raged I would lie in my bed, the curtains drawn and try to shut out of my mind the thought of what was happening outside the castle. There were one or two facts which forced themselves on my attention. I knew that Colum had agents in various foreign shipping ports—and English ones too—who informed him when cargo ships were leaving. He would know what route they would take and if they were likely to come near to our coast. Then he would watch for them. His men would be out on the coast and if the weather favoured him he would attempt to bring the ship on to the Devil’s Teeth.

I would lie there trembling sometimes, saying to myself: “You are a devil, Colum. You are cruel and wicked and I should take my children away from you. What can happen to them with such a father?”

My daughter was safe. She was essentially mine. Colum was proud of her healthy looks but he showed little interest in her. The boy was all his. Connell, now five years old, was beginning to look like his father. Colum would take him out on his pony; I had seen the boy riding on his shoulders. Connell could give that unadulterated adoration which Colum wanted. I think that Colum loved Connell more than anything on earth. He was determined to “make a man of him” and that meant bringing him up in his own image. He was succeeding admirably. The boy only came to me when he was sick, which was rarely. Then he would be like any other small child needing his mother. Colum had little patience with sickness, although if Connell was ailing he would be frantic with anxiety.

How different was my little Tamsyn. She was a bright child. Although a year and four months younger than Connell, I could see already that she was going to be more intelligent. She had a quick probing mind and asked continual questions. She was by no means pretty; she had a rather snub nose and she had missed her father’s darkness—which Connell had inherited—and was mid-brown, with large hazel eyes. Her mouth was too large and her brow too high; but to me she was perfect.

There was in Tamsyn a protective quality. It may have been that she sensed something of the relationship between myself and her father and instinctively knew that it was not all that could be desired. I always fancied that when Colum was in the nursery she was standing guard to protect me. To look at that small stalwart figure, ready to do battle on my behalf, moved me deeply. She had the same protective attitude towards Senara, which showed an uncommon trait in her character. She was going to be of the kind that fights for the rights of others.

Then there was that other occupant of our nurseries: Senara. She had been ten months old at the time of her mother’s departure and had very quickly forgotten her. Maria had never played an important part in her life in any case. It was Jennet and myself who gave her that affection and security which children look for.

It very early became clear that she was going to be a beauty. It seemed impossible that it could be otherwise with such a mother. Her hair was of the same black and silky texture as that of Maria; her eyes were long and dark; her skin of the magnolia petal kind, her nose was straight and perfectly formed and she had a lovely mouth. I wondered whether she would be as beautiful as her mother—it was too soon to say, but there was a sweet innocence about her which I felt sure Maria could never have had even in her cradle.

When Maria had left and there was all the talk about her being a witch I feared that some harm might come to Senara. She was, after all, the witch’s child. Some of the servants would not go near her and I talked seriously to Jennet about this.

“Jennet,” I said, “you must always let me know what the servants are saying. What do they think about Maria’s going away?”

“On Hallowe’en which was when she came,” said Jennet. “It goes to show. There can’t be no gainsaying that.”

“They are saying she’s a witch no doubt.”

“She be a witch, Mistress. How did her come, and where be her to now?”

“We know how she came. She was shipwrecked. Where she has gone is a mystery. People often go away discreetly.”

“To a lover, like as not,” said Jennet, touching her lips with her tongue. “She were the kind who would bewitch a man. Why …”

I stopped her. I knew she was going to say she had bewitched the master. Jennet’s tongue always ran away with her.

“It is Senara who worries me, Jennet.”

“Senara!” Jennet’s maternal feelings began to bristle. “What be wrong with Senara?”

“Nothing wrong with her health. You have been like a mother to her.”

“It do make you feel young again, Mistress, to have a little one in your arms.”

“Make sure no harm comes to her.”

“What should, Mistress, a baby … little more?”

“They will say she is the witch’s child.”

“They wouldn’t harm a baby.”

“Make sure they don’t, Jennet. Watch over her.”

“My dear life, Mistress, no one’s going to harm that pretty creature while I’m there.”

“What of those nights when you’re at Seaward with your lover?”

Jennet blushed like a schoolgirl. “Well, there be those,” she admitted. “But there’s the girl, Amy. I talk to her. ‘If any harm should come to my babies,’ I said to her, ‘I’ll break every bone in your body.’ And there’s young Tamsie. She’s there. She’ll look after Senara. They lie close together, and Tamsie holds her hand all through the night. If she cries, Tamsie soothes her. A regular little mother she be. Nay, no harm will come to Senara.”

“Watch the talk, Jennet. People can work themselves up into hysteria over some matters and witchcraft is one of them. Maria has gone. If she was a witch then she has taken her influence somewhere else.”

“And in good time,” said Jennet. “I could see the bewitchment in her.”

I knew she was thinking of Colum. Jennet who was wise in the ways of men would have sensed the growing tension in his relationship with Maria.

So the time began to pass, and although the servants refused to go into the Red Room and crossed themselves when they passed it, I was sure that there was less talk of witchcraft in the kitchens than there had been.

It was not until August of that year that my mother came. It was wonderful to see her. I told her in detail of Maria’s departure and she was pleased that she had gone. “A woman like that is unsettling in a household,” she said.

She loved the children and Tamsyn was her favourite. There was something very appealing about my grave little girl.

My mother had all the latest news from London where, she told me in hushed tones, twenty-eight thousand people had died of the plague.

“These terrible epidemics,” she sighed. “Is there no end to them? How I wish some means could be found of stopping them!” She went on: “You must come to Lyon Court and bring the children with you. Your father complains that he sees you rarely.”

“He should come here with you.”

“He is always engaged on a voyage or preparing for one.”

“Is he getting along amicably with the Landors?”

“As well as can be expected. You know your father. He is not the easiest man to work with. He wants all his own way.”

“And Fennimore … ?”

My mother looked at me sharply. She sensed that something had changed at the castle and I knew she was wondering if I were regretting my marriage. I was not sure whether I could truthfully say that I did. I could confess to myself that now and then I thought of Fennimore Landor, with the gentle kindly face and the idealism of his expression. He wanted to make a better world. He was that sort of man. Colum cared nothing for the world, only his own profit. Now I was beginning to think as I had long ago of how different my life might have been if I had not gone on that journey and met Colum. I should I was sure, have married Fennimore. We should have had children. I should have spent my time between Trystan Priory and Lyon Court and I was sure I should have been happy—in a quiet, secure and peaceful way.

Did I regret? How can I say? At times, yes. But then my children would not have been Connell and Tamsyn and when you have children whom you love how can you wish that you had others, which you undoubtedly would have had with a different father.