The Witch from the Sea (39 page)

Senara, Merry, the seamstress and I were once more busy with our gowns. I was very excited at the prospect of seeing Fenn again. Senara knew. She taunted me when we were in our bedroom at night.

“I know what you’re thinking, Tamsyn,” she said. “You’re thinking he’s going to ask you this time. Perhaps he will. It will be so neat, won’t it? Melanie comes here and you go to Trystan. What an excellent arrangement,
they
will think. I shan’t. I don’t want that silly dull creature here.”

“I thought you considered me rather dull.”

“In a different way. A foil to my liveliness. She’s different. I don’t want her. Just think when we come back, she will be with us.”

“I believe she will be a very pleasant addition to the household.”

“I shall ignore her.”

“Poor girl, how upset she will be!”

“Don’t mock. What really concerns me is that the laggardly Fenn might at last find the spirit to ask
you
. You’ll accept him. I know that full well. I never knew any girl throw herself at a young man as you have thrown yourself at him.”

“That’s not true.”

“You can’t see yourself. All adoration and submissiveness! Asking him all the time to marry you.”

“I’m going to sleep.”

“You’re not,” she said.

“If we are to be fresh tomorrow we must sleep. It’s a long way to Trystan.”

“There’s a change in your voice when you mention the house, even. Confess, you are longing to be mistress of it.”

“I refuse to discuss such nonsense.”

“Nonsense it is. Listen to me, Tamsyn Casvellyn. You are not going to marry him. I’ll marry him myself rather. That would be fun, wouldn’t it? Suppose I married him instead of you?
I
will go to Trystan Priory. I will be the mistress there and poor Tamsyn will stay behind in Castle Paling until she is old and crabbed and filled with bitter envy because her blood-sister Senara married the hero of her dreams and lives happily ever after at Trystan Priory with her ten children and her handsome husband whom she has turned into the most attractive man on earth, for she is a witch, remember.”

“Good night, Senara.”

“I will not be dismissed.”

“Will you not? Then go rambling on for I intend to sleep.”

She went on talking and I pretended not to listen, and after a while she was quiet.

The next morning early the pack-horses were loaded with our baggage which contained our wedding finery, and in a big party at the head of which rode my father and my stepmother we set out for Trystan Priory.

What sad news awaited me there! Fenn had been called to Plymouth where he must join his ship. He had wanted to remain to see his sister married but that was not possible. He had to take his ship on a venture from which he hoped to return in six months’ time.

Senara looked at me mischievously.

“I arranged it,” she whispered.

I turned away impatiently.

“When our Queen came from Denmark,” she went on, “the witches of Scotland and Norway raised storms so that she was almost lost at sea. If they could do that why should not someone be sent to sea?”

“You talk such nonsense,” I said shortly.

“You call it that because you don’t understand. Is witchcraft nonsense?”

“Why will you continually harp on witchcraft, Senara? Don’t you see it’s playing with fire.”

“One of the most exciting things in the world, my good blood-sister, is playing with fire.”

“If you don’t get burned,” I snapped, my disappointment over Fenn’s absence robbing me of my usual easy temper.

“Nay, ’tis others who will get burned,” she said enigmatically.

I was uneasy about her, but she had always loved to tease people. She teased Merry about Jan Leward and Jennet about her lovers; but this attitude towards me and Fenn was beginning to upset me.

The wedding was celebrated two days after our arrival. Melanie made a beautiful bride with her blonde hair falling about her shoulders and her gown of fine silk and her kirtle decorated with threads of gold; two of her boy cousins led her to the church; they looked very charming with bride laces and rosemary tied to their sleeves. Connell was already there, led in by two young men who must be unmarried to perform this duty and each of these had bride lace on branches of broom tied to his arms. Carried before Melanie was the bride cup on which was more rosemary, gilded and tied with ribbons of many colours. The Priory musicians followed them into the chapel and all the young girls including myself and Senara followed. Senara and I being closely related to the bridegroom carried big bride cakes.

It was impressive as such ceremonies always were and Melanie looked radiantly happy and Connell well pleased. It would have been a wonderful day for me if only Fenn had been there.

Senara whispered to me as the pair were repeating their vows: “Whose turn next. Yours? Don’t be too sure of that, Tamsyn Casvellyn. It might be mine.”

I ignored her.

The ceremony over, the feasting began; it went on during the day and then we put the couple to bed with a certain amount of ribaldry. My father cried that he hoped they would give him grandsons and “without delay”, he added.

Connell looked a little sheepish and I was amazed by Melanie’s tranquility.

Senara said afterwards that she had come to the marriage bed in absolute ignorance. Within three days we were riding back to Castle Paling, my father, stepmother, my brother and his new bride at the head of the party.

Having Melanie in the house made very little difference. She was so quiet no one noticed her very much. A nonentity was Senara’s verdict. Connell took very little notice of her. He scarcely saw her during the day but shared her bed every night.

“Once she is pregnant,” commented Senara, “he will find his pleasure elsewhere.”

“You are coarse,” I told her.

“My dear Tamsyn, I am not as innocent as you.”

“I trust you
are
innocent.”

Senara shrieked with laughter. “You would like to know, would you not?”

“I do know.”

“You know nothing. You are blind to what is going on. You are another Melanie. You don’t gossip enough, that’s your trouble. Servants are the best informants. They rarely fail. Then of course I have my special powers.”

“I don’t want to hear about them,” I said, “because I know they do not exist.”

“One of these days the truth will be brought home to you.” She looked mysterious. “Now I am going to brew a spell. Your Fenn is on the sea somewhere. What if I brew up a storm as the witches of Scotland did? What then, eh?”

I felt sick with fear suddenly and Senara went off into peals of laughter.

“You see, you do believe. It’s all very well to pretend you don’t when the result doesn’t matter.”

“Please, Senara, stop this talk of spells and suchlike. Servants overhear. I tell you it is dangerous.” I took her by the shoulders suddenly. She had really frightened me when she had talked of Fenn. “If there should be a scare throughout the neighbourhood, if there should be such a noise about witches and witchfinders came down here, do you not see that you would be suspected … you and …”

She finished for me. “My mother.” She smiled then and her mood changed suddenly. It was soft and loving. “You do care for me, don’t you Tamsyn?”

“You are as my sister.”

“No matter what I do.”

“It would appear so,” I said.

Then she threw her arms about me in the impulsive, lovable manner which I knew so well.

“I taunt you because we belong together. I could never endure to lose you, Tamsyn.”

“Nor shall you,” I promised.

After that she was gentle for a while and when she was in that mood no one could be more charming or loving than Senara. If only she would always be so. She told me once: “There are two sides to my nature, Tamsyn, and on one of them is the witch.”

We had been back from the wedding for a week or so. The sun had shone almost unceasingly for four weeks without a drop of rain, which was unusual for Cornwall. I decided that I would water the plants on the graves for the earth was so dry it was cracking in places.

Since that night when the stone had been found few people went near the burial ground. They were certain that that stone had been placed there by some ghostly hand. Sailors who were drowned at sea often could not rest. It was said that at night one could hear cries coming from the Devil’s Teeth where many a ship had foundered. The fishermen coming in at dusk always avoided that stretch of water, not only because it was dangerous—they did not fear this because they knew those rocks so well—but because they believed it to be haunted.

I took my watering-can and, entering the graveyard, went to that spot where the three graves were. I saw it immediately. I stared and knelt by my mother’s grave. The stone which my father had hurled into the bushes on that night had been discovered. It had now been planted on my mother’s grave.

I stared at it; the words danced before my eyes. “Murdered 1600.”

I pulled at the stone. It came away easily in my hands. I touched the black letters. I knelt by that grave and I thought back to the day when I had gone into my mother’s room and seen her lying there quiet and still.

Pictures flashed in and out of my mind. Had she been afraid before she died? I had slept with her, because my presence had given her comfort. I remembered the occasion I went to her and stood by her bed. She had awakened in fright. Why? Had she been expecting someone else? Did she know someone was planning to murder her?

Murder her! I looked back at the stone. Who had put it there? Why? And after all this time. It was seven years since my mother had been buried here. Why only now should someone put that stone on the unknown sailor’s grave and then on hers?

When I considered that, I was comforted. It was some practical joker with a distorted idea of humour. How could a sailor who was drowned at sea and washed up on our coast have been murdered!

I remember my father’s anger when he had seen it that night. Naturally he was angry because his guests had been disturbed. He had flung the stone into the bushes. Who then had found it and put it on my mother’s grave?

I stared down at it. What could I do with it? Mechanically I laid it on the ground and watered the graves.

I would not leave the stone there. I picked it up and carried it into the house. I put away my watering-can and took the stone up to my room.

I hid it at the back of the court cupboard, first wrapping it up in an old petticoat.

For the rest of the day I kept thinking about it and trying to remember the last months of my mother’s life. How could she have been murdered? Who would have murdered her? And if so, how? There was no sign on her body that she had suffered violence.

Next day I would take the stone with me when I rode out and I would go alone. I would take it far away. I would bury it in a wood and try to think no more of the matter.

What was the use of deluding myself? I knew that I should go on thinking of it.

I sat at my window and looked out to sea. There were the Devil’s Teeth crudely protruding from the water. Someone had once said, when the tide is neither high nor low it looks as though the Devil is smiling. It would be a wicked smile, a satisfied smile, the smile of one who knows that men will be lured to disaster.

I did not throw the stone away because when I came to take it next day it was missing.

I opened the door of the court cupboard and felt for the petticoat. There it was, rolled as I had left it. But it was light and the stone was not there.

I could not believe it. I had wrapped it so that it was hidden. No one could have known it was there. I knelt with the petticoat in my hand and a terrible apprehension crept over me. Could it really be that some other force—not human—had placed that stone first on the sailor’s grave and then on my mother’s? Was it really true that the ghosts of the castle were manifesting their existence in this way?

Hands caught at my throat and I screamed out in terror. My head was jerked back and I was looking up into Senara’s laughing face.

“What are you doing caressing that old petticoat? And I frightened you, did I not? Did you think it was an enemy? Have you such a bad conscience?”

“You … you did startle me.”

“I wondered what you were doing on your knees. I watched for minutes … well, a few seconds … I couldn’t make out why you kept looking at that old petticoat.”

She snatched it from me and unfurled it.

“Look, it’s torn. What possible good is it? That ribbon on it is rather pretty though …”

I rose and she studied me anxiously.

“You’re not ill, are you? You look scared.”

“I’m all right. It was just …”

“I know. Cold shiver. Someone walking over your grave, as they say.”

I pulled myself sharply together.

“Yes, something like that,” I said.

I was obsessed by memories of my mother. I had loved her dearly and she had rarely been far from my thoughts, but now the memories were with me all the time. I wished that I had taken more notice at the time. I had only been ten years old then and there was so much I had not understood. If only I had been older. If only my mother had been able to talk to me.

I remembered something Senara had said about our servants knowing so much about us and that led me to think of Jennet who was still in our household. She was getting old now; she was nearly as old as my grandmother and there had been talk of her going back to Grandmother when my mother died but she had wanted to stay.

She and my grandmother had been through many adventures together, and because my grandfather had given Jennet a child there was always a touch of asperity in my grandmother’s attitude towards her. They were fond of each other in a way but I think Jennet preferred to be with me.

When my mother had died she had said: “There’s young Tamsyn. I know Mistress Linnet would have wanted me to keep an eye on her.”

And in a way she had kept her eyes on me. In the last year she had become resigned to age as she had through her life become resigned to everything that had befallen her. The prospect of a baby in the house—we were all expecting every day to hear that Melanie was pregnant—revived old Jennet a little. If that baby came she would want to be in the nursery.