The Witch from the Sea (51 page)

It was hard for us to reconcile this way of life with that lived by our own parents; but we were aware that it happened, which brings me back to the fact that we were not as innocent as our mother believed us to be.

Lying in bed that night I tried to talk to Bersaba about all this.

‘He said we were ripe and ready,’ I announced with a giggle.

‘Grandfather is the sort of man who sees all women as possible bedfellows for some man or other.’

‘You’d think he would have lost interest in all that now.’

‘I don’t suppose people like that ever do.’

‘He was looking at you all the time,’ I reminded her.

‘What nonsense.’

‘Oh yes, he was. It was almost as though he knew something.’

‘I’m going to sleep,’ said Bersaba.

‘I wonder why he looked at you like that?’

‘What …?’ she said sleepily.

‘I said I wondered why he looked at
you
like that.’

‘He didn’t. Good night.’

And although I wanted to go on talking she pretended to be asleep.

Two days passed. We went for rides with our cousins and sometimes we explored the castle. I went down to the sea and looked for seashells and pieces of semi-precious stones on the beaches. We had quite a collection of raw amethyst, topaz and interesting quartzes which we had found from time to time. I used to love to stand on the beach while the waves thundered round me and sent their spray over me, and I would shriek with delight as I stepped back just in time to avoid getting drenched.

I liked to lean against the castle walls and marvel at their strength. They and the sea were like two mighty opponents—the work of man and the work of nature. Of course the sea was the more powerful; it could encroach on the land and sweep over that mighty edifice; but even then it would not completely destroy it. Grandfather Casvellyn had defied the sea and the sea had won that battle—but not completely, for he still lived in the Seaward Tower to shake his fist at the mighty monster.

Bersaba had once loved to collect stones on the beach, but now she had lost interest in that and said it was childish. She liked to ride—so did I. On our first day we went off with the cousins and it was not long before we noticed that Bersaba was not with us. She had a passion for getting lost. Rozen and Gwenifer had come with us and there were two grooms.

I said: ‘She will join us or go back to the castle. She likes to be alone sometimes.’

We didn’t worry about her as my mother would have done.

I was right. She did come back to the castle. She said she had lost us but had no intention of curtailing her ride just because of that. She knew the countryside well and was not afraid of meeting brigands, for she reckoned she could gallop faster than they could.

‘You know Mother doesn’t like us to ride alone.’

‘My dear Angel,’ she answered, ‘we are growing up. There may be lots of things we do of which Mother would not approve.’

I knew that she was slipping away from me then and the invisible cord which bound us together was stretching. She had become a stranger with secrets. One day, I thought, it will break, and then we shall be as ordinary sisters.

The next day when I was going to ride again I picked up her safeguards in mistake for my own and I saw that there was bracken clinging to them and mud on the edge of the skirt.

‘She must have fallen,’ I thought.

She came upon me staring at her skirts.

‘Look!’ I cried. ‘What happened? Did you take a toss?’

‘What nonsense!’ she said, snatching the garments from me. ‘Of course I didn’t.’

‘These skirts have been in contact with earth, sister. That’s clear enough.’

She was thoughtful for less than a second, then she said: ‘Oh, I know. It was when I was out yesterday. There was a lovely pool and it was so peaceful I had the urge to sit by it for a while, so I dismounted and sat there.’

‘You ought not to have done that … and alone. Suppose someone … some man … ?’

She laughed at me and turned away.

‘We’ve got to grow up one day, Angelet,’ she said, brushing the skirt. ‘That’s what it was,’ she went on, and hung the skirts in a cupboard. ‘And what are you doing examining
my
things?’

‘I wasn’t examining them. I thought they were mine.’

‘Well, now you know they’re not.’

She turned away and I was puzzled.

The following day a strange thing happened. It was midday and we were at dinner in the great hall, for Aunt Melanie said that as there were so many of us it was better to take our meals there rather than in the dining-parlour which was used for a smaller company.

There had always been a big table at Castle Paling. Grandfather Casvellyn had set the custom for hearty eating and Connell had followed it. In our house my father’s family had been more abstemious, and although there had been plenty of food in our larders should visitors call unexpectedly, we did not consume the large meals which they did at Castle Paling. Aunt Melanie took great pride in her stillroom and she had Melder to help her and was constantly urging us to try some delicacy or other which she or Melder had concocted from old recipes with little additions of their own.

My mother and Aunt Melanie were discussing the rival properties of the herbs they both grew with such assiduous care, and Aunt Melanie was saying how she had discovered that a solution acquired from the juice of buttercups gave Rozen such a fit of sneezing that it had cleared her head of a very unpleasant cold from which she was suffering, when we heard sound of arrival from without.

‘Visitors—’ said Uncle Connell, looking along the table from his end to where Aunt Melanie was seated.

‘I wonder who,’ she answered.

One of the servants came running in. ‘Travellers from afar, my lady,’ said the man.

Aunt Melanie rose and hurried out of the hall, Uncle Connell following her.

We at the table heard cries of amazement, and in a short time my uncle and aunt reappeared and with them were two women—and in that first moment I was aware of their unusual appearance. I often think, looking back, that life should prepare us in some way, that when events occur which are the forerunner of great changes which will affect our lives we should be given a little nudge, some warning, some premonition.

But it rarely happens so, and as I sat at that table and looked at the newcomers—one a woman of my mother’s age and with her another of my own, or a little older—I was quite unaware that their coming was going to prove one of the most momentous events of our lives.

Aunt Melanie was crying out: ‘Tamsyn. You know who this is. Senara!’

My mother stood up; she turned first pale and then rosy red. She stared for a few minutes before she and the elder of the two women rushed towards each other and embraced.

They were laughing and I could see that my mother was near to tears. She gripped the stranger’s shoulders and they looked searchingly at each other.

‘Senara!’ cried my mother. ‘What happened?’

‘Too much to tell yet,’ answered the woman. ‘Oh, it is good to see you … good to be here …’ She threw back her hood and shook out magnificent black hair. ‘It’s not changed … not one little bit. And you … you’re still the old Tamsyn.’

‘And this …’

‘This is my daughter. Carlotta, come and meet Tamsyn … the dearest sister of my childhood.’

Then the girl called Carlotta came to my mother, who was about to embrace her when the girl held back and swept a low curtsey. Even then I was struck by her infinite grace. She was very foreign-looking—with hair as dark as her mother’s and long oval eyes so heavily fringed with black lashes that even in that moment I couldn’t help noticing them. Her face was very pale except for vividly red lips and the blackness of her eyes.

‘Your daughter … My dear Senara. Oh, this is wonderful. You must have so much to tell.’ She looked round at us. ‘My girls are here too …’

‘So you married Fennimore.’

‘Yes, I married Fennimore.’

‘And lived happy ever after.’

‘I am very happy. Angelet, Bersaba …’

We rose from the table and went to our mother.

‘Twins!’ said Senara. There was a lilt of laughter in her voice which I had noticed from the first. ‘Oh Tamsyn, you with twins!’

‘I have a son too. He is seven years older than the twins.’

Senara took my left hand and Bersaba’s right and studied us intently.

‘Your mother and I were as sisters … all our childhood until we were parted. Carlotta, come and meet these two children who are already dear to me because of their mother.’

Carlotta’s gaze was appraising, I thought. She bowed gracefully to us.

‘You have ridden far,’ said Melanie.

‘Yes, we have come from Plymouth. Last night we rested at a most indifferent inn. The beds were hard and the pork too salt, but I scarcely noticed, so eager was I to come to Castle Paling.’

‘What great good fortune that you found us here. We are on a visit.’

‘Of course. Your home would be at Trystan Priory. How is the good Fennimore?’

‘At sea at the moment. We expect him home before long.’

‘How I shall enjoy seeing you all again!’

‘Tell us what has happened.’

Melanie was smiling. ‘I know how you are feeling seeing each other after all these years, but, Senara, you must be weary. I will have a room made ready for you and your daughter, and you are hungry, I’ll dareswear.’

‘Oh Melanie, you were always so good, so practical … And, Connell, I am forgetting you and the dear children … But I
am
hungry and so, I know, is my daughter. If we could wash the stains of travel from our hands and faces and if we could eat some of this delicious-smelling food … and then perhaps talk and talk of old times and the future …’

Connell came to stand beside his wife. He said: ‘Call the servants. Let them make ready for our guests.’

Melder, good housewife that she was, was already leaving us to issue orders.

‘We’ll hold back the meal,’ said Melanie. ‘In the meantime come to my room and you can wash there. Your rooms will not be ready yet.’

She and my mother went out with the newcomers and silence fell on the table.

‘Who are these people?’ asked Rozen. ‘Mother and Aunt Tamsyn seem to know them well.’

‘The elder one was born here at Castle Paling,’ said Uncle Connell. ‘Her mother was the victim of a wreck and was washed up on the coast. Senara was born about three months after. She lived here all her childhood and when our mother died our father married Senara’s mother.’

‘So this was her home.’

‘Yes, it was her home.’

‘And she went away and hasn’t been heard of until now?’

‘It’s a long story,’ said Connell. ‘She went away to marry one of the Puritans and I think she went to Holland. No doubt we’ll hear.’

‘And she’s come back after all these years! How long is it since she went away?’

Connell was thoughtful. ‘Why,’ he said, calculating, ‘it must be nearly thirty years.’

‘She must be old … this Senara.’

‘She would have been no more than seventeen when she went.’

‘That would make her forty-seven. It cannot be so.’

‘She would doubtless have means of keeping herself young.’

‘How, Father?’ asked Rozen.

‘Senara was always a sly one. The servants used to think that she was a witch.’

‘How exciting,’ cried Gwenifer.

‘There was a lot of talk at the time about witches,’ said Connell. ‘You know how now and then there seems to be a fashion for it. The late King was a bit of a fanatic about them. People round here were certain that Senara’s mother was a witch and that can be dangerous. She went away.’

‘What became of her?’

‘It was never known. But after she’d gone they came to the castle to take Senara. You see, her mother had been washed up by the sea on Hallowe’en; she’d disappeared on Hallowe’en. Everything seemed to point to the fact that she was a witch and the people came to take her. When they found she wasn’t there they said Senara would do, so Senara fled for her life and that was the last we saw of her until now.’

‘And you and our mother helped her?’

‘Naturally we all helped her. She had been as a sister to us.’

‘And now she has come back,’ murmured Bersaba.

And we were silent. I was picturing it all so clearly. Senara’s mother being washed up by the sea, being a witch, and after Grandmother Linnet died marrying that fearful old man in the Seaward Tower and then running away from him—which didn’t surprise me. And the mob’s coming for Senara … who had been young then, with eyes like those of her daughter Carlotta. And who had been Carlotta’s father? We should hear, I was sure.

They came back into the hall accompanied by my mother and Aunt Melanie. My mother was flushed and excited and quite clearly very happy because of the arrivals.

I could not take my eyes from the girl Carlotta. She was the most arresting creature I had ever seen. It was something more than beauty, although, of course, she was beautiful. In the candlelight her black hair had a bluish tinge; and there was a mysterious look in her enormous almond-shaped eyes. Her skin was very delicately tinged, which prevented its being dead white; it was petal smooth and her nose was long, patrician and beautifully moulded. There was something exotic about her which added to her attraction. My cousins could not take their eyes from her any more than Bersaba and I could. Her mother was a beautiful woman still, but even though she must have shown considerable defiance to the years she could not completely elude their ravages, and I guessed that when she had been Carlotta’s age she would have been almost as attractive.

They had brought mystery and excitement into the castle. I kept thinking of the mob’s marching up the slight incline to the portcullis and storming their way into the castle. They would be carrying torches and shouting what they would do to the witch when they found her.

‘Sit beside me, Senara,’ cried my mother. ‘How wonderful it is to have you here. I could almost believe we are young again. You must tell us all that has happened.’

‘But first allow them to eat,’ begged Melanie with a smile.

Hot soup was brought; Senara declared it was delicious and it was of the kind she remembered Melanie’s preparing before she left the castle.