The Witch from the Sea (13 page)

“Go on,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”

“I knew where you were going. Trystan Priory. I know it well. The Landors’ place. You were staying for a week. Your maid told one of my servants that you were coming back that way.”

“You mean …”

“You begin to understand. They were my men who waylaid you on the road.”

“The robbers …”

“Just good servants. I was ready waiting to rescue you and bring you here … where the scene was set. It was not your purse we were after.”

“You are wicked,” I said.

“It is well that a wife should know her husband.”

“You deliberately arranged all that to take place … You caused us such anguish … myself … my mother …”

“Sometimes it is necessary to suffer to be happy. All came well in the end. See, you have a lusty husband and a fine home. He has already planted his seed within you. In six months’ time our son will be born. And there will be many more, I promise you. For I like what I have, wife. I liked you from the moment I saw you. I know when I want a woman.”

“There have doubtless been many.”

“Oh, many. But you were the one for my wife.”

“Why was that?”

“Well bred, worthy to be mother of my sons. A good family, a good dowry, for your father is a generous man and a rich one. You were suitable in every way. But I wouldn’t have had you if I hadn’t wanted you. I could find a rich wife without trouble, but I had to have one that pleased me too.”

“I should loathe you,” I said.

“And you don’t. I know that. You couldn’t pretend to me, although you tried. Why, even on that first night … I could feel your responses. You wanted me, my girl, although you were so helpless and ignorant. You knew it, did you not? Somewhere within your mind was the thought: He arranged it. He is that sort of man. He takes what he wants and there is no gainsaying him.”

I was silent. Had I suspected? I think perhaps I had. But the great discovery was not that he had arranged that this should happen, but that I should know it and be glad that he had.

The weeks which followed my arrival at Castle Paling were ones of discovery of myself and my nature. Strange as it seemed I was happy—not peacefully, quietly so, but because I was in a state of continual excitement. It could never have been thus with Fennimore Landor I knew full well.

My relationship with my husband was the dominating factor. I was completely fascinated by him. He was indeed the lord of the castle and everyone hastened to do his bidding. His anger could be terrible. I saw him strike servants with his riding whip if they displeased him; they trembled before him. When he was not in the castle an atmosphere of relief prevailed—it was a sort of respite, I supposed, from the need to be continually on the alert to please him. His loud voice could be heard echoing through those great chambers. He was indeed the master.

It was a wonderful experience to know that I was so important to him. I laughed to myself when I thought of his planning my seduction. He must have wanted me very fiercely to have gone to such lengths. He had made this obvious to me. He was delighted with me. I was an inexperienced girl but a passionate one and he found great pleasure in teaching me. There was no doubt that he was completely absorbed in our relationship and it did not occur to me to ask myself how long it would last, for I would not remain a pupil for ever and very soon I would begin to be less shapely.

He was delighted about the child and I could see that, like my father, he passionately wanted a son. My mother told me that her inability to give my father sons had been the cause of a great deal of trouble. She had once said that she believed that if she had given birth to a son my father would never have turned to Romilly and Penn would not have existed. Who knew?

Colum would talk about “our boy”, and I would beg him not to talk so constantly of a boy for it could well be a girl.

“Nay, nay,” he would say, feeling the faint protuberance of my body. “This little one is a boy. I know it.”

“And if it is a girl are you going to dislike her?”

“I’ll accept her. There’s time for boys. I know you will give me one.” He bit my ear rather sharply. “You wouldn’t dare do aught else.”

And he went on talking of our boy.

He would insist on my taking care. It was very important that I should produce a healthy boy. He wanted nothing to go wrong during my pregnancy. “A man can get lusty boys on serving wenches but by God, often the fates are against him when he wants a legitimate son. It must not be so with us,” he added, as though if it did it would be my fault.

That was how my father had been with my mother, I dare-swear, and she had longed to please her husband as I did mine.

The castle itself was a strange place to be in. There was so much to know about it. There were so many servants that I could not keep track of them.

The four towers with ramparts and battlements formed the main structure. In two of these towers, the Crows’ Tower which faced the land and Nonna’s Tower which faced the sea, we lived with our personal servants. I wondered about the other two. From the Seaward Tower—on a level with Nonna and which also looked out to sea, I had seen men and women coming and going. I supposed they were servants but I had rarely seen them working in that part of the castle where we lived. But the place was so vast that there would naturally be many servants and it would take a long time to get to know them all.

Sometimes I would go to the ramparts of Nonna’s Tower and look through the battlements to the sea. There the great black rocks known as the Devil’s Teeth could sometimes be seen, but only when the tide was out. They were a group of cruel, sharp-pointed rocks. Teeth was an apt description, particularly if they were seen at some angles. Then their formation could be likened to a grinning mouth. At high tide they were not visible, lurking as they did just below the surface of the water. They were about half a mile out to sea and almost in a straight line with Castle Paling. Some people called them the Paling Rocks.

The great wall of the castle on the sea side rose up starkly straight, and looking down at the surf below, I thought what a well chosen spot it was for a fortification. It would have been almost impossible to attack from the sea and there was only the landward side to be protected.

I found the desire to stand up there and lean on the battlements and gaze down irresistible and dangerous. It seemed to me symbolic of my life here.

Once when I was up there I was seized from behind and Colum lifted me off the ground and held me high. He laughed in that way of his which I could have called satanic.

“What are you doing up here?” he demanded. “You were leaning over too far. What if you had fallen? You would have killed yourself and our son. By God, I’d never have forgiven you.”

“As I should have been past your vengeance why should I care?”

He put me down and kissed me hard on the mouth.

“I couldn’t do without you now, wife,” he said.

I put my hand up and touched his hair. “Why do you always call me wife? It sounds unromantic … it is as an innkeeper might call his spouse.”

“What else are you?”

“Linnet.”

“Bah!” he said. “A silly little bird.”

“Names change when you are fond of people. You might get to like it.”

“Never,” he said. “The day I call you Linnet you will know I have ceased to love you.”

I shivered and he noticed.

“Yes,” he said, “you should take care to keep me warm. You must always do your wifely duty. You must give me sons and sons.”

“Beauty is impaired by too much childbearing.”

“That may be. But the sons are a man’s compensation.”

“But if she no longer arouses his desire?”

“Then he turns elsewhere. A fact of nature,” he said curtly.

“I would not wish that to happen.”

“Then you must see that it does not.”

“And what if a wife is neglected? She might turn elsewhere. What of that?”

“If she were my wife that would be the time to beware.”

“What would you do to her if she were unfaithful?”

He lifted me up suddenly and set me on the parapet. He laughed and it did indeed sound like the laughter of devils. “I should take my revenge, you may be sure. Mayhap I’d give her to the rocks.”

He lifted me down and held me against him. “There, I alarm you and that is not good for our boy. Why should you speak of such things? Have I not given you proof that you are my choice?” He took my chin in his hands and jerked up my face. “And you, are you a wanton then that you talk to your husband in this way? What of Fennimore Landor, eh? Did you not once think of marrying that man?”

“It was mentioned,” I said.

“Did he ask you?”

“Yes, he did.”

“I am amazed that you did not accept such a model of virtue.”

“It was after …”

That amused him. “After I had taught you what it meant to bed with a real man, eh?”

“Remember I was not conscious.”

“Enough though to realize, eh?”

“I knew that I had been deflowered.”

“What a foolish expression! Deflowered! Rather have you been flowered. Have not I given you fertility? Our son will be the flower and the fruit. Deflowered! I did you great honour and much good as you will admit.”

“Yes,” I said, “I think I will admit it here, where none can hear but you and the choughs.”

Then he kissed me again and in his hands which caressed my body was that tenderness which was the more precious because it was so rare.

Then he held me against the stone wall and he talked about the castle, how it was his stronghold and how he had walked the ramparts when he was a boy, how he had dreamed of possessing it and had played wild games in the dungeons and on the winding spiral staircases.

“There are stories of my ancestors which we pass on from generation to generation,” he told me. There was in his eyes a yearning and I knew he was seeing our boy playing in the castle, learning to grow up like his father.

“We have been a wild lot,” he said. “What a family you have married into! In the reign of King Stephen my ancestor of that time was a robber baron. He used to waylay travellers and bring them to his castle. He was called the Fiend of Paling. In the Seaward Tower”—he pointed to it—“he used to take his victims there and he would demand a ransom of their family and if it were not paid the victim would be tortured. He would give a grand banquet and bring him out for the amusement of his cronies. At night it is said that the cries of long dead tortured men and women can be heard in the Seaward Tower.” He looked at me sharply and I could see he was thinking of the child I carried. “There is nothing to fear,” he went on quickly. “It was all long ago. Then Stephen died and Henry II was our King. He was for law and order and extorting money for his wars through taxes, so he suppressed the robber barons by means of meting out dire punishments and the Casvellyns had to find a new means of sustenance.”

“I have seen men going in and out of the Seaward Tower.”

“My servants,” he said. “They are fishermen, many of them. They catch our fish and I have a fancy for it. They serve me in many ways. Down there in the lower part of the Seaward Tower are our boats. You may see them venturing out now and then. Have you seen them?”

“No.”

“You will know our ways in due time. I will tell you of another ancestor of mine. He had a fair wife but he was very fond of women. It is a failing—or it may be a virtue—in the men of my family. They adore women. They need women.”

“Are you telling me this to put me on my guard?”

“One must always be on one’s guard to hold a possession which is precious. You should remember that.”

“Should we both remember it?”

“Aye, we will. I was telling you of my ancestor.”

“The one who needed women and was unfaithful to his wife. Is that an uncommon story?”

“Not in my family, nor in any for that matter, I’ll swear, but where this Casvellyn was different was that, being in love with his wife who was a very fair lady, yet he could fall in love with another who was equally fair. The second lady was a very moral woman and although she greatly desired this Casvellyn he knew he could not have her—save by rape—unless he married her. He was not a man for a quick seduction and that be that. Nay, he liked marriage. He liked the cosy comforts of it. But he wanted more than one wife. So what did he do?” He turned me round, so that we were looking at the turrets of those two towers which faced landward. “There you see our two towers, Ysella’s Tower and the Crows’ Tower.”

“I did not know they all had names.”

“Yes, Seaward you know, and Nonna’s. They face the sea and Ysella’s and Crows face the land. Seaward is so called for the obvious reason that it looks to the sea, and Crows because I imagine crows once nested there. Ysella and Nonna were the names of that long dead Casvellyn’s wives. For ten years Ysella lived in her tower and Nonna did not know she was there. He kept them apart. He would say farewell to Nonna and ride away. Then he would come back when it was dark and take the secret door to Ysella’s Tower and behave as though he had come home after a long journey. He would stay with her for a while and then ride away and return to Nonna.”

“I don’t believe it. It’s not possible. Two wives living in the same castle! Why did they not explore their home?”

“He forbade them to and wives in those days were obedient. He told Ysella that Nonna’s Tower was haunted and Nonna that Ysella’s was, and that if either of them ventured near the other, evil would befall the house. He said it was the result of a witch’s curse. He would never allow them to leave the castle unless he accompanied them.”

“It seems quite incredible.”

“It is the legend and when people used to say, as you do, that it is impossible, my father always replied that with the Casvellyns all things were possible.”

“That is blasphemy.”

“Maybe blasphemy can be truth.”

“And what happened? Did they discover each other?”

“Yes. One day Nonna was here on the ramparts and she saw a figure on the ramparts of Ysella’s Tower. Neither of them should have been where they were. It was part of the forbidden territory. Nonna called her servants but by the time they came Ysella had disappeared. This gave rise to the legend that there was a ghost at the tower (it was not called Ysella’s then of course, nor was this called Nonna’s). Nonna confessed that she had been on the ramparts and asked her husband to explore the tower for her, for she pointed out if they were a party they need not fear the ghost. He refused and something in the manner of his refusal made her more curious. It is never good to be too curious, particularly about a husband’s secrets. Nonna was determined to find out more about the ghost of Ysella’s Tower. One day she took her maid with her and explored. They entered the tower but they could not get beyond the barred door; they did not know that there was a secret way in close to the rocks. One day she followed her husband when he went away on one of his journeys and lying in hiding saw him enter Ysella’s Tower by a secret door. She followed him in and came face to face with Ysella. She understood what had happened and there was nothing for their husband to do but admit his guilt. That day Nonna died. She fell from the top of Ysella’s Tower. That was the first time she had entered it. My ancestor then brought Ysella out of her tower and proclaimed her to be his wife. They lived together until the end of their days, but it is said that Nonna haunts Ysella’s Tower from that day. There! That is the most colourful of our family legends, do you not think? It is a lesson too for disobedient wives who are too curious.”