The Witch from the Sea (32 page)

In the afternoon the children did their miracle play. I was deeply moved to watch Tamsyn in her role. It was declared a great success and the children enjoyed it very much, as did we all.

I sat with our guests and watched Colum and Maria. Perhaps it was not obvious to others but it was to me. There was something about the manner in which they avoided looking at each other and then suddenly they would be unable to prevent it. There was scorching passion there. I sensed it. The children played their recorders and lutes and the feasting began. The table was laden with food of all descriptions—there was beef, mutton, sucking-pig and boar’s head, pies of various kinds—muggety, natlin, squab, leek and herby. There was dash-an’-darras, a kind of stirrup cup, and metheglin and all kinds of wines—cowslip, gillyflower, blackberry and elder.

All seemed to eat heartily and afterwards there was dancing, singing and the choosing of King for the Night. Strangely enough, this fell to Colum. There were loud cries of protest as he produced the silver penny. He was lord of the castle in any case. Connell was bitterly disappointed. Then the games began and when we went in search of the treasure, Colum chose me as his partner.

I was suddenly happy and told myself that I had been mistaken in him. He really cared for me. He would have chosen Maria, who had gone off with one of the visiting squires; and all knew that for the grown-ups this game was an opportunity for getting together and being alone.

Colum said: “It has gone well, eh?”

“The children are enjoying it, which is the main thing.”

“Nay,” he said banteringly, “we have as much right to enjoy Christmas as the children. Come,” he went on, and we climbed the stairs to the ramparts.

We were up there alone in the cool night air.

It was a beautiful sight—the calm sea, the slightly protruding Devil’s Teeth, and to our left the Seaward Tower with the light burning from the lantern.

Colum leaned over and looked down.

“How far away it seems,” he said.

“A long drop,” I answered.

Then he came close to me and caught me round the waist, and I had a panic-stricken moment when I thought he was going to throw me over. I felt my body go rigid with terror.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “it’s a long, long way down.”

I drew away from him and looked at him in the night light. His eyes were brilliant. I thought: He is going to tell me something. He is going to tell me that he loves Maria.

For a few seconds the thought flashed into my head that he was inviting me to throw myself down there on to the rocks.

I said in a voice, the steadiness of which surprised me: “I think we should join our guests. Someone will have found the treasure by now.”

“
We
must not find it,” said Colum. “That would be wrong. They would say it was contrived. It is bad enough that I should have found the silver penny and become King for the Night. King for the Night … anything I want tonight is mine. Whatever I ask, eh?”

“Are you not always king in your castle?”

“Can it be that you recognize this at last?”

I laughed and we went down to join our guests.

Connell and his partner, the young daughter of one of the squires, had found the treasure—which were two little gold amulets in a box. The box was brought to Colum, who then presented it to them with the customary remark that the contents of the box would protect them from cursed devils, sprites, bugs, conjuring and charms.

Connell was delighted. It was a consolation for not finding the silver penny.

There were bound to be casualties and one was Senara. She was sick and Tamsyn said she would take her to her bed.

Several of the visitors were staying for a few days and in due course they were lighted to their rooms.

I went to mine and I could not resist writing my account of what had happened that day. I liked to do it while it was fresh in my memory. As I wrote I heard footsteps outside my door and I hastily put the papers away.

It was Tamsyn.

She had come every night to look after me.

“Senara is very sick,” she said. “She wants me to be with her. She says she is better when I am there.”

“Go to her, my dear,” I said.

“Well, you are better today, Mother.”

“Yes, my love. Do not fret about me.”

“Jennet is giving Senara a dose of Herb Twopence. She says that will cure anything.”

“She will be better in the morning.”

She clung to me for a moment. “You are sure, Mother, that you are all right without me?”

“Of course, my darling. Good night. Go and look after Senara.”

I kissed her fondly and she went out.

I went on writing. I would finish right up to that moment when I had kissed her good night. Then I shall put the papers away and go to bed.

C
HRISTMAS IS NEVER A
happy time for me. I can never forget that it was at Christmas that my mother died, and although it happened six years ago I remember it as vividly now as I did the first Christmas after.

I was ten years old at the time. It had been quite a merry Christmas day. We had done a miracle play, the mummers had been to the castle and we had danced, sung and played our musical instruments.

I often thought that if I had been with her on that night, it wouldn’t have happened. For several nights before I had slept in her bed; and then Senara had been ill and I had stayed with her.

I would often think of those nights when my mother had been so pleased to have me with her. I was very young then and children don’t always see things clearly. I had imagined that she clung to me and that it seemed so important that I should be there.

And the next morning she was dead.

Jennet found her. I often go over it all. How I had heard Jennet scream and come running to me and I couldn’t get a coherent sentence out of her. I went to my mother’s room and there she was lying in her bed. She looked unlike herself—so still and cold when I touched her cheek.

The strange thing was that there was nothing to indicate how she had died.

My father’s physician came and said that her heart had failed her. He could find no other reason why she should have died.

She had been ailing for some weeks, my father said, and he had been very anxious about her. We all confirmed that.

I felt sick with anger against myself. I had the notion that had I been with her this would never have happened. I had sensed in those days before her death that she was afraid. Then I wondered whether I had imagined it. At ten years old one is not very wise.

There was a great deal of whispering in the castle among the servants but whenever I appeared they stopped and said something quite banal so that I was well aware that they had changed the subject.

My grandmother arrived from Lyon Court. She was stunned. She looked so bewildered, just as I felt, and she took me in her arms and we cried together. “Not Linnet,” she kept saying. “She was too young. How could it have been?”

No one knew. People’s hearts sometimes failed them, said the physician. Their time had come. God had seen fit to take them and so they went.

My grandfather was away at sea; so were my uncles Carlos, Jacko and Penn. Edwina came though. She seemed so strained and frightened. She broke down and said that she ought to have done something, that she had seen it coming. She wouldn’t explain and we didn’t quite know what she meant and she was too distressed and hysterical to say more. But I felt drawn towards her, because she blamed herself in much the same way as I did, for I continued to feel that had I been with her it wouldn’t have happened.

There was a service in the old Norman chapel and she was buried in our burial grounds close by Ysella’s Tower. She was put next to the grave of the unknown man who had been washed ashore when there was a wreck at sea earlier that year. On the other side of the unknown man’s grave was my father’s first wife.

More than anyone—even Senara—I had loved my mother. This was the great tragedy of my life. I told my grandmother that I would never get over it.

She stroked my hair and said, “The pain will grow less for you, Tamsyn, even as it will for me, but it is hard for either of us to believe that yet.”

She said she would take me back to Lyon Court with her. It would be easier for me there, she said. I longed to go with her. I kept thinking of my mother and the last time I had seen her. I should never forget it. She was in her bedroom and when I came she was standing up and looked as though she had hidden something. But perhaps I imagined that.

I felt more and more uneasy about not being with her. I felt she needed me so. Perhaps I did not feel that at the time but imagined it afterwards.

There was Senara though, who had drunk too much mulled wine and was very ill. So I had stayed with her. If I had not I should have been with my mother.

Senara said I should not reproach myself. She had been so sick and naturally I stayed with her. My mother had not exactly been ill, or if she had no one had known it.

“Besides,” said Senara, “what could you have done?” She was only eight years old then and I couldn’t explain to her this uncanny feeling I had. It was because my mother and I were so much in harmony. I felt she knew something that she hadn’t told me. If she had, I might have understood. I remember how angry I was with myself for being so young.

When my grandmother suggested I go back with her I said that I couldn’t leave Senara, so she immediately said that Senara must come too. I told Senara and she was pleased; she wanted to get away from the castle and my father raised no objection to our going. I had never known my father so quiet before.

I felt a little comforted to be at Lyon Court. I had always enjoyed my visits there. Lyon Court was a young house compared with the castle. It seemed open, frank, candid … which doesn’t seem the right word with which to describe a house, but I use it in comparison with the castle—which was sly, in a way, full of secrets—having stood so long, I suppose. There had been a castle there in Norman days and of course it had been improved on over the Plantagenet years. My grandmother said that Lyon Court was ostentatious and that the Pennlyons wanted everyone to know that they had made a fortune. It was the sort of house which was proud of itself, if you can think of houses having personalities, which I do; and as a proud house it was a happy one.

The gardens were famous in the neighbourhood for their beauty and my grandfather liked that to be kept up. At this time of year there was not much blooming, naturally, but there was that air of promise of spring and summer glory.

We could see across Plymouth Hoe and out to the Sound with the ships coming and going. Senara loved it and as she had not suffered as much as I had over my mother’s death—although she had loved her too—she began to be excited about being at Lyon Court. Sometimes she would laugh aloud and then look at me in dismay. I would tell her she was not to worry if she forgot now and then because that would please my mother if she were aware of what was happening here. She would not wish us to mourn more than we could help.

My Aunt Damask who was fifteen—young for an aunt—was told by her mother to look after us and she did; but she was unhappy for she had loved my mother dearly, as all seemed to who had known her.

Looking back at that visit I think of sadness. We could not escape our sorrow by leaving the castle. This was my mother’s old home. At the great table in the lofty hall she had sat; she had climbed the staircases, walked along the gallery, ate here, slept here, laughed here. The memory of her was as strong here as it was at the castle.

But it was not unrelieved gloom because of the Landors. They had been staying with my grandmother for Christmas, and when she had heard of my mother’s death and had come at once to the castle, they had left Lyon Court and gone to visit other members of the trading company and were calling back for another brief stay on their way to their home at Trystan Priory. I had heard the name Landor now and then and I knew that this family was connected with my grandfather’s business, a great trading concern which was often spoken of with a kind of awe. I had gathered that my father was a little sceptical of it, for I had seen his lips curl when it was mentioned.

Senara and I were in the gardens with Damask, who was playing a song she had learned. I knew her mother had told her that she must try to take my mind off my mother’s death and this was what she was attempting to do. There was a clatter of horses’ hoofs and the sound of voices, all of which I connected with arrivals. Damask stopped playing and said: “Someone has come. I wonder who?”

Senara jumped up and was ready to go and see who it was. She was volatile and impulsive. I continually had to curb her.

I said, “We ought to wait until we are sent for, shouldn’t we, Damask?”

Damask agreed with me. “People often come,” she said. “Do you have many visitors at Castle Paling?”

I thought of the visitors—the squires of the neighbourhood who came when invited for Christmas and such festivities; we had always known when to expect them. There were others though who came unexpectedly. They weren’t ordinary visitors. They came to talk business with my father and I remember that my mother always seemed uneasy when they were in the house.

“We have a few,” I said.

“We have lots,” said Senara, who liked everything of hers to be bigger and better than anyone else’s. She had a habit of deceiving herself into thinking that it was. I checked her when I could.

“When your grandfather is here the house is often full,” said Damask.

I was glad he was not there. I knew his grief would be loud and vociferous. He would be angry because my mother had died and seek to blame someone. He always looked round for a culprit when anything went wrong. He would demand why doctors had not been called and blame my father. I knew he would. I did not want my father to be blamed.

“We shall soon know who it is,” I said.

And so we did.

I believe now that meeting Fenn Landor at that time helped me far more than anything else could. He too was ten years old—a few months older than I was. A good-looking boy with deep blue eyes; he was very serious. Perhaps because we were of an age, he singled me out for a special companion—Senara was too young, Damask too old, and through him I began to be interested in life again as, in my ten-year-old ignorance, I had thought I never could be.