The Witch from the Sea (45 page)

What can I do? I asked myself. I cannot stay here. I won’t stay here. I must get away. I must put a stop to my father’s hideous trade.

How?

I could betray him. To whom? I was so ignorant of what should be done. What if I told Fenn? I could go to him and tell him what was happening and he would stop it. And Fenn’s father was in that grave. Murdered 1600 and by my own father!

I felt inadequate, alone.

To whom could I turn?

There was my grandmother. I could go to her. She was a wise woman. She would tell me what to do.

Then I thought of her, frail and failing, and I asked myself how could I burden her with this?

I must find a way. I would make sure that always the lanterns shone out their beams on the water. They might turn them out but I would see that they were lighted. At least I could do that. I had saved a ship once. I would do it again.

They would discover, of course. What would they do to me? What would my father do if he knew that I was aware of his trade? He was a violent man; and if he was capable of letting hundreds drown for the sake of the cargo they carried, what else was he capable of?

Murdered 1600! I kept seeing that stone on my mother’s grave. I read on in fascinated horror.

She had been afraid. She had suspected something. She had been comforted by my presence and on the night I was not there she had died.

I had learned so much through those papers but not what I had set out to know.

How did my mother die?

In view of all I now knew I was convinced that she had been murdered.

My knowledge had changed me. Senara noticed it.

“What’s happened?” she demanded. “Something has.”

I shook my head. “What do you mean?”

“I can see it,” she insisted. “I’ve spoken to you twice and you haven’t answered. You’re dreaming half the time. And you’re worried, Tamsyn. What is it?”

“You’re imagining things,” I said.

But she didn’t believe me and she wasn’t going to let it rest.

“I believe you’ve discovered something. What is it? Is it why Fenn doesn’t come to see you?”

“I don’t need to discover that. Why should he come to see me more than anyone else?”

“Because there was some special understanding between you.”

“In other people’s imaginations,” I said.

“Well, if it’s not Fenn, what is it? I know. You’ve found those papers you were looking for.”

I started. I must have betrayed myself.

“So you have,” she declared.

“The papers are still in their secret hiding-place.” This was true. I had put them back in the sandalwood desk. I would keep the desk in the old place so that none might find anything different. That was the safest way.

“I believe you
have
seen them,” said Senara. “You’ve been reading the revelations and it has made you very thoughtful. You can’t keep secrets, Tamsyn. You never could.”

“You’d be surprised,” I said, “what secrets I can keep.”

“If you’ve found those papers and won’t show them to me I’ll never forgive you.”

“I dare say I shall get through life without your forgiveness.”

“So you have found them.”

“I said I could do without your forgiveness.”

“You are maddening. But you’ve found them, I know. Don’t imagine that I’m not going to pester you till you tell me where they are.”

Merry had come into the room.

I wondered how much she had overheard.

It was amazing how difficult it was to keep a secret in a household of many people. I was well aware that several people believed with Senara that I had found the papers.

During that day the uneasiness came to me.

I was possessed of dangerous knowledge. There were several people involved—my father who gave the orders, all the men of the Seaward Tower who were his helpers in his work of destruction, my stepmother who might have been my father’s mistress while my mother was alive and who married him three months after her death.

The biggest guilt rested with my father. It was this thought which horrified me. I could not bear that he should be the murderer of my mother. He was the one with the motive. She had known of his trade, but then she had accepted it. I was surprised that she had, but perhaps I did not understand. She had needed him in her life. Whether she had loved him or not I could not know. I was not sufficiently experienced. I was too young, too idealistic. I knew my grandmother had deplored my grandfather’s buccaneering ways. He had often boasted of the Spaniards he had killed. Yet she had loved him and when he had died it had seemed that her life had finished with his. How was I to understand the complex emotions between men and women. I had a kind of idealistic love for Fenn Landor, but I was shrewd enough to know that I was only on the threshold of love. He had rejected me and it might be that one day I would love as my grandmother had loved my grandfather and my mother my father. I could not blame her for turning away from that terrible question. He was her husband and she had promised to obey him.

I was certain though that my mother had been murdered. I was equally certain of the method. A famous person died in a certain way and a method was used. That method would be remembered. I thought of Lord Darnley in that house at Kirk o’ Fields and how he had escaped when the gunpowder was about to blow it up, how his murderers had caught up with him in the garden and there suffocated him with the damp cloth—not in his bed as they had planned but in the garden to which he had escaped. And because of this and because his body was found unmarked by violence, people talked of how he had died and that method would be remembered and repeated. In a way all our lives were linked with one another.

One thing was clear. There was a murderer in the castle and I was possessed of dangerous knowledge—how dangerous that person was not sure.

The simplest thing to be done would be to get me out of the way.

That was why I felt this fear. It was as though my mother was warning me. I had this strong feeling that she was watching over me.

By a coincidence I had overheard that conversation at my grandmother’s house and it had alerted my senses. It was a possible method … in fact the only method; and it had proved so effective. Would it be repeated?

I could picture it all so clearly. Merry would come in the morning. She would see me lying there cold and still as my mother had lain all those years ago.

There would be no marks on my body, no indication of how I had died. They would say: It was a mysterious disease which she must have inherited from her mother for this is exactly how she died. I knew my danger was at night.

How had I lived through that day, I wondered. If only there was someone to whom I could turn. Should I go to my grandmother after all?

Evening shadows fell across the castle. I sat at my window and looked out at the Devil’s Teeth. There the masts of broken ships were visible. Was it true that on some nights the ghostly voices of the dead were heard coming from the rocks?

I went up to the tower room to make sure the lanterns were lighted. They weren’t. Perhaps it wasn’t dark enough. So I lighted them.

Jan Leward came up while I was on the ladder.

I started when I heard a noise in the room.

“What be doing, Mistress?” he said. “I come to light the lanterns.”

“I thought it had been forgotten,” I said.

He looked at me oddly. “Nay, Mistress, ’twas early yet.”

I wondered whether he was thinking that I was the one who had lighted them before and earned a whipping for one of his friends.

I went down to my bedchamber. I had not joined them for supper. I felt I could not sit at the table with my father and stepmother and not betray my feelings. I had pleaded a headache.

Jennet came up with one of her possets. I took it uncomplainingly to get rid of her. And when she had gone I thought how foolish it was of me to have pleaded indisposition. Wasn’t that setting the stage for someone to despatch me in the same way as my mother had been?

I thought: If it is going to happen to me it will happen soon, and it will be while I am asleep in my bedchamber. I should have been wise and calm. I should have behaved as though nothing unusual had happened. I should have made it seem that that talk of the papers being discovered was mere servants’ gossip.

But I had not been strong enough.

I undressed and went to my bed. I had no intention of sleeping. I could not in any case. I was wide awake. It could be tonight, I thought, for if someone is trying to be rid of me it will have to be done soon, for every minute I live I could divulge something I have discovered in my mother’s papers.

I must not sleep tonight.

I propped myself up with pillows and waited.

There was no moon tonight and it was dark. My eyes were accustomed to the gloom and I could make out the familiar pieces of furniture in the room.

There I waited and I went over in my mind everything I had read in my mother’s papers. I promised myself that if I lived through this I would write my own experiences and add them to hers, that I might as she said look at myself with complete clarity, for that is important. One must see oneself, one must be true to oneself, for it is only then that one can be faithful to others.

And as I waited there in the gloom of my bedchamber, I heard the clock in the courtyard strike midnight.

Now my lids were becoming heavy; part of me wanted to sleep, but the tension within me saved me from that. I was firmly of the belief that if I slept I would never wake up. I would never know who it was who had killed my mother.

I must be ready.

And then it came … It must have been a half-hour past midnight, the steps in the corridor which paused outside my door. The slow lifting of the latch.

Oh God, I thought, it has come. And a fervent prayer escaped me. Not my father, I implored.

The door was opening. Someone was in the room—a shadowy figure, coming closer and closer to the bed.

I cried: “Senara!”

“Yes,” she said, “it is. I couldn’t sleep. I had to come to talk to you.”

She looked round. “Where’s my pallet?”

“It’s been taken away. I think it’s behind the ruelle.”

I was shaking. It must have been with relief.

She went to the wooden chair and pulled it close to the bed.

“I had to talk to you, Tamsyn. It’s easier to talk in the dark.”

“A fine time to come,” I said, returning to normal. And I thought: There will be two of us if the murderer comes.

“Yes,” she said. “It was easier when I slept here, wasn’t it? I’d just wake you and make you talk. Now I have to come to you.”

“Why did you go?”

“You know.”

“Dickon,” I said. “So he comes to visit you.”

“You’re shocked.”

“I’m finding out quite a lot that’s shocking.”

“You mean in the papers …”

I said, “I mean about you.”

“I can’t explain my feelings for Dickon,” she said. “He’s not much more than a servant, is he?”

“Put that down to ill luck. He has some education, as much as you have. He sings beautifully and dances too.”

“He doesn’t now. He’s a puritan.”

“Yet he visits you at night?”

“He’s trying to be a puritan. He wants me to marry him.”

“That’s impossible.”

“They want me for Lord Cartonel.”

“He may not want
you
after the Dickon adventure.”

She laughed. “Dickon is going away. They’re sailing in a week. Fancy! I shall see him no more. I can’t bear it, Tamsyn.”

“You’ll have to.”

“Not if I went with him.”

“Senara, you’re mad. You’d have to be a puritan.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“As if you ever could!”

“I could try … as Dickon tries. I’d have my lapses … but I suspect they all do.”

“I should put such nonsense out of your mind.”

“I want to be good, Tamsyn.”

“I suppose most people do, but they want other things more.”

“I have to confess to you, Tamsyn. It’s about Fenn Landor.”

“What?” I cried.

“I couldn’t bear that you should marry and go away. It was all so right for you, wasn’t it? He was approved of by the family. And he was so good and noble and you were to live not so far from here and dear Grandmother, and he would be such a good husband. It wasn’t fair.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Senara?”

“You’re such a fool, Tamsyn. Always believing the best of everyone. You just don’t know what life’s about. You’re the eternal mother and we’re all your children. We’re a wicked lot and you think the best of us. Fenn Landor is another like you. You go through life blindly innocent of the world. Look at this place. Look what goes on here.”

“You know,” I said.

“Of course I know. I’ve spied out things. I’ve seen what goes into Ysella’s Tower. I’ve seen the men go out with their donkeys when the lights are out in the tower. I know they lure ships on to the Devil’s Teeth and they don’t save the survivors. I’m going to make a guess. You’ve found those papers and your mother knew about this and she’s written about it and you know now. And you don’t know what to do. That’s it, is it not?”

I was silent. She’s right, I thought, I’m an innocent. I don’t see what is happening about me. I do believe in the goodness of everybody. But not any more. I know someone in this house is going to murder me.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said.

“Oh no. I wasn’t going to do that. I used it though … that’s what I’ve got to tell you. You see, when Jan Leward was whipped he hated our father. So did Merry. They were ready to do anything that would bring harm to him. I questioned them about what I suspected and they told me so much. They told me that the grave next to your mother’s was that of Fenn Landor’s father and they told me how his ship was wrecked and he washed up on the coast. We put the stones on the graves—it was my idea. They thought it was revenge on your father, but I wanted it for Fenn Landor. I wanted a big shock for him because I felt in my bones—and I
am
a bit of a witch, you know—that he was going to ask you to marry him that night. I had to stop it. It was only partly because I didn’t want you to have everything that was right and proper. I didn’t want to lose you either. So that’s what we did. Then we put one on your mother’s grave. And when I found you’d brought the stone in I took it away and threw it in the sea. It had served its purpose. Then I sent Jan to tell Fenn Landor what was going on here. He thinks you know of it.”