Текст книги "Witch from the Sea"

Автор книги: Philippa Carr

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All through the month of January when it was cold—exceptionally for us, for there was snow—she scarcely moved from the Red Room. She ordered that a great fire should burn there throughout the day and most of the night and I did not countermand this order. When I felt inclined to, I remembered her lying there in the water so near to death and the men coming in with their donkeys, and I could do nothing.

My mother stayed until mid-February because the weather was too bad for travelling and while she was there I did not notice the change so much. It was after she had gone that it seemed more apparent.

I gathered from Jennet’s conversation that the servants were aware of it.

“They don’t like going to the Red Room,” she told me. “They’m in and out quick as can be. They say they’ll look up, like, and see her eyes on them. ’Tis like she be fixing a spell on them.”

“A spell, Jennet!” I said sharply. “What nonsense!”

“Well, she did come on Hallowe’en, Mistress.”

That alarmed me faintly. They were going to fasten the name “witch” on Maria.

I knew that she would be able to look after herself, but it was dangerous. Witches were taken and hanged or even burned to death on the flimsiest suspicion. I did not want the shadow of witchcraft to touch our household.

“It just happened that she was on the wrecked ship,” I said sharply.

“That’s what ’twould seem, Mistress.”

“That’s what it was, Jennet.”

“Well, they be saying that if she be a witch she’d make her coming seem natural. She could stir up a storm at sea if need be.”

“This is dangerous talk,” I said.

“And she pretends not to speak so’s we can understand.”

“She is a foreigner so of course her language is different from ours.”

“You can’t be sure, Mistress, with foreigners.”

I could see that Jennet, too, was tainted with this belief.

I said: “If they accused her of being a witch, what of Senara?”

Jennet then did look alarmed.

“They would soon be accusing the daughter of a witch,” I went on.

“She be but a babe.”

“Would they care for that? If they took one they’d take the other too.”

Jennet’s face was as resolute as it could only be when there was a child to be protected.

“’Tis all a parcel of nonsense,” she said hotly. “There were a wreck and she were from that broken ship. And just because it happen to be Hallowe’en.”

I could see that I had said the right thing.

I was sure Jennet would have some effect on the others but she could not eradicate suspicion altogether. Maria had come at the time of Hallowe’en, and to a community which was beginning to be more and more obsessed by witchcraft that was significant.

March was unusually mild and the spring feeling came early that year. There appeared to be a bigger crop of daisies and dandelions making the meadows a mass of white and gold. I had inherited a love of flowers from my grandmother and I always took special delight in their coming. At this time of the year I would ride out and search for the wild daffodils and wood anemones and the purplish-blue flowers of the ground ivy which I called gill-go-by-the-ground, a name I must have heard from my mother who got it from hers. This year was different. When I rode out I would be thinking about Maria and wondering what was going to happen to her and Senara, for they could not stay indefinitely at Castle Paling.

Where could they go? I wondered. I guessed Maria was Spanish but how could she leave for Spain? Perhaps I thought one of my father’s ships could take her, but in view of the animosity between our countries that could not very easily be arranged.

In time, I suppose, Maria would tell us. She had been in the house five months. Of course if there had not been the child she could not have remained so long.

I wondered why Colum ignored her presence. She was living as our guest and I had to admit that at times she behaved almost like the mistress of the house. Colum was not of a temper to tolerate such an invasion into his household, yet he had raised no objection after the first outburst. I could not get Edwina’s warning out of my mind, for Edwina’s prognostications had so many times proved to have some substance.

Returning from one of my rides on a lovely day in March, I left my horse in the stables and as I was coming into the courtyard through the narrow arch I heard voices.

I paused, for I recognized those of Colum and Maria, and it so surprised me that without realizing I stopped short. From where I stood they could not see me, nor I them, but Colum’s voice with its deep timbre was one which carried easily on the air.

They were quarrelling and I sensed the suppressed fury in him.

“Get out,” he said. “I will not have you under my roof. Get out and take your brat with you.”

I heard her laugh. It was a deep laugh, full of malice and hatred.

She spoke haltingly but there was no doubt of the gist of her remarks. “This you owe me. As long as I wish. You destroy our ship … You … you. Murderer. You take our goods … you take our lives … I live … my child live … and because this is so you owe us all we take.”

“I owe you nothing.”

“Think, lord of the castle. I go from here. I tell …”

“You tell … tell what?”

“How you become rich …”

I drew back into the shadows. I felt sick with fear. I thought of those stormy nights and the men coming back to the Seaward Tower with their donkeys.

“Some things I remember,” she said. “The ship … the lights … The big rocks are there … in the sea. There were lights to warn us … But the lights were not where the rocks were … I know what you do. You lure the ship to the rocks and you plunder us.”

“Who will believe this nonsense?” he cried.

She laughed again.

I could not stand there. At any moment Colum could come striding from the courtyard and find me there, listening.

I turned and fled. I went up to my bedchamber. I could not say that I had had a shock. For some time the thought had been in my mind … ever since I had seen the men on the donkeys … and perhaps before.

So this was what he did. He sent his men out on the donkeys with their lanterns and they would stand some miles away with their lights to indicate that that spot was Castle Paling and the Devil’s Teeth were just before it, and thinking to avoid the treacherous rocks the ships would come straight on to them.

It was diabolical.

And this he did that he might salvage the cargoes and sell them. How many ships had suffered in this way? I could remember five storms and the nightly activities of the men. They might not have succeeded in every instance, but that he could do this horrified me and changed my feelings towards him.

I did not know what to do. He was my husband, the father of my beloved children; and his profession—if such it could be called—horrified me.

It was a mistake to have come to the bedchamber for within a short time the door was open and there he stood, flushed with rage after his encounter with Maria.

I faced him. I could not keep silent.

I said: “I have just come up. I was in the courtyard. I overheard what Maria was saying to you.”

He looked at me in astonishment, his eyes narrowed suddenly. “Well?” he said.

“I know it’s true. Oh Colum, it’s horrible.”

“You too,” he said. “Have done. I am in a mood to do you a mischief … both of you.”

“She was right. You lured the ship in which she was sailing on to the rocks, for the sake of its cargo. By chance she managed to survive. I …”

“And you, by God, brought her here. Had I known what you were doing …”

“Yes, you would have thrown her back into the sea, for that is the kind of man you are. You care nothing for human life. You dispense with it if it is in your way. It sickens me to think of it.”

“Then, Madam, you had best prepare yourself for this state of sickness. If I have married a lily-livered woman, God help her, for I will have her obey me and keep her mouth shut when I command it.”

“I have suspected this.”

He came towards me suddenly and caught my arm. “You have mentioned this to any?”

“To whom should I mention it?”

“To your mother perhaps.”

“How could I? She would be disgusted. She would insist that I return to my home with her.”

He released his grip on my arm. “This is your home,” he said, “and by God, you shall stay in it as long as I wish to keep you. As for your mother’s disgust, I do not believe your father is so nice in his ways. I wonder how many Spaniards he has killed.”

“We were always at war with Spain.”

“Was it for war that they met their deaths or because they had gold and treasure? Answer me that.”

I could not. I knew what he said was true. And I knew that my mother, who was honourable and good, remained with my father and loved him in her way, in spite of his bloodstained hands.

I wanted to go away, to be by myself, to think. To ask myself what I wanted to do, for I could not be sure. I wanted to be with Colum. I had to admit it, he satisfied my senses. When we were together I could forget everything. The strength of him, the power he wielded over everything and everyone in the castle. At such times I felt I wanted to be subdued; I welcomed his rough love-making; it satisfied a part of my nature; but when he was not there, when I thought about him I felt repulsed and wanted very much to go back to Lyon Court. I wanted to talk to someone, to understand myself. I could not talk to my mother because what I had to tell I believed would cause her great concern. She would not want me to go on living with a man who lured people to their deaths for the sake of profit. Yet she had lived with my father.

It was a cruel world. Once my mother had said: “Was it so vicious in the past? Will it be so in the future? I find it hard to reconcile myself to the fury of the times. Perhaps I was born into the wrong world.”

I remembered that now and asked myself: Was I?

Colum was watching me; his black eyes alight with a passion that I had seen in the early days of our acquaintance.

He shouted: “Answer me. Answer me!”

“What other men did has no bearing on this,” I said.

“Has it not? You have a fine opinion of your father. I shall insist that you have as fine a one of your husband.”

“You cannot force people to have opinions.”

“We shall see,” he said. Then he came close to me and took me by the shoulders. “Now you know the nature of my business,” he said, “what do you propose to do about it?” I was silent and he went on: “I will tell you. You will accept it. You will help me in all I do, as a good wife should.”

“I would never help you to … murder.”

He shook me violently. “Have done,” he said. “A ship founders. I have as much right to its cargo as any.”

“A ship that has been helped to founder?”

“Should I be blamed because a captain does not know how to navigate?”

“If you lead him astray with false information, yes, you are to blame. You have caused the death of countless people … so that you could grow rich on their possessions.”

“Have done, you fool. Why did you have to save that woman from the sea?”

“Because I am not like you … a murderer.”

“You have brought her into this house with her brat. What good will that do us?”

“At least it has saved two lives to set against all those you have taken.”

“You have the tongue of a shrew.”

“As you have long discovered.”

“And you are too virtuous, are you, to stay under this roof?”

“I … think I would like to go to stay with my mother.”

“And leave your husband … and your children?”

“I could take the children with me.”

He laughed. “Never,” he said. “Do you think I would allow them to leave this roof? Or you either? They shall be brought up as I wish.”

“You would make a murderer of my son.”

“I would make a man of mine.”

“I will take my daughter and go.”

“You will leave your daughter and stay.”

“I have to think about what I have discovered.”

“There is one lesson you must learn and I had hoped you had learned it by now. I am the master here and of you and my children. You disobeyed me when you brought that woman here.”

“You had given no order that she should not be brought … Master,” I added with sarcasm.

“Because I had not seen her. She will bring no good to you. Rest assured of that.”

“I was not thinking of the good that might come my way. She was in distress, and as any normal human being would, I saved her.”

“You are a fool, wife, and I doubt not will live to regret your folly.”

“Why am I foolish?”

“Because she is as she is …”

“I understand not.”

“You must not think you are the fount of wisdom.”

“I must be alone. I want to think.”

“To plan your departure. You will stay here. I will not let you go. Take off your riding habit.”

“I am not yet ready to.”

“I am.” He snatched my riding hat from my head and threw it on to the floor. He caught my hair in his hands and pulled it in the rough manner with which I was familiar. I could sense the rising passion in him and although I thought of this later, there was something different in it. He wanted to teach me a lesson. I had to learn that I was his … to give way to him when and where he pleased; and these encounters often took place after I had shown some resistance to him. It was his way of subduing me; and it was effective, because he had aroused in me a desire which matched his own, revealing to him a sensuality in my nature which I had not known existed until he found it.

Now, I had talked of going away; and he would show me that I wanted him as he wanted me. I could not do without him just as he was pleased with me, in this respect.

It was as before—but there was this difference. Perhaps I should have known. But like so many significant things in life it only occurred to me later.

Maria stayed with us. Her status in the household had changed, and she behaved like a guest. She joined us at meals and her daughter was cared for in our nursery with our own children.

I was not sure how this had come about. Colum and I rarely ate alone but when we did it was in the room which I called the winter parlour—after the one at Lyon Court—the small intimate kind of room which people were beginning to use instead of the great halls where all the household sat together.

There were occasions when we dined in the hall. If there were visitors—which there were quite frequently—and on special occasions—then it was natural that Maria should be there. What was strange was that when we dined in the winter parlour she should join us. I could not understand why Colum accepted this.

I guessed that in a way either his conscience worried him—although that was difficult to believe—or that she was threatening him in some way. It was hard to imagine his allowing anyone to threaten him, but she had accused him of being a murderer. He had been responsible for the death of her husband—for I must believe she was travelling with her husband—and perhaps even he would feel he should make some amends.

Colum kept me with him a great deal after that encounter. He seemed determined to make me accept him for what he was. He told me, soon after that scene, that if I attempted to leave him, he would come to Lyon Court and get me, no matter if he had to kill my father in the attempt.

He said: “Don’t provoke me, wife. Never provoke me. You would find my anger terrible. I would stop at nothing to gain satisfaction. Is that something you have learned yet?”

“I begin to,” I said.

“Then be a good wife. Deny me nothing and you will be cared for. I want more children. Give them to me.”

“That is hardly in my hands.”

“You gave me Connell that first night. That was because you and I were made for one another. You responded.”

“How could I, drugged as I was?”

“Nevertheless you did. That was when I knew that I’d make you my wife.”

“I thought it had something to do with my dowry.”

“That came after. But that first night I knew. And look how soon we got ourselves our daughter. But all this time you have been barren. Why?”

“That question must be answered by a higher power.”

“Not so. You have slipped away from me. You have become critical of me. I will not have that. Take care, wife.”

“Take care of what?”

“That you continue to please me.”

What did he mean? I wondered about slipping away. Had I during that first year or so of marriage loved him not only with this physical passion of which I was so acutely aware, or had my feelings for him gone deeper than that? Had I built up a false image? Had I seen him as the man I wanted him to be? I could do that no longer.

And he allowed Maria to join us. Those meals à trois were not easy. Colum and I talked in rather a forced fashion; she appeared to watch us thoughtfully and contributed very little to the conversation.

I had a feeling that this state of affairs could not continue. We could not go on day after day sitting thus at table together. Something was going to happen. Then suddenly I was aware.

I caught his gaze fixed on her and he looked just as he had looked at me on the memorable night when I had first seen him at The Traveller’s Rest.

I felt a wild twinge of alarm.

I was deeply aware of them. They were playing a kind of game together. She was haughty, aloof, scornful of him; and he was maddened by her attitude. It was something of a repetition of what had happened between him and me.

There was an occasion when she stayed in her room and sent one of the maids down to say she was indisposed, for all the world as though she was the mistress of the house. We ate alone on that night. Colum was moody, speaking scarcely a word.

She had taken one of the horses from the stables and made it her own. I had supplied her with riding clothes; I had set the seamstress to make garments for her. That was in the beginning when I was sorry for her and wanted to make up for the wrong which had been done to her by my husband.

She never hesitated to take these things. She herself designed her clothes and was with the seamstress while she was working. When they were completed they were beautiful in an exotic way. She walked gracefully and held herself so proudly that she looked like a queen. Her beauty seemed to intensify with the passing of the months. She loved the sun and on hot days rode off and sometimes did not come back all day.

Colum continued to watch her broodingly; and he had ceased to mention her to me.

When we entertained she joined the company. She would seat herself at the table on the dais and even though Colum and I were in the centre she would have given the impression to a stranger that she was the mistress of the house, not I.

There was often something jaunty about her manner; it was as though she were secretly amused. One of the neighbouring squires had fallen in love with her and implored her to marry him. She would not give him a definite answer and consequently he made pretence after pretence to visit us.

“Young Madden is here again,” Colum would say. “Poor lovesick fool! Does he think she will have him?”

Once I said: “Colum, how long will she stay here?”

He turned on me angrily. “I thought it was your pleasure that she stayed. Was it not you who were so eager to make up for my cruelty?”

“Yes, but she doesn’t belong here, does she?”

“Who shall say who belongs where? Once you did not belong, now you do.”

“Surely that is different. I am your wife.”

“Remember it,” he said rather sourly.

That was a strange long summer. The heat was intense. The sea was as calm as a lake and from the turret window looked like a sheet of silk shot with blue and grey light; its murmur was gentle as it washed the walls of the castle. I would often look out at the sharp teeth of the Devil protruding above the water, and the dark smudge of battered vessels there. I wondered what Maria thought when she looked out and saw the remains of the Santa Maria. Did she think of her husband who was lost to her forever? One could never tell; she glided about the castle with that aloof look in her eyes and no one could know what she was thinking.

Colum was different. He talked often about another child. What was wrong with me? Why did I not conceive? He had changed towards me. I was sensitive enough to realize that. There was a certain lack of spontaneity in his passion. I thought I knew why.

I wished that my mother would visit us. In the months of June I wrote and asked her to come. I told her how I missed her and how long it seemed since we had been together.

There must have been a plea in my letter for she wrote immediately and said she was making plans to leave. I felt relieved then. I had decided that I must confide in her. I knew that was the last thing Colum wanted but I did not care. I felt I must talk to someone. But she did not come. Damask had a fever and she neither dared leave her nor bring her.

“When she is well, we will come, my dear Linnet,” she wrote. She told me what was happening at home. My father had returned from his second voyage and this time he had been equally successful as far as trading was concerned and had achieved this without the loss of ships. The Landors had visited them and they had talked most of the time about the success of the venture.

“Fennimore’s little boy is the pride of his life,” she wrote. “He is called Fenn and must be a month or so older than our own little Tamsyn.”

Her letter brought back so clearly to me the great hall in Lyon Court and my father at the head of the table talking of his adventures and my mother, watching him and now and then bickering with him.

There was a great comfort in thinking of my mother and father. I imagined that Colum and I were rather like them. Their marriage had survived the years and it was clear that they could not live happily without each other. We should be like that, I promised myself, perhaps rather too vehemently.

I watched Maria walking to the stables. She swayed as she walked, so graceful was she. When she sat a horse she looked like one of the goddesses from Greek mythology. I thought that so much beauty concentrated in one person was disconcerting.

I wondered where she went on her long rides. That was a mystery. Mystery must always surround Maria.

July came and the heat had turned sultry.

“There’ll be thunder,” said the weather-wise; but they were wrong. The heat persisted. St. Swithin’s Day came and we watched for the rain. It did not come.

I remember my mother’s quoting to me:

“St. Swithin’s Day, if thou dost rain

For forty days it will remain.

St. Swithin’s Day, if thou be fair

For forty days ’twill rain nae mair.”

But what did I care whether it rained or the sun shone? The weather could not alter the strangeness in the Castle.

Then came August—hot nights when the bed curtains were drawn back to let in a little air. There was a swarm of wasps. Connell was stung and I treated the sting with a remedy Edwina had given me. How I wished I could see Edwina. I remembered then how she had said that there was something evil in the house.

Evil. Yes it was evil. There was no mistaking it. In my heart I thought: It was brought here by the woman from the sea.

I awoke in the night. It was too hot for sleep. Colum was not there. How many times had I awakened and found him gone. I went to the window and looked out to sea. It was calm and still. A shaft of moonlight made a path on the still waters. I could see the tips of the Devil’s Teeth clearly. There was no ship in sight.

Some impulse made me take my robe and wrap it round me. I opened the door and stepped out into the narrow corridor.

It was dark for there were no windows to let in the moonlight. I went back into the room and lighted a candle.

I knew where I was going and if I found what I felt I might find, what should I do? I would go to my mother. I would steal out of the house in secret and take the children with me. Or I might write to her and tell her that she must come for I needed her even as Damask did. Damask was recovering now. She could come to me and she must.

The candlelight threw shadows on the thick stone walls. I stood outside the Red Room, my fingers on the latch, yet I could not bring myself to open the door. In my mind’s eye I could picture them. It would be as it had been with us, for she had bewitched him.

Why did I use that word? Bewitched. It was wrong. There was no question of witchcraft. She was a beautiful and voluptuous woman, he was a sensual man. He desired her as he had once desired me, and did I not know that he would allow nothing to stand in the way of his desires?

The room of ghosts and shadows, I thought. She suffered here, poor Melanie. And if he visited Maria here, what did the poor sad shade of Melanie think? Could it be true that unhappy people walked, as the servants said? Did they hope to regain some happiness by so doing? Did they seek revenge on those who had made them suffer?

How like him it would be to join Maria in that room, on that bed where Melanie had died! … just as he had made me share it with him. I remember then his passion had been not only desire for me but a need to show Melanie’s ghost if it existed that he cared not a jot for it. It seemed that in Colum’s passion there must always be double motives.

Quietly I opened the door. The curtains were drawn back from the bed and a shaft of moonlight shone straight on to it.

It was empty.

I felt ashamed as I tiptoed back to my bedchamber. I lay on the bed. Colum did not join me. It seemed strange that they were both absent on that moonlit night.

September had come and the heat was still with us. I had to see my mother. I told Colum that either she must come to me or I would go to her.

He did not answer me; his thoughts appeared to be on other matters.

There had been no disasters at sea during the summer months. Colum rode off on long journeys by himself and often stayed away for several days. He never told me where he had been. Maria was at the castle—quiet, brooding almost; there was a secret smile in her eyes.

Colum came back after one of his long journeys. It was September—nearly a year since that night when I had gone out and rescued Maria from the sea. Senara was taking notice now. Her eyes would light up when I entered the nursery; I wondered what happened when Maria did. But of course she rarely did. She had borne her daughter and passed her over to us, as though it were our duty to care for her.

Soon the autumn would be with us. A whole year would have passed. At the end of October it would be Hallowe’en again.

When I rode inland I saw the birds congregating ready to leave for a warmer climate. The butcherbird, the nightjar, the chiffchaff and the common sandpiper were leaving us. Our ever-faithful gulls would remain to wheel over our coasts and utter their mournful cries.

I said to Colum: “I have written to my mother. It seems so long since I saw her. I am insisting that she comes.”

He looked at me steadily, his dark eyes cold.

“You have not heard,” he said. “I did not wish to disturb you. The sweat is raging in Plymouth.”

“The sweat!” I cried. “Then she must come to us at once.”

“Nay, that she will not. Dost think I will allow my children to run the risk of catching it?”

“She may be ill.”

“You would have heard had she been.”

“I must go to her.”

“You shall stay here.”

“But if she is in danger?”

“I doubt she is ill. But she is near the sickness and it spreads like wildfire. You must stay apart.”

“I want to see her so much,” I said.

“You talk like a peevish child. You have your home to think of. Know this. She shall not come here nor shall you go to her, I’ll not have danger brought to the castle.”

I was worried about my mother, but letters came. The sweat was taking toll of many people in the neighbourhood, she wrote. She did not go into the town. She had feared that Damask was sickening, but it turned out to be only a return of the fever she had had earlier.

She wrote that she thought it unwise of her to come to see me or me to go to her.

“I shall write often, my dearest child,” she said. “And until this terrible thing passes, we must be content with our letters.”

She sent me a pair of stockings such as I had never seen before. The art of weaving had been introduced by a gentleman of Cambridge. He was the Rev. Mr. Lee and my mother wanted to know if I had ever seen such stockings.

See how they mould themselves to the leg as stocking never did before (she wrote). I have heard from your grandmother in London that they are always worn by the quality and she says that soon there will be no other kind. I have more news from London. A Mr. Jansen who has been making spectacles has invented an instrument which makes things far off seem close. It is called a telescope. What will happen next, I wonder. What times we live in. I would instead they could find some means of preventing this terrible sickness breaking out every few years—and a cure for it when it comes.

To read her letters offered me some comfort; but I wanted so much to talk to her. I wanted to tell her of the strange atmosphere which was slowly creeping into the castle.

That it had something to do with Maria I was certain; and Colum was involved in it.

Are they lovers? I wondered. If they were, that would explain so much.

It was Hallowe’en again. Now the weather had changed. There was rain—a light drizzle which was little more than a mist.

Jennet’s eyes were dark with her thoughts. I wondered what she knew.

“’Tis a year,” she said, “since she came here. ’T’as been a long year … a long strange year.”

So Jennet had felt it too.

“And little Senara is ten months old.”

“A proper little miss,” said Jennet, her eyes softening and the mysterious look going out of them. “It does me good to see young Tamsie with her. Proper little mother. And Senara, she knows her too. Screams for her. I swear she said ‘Tamsie’ the other day. Mark my words, that’ll be the first word that one says.”

I was glad that my daughter was kind to the baby. It showed a pleasant trait in her character that there was no jealousy, for I knew that Jennet spoiled Senara. How far away that nursery world seemed from what was going on in the rest of the castle!

Hallowe’en was with us. A dark and gloomy day—quite windless; the mist hanging over the castle, shrouding the turrets and penetrating into the rooms. The coastline merged into a bank of mist. It would be hard for any ships who were near our coasts in this. They would not need the lights from Colum’s donkeys to deceive them. They would not be able to see anything through the mist.