Текст книги "Witch from the Sea"
Автор книги: Philippa Carr
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Tamsyn was cleverer at her books than the others and she wrote the play which they would present in mime, for Connell declared that he would not learn words. Two or three of the local squires were being invited and as they had children these would be brought in to play their parts.
Senara was to be the Virgin at first but somehow she didn’t look the part, but she did make an enchanting shepherd boy who saw the star in the East and to her surprise Tamsyn was the Virgin. I was pleased because in spite of her somewhat retroussé nose and her wide mouth there was a purity about her and I set about devising her costume. This was where Maria showed herself in a new light. She found materials for the costumes and appeared to enjoy helping them to dress up. Even Colum watched with amusement and Connell who might so easily have imagined such mummery only fit for girls was delighted to be one of the Three Kings.
There was a great deal of speculation as to who would find the silver penny and be King for the Night. Connell boasted of what he would do if he were.
There was to be dancing, music and singing, the children would sing madrigals in which we would all join; then they would show their skill with their lutes and recorders.
From the kitchens there came the smell of baking. There was to be feasting as never before.
I was almost lulled to a sense of security, but not quite, for as soon as I retired for the night and was alone in my room I would begin to wonder what was in store for me and I would remember glances which I had—or imagined I had—intercepted between Colum and Maria. The excitement of Christmas could not dispel the suspicions that they were lovers. I think perhaps at the heart of my fears was the fact that Colum should seek to hide this from me. I was sure he had hidden nothing from Melanie. Why should he attempt to delude me if he no longer cared for my feelings? Was it because he realized this passion for Maria was a fleeting thing? Did he fear that she would disappear again as she had once before?
No sooner had I got into my bed than the fears would descend on me. I could only sleep fitfully. It was as though my instincts would not let me, as though they were warning me that it would be dangerous to do so.
There was one night about a week before Christmas when these fears seemed stronger than ever. I tossed and turned in my bed and it must have been soon after midnight when I could stay there no longer. I got out of bed, wrapped a gown about me and sat at the window.
What thoughts came back to me then as I looked down on the sea, calm as a lake, with a shaft of moonlight making a path on the waters! I could see the Devil’s Teeth just protruding for it was going to be a high tide. The gentle swish of the waves soothed me and I began to nod.
Then suddenly I was awake. I felt a tingling down my spine, that previously experienced raising of my hair on my scalp. I gave a little cry for there had been a sound in the room, and in my half sleeping state I believed that the door had opened and someone had looked at the bed and then at me. I was sure I heard a click as the door closed.
As before I ran to the door. There was no one there. It was a bad dream. But I was trembling. I could not go back to bed. I was afraid that if I did so, frightened as I was, I should sleep. Something warned me. I must not sleep. Twice I had thought someone had meant to enter my room. The first time I had called out and whoever it was had not entered. The second that person had entered and seen me at the window. If I had been sound asleep … what then?
I was haggard in the morning. I had scarcely slept all night.
Tamsyn looked at me with anxious eyes. “Are you well, Mother? You look not well.”
I said: “I did not sleep well. I had a bad dream, I think.”
She nodded gravely.
That evening Jennet came up with a posset.
“The master said you were to have it, Mistress.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“He said he thought you were doing too much for the Christmas preparations and had got tired. He said he was worried about your health and if you did not improve he was going to call the physician.”
That lifted my spirits somewhat. So I did care about him. If he were to me as he had been in the beginning, I thought, I could be so too, in spite of everything.
I thought of that other beverage which had been prepared for me, the one which had made me lose my senses on that very first night in the castle.
I said to Jennet in sudden alarm. “Did he make the posset?”
“Oh no, Mistress. He bid me make it.”
“Then you know what’s in it.”
“Surely I do, mistress. ’Tis the posset I make always when the children have their ailments. I have the herbs by me, dried they be and all in their sweet-smelling jars as I did learn from your mother as learned from hers. This be a good one if you are feeling out of sorts. There be goose grass to sweeten the blood and a sprig of woodruff for the liver, for ’tis very often the liver as will affect your poorly.”
“Give it to me, Jennet,” I said. “I will drink it and tomorrow you will see me brimming over with health.”
So I drank the posset and indeed it did soothe me to such an extent that when I lay on my pillow I was almost immediately fast asleep.
I awoke startled. Someone was in my room, standing at my bedside. I felt as though a thousand ants were crawling over my skin. I could not see very clearly. The moonlight must have been obscured by dark clouds. Hands were reaching out. I was caught and held.
“No,” I screamed.
Then a soothing voice said: “It is all right, Mother.”
“Tamsyn.”
She was laughing as she clambered into my bed.
I held her tightly against me. “Dearest Tamsyn.”
“I frightened you,” she said.
“I must have been dreaming.”
“I should have awakened you gently. How you shiver!”
“It was waking suddenly. Why did you come, Tamsyn?”
“I was worried about you. I couldn’t sleep. You looked so tired yesterday. Not like yourself at all. Then I thought, I will go and be with her. She may need me. And without thinking very much I came.”
“Oh Tamsyn, it makes me so happy to have you with me.”
“Do you feel comforted then because I am here?”
“Greatly so.”
“I shall stay with you.”
“Yes, do. I feel so happy to have you with me.”
She clung to me.
“You feel better with me here?”
“I feel so happy, Tamsyn. So much better already.”
After a while she said: “I thought to find my father here with you.”
“Nay, he is not always here.”
She was thoughtful. Then she said: “He is away so much. I’ll swear he does not want to disturb you.”
“That may be so, Tamsyn.”
“You are getting sleepy.”
“Yes, I am.”
“I shall stay with you, because I feel you like it better when I am here.”
“I feel so happy to have you, Tamsyn … so safe.”
“Let us sleep then, Mother. You need to sleep. Then you will be gay and happy as you used to be.”
So we slept together and in the morning I felt better.
Tamsyn said: “I shall stay with you, Mother, until you are quite well again. I think you need me. Who knows, you might want something in the night.”
It seemed absurd but I felt a great relief sweeping over me, for it was true that with my little daughter there I felt safe.
Christmas day came and in the morning the carol singers arrived. There was a great bowl of mulled wine from which everyone drank and we all joined in the singing. We gave each other gifts and we kissed and declared no presents could have pleased us more than those we had received.
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.
Part Two
TAMSYN
THE UNKNOWN SAILOR’S GRAVE
CHRISTMAS 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.
He liked us to be alone so that he could talk. He chafed against his youth and longed to be a man. We would go off together and lie on the cliffs looking over the sea; or sometimes we would ride together. My grandmother, watching us closely, allowed this. I realized that she thought that Fenn could do more for me than perhaps anyone. He was not part of my old life as the rest of them were. He was someone entirely new and when I was with him I could cease to think of my tragedy for half an hour at a time.
He told me about his father, who according to him had been the finest man in the world. “He wasn’t rough and swaggering as so many men are,” he told me. “He was good and noble. He hated killing people. He never killed a man in his life. He wanted to bring good into people’s lives.”
“When did he die?”
“People say he is lost but I don’t believe it. He’ll come back one day. He was due to come home. We watched for him every day. Every morning when I wake up I say to myself: ‘This will be the day.’ And it goes on and on …”
I could see a look of blank despair in his face and I longed to comfort him. I knew that although he said he believed his father was alive, he feared that he was not.
“His ship was the Landor Lion. It was a joint venture—the Pennlyons and the Landors, you see. My family and your grandfather’s.”
“Ships are often delayed for months.”
“Yes, but you see this one was sighted off the coast in October and there was a great storm.”
“I remember the great storm.”
“So you see …”
“Go on hoping,” I said. “Strange things happen to ships. It might not have been his ship that was sighted. You can’t be sure.”
“No,” he said firmly. “You can’t be sure.”
Then he told me about the new East India Company which had been founded and he talked glowingly of the progress it had made, and how his father had been instrumental in making it great.
“It was his idea really, you see. It started long ago before I was born. It was after the defeat of the Armada. My father believed that peaceful trading was the answer to our problems.” I noticed with a touch of sorrow that he talked of his father in the past tense and I knew that in his heart he could not help thinking he was dead.
“How old will you have to be before you join your father?” I said deliberately, to restore his belief.
He smiled suddenly, dazzlingly; he had a beautiful face when he was happy.
“Sixteen perhaps. Six whole years.”
I was able to tell him about my mother’s death and that was the reason I was at Lyon Court with my grandmother. I found I could talk to him of that sad event more calmly than with anyone else. It was because he too had lost a deeply loved one. The bond was instantly formed between us. I knew he had loved and admired his father more than anyone, just as I had loved and admired my mother.
Thus we could comfort each other.
I made him tell me about ships and the company. His father had talked a great deal to him. I could imagine the sort of father he had been—a father of whom his children need never be afraid and for whom they had the utmost love and affection and above all respect. An ideal father. To have had such a father was a great blessing, but alas, to lose him must be the greatest tragedy.
Once he said to me: “Why is it that we have never met before? We often come here. You must do too, for this is the home of your grandparents.”
I admitted it was strange, for we had come frequently.
“We must just have missed each other.”
There was no doubt that Fenn and I did a great deal for each other and my grandmother was pleased about this.
There was one strange incident which happened during that visit and which I could never forget.
Senara, Damask and I shared a room at Lyon Court. It was a big room and there were three beds in it. One night I lay sleepless, for I had not slept well since my mother’s death. I dreamed a good deal about her and I would wake up suddenly and imagine she was calling to me to come to her for she was afraid of something. This dream was a recurring one. In it I was always fighting to get to her and was unable to reach her. I would call out in my despair and then I was awake.
This is what happened on that particular night. I woke up wretched and sat up in bed, being unable for the moment to realize where I was. Then out of the gloom the familiar objects took shape—the planked hutch, the table with the carved panels and the two other pallets on which lay Damask and Senara.
I could hear the sound of someone’s crying. I got out of bed, wrapped a robe about me and opened the door. I went into the corridor. The crying was coming from the room next to ours.
I knocked lightly on the door and as there was no answer I opened it gently. In the window seat, sitting very still, the tears falling unheeded down her cheeks, was Fenn’s grandmother.
She started up as I entered. I said quickly: “I’m sorry. I heard your crying. Is there anything I can do?”
“It is Tamsyn,” she said. “Did I awaken you?”
“I was not sleeping very well.”
“You too are grieving,” she said. “My poor child, you have lost your mother. I have lost my daughter and my son.”
“Perhaps he did not drown.”
“Yes, he did. He comes to me in dreams. His eyes are empty sockets and the fishes swim round him; the sea has him; he lies deep on the sea bed and I shall never see my beloved son again.”
There was something alarming about the wildness in her eyes and I could see that her grief was an illness and that she was deeply stricken by it.
“Both my son … and my daughter,” she said.
“Your daughter too?”
“My daughter was murdered,” she said.
“Murdered!” I whispered.
She caught her breath in a gasp of horror and then she said: “You are little Tamsyn Casvellyn. I must not talk to you of my daughter.”
“You may talk to me of anything if it comforts you to do so.”
“My dear child,” she said. “My poor dear child.”
I cried a little because, as Fenn helped me to forget my grief, she brought it back in all its vividness. I was right back in that dreadful morning when I had gone into my mother’s bedroom and seen her lying there. I could hear Jennet babbling of what she had found and all my misery swept over me afresh.
She rocked me to and fro. “Life has been cruel to us both, my child, cruel … cruel …”
“When did your daughter die?”
“Before you were born … It had to be before you were born.” I did not understand that, but I had already discovered that she was incoherent.
“She was murdered by her husband. He is a murderer. One day fate will catch up with him. You’ll see. It will be so. I am sure of it. And now my beautiful boy is taken from me by the sea. He was so young to die. Why did it have to happen to him? Within a few miles of the coast he was …”
“Perhaps he will come back.”
“Never,” she said. “I shall never see his face again.”
“At least,” I said, “You have hope.”
And I thought: I have no hope. I have seen my mother laid in her grave. Vividly into my mind there flashed the picture of the family burial ground—the grave of my father’s first wife and that of the unknown sailor and my mother’s.
She started to talk then, of her son Fennimore and his ambitions. “No mother ever had a better son. He was noble, he was good. He was a great man. And my daughter … my little girl. She was frail. She should never have married. But it seemed natural and there was that … that”—her voice sank to a whisper—“that monster!”
I tried to soothe her. I said she must go back to bed. But she would not be soothed; she started to lament loudly and I could not calm her.
I did not know what to do because she was becoming hysterical and I thought she must be ill. She clung to me, but I managed to disengage myself and I went along to my grandmother’s room.
I wakened her and told her what had happened.
“Poor woman,” she said, “she is in a sorry state. This terrible disappearance of her son has brought back the tragic loss of her daughter. She gives way to her grief and I fear it will unhinge her mind.”
We went back to her. She was sitting there, her hands covering her face while she rocked back and forth in her misery.
My grandmother said to me: “You should go to bed, my child.”
I did not take any notice. I felt there was something I could do.
