The Witch from the Sea (29 page)

Then the strange thing happened.

I had been to Lyon Court for several weeks and returned home.

It was a hot still day. The children were pleased to be back home as they always were, although they enjoyed Lyon Court. Looking at the castle Towers as I rode up, I felt the thrill I always did when I had been away for some time. The first that came into view were Ysella’s and Seaward Towers, and I could never look at Ysella’s without thinking of that day when I had been shut in there. I could still smell the musty damp smell of stale sea water. I thought too of the ridiculous legend of the two wives who lived so close to each other and never knew of the other’s existence. It would always be with a kind of apprehensive fascination that I returned home.

Connell was eager to see if Jerry the groom had looked after his dogs and falcons during his absence. Tamsyn, Senara and I went to my bedchamber, and Jennet and the little girls went off to their own room together.

I looked about that bedchamber of many memories. There was a strangeness about the place on this day. Was that so, or was I imagining it? When I came back after an absence the antiquity of the place forced itself upon me. Lyon Court was modern in comparison and modern houses seemed less touched by the past.

I don’t know what took my steps to the Red Room on that afternoon and so soon after my arrival. It may have been that I was simply overpowered by the difference in the place from my old home. The little chambers, the short spiral staircases, the unexpected nooks, all these things had the effect of taking one out of this world into another era. I almost felt on that afternoon that I was impelled towards the Red Room.

I went along and stood for a few moments outside the door. Edwina would have said some uncanny force had sent me there.

As I opened the door, I felt a shiver run down my spine and the hair really did rise from my scalp. It was not a bright room—perhaps it would never have acquired its reputation if it had been—for very little light came in from the long slit of a window, but my eyes accustomed to the gloom saw clearly and I am sure did not deceive me. I knew as soon as I opened the door that someone was in the room. Then as I stood there, the shape took form, emerged as it were from the hangings on either side of the window.

I caught my breath. I felt my knees tremble.

Then she came towards me—gliding slowly. The smell of musk scent enveloped me. She brushed past me and went into the corridor.

For a few seconds I could not move. I was too shocked. I just stood still, that unmistakable scent assailing my nostrils.

Then I said: “Maria! What are you doing here?”

There seemed to be a terrible silence, and then my limbs suddenly regained their bones.

I ran from the room. There was no sign of her.

“I have seen a ghost,” I said aloud.

Where was Maria? No one knew. I could not keep my vision to myself.

I told Colum. “I saw her, Colum. I saw her as clearly as I am seeing you now.”

“How could you have done so? Where is she?”

“I swear I saw her. She came towards me and walked past me. I smelt her scent.”

“Then why did you not take hold of her? Wouldn’t that have been the reasonable thing to have done?”

“I was so taken by surprise. I just stood there.”

“And let her pass you!”

“You don’t understand how shocked I was.”

He took me by the shoulders and shook me, in an exasperated way.

“You’re as fanciful as the servants. If she had been here, how could she have got away without someone’s seeing her? Be reasonable, wife.”

I was certain … and then not so certain.

Where did she go? I had been as though rooted to the floor, it was true. I had given her a few seconds to escape, but, as Colum said, where could she have gone to?

I told no one but Colum what I had seen.

Jennet volunteered the information though that the servants were more convinced than ever that the room was haunted.

“Have any of them
seen
anything, Jennet?” I asked.

“They’ve
heard
,” replied Jennet. “There was young Jim who had to pass the room after dark one night and he said he heard something in there … something that would make your hair stand on end.”

I thought I had seen something which had made mine do that.

Edwina would have seen significance in the vision. Did it mean that danger had come back? Was I once more threatened as I had been before?

I became convinced that I had seen a ghost.

I could not keep away from the Red Room. I used to fancy I could smell the musky scent there. It was in the pillows. I would turn sharply expecting at any moment to see her standing behind me.

I felt the uneasiness returning.

My mother wrote exuberantly. There was great rejoicing at Lyon Court and Trystan Priory. The trading company had come so far that it was to be incorporated by Charter under the title of the Governors and Company of Merchants of London Trading to East Indies.

“Our branch here is being swallowed up by the bigger ones, and Fennimore is delighted. Your father less so. He says he doesn’t want interference from outside. But you see what it means, Linnet. It means Fennimore’s venture is more successful than he ever dreamed it possibly could be.

“This will be a great company. It is planned to form agencies all over the world. Factories will be built. I cannot tell you how excited Fennimore is. For him it is the realization of a dream.”

I told Colum. A cynical smiled played about his lips.

“A great deal of effort to achieve what? The sailors will do all the work and the profit will go elsewhere. Mark my words.”

“They seem to think that the trading company will help to make England great. It is what they wanted.”

“Who is they? Your Fennimore! Are you thinking you should have married him?”

I was thinking it. What was the use of pretending otherwise? I had known little of Fennimore really—except that he was personable and an idealist. I thought too of men like Fennimore planning a great company which would bring good to England. I should have liked to plan with him.

Suppose I had never gone to The Traveller’s Rest. Suppose I had never met Colum. I pictured us all at Lyon Court. The great table would be weighed down with food and there would be great rejoicing because the object which had been so near to Fennimore’s heart was showing great promise.

I felt then that fate had gone against me. I should have married Fennimore Landor. I should have been beside him in his triumph now. I could never share Colum’s, for his successes meant disaster for others. I longed to share in Fennimore’s enterprise and how I hated those of my husband.

It was a mistake, I told myself desolately. A tragic mistake.

The gales came early that year. October had scarcely begun when they started roughing up the seas and throwing showers of sand against the castle walls. I was apprehensive. These were the times when there was nightly activity at Paling. Visitors to the castle brought news of ships that would be sailing near our coasts. I had gradually come to understand how well this diabolical business was organized.

I would lie in my bed alone and fearful, wondering what was happening outside. At such times I would promise myself, when the children are older I will go away. I will set out as though on a visit to my mother and never come back. I could not take Connell. He would never leave the castle. He was his father’s boy. But Tamsyn, who was now ten years old, and Senara would come with me. I would tell my mother why I could not return.

I knew this was only dreaming—a kind of sop to my conscience because I felt sullied by those murders. Sometimes I could not rid myself of the conviction that I was in a way involved, simply because I accepted what had happened and remained a wife to Colum even though I knew what he was doing.

During a long spell of fine weather when there were no wrecks on our coast my conscience would be lulled and I would say to myself: A wife’s place is beside her husband. She promised to remain with him, for better or worse. I had made my vows. Strangely enough, deep down in my heart I wanted to stay with Colum.

There came the night in mid-October. The wind had been rising all day. I was sickened by the now familiar signs of activities. The lanterns in the two towers would be doused, I knew, and the donkeys would be out with their lights high on the cliffs some miles away. News had come that a ship with a rich cargo was passing our way.

I lay in bed.

Was there not something I could do, should do? But what? How could I stop disaster? I could only pray that the captain of that ship would steer clear of the Devil’s Teeth.

I scarcely slept at all. Soon after dawn I was up. I went down to the shore. Colum and his men were busy going out in their little boats bringing in the cargo. I saw one of the men down there and I stopped him.

I said: “What sort of ship this time?”

“One of the finest, Mistress.” His eyes were cruel, his tongue came out and licked his lips. I could sense his excitement. He was doubtless calculating what his share in the profits would be. “One of them East Indiamen we hear about—one of the Lions.”

The Lions! They were my father’s ships. Did he not know that? I had begun to tremble. I said: “Did you see her name?”

“’Twere the
Landor Lion
, Mistress.”

It was as though the waves rested in mid air; there was a deep silence and then the sound of a madly beating drum which was my own heart.

The man looked at me oddly; then embarrassment was obvious in his face he had forgotten for the moment who I was. I had come from Lyon Court, my father was Jake Pennlyon, the owner of the Lion Line.

He touched his forelock hastily and made off, terrified of course that he had given information which should be kept secret.

I just stood there looking out to sea. So high were the waves that I could see little. Somewhere out there was one of my father’s ships lured to destruction by my wicked husband.

There could be no more complacency. This was the end of it.

Then the terrifying thought struck me: Who was on that ship?

I just stood there looking out to sea. So high were the waves that I could see little. Impossible in such a sea. One of them must take me, I must know. I could not bear the suspense. What if my own father had been navigating that ship? It could not be. He knew this coast so well. But if he were deceived by the lights? I could not believe it, not of Jake Pennlyon who had sailed the Spanish Main and come through unscathed after years of adventure.

What could I do? I must know.

I went into the castle and climbed the stairs to the ramparts from which point I should be able to get a long-distance view. The sun was coming up and I could see the Devil’s Teeth; I could see what must be the ship … the floating mass on the water … rich cargo, and bodies like as not. What if there were survivors? What did they do to survivors?

What had I been doing in this place all these years? Why had I become involved?

I felt as helpless against the tide of my emotions as I was against that of the sea.

Later that day a body was washed up on our coast. I was the one who found it. I had been walking along the shore sadly, my thoughts in a turmoil, asking myself again and again what I could do.

He was lying there on the shore. I sank to my knees and looked at him. It was Fennimore. Dead.

It was years since I had seen those noble features. There was nothing I could do. The sea had taken him. Oh Fennimore, who had had his dreams, Fennimore the idealist who had lived long enough to start his great enterprise, to see it expand, that scheme which was going to make his country great as wars never could.

The face of a dreamer; the man who would love an idea more than anything else, Fennimore who might have been my husband.

I knelt and lifted his head into my lap … I smoothed the wet hair made a darker shade of blonde by the sea water. How fine his features were, how noble. And those glassy eyes had once shone with enthusiasm for a scheme and with love for me. He was a man who would accept fate unflinchingly. But his love was gentle; I married and he took another wife. I wondered if he loved her. He would in a calm and gentle way of course. He must have wanted sons and he had one, named Fennimore as he was.

I thought how strange life was. If he had not come into my life I should never have set out to visit his family and so come into Colum’s orbit. His life was bound up with mine, in a way.

I could not leave him. I stayed there with him.

It was Colum who found me. I saw his face darken as he looked at me there with the dead man’s head in my lap.

He cried: “In God’s name …”

“Yes,” I said, “’tis another of your victims.”

“You interfering woman. Keep to your nurseries, will you!”

“No, I will not. You have destroyed one of my father’s ships.”

“If her captain had known how to steer her …”

“Stop it,” I shouted. “This was her captain. She was the
Landor Lion
—the ship my father and the Landors built that they might follow their peaceable trade. They brought back rich cargoes from the East Indies. You wanted those cargoes. One night’s evil work would give you that which they had taken months of planning and labour to get together. I hate you and everything you stand for.”

“A nice thing,” he said, “to find a wife mourning her lover.”

“He was never my lover.”

“Nay, he had not the spirit for it. He wanted you but being the lily-livered dandy he was, he was willing to pass you over and take another. Do you think you would have had the night sport with him you have had with me?”

I laid his head gently down and rose.

I said: “He must be given a decent burial. On that I insist.”

“Who are you, Madam, to insist?”

“Not your slave, but your unfortunate wife.”

“He shall be thrown back into the sea.”

“Do not dare do such a thing. If you do I will let it be known how you have made your fortune.”

“You talk to me of daring! Know this, I will have my way and you shall obey me.”

“Why should I?”