The Witch from the Sea (40 page)

She said to me once: “Men! I’ve known scores of them and very good company too and from that company comes the best of all things—little babies, dear little babies.”

Now I wanted to talk to her about my mother. Jennet was easy to talk to; reminiscences flowed from her.

“Mistress Linnet,” she said, “she were a wild one at one time. Stood up to her father, she did. But she never had quite the fight in her that her mother had. Cat they called her and Wild Cat I’d heard the master say more than once—that was the Captain—a regular one he was. I reckon there wasn’t another like him. You see, your mother wasn’t wanted by him. He was mad for a boy and it seemed your grandmother couldn’t give him one. He let her see it, and Mistress Linnet she let him see that she knew it, and then sudden like they understood each other, and then—my dear life—there was something between them. He was proud of her. My girl Linnet’s as good as a son, he said. Then she met your father. And when she came here I came with her.”

“She was happy here, wasn’t she, Jennet?”

“Happy … what’s being happy? Most people are happy one minute and sad the next.”

“You’re not, Jennet. You’ve been as happy as anyone I ever knew.”

“I had a knack of it. Good things happened to me. I’ve had a good life, I have.”

I smiled at her fondly. I was not surprised that my mother had been fond of her.

“You were my mother’s personal maid, weren’t you?”

“Oh yes, I was. I was sent over here to be that. Your grandmother trusted me for all she could be sharp with me. She knew that I was the best one to look after her daughter.”

“Why did she think my mother needed looking after?”

“Oh, you know how it is … a young girl bride. She wants some of the old familiar faces round her.”

“How was she … towards the end, I mean.”

Jennet looked back into the past and frowned.

“She got a bit quiet, like … as though there was something …”

“Yes, Jennet, go on. As though there was something?”

“Something she wasn’t sure of.”

“Did she ever say anything?”

“Not to me. I reckon there was one person she would have told and that was your grandmother.”

“Why not … my father …”

“Well, what if it should have concerned him?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t know. Just that if she was worried about him she wouldn’t have him to talk to, would she?”

“Do you know why she should worry about him?”

“Wives do worry about husbands, you know. There’s reasons. Why, your grandmother …”

But I was not going to be side-tracked.

“How did she seem during those last weeks, Jennet?
I
felt there was something.”

“She was always writing … I caught her at it more than once.”

“
Caught
her at it!”

“Well, that’s how it seemed. She’d be there at her table writing away and if I came in she would cover up what she was writing, and I never saw where it went in the end.”

“She must have been writing letters.”

“I don’t think so. She never sent so many letters away. But when I came back to her room it would all be put out of sight. I never saw any sign of it then, which was strange. I often wondered where she kept it.”

“I wonder what she was writing.”

“It was some sort of diary, I always thought. People do that. They like to write things down.”

“That’s interesting,” I said. “I wonder where she put her diary.”

“’Tis my belief she hid it away.”

I thought to myself: If she did that she must have felt there was something she must hide.

I didn’t want to discuss her any more. I started Jennet talking about the old days at Lyon Court and Captain Jake, my grandfather. That was a subject for which she would turn away from any other.

I was excited though. If my mother had written a diary and if she had recorded everything that happened to her as it did, surely there would be some clue in it as to what she had been feeling during those last weeks of her life.

I was determined to find my mother’s journal or diary, whatever it was. I could not forget that moment when I had seen the stone on her grave. Why had it been put there? Because someone knew that her death had not been natural?

Perhaps I thought the mischief-maker had meant to put it on her grave in the first place and had in mistake put in on the unknown sailor’s. I went down to the shore where I could be quiet to think of what had happened. I found the rhythm of the waves soothing. I looked up at the straight grey walls of the castle and I said to myself: Someone in there knows what happened to my mother.

My father. He had married within three months of her death. It was very soon, too soon, said some. But my father was a law unto himself and he did not consider convention.

He had married a strange woman: a witch. On Hallowe’en, the one before my mother died, she had returned to the castle. Could it really be true that she was a witch and that she had willed my mother to die? There were no marks on her body. How could she have died? “A failure of the heart.” But did not hearts always fail in death, no matter how it came?

Did my father wish to be rid of her that he might marry my stepmother? Did my stepmother wish her dead that she might marry my father? Had my mother discovered a secret which someone in the castle wished to hide?

If she had kept her journal faithfully—and what was the point of keeping it if not faithfully—she would have written it there. She must have done so, for she was so anxious to keep it hidden where no one could see it. What had happened on that last night of her life? Had she written in her journal and then gone to that bed from which she had never risen?

I must find the journal. I would have no rest until I did.

Where would it be most likely to be? In the bedroom she had shared with my father and which he now shared with my stepmother?

No, I did not think so, for she would surely not wish my father to see it. There was her sitting-room in which she had spent a great deal of time. No one used it now. I would begin my search there.

It was a small room and not very light—no room in the castle was, for the long narrow slits of windows had originally been built more for defence than to let in air and sunlight.

As I entered the room I felt deeply moved. I remembered so well her sitting there. She liked to sit in the window seat with me beside her, or at her feet while she talked to me.

There was the chair on which she sat and there was the table. On it was a book and her sandalwood box, a kind of desk. I went to it and opened it. That part on which one wrote lifted up to disclose a cavity in it. There was nothing there but some sheets of blank paper.

It was the obvious place in which to put one’s journal though she would hardly keep it there if she wished to hide it.

Where then? I looked round the room, at the chair with the panelled back decorated with inlay and carving; it was one which my grandmother had had made for my mother and of a modern design. Not so the old settle. That had been in the castle for as long as I could remember. My mother said it was there when she came and it had probably been built in the middle of the previous century, long before the defeat of the Armada. It was really a chest with the back and arms put on it, the top of the chest making the seat and the extensions the back and the arms. I went to it and lifted the seat. I pulled out some old garments. There was a hat with a feather which I remembered seeing my mother wear. I was excited. This was her room and it had not been changed since her death. I was certain that somewhere here I would find her journal.

In chests such as this there were often secret compartments. What more likely than that she should have hidden her papers in this very chest?

I took out the clothes to examine it better. On either side the wood appeared to be thicker and I felt that this could quite easily conceal a cavity. I tapped gently on the wood. It seemed hollow. I was certain that somewhere there was a secret spring.

And as I knelt before the chest I heard a noise. What was it? Only a footstep in the corridor. Only someone passing the door. Keeping my kneeling position I stared at the door. My heart started to beat wildly as the latch of the door moved and the door was silently and slowly opening.

My stepmother was standing on the threshold of the room.

She was always mysterious; I knew the servants feared her, and at that moment so did I. She remained silent for what seemed a long time but could only have been a few seconds. What was it that was so frightening about this moment? I realized suddenly that her face did not move or change very much. When she smiled her mouth turned up a little at the corners—that was all. I suddenly felt that I was in the presence of evil. This is what the servants felt. But who could say whether it was because of the reputation she had of being a witch or whether there really was something satanic within her.

Her lips moved slightly in her immobile face.

“Are you clearing out your mother’s clothes?”

She had walked in; the door shut behind her. I felt a great desire to dash past her out of this room. I was deeply conscious that I was here with her … alone.

“Why … yes,” I said. “All these years these things have been here.”

“Did you find anything that you were looking for … particularly?”

“There are only her clothes.”

I stood up.

“Nothing else there?” she said.

“Nothing,” I answered.

She picked up a shoe, cork-soled, high-heeled and round-toed.

“Hideous!” she said. “Fashions are better now, are they not? Look at this ruff. The lace is beautiful. But an ugly fashion, do you not think? It is well that it is no longer the mode. It had one virtue though. It made the ladies hold their heads high.”

I picked up the things and put them back into the chest.

“Do you propose to leave them there?” she asked.

“I do not know what else to do with them.”

“I thought perhaps you had some purpose in gathering them together. The servants perhaps would like them. But even they are conscious of the fashion.”

I picked up the things and put them in the chest. Then I shut down the lid and it was turned into a settle.

“It is not an unpleasant room,” she said. “We should use it. Or did you feel that since it was your mother’s …”

“Yes, I do feel I should like it to remain just as it is.”

“It shall be,” she said, and went out.

I wondered if she had been aware of the tension I was feeling.

I went to my bedchamber. I was glad Senara was not there. After a while I felt better. Then I asked myself what had come over me to make me feel so disturbed because my stepmother had discovered me looking into the chest.

Jennet had been gossiping. Poor Jennet, she could never resist it. I heard through Senara.

“Your mother was always writing,” she said. “She wrote in a book she had every day. Did you know?”

“Jennet mentioned it the other day. So she told you too?”

“Not exactly. Merry said she was talking about it in the kitchens. It all sounded rather mysterious.”

“Why should the fact that she was keeping a diary be mysterious? Many people do, I believe.”

“Well, she hid this away, apparently.”

“Who said so?”

“Well, where is it? Have you got it? I believe you have.”

“I haven’t.”

Senara looked at me intently. “If you had it, would you read it?”

“Why do you ask that question?”

“For the reason people usually ask questions. I should like an answer.”

I hesitated and she went on. “People put their secret thoughts into diaries. If she had wanted you to read it she would have shown you, wouldn’t she?”

I was still silent. I was thinking of Jennet’s spreading the news that my mother had written down what happened to her every day and had been so anxious that someone should not see what she had written that she had been very careful to put her writings in some secret place.

I thought of the diary I had once kept when I was a child. It read something like this: “Rained today.” “There were visitors at the castle for my father.” “Hotter today.” And so on, except at Christmas time when there would be a description of the festivities. Nothing to be hidden away there.

Then I thought of my mother stealthily writing and finding some spot where she could secrete her journal for fear it should be read by someone in the castle.

Senara went on: “There was something strange about her, wasn’t there … just before she died?”

“What do you mean … strange?”

“You used to go and sleep with her every night. Why?”

“I just had a feeling that I wanted to.”

“What a baby! Who wanted to be with her mother!”

“Perhaps I did.”

“It wasn’t that.
You
were playing the mother. You always seem to like it when there’s someone who wants to be looked after. You’re always finding animals to nurse. Dogs and birds, that sort of thing. Do you remember that gull you brought home with the broken leg? The others were pecking him to death and you found him there, making horrid squawking noises. I remember how you brought him home and nursed him but it didn’t do any good, did it? He died in the courtyard. ‘Miss Tamsyn at it again,’ they said. And look how you’re always clucking over the peacocks at Lyon Court. So you went to look after your mother. Why? You would have been there the night she died if I hadn’t been sick. Oh, Tamsyn, do you blame me for that?”

“Don’t be silly. Of course I don’t.”

“I did drink too much mulled wine. It was horrid. I shall never forget the feeling. I’ll never do it again. But I wonder why your mother hid away her diary. Wouldn’t it be fun if we found it?”

Then I knew that my stepmother had known for what I was looking when she had seen me at the chest.

We were approaching Hallowe’en, always remembered at the castle with a certain awe because it was on Hallowe’en fifteen years ago that my stepmother had come to us. Jennet remembered it well and while Jennet had a tongue in her head it would not be allowed to be forgotten.

There is something about the autumn which has always fascinated me. Spring was the season my mother had loved because of all the wild flowers she found in the hedgerows. She knew the names of most of them and tried to teach me, but I was not a very apt pupil and tried to learn to please her more than for any special interest. For me the special time of year was autumn when—a little inland—the trees sported their bronzed and golden leaves and there were carpets of them in fields and lanes and the spider’s webs were draped over the hedges. I liked the mists of the mornings and evenings and even the chill in the air. I used to think before my mother died: Soon it will be Christmas, the time of holly and ivy and yule logs, and families being together and forgetting their differences. It was a time to look forward to. Autumn was the looking forward time, and so often anticipation is better than realization.