The Witch from the Sea (47 page)

“He is a powerful man in these parts. I know of none who do not tremble before him. Suppose you inform against him. Where would you inform? What would happen? He is too powerful. You would never stop him. He would have means of evading justice.”

He looked beyond me with a faraway look in his eyes, and he said, “There is only one way of making sure that he never does this again. That is by killing him.”

“But you are a man of peace,” I said.

“This is the way to bring peace. Sometimes it is necessary to remove someone who is corroding the society in which we live. We had to kill Spaniards when we defeated the Armada. I have no remorse for them. We were saving our country from a cruel enemy. We drove off those ships which carried the invader and his instruments of torture. I would fight again and again; I would kill any Spaniard who tried to land in England. This is different. This is a ship full of cargo, a trading ship. The wrecker wants that cargo so he lures the ship on to the rocks; he sends thousands of men and women to their deaths for he must make sure that there are no survivors to carry the tale of villainy where it might be acted on. No, there is only one way, I say.”

I looked at him fearfully. In his eyes there was a fanatical hatred—so alien to him.

“I am going to kill your father,” he said.

“No, Fenn,” I cried; and I put my arms about him.

He put them aside; then he looked at me sadly.

“It would always be between us,” he said. “He killed my father. I can never forget that nor forgive him. And I shall kill yours. You will never forget that either.”

He looked down at his father’s grave; then he turned away and left me there.

I ran after him. I had to stop him, I knew he meant what he said. He had idolized his father; he had gone on doing so after he was dead. He had refused to believe that he
was
dead and gone on dreaming of his return.

And my father was responsible for his death—he had killed him as certainly as though he had run him through with a cutlass and left him to die.

I heard the shouting voices above the wind.

“He be gone out,” said one.

I saw them in the Seaward courtyard. There were about four of the men who worked with my father.

“He be at the Teeth,” said Jack Emms, a dark-haired man with battered features.

“Why should he go there?” cried Fenn. “There’s no wreck. He’s been merciful of late. There has been no disaster there for the last two months to my knowledge.”

“There he be gone, Master.”

Fenn had the man by the throat. I had not known he was capable of such violence. It was born of anger which came from the love of his father. He could not forget that but for this man, his father would have been alive today.

“Tell me where he is. I will know,” he said, “or it will be the worse for you.”

I saw then that Fenn was a man with the strength of my father. I had thought him gentle and so he would be—gentle and tender; but he was an idealist as his father had been and now he was full of righteous anger.

“He be gone, Master, with Jan Leward. There always be cargo that stays in the foundered ships. We go out now and then to recover it.”

“I am going out there,” said Fenn. “I am going to catch him at his evil trade.”

“Nay, Master.”

“But yes,” cried Fenn. “Yes, yes!”

I was terrified. I pictured my father out there at the Teeth, with the howling wind whipping the waves to fury. And Fenn there … in the midst of his enemies.

I wanted to cry: “Don’t go. Jack Emms is your enemy. All these men are your enemies. They will destroy you because you have come among them like an avenging angel. You are trying to destroy their lucrative business. Fenn, don’t go.”

It would be to plead in vain. He was going to confront my father. He was going to accuse him of the murder of
his
father; and I knew he planned to kill him. He would not take the cowardly way out, to go away with me and live far away from Castle Paling. He was right, for neither of us could do this. I knew too that when the wind howled and the storms raged we should be thinking of sailors in peril near the Devil’s Teeth; and the cries of drowning men would haunt us through the years.

But if he was going out there, I was going with him. I leaped into the boat.

“No, Tamsyn,” shouted Fenn.

“If you go,” I retorted, “I am coming with you.”

Fenn looked at me and his fear for me overcame his fury against my father.

I said: “My father is a murderer. He has been responsible for the deaths of thousands.” I was thinking of my mother. He had not killed her but he had connived at her murder and married her murderess. And since her death he had not been a happy man. Fenn must not suffer a murderer’s remorse. I must save him from that. “Fenn,” I went on, “I beg of you, do not have his death on your conscience.”

His face hardened. “He killed my father.”

“I know … I know. But it is not for you to kill him. If you do the memory will haunt you all your life. Fenn, we have found each other. Let us think of that.”

But I could see he was remembering the father whom he had loved—gentle Fennimore Landor, who had never sought to harm anyone and who had dreamed idealistic dreams of bringing prosperity to his country.

We had reached the Devil’s Teeth. How malevolent they looked with a tetchy sea swirling threateningly about them!

A wooden chest with iron bands had been caught in the rocks and it was this which my father was trying to salvage.

“Colum Casvellyn,” shouted Fenn. “You killed my father and I’m going to kill you.”

My father turned sharply to look at him and as he did so the boat rocked dangerously. He stared at us for a few seconds in amazement, then he cried: “You fools. Go back. There’s danger here. What do you know of these rocks?”

“I know this,” answered Fenn. “You lured my father to death on them.”

“Go away, you oaf! Take yourself out of my affairs.”

Fenn had stood up and I cried out in fear: “Fenn, be careful.”

I heard my father’s derisive laughter.

“Yes, be careful. Go away, you … trader. You don’t understand this business. It’s too dangerous for you, boy.”

At that moment my father’s boat tipped suddenly and he was pitched forward. The boat turned over and he was in the water. I heard him give a cry of agony as he threw up his hands and sank. He emerged a few seconds later. The water was up to his neck.

“I’ll get him,” cried Fenn.

“It’s too dangerous,” I warned, but Fenn was out of our boat swimming cautiously to that spot where my father was.

“Go away,” shouted my father. “I’m caught. The Teeth have got me. Can’t pull myself free. You’ll kill yourself, you fool.”

Fenn ignored him.

Minutes passed while I watched in terror. The water was stained red and I thought: They will both be lost.

“Fenn, Fenn,” I cried. “It’s no good. There’s nothing you can do.”

But he did not listen to me.

It seemed a long time before I helped him pull my father’s mangled body into the boat.

He lay on his bed, my bold cruel father. The physician had seen him. Both his legs were injured. He had prided himself that he knew the Devil’s Teeth better than any living man, but they had caught him in the end. The eddies about the rocks were notoriously dangerous and when he had fallen into the sea he had been immediately sucked under. Strong swimmer that he was, he could do nothing against such odds, for he had fallen between the two rocks known as the Canines, the most dangerous of them all. And Fenn had saved his life. That is what makes me so proud. He had intended to kill him and in that moment when my father lay helpless and all Fenn would have had to do was leave him to his fate, he had risked his own life to save that which a short while before he had threatened to take.

So Fenn brought home my father’s poor mangled body and we did not need the physician to tell us that he would never walk again.

Melanie was there, cool and efficient. Dear good Melanie, we all had reason to be grateful that she belonged to our family, then—and more so in the years to come.

So my father lived—not the same man. How could he be? He who had been so active would never walk again. This was retribution. The Devil’s Teeth which he had used as his murder weapon on so many were turned against him. And the punishment he must suffer must be greater than death, for he was not a man lightly to endure inactivity.

Fenn came to me when the physician had gone.

We did not speak. We just looked at each other and then he put his arms round me and I knew that we should never leave each other again.

It was the next morning when we found my stepmother’s cloak on the shore. It was in that very spot where my mother had discovered her. There was nothing else but her cloak.

The inference was that she had walked into the sea.

There was a great deal of talk in the castle. The servants whispered together. Change was everywhere. The master had been struck by avenging providence. He would never stalk through the castle again. And the mistress had gone, the way she had come.

They had always known she was a witch.

Fenn wanted me to go to my grandmother until we could be married, but I said I must stay awhile. I must be with Melanie who was now pregnant and had taken my father under her care.

My stepmother had gone; my father was crippled. It was a stricken house; but the danger had disappeared.

Senara came to my room, her eyes wild. “Everything has changed, so quickly,” she said. “You’ve got your Fenn after all. Who would have believed it? He now knows what a fool he was to think that you could ever have stood quietly by and watched your father’s business. And you know what a noble gentleman he is. He sets out to kill and then saves. Now with free conscience and hearts beating as one you can begin to live happily ever after.”

“You may laugh at us, Senara, but we shall be happy.”

“And what of me?”

“Let us hope that you too …”

“Dickon is going to Holland. Shall I be happy without him?”

“When we are married,” I said, “I shall live at Trystan Priory. You must come there too. I don’t think you’ll be happy here in the castle.”

“Would you have me there weaving my spells?”

“Have done with such talk.”

“My mother has gone now.”

“She had to. She killed my mother and would have killed me but I discovered in time.”

“What do you think happened to her?”

“I think she walked into the sea.”

Senara laughed aloud. “Oh Tamsyn, you don’t change. Full of remorse, do you think she was?”

“No, she found the position untenable. She was betrayed as a murderess and my father a cripple for the rest of his life. The weight of her sins must have been heavy.”

“Never. I knew her well, Tamsyn, better than you ever could. She came of a noble Spanish family. She was travelling in the ship with her husband, my father, when it was caught on the Devil’s Teeth. She never forgave that. She told me much. She came here and determined to destroy the household which had changed her life. She ensnared your father. They were lovers from the first. He never tired of her. She left soon after I was born and he bought a house for her some miles from here in the heart of a wood. He used to visit her and there she wove her spells. Then she came back and she sent your mother away so that she could marry your father. And she did. But she was tired of the life. She remembered Spain and the hot sun and the flowers and the gracious manners of courtiers, for she was highly-born. Lord Cartonel didn’t come to see me, Tamsyn. He came to see her. She has gone with him. They will go to Spain and we shall never hear from her again.”

“Is this truly so, or is it one of your dreams?”

“It is a good story, is it not? You will find that Lord Cartonel has disappeared too. He is a spy for the Spaniards, I doubt not. You will never see either of them again.”

“Can she leave you, her daughter, and never see you again?”

“Quite easily. She left me before, did she not? She did not want children. They do not fit into her scheme of things.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It is hard for you to understand … you with your mother and your kind grandmother. We were different. She was a witch in her way as I am in mine. We are not like ordinary folk.”

“Senara, once again I must ask you not to talk so. It is dangerous.”

“Life is dangerous, Tamsyn. Even you should have learned that by now. When you are married to your Fenn and your children are playing at your knee, it will still be dangerous.”

She was right of course, but whatever life held for me I was ready to face it with Fenn.

Melanie wanted me to marry soon although I had said I would stay awhile and help her nurse my father. But she would not hear of it. He was bewildered and could not believe that this had happened to him, to Colum Casvellyn, the man who had always had his own way. Oddly enough Melanie was the one who could soothe him best. It was a remarkable discovery that there was such power in this quiet girl. My brother Connell was changing too. He was the head of the house now, for that poor wreck which my father had become could scarcely be called that any longer. It was as though his new responsibilities gave him sudden strength. He was regarding Melanie in a new light; she was no longer the dull little wife whom he had married for convenience. Once I had thought he was growing more and more like our father but now there was a sudden halt in that progress. It was as though he had had a revelation and was taking stock of himself. I was glad for him … and for Melanie.

It was evening and the light was fading fast. Senara was with me in my bedchamber and as we talked I suddenly saw from my window that lights were approaching. It was a party of people, carrying torches, who were wending their way up the slope towards the castle.

I listened to their chanting voices and what they said sent a cold shiver down my spine.

“Give us the witch.”

Senara stood beside me, her eyes dilated.

“They are intent on murder,” she said, “and they are coming for my mother.”

“Thank God she has gone.”

“Yes, she has cheated them.”