The Witch From The Sea Part 47

The following day a strange thing happened. It was midday and we were at dinner in the great hall, for Aunt Melanie said that as there were so many of us it was better to take our meals there rather than in the dining-parlour which was used for a smaller company.

There had always been a big table at Castle Paling. Grandfather Casvellyn had set the custom for hearty eating and Connell had followed it. In our house my father's family had been more abstemious, and although there had been plenty of food in our larders should visitors call unexpectedly, we did not consume the large meals which they did at Castle Paling. Aunt Melanie took great pride in her stillroom and she had Melder to help her and was constantly urging us to try some delicacy or other which she or Melder had concocted from old recipes with little additions of their own.

My mother and Aunt Melanie were discussing the rival properties of the herbs they both grew with such a.s.siduous care, and Aunt Melanie was saying how she had discovered that a solution acquired from the juice of b.u.t.tercups gave Rozen such a fit of sneezing that it had cleared her head of a very unpleasant cold from which she was suffering, when we heard sound of arrival from without.

'Visitors-' said Uncle Connell, looking along the table from his end to where Aunt Melanie was seated.

'I wonder who,' she answered.

One of the servants came running in. 'Travellers from afar, my lady,' said the man.

Aunt Melanie rose and hurried out of the hall, Uncle Connell following her.

We at the table heard cries of amazement, and in a short time my uncle and aunt reappeared and with them were two women-and in that first moment I was aware of their unusual appearance. I often think, looking back, that life should prepare us in some way, that when events occur which are the forerunner of great changes which will affect our lives we should be given a little nudge, some warning, some premonition.

But it rarely happens so, and as I sat at that table and looked at the newcomers-one a woman of my mother's age and with her another of my own, or a little older-I was quite unaware that their coming was going to prove one of the most momentous events of our lives.

Aunt Melanie was crying out: 'Tamsyn. You know who this is. Senara!'

My mother stood up; she turned first pale and then rosy red. She stared for a few minutes before she and the elder of the two women rushed towards each other and embraced.

They were laughing and I could see that my mother was near to tears. She gripped the stranger's shoulders and they looked searchingly at each other.

'Senara!' cried my mother. 'What happened?'

'Too much to tell yet,' answered the woman. 'Oh, it is good to see you ... good to be here ...' She threw back her hood and shook out magnificent black hair. 'It's not changed ... not one little bit. And you ... you're still the old Tamsyn.'

'And this ...'

'This is my daughter. Carlotta, come and meet Tamsyn ... the dearest sister of my childhood.'

Then the girl called Carlotta came to my mother, who was about to embrace her when the girl held back and swept a low curtsey. Even then I was struck by her infinite grace. She was very foreign-looking-with hair as dark as her mother's and long oval eyes so heavily fringed with black lashes that even in that moment I couldn't help noticing them. Her face was very pale except for vividly red lips and the blackness of her eyes.

'Your daughter ... My dear Senara. Oh, this is wonderful. You must have so much to tell.' She looked round at us. 'My girls are here too ...'

'So you married Fennimore.'

'Yes, I married Fennimore.'

'And lived happy ever after.'

'I am very happy. Angelet, Bersaba ...'

We rose from the table and went to our mother.

'Twins!' said Senara. There was a lilt of laughter in her voice which I had noticed from the first. 'Oh Tamsyn, you with twins!'

'I have a son too. He is seven years older than the twins.'

Senara took my left hand and Bersaba's right and studied us intently.

'Your mother and I were as sisters ... all our childhood until we were parted. Carlotta, come and meet these two children who are already dear to me because of their mother.'

Carlotta's gaze was appraising, I thought. She bowed gracefully to us.

'You have ridden far,' said Melanie.

'Yes, we have come from Plymouth. Last night we rested at a most indifferent inn. The beds were hard and the pork too salt, but I scarcely noticed, so eager was I to come to Castle Paling.'

'What great good fortune that you found us here. We are on a visit.'

'Of course. Your home would be at Trystan Priory. How is the good Fennimore?'

'At sea at the moment. We expect him home before long.'

'How I shall enjoy seeing you all again!'

'Tell us what has happened.'

Melanie was smiling. 'I know how you are feeling seeing each other after all these years, but, Senara, you must be weary. I will have a room made ready for you and your daughter, and you are hungry, I'll dareswear.'

'Oh Melanie, you were always so good, so practical ... And, Connell, I am forgetting you and the dear children ... But I am hungry and so, I know, is my daughter. If we could wash the stains of travel from our hands and faces and if we could eat some of this delicious-smelling food ... and then perhaps talk and talk of old times and the future ...'

Connell came to stand beside his wife. He said: 'Call the servants. Let them make ready for our guests.'

Melder, good housewife that she was, was already leaving us to issue orders.

'We'll hold back the meal,' said Melanie. 'In the meantime come to my room and you can wash there. Your rooms will not be ready yet.'

She and my mother went out with the newcomers and silence fell on the table.

'Who are these people?' asked Rozen. 'Mother and Aunt Tamsyn seem to know them well.'

'The elder one was born here at Castle Paling,' said Uncle Connell. 'Her mother was the victim of a wreck and was washed up on the coast. Senara was born about three months after. She lived here all her childhood and when our mother died our father married Senara's mother.'

'So this was her home.'

'Yes, it was her home.'

'And she went away and hasn't been heard of until now?'

'It's a long story,' said Connell. 'She went away to marry one of the Puritans and I think she went to Holland. No doubt we'll hear.'

'And she's come back after all these years! How long is it since she went away?'

Connell was thoughtful. 'Why,' he said, calculating, 'it must be nearly thirty years.'

'She must be old ... this Senara.'

'She would have been no more than seventeen when she went.'

'That would make her forty-seven. It cannot be so.'

'She would doubtless have means of keeping herself young.'

'How, Father?' asked Rozen.

'Senara was always a sly one. The servants used to think that she was a witch.'

'How exciting,' cried Gwenifer.

'There was a lot of talk at the time about witches,' said Connell. 'You know how now and then there seems to be a fashion for it. The late King was a bit of a fanatic about them. People round here were certain that Senara's mother was a witch and that can be dangerous. She went away.'

'What became of her?'

'It was never known. But after she'd gone they came to the castle to take Senara. You see, her mother had been washed up by the sea on Hallowe'en; she'd disappeared on Hallowe'en. Everything seemed to point to the fact that she was a witch and the people came to take her. When they found she wasn't there they said Senara would do, so Senara fled for her life and that was the last we saw of her until now.'

'And you and our mother helped her?'

'Naturally we all helped her. She had been as a sister to us.'

'And now she has come back,' murmured Bersaba.

And we were silent. I was picturing it all so clearly. Senara's mother being washed up by the sea, being a witch, and after Grandmother Linnet died marrying that fearful old man in the Seaward Tower and then running away from him-which didn't surprise me. And the mob's coming for Senara ... who had been young then, with eyes like those of her daughter Carlotta. And who had been Carlotta's father? We should hear, I was sure.

They came back into the hall accompanied by my mother and Aunt Melanie. My mother was flushed and excited and quite clearly very happy because of the arrivals.

I could not take my eyes from the girl Carlotta. She was the most arresting creature I had ever seen. It was something more than beauty, although, of course, she was beautiful. In the candlelight her black hair had a bluish tinge; and there was a mysterious look in her enormous almond-shaped eyes. Her skin was very delicately tinged, which prevented its being dead white; it was petal smooth and her nose was long, patrician and beautifully moulded. There was something exotic about her which added to her attraction. My cousins could not take their eyes from her any more than Bersaba and I could. Her mother was a beautiful woman still, but even though she must have shown considerable defiance to the years she could not completely elude their ravages, and I guessed that when she had been Carlotta's age she would have been almost as attractive.

They had brought mystery and excitement into the castle. I kept thinking of the mob's marching up the slight incline to the portcullis and storming their way into the castle. They would be carrying torches and shouting what they would do to the witch when they found her.

'Sit beside me, Senara,' cried my mother. 'How wonderful it is to have you here. I could almost believe we are young again. You must tell us all that has happened.'

'But first allow them to eat,' begged Melanie with a smile.

Hot soup was brought; Senara declared it was delicious and it was of the kind she remembered Melanie's preparing before she left the castle.

'We add different herbs from time to time,' said Melanie. 'We try to improve on it.'

'It was always too good to be improved,' said Senara. 'And see how impatient Tamsyn is. She is really chiding us for talking of soup when there is so much to tell.'

My mother said: 'Eat, Senara. You must be famished. There is plenty of time to talk afterwards.'

They ate heartily of the soup, which was followed by lamby pie, and then there were strawberries with clouted cream.

'I have indeed come home,' said Senara. 'Is it not exactly as I told you it would be, Carlotta?'

Carlotta replied: 'Madre, you have talked of nothing else but Castle Paling and your sister Tamsyn ever since you made up your mind to come here.'

We were all waiting eagerly for the last of the strawberries to be consumed, and when the servants had removed the platters Senara said: 'Now you are impatient to hear what happened. I shall give you a rough outline, for I cannot explain all the little happenings that made up a lifetime over a dinner table. But you will learn in due time. You young people may have heard of me. There was a great talk hereabouts when I was here ... but that was long ago and when faces are no longer around they are forgotten. Yet my mother was different ... She came mysteriously, thrown up from the sea. She was a n.o.ble lady, the wife of a count and bearing his child ... which was myself. I was born here ... in the Red Room. Is the Red Room still here?'

'Why, it's the haunted room,' cried Rozen.

'That's right,' went on Senara. 'The haunted room. But it was haunted before my mother came to it. Colum Casvellyn's first wife died there bearing a stillborn child. That was before he married Tamsyn's mother. Yes, it was haunted then and my mother added another ghost to the Red Room.'

'The servants won't go there after dark,' said Gwenifer excitedly.

'It's nonsense,' retorted Melanie. 'The room is not haunted. One of these days I intend to change all the furnishings.'

'Several had that idea,' said Senara. 'Wasn't it odd that no one ever did?'

'Please go on,' pleaded Bersaba.

'My mother came and I was born and then she went away, but I grew up with Tamsyn and when her mother died, my mother came back and she married Colum Casvellyn. We were always together, weren't we, Tamsyn? I used to shock you, but you thought of me as your sister.'

'Always,' said my mother.

'Then came the day when my mother went away again and Colum Casvellyn had had his accident and was in his chair. The witch-hunters came for my mother and they were ready to take me in her place, so Tamsyn and Connell here got me out of the castle. I was very friendly with my old music master who had become a Puritan and was living in Leyden Hall. You know it of course.'

'The Lamptons live there now,' said Rozen. 'We know them well.'

'They bought it after the Deemsters left,' added Aunt Melanie.

'I fled there,' went on Senara, 'and the Deemsters took me in. I was married in the simple Puritan fashion to Richard Gravel-d.i.c.kon, my old music master-and we went to Holland together. Amsterdam was the refuge then for those who wished to worship as they pleased, so it was believed; but we began to discover that that freedom was to worship only in a manner approved by the Puritans. I was never really a Puritan at heart. I just changed when I met d.i.c.kon. I had brought with me some pieces of jewellery and to wear jewellery in our sect was considered sinful. At first I wore it in secret and d.i.c.kon was so besotted with me that he daren't offend me by forbidding me to wear it.'

'I never thought you could be a Puritan, Senara,' said my mother with an affectionate smile.

'You knew me well,' answered Senara. 'We left Amsterdam for Leyden, after which city the Deemsters had named their home. And here we spent eleven years while we made our plans to leave for America. Eleven years! How did I endure them!'

'You had your love for d.i.c.kon.'

Senara laughed. 'My dear Tamsyn,' she replied, 'you think we are all like you ... good faithful docile wives. Far from it. I was soon out of love with d.i.c.kon and out of love with religion. There was little that was holy about me. All through those eleven years I longed to be back at Paling. I wanted to be young again. I knew that I had wanted d.i.c.kon mainly because he was forbidden to me. I knew that I had been wrong to marry a Puritan ... not that he was always a Puritan. He could forget his religion on occasions.'

'They provided an escape for you when you were in danger,' my mother reminded her.

'That's true,' agreed Senara. 'But for them I might have had nowhere to go when I was in danger and that could have been an end to me.' She grimaced. 'All those years ago I might have been a corpse on that tree in Hangman's Lane where they used to hang witches. Remember, Tamsyn?'

My mother looked uncomfortable.

'They still hang witches there,' said Rozen.

'Are they searching them out as madly as they were when I left?'

'Every now and then there is a revival,' said my mother. 'Thank G.o.d, we have heard nothing for these last few years. I won't have the servants speaking of witches. It revives interest and that is bad. Why, a poor old woman has only to stoop or develop a mole on her cheek or have some spot which can be said to have been made by the Devil and they will take her to Hangman's Lane. Many an innocent woman has been treated thus and I want to see it stopped.'

'There will always be witches,' said Uncle Connell, 'and 'tis well that they should be dispatched to their masters,'

'I shall always do all I can to save the innocent,' said my mother, fierce when there was someone who needed her protection. 'And,' she added, 'I should like to know more of witches and what made them give their souls to the Devil in the first place.'