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Witch from the Sea

Page 15

by Philippa Carr


  There was a great deal I had to discover about my husband. I knew so little of him. That was doubtless why I was so fascinated by him.

  Ruthless I knew he was. How ruthless I had to discover. Brutal he could be. How brutal? I was safe while I pleased him. Had Melanie ever been? I could picture his bringing home his bride. I could see the wedding feast at Trystan Priory and the gentle girl who had been brought up in that kindly mansion and knew nothing of the harsh reality of life.

  Had he been tender towards her once? I could picture his indifference to her suffering. I remembered him as he had been in the inn when there had been nothing but lust in his eyes for me.

  He excited me; he fascinated me; but I knew I did not understand him; and I knew too that I could only rely on his goodness to me as long as I continued to please him.

  I would keep the Red Room as it was and I would attempt to learn more of my husband. I must know where he went when he was not at the castle. I must share his life.

  I would find out. Oddly enough—and how right this premonition was to prove—the notion filled me with a certain apprehension.

  Spring had come and I was once more expecting a child. I was delighted but not more so than Colum.

  “Did I not tell you that you would have a quiverful? Give me another boy. When we have half a dozen of them we’ll think about a girl or two.”

  I retorted: “I do not propose to spend my life in a continual state of pregnancy.”

  “Do you not?” he retorted. “I thought that was a wifely duty.”

  “To provide a few children yes, but she needs a little respite.”

  “Not my wife,” he said, and he lifted me in his arms and looked at me with love.

  I was happy. Gloomy thoughts had gone. I visualized a future—Colum and I grown older, more sedate, and our children playing about us.

  As soon as I knew I was to have another child my desire to discover receded. I was happy. I wanted to go on in my contentment. There were times when he went away for several days at a stretch. I used to wonder where. He was not very communicative about his affairs; and one thing I had discovered was that he hated to be questioned. When I had asked he had answered me vaguely but I had seen the danger signals in his eyes. I had seen his sudden anger flare up against some servant and I had always been afraid of arousing it. At one time I wondered whether he visited a mistress. I did not think this was so because when he went away he took a retinue of servants with him.

  Again I learned a little through Jennet. She was supposed to sleep in the servants’ quarters in the Crows’ Tower but I knew she slipped out to Seaward to join her lover there. One night I discovered that she was not going to Seaward Tower.

  Colum had told me that he would be leaving early the next morning. He was going on some business and would be gone before I was up.

  I remembered then that Jennet had not gone to the Seaward Tower on another occasion when Colum had been going away. I decided to question as discreetly as I could, because I was growing more and more interested in Colum’s journeys.

  When I awoke the next morning I sent for Jennet. I said: “I gathered you spent the night on your lonely pallet, Jennet.”

  She blushed in that manner which had sometimes irritated my mother but which I could not help finding rather endearing.

  “Orders,” she said. “I was not to go to Seaward last night.”

  “There should be such orders every night, Jennet,” I said.

  “Yes, Mistress,” she answered. “’Tis always so,” she volunteered, “the night before he do go on his journey. He be busy preparing, like, late into the night and sets off with the dawn.”

  “Does he tell you where he is going?”

  “He never will say, Mistress. Shuts up tight when I ask. He’s a mild man but he gets angry if I as much as mention it. ‘Keep thy mouth shut, woman,’ he says, ‘or that’ll be the end ’twixt you and me.’ Yet he be a mild man in all other matters.”

  It certainly was strange. I wondered why there had to be this secrecy. Colum was not a man to make an effort to keep anything quiet. His implication was that if people did not like what he did, he cared not a jot. Yet he was quiet about this business of his.

  When he returned from a journey he was invariably in good spirits and glad to be back with me. It was June and the warm sunshine filled the castle. It was three months since my child had been conceived and I had recovered from the first uncomfortable stages of pregnancy and had not yet reached the cumbersome one. I felt well and energetic and Colum and I rode out together. We should be away for the night, he told me, as he had some business to transact.

  I was delighted because I thought at last he was taking me into his confidence. I was actually going with him on a business venture; I was making the most of my riding too, because I knew that very soon I should be forbidden to ride.

  This is the loveliest of all months, or perhaps it seemed so to me because I was so happy. The sky was cobalt blue with only the faintest hint of wispy white cloud. The choughs and the seagulls swooped and rose above the water and as we rode away from the sea into the lanes I was enchanted by the countryside. The white chervil on the banks reminded me of lace and the grass was spattered with blue forget-me-nots and red ragged robin.

  The sun was warm and I was happy. I felt well and strong, and glad as I was to be riding with Colum I knew I should be just as delighted to go back and see my son. He was in good hands. The care of children was one thing Jennet could really be trusted with.

  Colum sang as we rode along—it was the old hunting song which was such a favourite with him.

  I did not recognize the road until we were almost at the inn. And there it was before us: The Traveller’s Rest, and there was the host who had been in such a quandary on that other night. Now he was beaming with delight, hands crossed on his chest.

  Colum leaped from his horse and lifted me down. Grooms ran to take our horses.

  “The Oak Room, host,” cried Colum.

  “At your service, my master,” replied the host.

  And we were mounting the stairs and there was the room which I remembered so well—the big four-poster bed in which I had slept with my mother, the lattice window from which I had looked down and seen Colum standing before me.

  The host was saying, “There is venison, my master, cooked as you like it. And natlin and taddage pies as will tempt your palate. And if my lord so wishes, metheglin to wash it down.”

  “Lay it on,” cried Colum. “For we have ridden far and are hungry.”

  The host bowed and shuffled out and left us standing there looking at each other.

  Colum came to me and laid his hands on my shoulders. “I always promised myself that you and I should sleep in that bed.”

  “You are a man who cannot endure to be baulked.”

  “What man worth his salt is not?”

  “But most men realize that there are some things in life which must be denied them.”

  “Not this man,” he retorted.

  I laughed. “You planned this,” I said, “because of what happened here when I came with my mother.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I had business to transact so I thought, why should I not do it at The Traveller’s Rest? I will take my wife with me and we will share the Oak Room, for it will bring home to her the fact that she has a husband who will have his way sooner or later.”

  “I can never understand why a man who is acknowledged as the king of his castle should have to go to such lengths continually to stress the fact that he is.”

  “Because he is not sure that one person fully realizes it, and to tell you the truth, it is that person he is most anxious should.”

  I laid my head against his chest and put my arms about him.

  “I am content with life as I have found it, Colum. You are a strong man. I should be the last to deny it, but whatever I was made to accept I should always have my own views … you appreciate that.”

  “I would not want a fool
ish simpering creature … like …”

  I was glad he stopped, but I knew of course that he was referring to Melanie.

  To change the subject I said: “You say you have come here to do business. Do tell me, Colum, I am most eager to know.”

  I saw a shadow pass over his face. He went to the window and looked out; then he turned his head and said to me: “What do you know of my business?”

  “Nothing much at the moment but I should like to learn.”

  “There is nothing to learn,” he said. “I have some merchandise I wish to show to a merchant. We are meeting at this inn.”

  “So it was because it is business, not because of that night?”

  “Shall we say a little of each.”

  “What merchandise have you to dispose of, Colum? Where does it come from?”

  He did not answer that question.

  He said: “Ere long two of my men will arrive with pack-horses. They will bring the merchandise.”

  “What merchandise is this?” I persisted.

  “It varies.”

  He drew me to the bed and removed my cloak.

  “Colum, there is much I wish to know. When I come to think of it there is so little I do know. You are my husband. There is nothing I want so much as to share my life with you and if I do so I must know …”

  “Know what?” he said, loosening my hair from the net which held it. “What should you, a good and obedient wife, wish to know but that you please me?”

  “I want to please you, yes. In every way I want to please you. But I want to help you too.”

  He kissed me with more gentleness than I was accustomed to. “You please me and you please me most when you wait for me to tell you what I will.”

  “You mean this business of yours is a secret?”

  “Who talks of secrets? What a woman you are for creating drama from ordinary events. You store up ghosts in the Red Room.”

  “You were secretive about that.”

  “Secretive! I! Because I forgot something in the past which it can do no one good to remember. You should be grateful that my first marriage was a failure. It makes me more than ever contented with my second.”

  “I know you are content, Colum, but I want to help you. I want to understand … everything.”

  He laughed and pressed me back on the bed. He kissed my throat. Then he said: “Nay, the host’s table is awaiting our attention. We will eat and then mayhap I will attend to my business and when that is finished you and I will be together here in this Oak Room as I yearned to be when I first saw you here.”

  He rose and pulled me to my feet.

  “But, Colum …” I began.

  “You have a hungry husband, Madam,” he told me. “He must needs eat before he can answer more questions.”

  We went to the dining-room. Memories came back. I pictured his sitting there eating with gusto, catching my skirt as I passed. How I had hated him then! It was incredible that in so short a time that hatred could have turned to this passionate love.

  He ate heartily, doing full justice to the muggety pie made of sheeps’ entrails, and taken with cream—a Cornish custom which we of Devon had never indulged in, although we were as famous for our clotted cream as the Cornish were. He drank the metheglin but rather sparingly, I thought, and while we were eating two men put their heads into the dining-room.

  He acknowledged them but he did not introduce me. They did not remain in the dining-room but went away—I believed to wait until Colum was ready, and had come in either to see that he was there or assure him that they had arrived. They looked like merchants in their best clothes. One wore a russet jacket with camblet sleeves and there were pewter buttons on it. The other was in brown with grey kersey hose and they both wore steeple-crowned hats.

  “They are friends of yours, Colum?” I asked.

  “They are the men whom I have come to see.”

  “On business,” I said.

  “Aye, business.”

  “I had thought you a man of means, not a merchant.”

  “Merchants are men of means, wife. I have rich lands, a castle and many servants. To keep up such an establishment and maintain a wife is costly in these days. So now and then when the mood is on me I am a merchant.”

  “What is your merchandise?”

  “Whatever comes my way.”

  “So it is no particular commodity?”

  “Enough of questions. Your curiosity will make a scold of you yet.”

  “It is only because I would serve my husband that I wish to learn his habits.”

  “He will keep you acquainted of the best way to serve him. Now I must leave you for a while so I will take you to the Oak Room and then you will go to bed. You may be sure that the moment I have completed my business I will be with you.”

  He took me to the Oak Room and left me there. I sat on the bed and thought of him down there transacting his business. What business? The men had arrived with the pack-horses. I wondered what they had brought. It was strange for the squire who owned a castle and was the lord of his neighbourhood to barter over merchandise. I wondered again what it was, and why he should be so reluctant to discuss this with me. There could be two reasons. The first was that wives were not supposed to share in their husband’s business affairs. They were not supposed to understand them. That was something I would not accept, as my mother would not either. I knew that Colum, while delighting in my spirited nature, was also determined to subdue it. He wanted me relegated to what he would call a wife’s place. He seemed to ignore the fact that if he ever did he would lose interest in me. Perhaps deep down in his heart he wanted to. Perhaps he wanted to keep me as the mother of his children and go off in search of erotic adventures with other women, I was sure that was what he did before we had married. In a way he chafed against this passion between us. Once he had said with a sort of exasperated anger: “None will satisfy me now save you.” He was a strange man. He hated above all things to be shackled. It might well be that he wished to keep his business apart from me because he did not want to share everything. He wanted to exclude me because he feared I was becoming too important to him. The other reason was, of course, that it was something of which he was ashamed. Ashamed! He would never be ashamed. Something that must be kept secret perhaps.

  So I pondered and I longed to creep down the stairs and into the room which the host would have set aside for them and listen at the door.

  Instead I went to the window and sat there, and thought over every detail of what had happened on that other occasion at the inn. It had been the most important of my life in a way, for had I not come here I should never have met Colum. How easy it would have been for us to have taken another road, to have stayed at another inn. It seemed incredible that life could be affected by so flimsy a chance.

  I sat at that window for a long time thinking of this and I was still there when I heard a bustle below. Looking down, I saw the two men who had looked in at the dining-room. A groom was leading two pack-horses. They were not ours. Then came Colum with the two men. I drew back but not so far that I could not see them.

  They talked together. Then the men mounted their horses and rode away.

  I knew that Colum was coming up now so I left the window and sat on the bed.

  In a few minutes he was in the room.

  “What!” he cried. “Still up! What do you here? ’Tis time we were abed.”

  I could not sleep well that night. I had bad dreams. I was not sure of what for in them events were jumbled, but Colum was there and so were the merchants and the pack-horses, and Melanie too … for my dream had shifted to the Red Room. Melanie was warning me: “Don’t be too curious. If you are, you could uncover something you would rather not know.”

  In the morning we rode back to Castle Paling. It was a beautiful morning. There is nothing like sunlight for washing away the fears which come by night. They are exposed as nothing but vague shadows conjured up out of the darkness. I revelled in the green of the c
onifers and the call of the cuckoo, though he was beginning to stammer now. All was well. In six months’ time my child would be born and now I was going to my home where my son would be waiting for me.

  It was August. I could no longer ride and the days seemed long and tedious. One night there was a violent storm and I awoke to find that Colum was hastily dressing.

  I sat up in bed, and he told me to lie down and keep the curtains drawn. He was going out because he thought there might be a ship out there in distress.

  I said should I not be up in case there was something I could do? He said no, he would forbid it. I had to think of the child I carried.

  Nevertheless, I rose and went to look in at the room adjoining ours where Connell slept. He was a year old now. I thought the thunder and lightning might frighten him. Nothing of the sort. He shouted with delight as the flash lit up the room and he clearly thought the violent thunder was part of a game which had been devised for his benefit.

  I laughed with him, glad that he was not frightened and because I did not wish him to see that I had expected him to be afraid I left him.

  I went back to my bed and drew the curtains around me, and I thought of that other night when there had been a storm and Colum had gone out to see what could be done.

  He had told me that on dark nights he caused a lantern to be put in the turret rooms of the towers facing the sea as a warning to sailors that they were close to the Devil’s Teeth.

  He said: “It has been the custom of our house to give this service. When sailors see the lights, if they know they are on the Cornish Coast, they will realize that they are near the Devil’s Teeth and keep away—so in the Nonna and Seaward Towers these lanterns shone on all dark nights.”

  So I lay in bed and prayed that if any ship was being buffeted by the violent winds it would come safely through.

  The storm died down and I slept. It was light when I awoke and Colum had awakened me by coming into the room.

  His clothes were sodden with the rain and there was a hot colour in his cheeks.

 

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