Saraband for Two Sisters

by Philippa Carr

  He seemed taller and more remote than I had been imagining him, and was a little embarrassed with me, not knowing how to tell me of his affection.

  For one thing I was grateful. He said I must be strong again before we thought of having another child, because what had happened, although so early in my pregnancy and therefore not dangerous to me, might well have weakened me. And we must take no risks.

  During that first week of his return I slept in the Blue Room, so called because of its furnishings, which was on the same landing as our own bedchamber.

  ‘You will find it more restful to sleep alone,’ was his comment. ‘Just at first,’ he added.

  How grateful I was.

  I hoped that he did not sense my relief, but I feared I could not hide it.

  Of course I told him of the night before my miscarriage, how I had seen the lights and thought I had glimpsed Strawberry John on the battlements. I saw his face whiten and I could not understand the expression in his eyes. His mouth was tight, angry, I thought it.

  ‘Could you have imagined it?’ he asked, almost pleadingly, I thought.

  ‘No,’ I said vehemently. ‘I was fully awake and in possession of my senses. I saw the light, heard something, and there was no doubt that it was a face up there.’

  ‘And you recognized that face?’

  ‘Yes—well, I’m not absolutely sure. The light wasn’t good. But I had seen this Strawberry John in the woods near the castle.’

  ‘I wonder if it is possible,’ he said. ‘I shall discover.’

  I said: ‘Wouldn’t it be better to demolish the castle?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t do that.’

  ‘But if it is dangerous and people can get in?’

  ‘People cannot get in. I don’t understand this. It was unfortunate, but I shall look into the matter. You should never have left your bed and gone up to investigate. It was foolish.’

  ‘It seemed natural. After all, I wanted to know what was going on in my home.’

  ‘I will see this Strawberry John at the first opportunity, and if by chance you saw him, I must ask you not to be afraid if by some chance you should do so again. If you do, come to me at once. I shall take the necessary steps. I do not wish you to attempt to investigate without telling me. Please remember that, Angelet.’

  It was a command, spoken in a stern voice. So he must talk to his soldiers, I thought.

  ‘It is a painful subject,’ he went on. ‘Your wanderings in the night in all probability have lost the child. You must take care in future. Perhaps it would be better if you came to Whitehall and stayed in London for a while.’

  I was silent. A terrible depression had come over me and I could not shake it off.

  Then began the evenings when he brought out the soldiers and made a battlefield. He did not always involve me in this; and sometimes he would go to the library and become deeply immersed in some of the books there. We had the occasional game of chess, but I was afraid my game had not improved and I knew that there was little excitement for him in our battles over the board.

  I knew too that soon he would be back with me in the red-curtained bed.

  One day he said to me: ‘You are not really happy, Angelet. Tell me, what would make you so?’

  I answered promptly: ‘Perhaps if I could see my sister. We have been together all our lives until I came to London. I miss her very much.’

  ‘Why should she not come to visit us?’

  ‘Do you think I might ask her?’

  ‘By all means do so.’

  So that day I wrote to Bersaba.

  ‘Do come, Bersaba. It seems so long since I have seen you. There is so much I want to talk to you about. I miss you and Mother terribly, but if you could come it would be a wonderful help to me. Bersaba, I need you here. You are stronger now. Are you strong enough for the journey? I do hope so and I do believe you will want to come when I tell you how much I need you.’

  I read the letter through when I had written it. It sounded like a cry for help.

  BERSABA

  Escape from the Grave

  I AM CHANGED. IT is no use their telling me I am not. I have come near to death, and only by a miracle—which was brought about through the assiduous care of my mother and Phoebe—have I survived. This terrible disease has set its mark on me. Who ever heard of anyone who escaped unscathed? I know that either my mother or Phoebe remained at my bedside through day and night, and not once did they sleep while they were there, but they took it in turns to spend the long nights with me.

  It is because of this that I am not completely disfigured. On my brows there are one or two of those horrible scars, more on my neck, one on my left cheek, but my mother and Phoebe saved me from the worst, and there are few who have suffered the dreadful disease and come through it who show as few signs as I do. My mother bound my hands to my sides that I might not in my sleep touch the hateful sores; they watched over me; they bathed me in special oils made by my mother and learned from hers; they fed me broth and milk and beef tea, and they would not let me see myself in a mirror until they were sure that the disfiguration was going to be slight.

  Although I was grateful that it is, I cannot pretend I am the same. I have grown thin and my eyes seem too big for my face. My mother says it has not impaired my looks, but I often ask myself if it is truth or mother love which makes her see me so.

  For months even after the infection had left me I was conscious of a lassitude. I did not want to do anything but lie on my bed and read, and sometimes brood and ask fate why this had had to happen to me.

  When my mother first told me that she had sent Angelet away I was relieved, because I knew that everyone in the household ran the risk of taking the disease which I had brought in from the midwife. Afterwards I began to feel a little resentful. It seemed unfair that Angelet should be having gay adventures while I should have this fearful one. But when Phoebe came into my room, her eyes round with adoration, I felt better, for there is no doubt that to Phoebe I am a mixture of saint and Amazon—a goddess of power and virtue. I like that, for my nature is one that revels in admiration. I suppose most people like it, but my love of it is inordinate. That was why I always wanted to score over Angelet. Now she is married to a very important man, it seems—a General in the King’s army—and my mother says that he is well known to people who have called at the house, and they think that Angelet has made a very good match indeed.

  And it is all because of what happened to me, for if I had not contracted this disease, both Angelet and I would be here in Trystan Priory and since we had passed our eighteenth birthdays my mother would have been bestirring herself to get us husbands. Who would have believed that Angelet would find her own!

  I often think of her and wonder what she is doing. We had been so close, we had always done everything together … well, not everything. She had known nothing of my affair with Bastian—and now we were miles apart—separated by distance and all the experiences she must be having in her new life.

  I have taken to riding each day. The first time I sat in the saddle since my illness I felt like a novice, terrified that I was going to fall, but that soon passed and my mother agreed that I should ride a little each day. Sometimes she accompanied me and often I went with the grooms.

  I am very conscious of the marks on my face.

  ‘They are nothing,’ said my mother. ‘In fact no one would notice them. You must wear a fringe on your forehead, which I hear from Angelet’s letters is most fashionable.’

  Phoebe cut my fringe and curled it, but whenever I looked at myself in a mirror my eyes went to the scars. I used to get angry sometimes and think of Angelet who had had an exciting adventure ending in marriage while her skin remained as smooth and fresh as mine used to be.

  It was as though she were constantly with me. I used to read her letters again and again. She described Far Flamstead with its quaint Folly to me so that I could see it clearly, and when she wrote of her husband I sensed that she
thought him wonderful. Yet at the same time there was something which she held back. I couldn’t help thinking of them together … as Bastian and I had been, and I was filled with a bitter envy.

  Soon after my eighteenth birthday my father’s ship returned. That was a day of great rejoicing in our household. My lassitude dropped from me then, for not only had my father returned but my brother Fennimore and Bastian with him.

  When the news came that the ship had been sighted, there was the bustle of excitement and preparation which I remembered so well. My mother shone with an inner radiance and the whole household seemed to come alive. Only at such times would she allow herself to contemplate the hazards of the journey. That must have been a very happy trait to possess.

  We rode down to the coast to greet them as they came ashore.

  My father embraced my mother first as though he was never going to let her go again, and then he looked round for his daughters. It was difficult explaining so much in a few breathless sentences, and my mother had evidently practised how she would tell him, so that he should suffer no unnecessary anxieties even for a few moments.

  ‘We are all well and happy, Fenn. But so much has happened since you have been away. Our darling Angelet has married … most happily … and Bersaba has been ill but is now quite recovered. It is too much to tell now.’

  My brother Fennimore embraced me and so did Bastian. I felt myself flushing with bitter anger, wondering how much of the change he noticed.

  ‘Let us get back to the house,’ said my mother. ‘I can only think that you are back … safe and well.’

  So we rode back to Trystan Priory—myself between Fennimore and Bastian.

  I told them as briefly as I could. I contracted smallpox; Angelet was sent away to stay with Carlotta and there had met her husband. We had recently had the news that she had married and everyone seemed pleased with the match.

  ‘Bersaba,’ cried my brother Fennimore. ‘You have had smallpox. But it is a miracle!’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘The miracle of love, I suppose. You can imagine what Mother did for me. And there was Phoebe to help her. The blacksmith’s daughter, you know. Her father turned her out and I brought her to the Priory. She seems to think that makes her my slave for life.’

  Bastian said nothing, but I could sense his emotion and I felt elated. It was at this moment that I started to come alive again.

  There was the well-remembered atmosphere of festivity about the Priory. My father was delighted to be back, so concerned about what had happened in his absence. As we came into the house he had me on one side of him, my mother on the other, and he kept pressing my arm against him and I knew how thankful he was that I had survived.

  Everything had to be told him in detail. Angelet’s letters had to be produced. He wanted to hear how I had gone to the midwife and how my mother had nursed me. He sent for Phoebe and thanked her for what she had done, and she said it was nothing to what I had done for her and she’d give her life for me.

  There were sentimental tears in their eyes and I felt like an outside observer looking on at the scene; and all the time I was conscious of Bastian.

  We supped in the hall that night and it was like long ago days, for the servants were at the table too. The only thing that was missing was the massive old salt cellar which a hundred years ago used to stand in the centre of the table, dividing the members of the household and their guests from the menials. It now stood in the kitchen as a sort of ornament and memento of other days. My father sat at the head of the table and Mother beside him, with Fennimore on my mother’s left hand and I on my father’s right. Bastian sat next to me.

  Everyone was happy, for the servants loved my father and regarded him as the best of masters. I once remarked to Angelet that their regard for him was due in part to the fact that they saw him rarely, and it is so much easier to love someone who is not always there to irritate and inspire something less than loving. I remember how horrified she was and how we argued about our father and the servants and our different characters, hers and mine. ‘You’re a sentimentalist, Angelet.’ I clinched the discussion with that remark—for I invariably had had the last word. ‘And I am a realist.’ I could always nonplus her with words, but now of course she had escaped from me. She was the one who had had the fine adventure; she was the one who had made the good marriage.

  So that was a merry meal except for the fact that my father regretted the absence of my sister. He would have liked to have had her living a few miles away and to be here with her new husband on this occasion.

  I asked Bastian how he had liked voyaging and he replied that it had been a great adventure but he was not sure that he wished to go again.

  He looked at me earnestly and said: ‘I want to stay here. There is so much to keep me.’

  I wondered if he noticed those hideous pockmarks. My hair hid them on my brow where they were at their worst and I kept my left cheek turned away from him.

  He said: ‘To think that you were so ill, Bersaba, and I knew nothing of it! You might have died.’

  ‘It is considered a miracle that I did not,’ I answered.

  My mother said that she supposed he would like to go soon to his family and he replied that he would be very happy to stay at the Priory for a few days if she would allow it.

  She reproached him warmly for asking, for she hoped he regarded the Priory as his second home.

  My father said there were business matters in progress and he would want to discuss them with my mother, Fennimore and Bastian.

  Bastian looked contented and I knew that he was watching me.

  The next morning he asked me to ride with him and we went out together.

  It was a beautiful morning, or perhaps it seemed especially so to me because I was regaining an interest in life. I was beginning to feel well again perhaps, or it might have been because Bastian was here and clearly in love with me that I noticed afresh the beauties of the countryside to which for so long I had been oblivious. I was struck by the bright yellow flowers of the vetch, which we called lady’s fingers and which grew on the hillside, and the pale blue of the skull-cap close to the streams. There also grew the woody nightshade—yellow and purple—the flower which always seemed to me to be of special interest because it could look so pretty and yet could be deadly. We were always warned not to touch it and we called it bittersweet.

  On this day it seemed especially significant. For that was my mood—bitter-sweet.

  Bastian said: ‘I have thought about you so much, Bersaba. I remember so much of …’

  ‘Of what should be forgotten,’ I answered.

  ‘It never will be,’ he answered vehemently.

  I shrugged my shoulders. ‘You did forget for a time.’

  ‘No, I never did.’

  I laughed and spurred up my horse. He was after me, beside me, pleading, ‘Bersaba, I must talk to you.’

  ‘Well, pray talk.’

  ‘I want to marry you.’

  ‘Now that your first choice Carlotta is out of reach, I make a good second, is that it?’

  ‘You are first, Bersaba. You would always be first.’

  ‘My experiences would suggest otherwise.’

  ‘I must try to explain.’

  ‘Everything is clear. No explanations are needed.’

  ‘When I think of everything we used to be to each other …’

  ‘That makes it all the more clear,’ I retorted sharply. ‘You knew that and yet you preferred Carlotta. Alas for you, she preferred someone else. Poor Bastian! Now you say, “Very well, since I can’t have Carlotta, I’ll take Bersaba.” Alas again for you. Bersaba is not one to be picked up and dropped and then to beg for the return of past favours.’

  ‘You have a sharp tongue, Bersaba.’

  ‘It is one of the reasons why it would be unwise for you to marry me.’

  ‘Your parents would be delighted.’

  ‘Would they? Have you asked them?’

  ‘I have spoken to y
our father.’

  ‘We are cousins,’ I said.

  ‘What of it? That didn’t bother you at one time.’

  ‘I’ve grown up. There is so much you don’t know. I have had a deadly illness, Bastian. I’m changed.’ I had pulled up my horse and dramatically took off my hat and shook back my hair. ‘Look!’ I showed him the scars on my forehead.

  ‘I love them,’ he said. ‘They make me want you more than ever.’

  ‘You have strange tastes, Bastian.’

  ‘Give me a chance, Bersaba.’

  ‘How? Shall we go to the woods and find a secluded spot and lie there together? Shall you come to my bedchamber this night when the household is asleep? It would be safe, you know. Angelet is no longer there.’

  I saw the lights leap into his eyes and I felt a great surge of desire for him, but I held it in check, for my bitterness was as strong as my desire and my pride was as great as my need.

  I turned away from him and put on my hat. ‘Then,’ I said, ‘you could enjoy our adventure until someone more desirable came along, someone to whom you could offer marriage.’

  I spurred on my horse and galloped away, and as we sped over the soft turf a sudden realization came to me. It was not that I really cared for Bastian, that I needed Bastian, but that I was a sensuous woman who would always need men; I had more than my share of desire than most women, and I wondered then about Angelet and her husband and I knew of course that this was one of the assets—could one call it an asset or a liability?

  —of which I had taken the lion’s share.

  I knew that I must not be too often alone with Bastian, for old desires would torment me. But I did not love Bastian. I merely wanted that which others could give me, but my need had blinded me to the real reason. As I sped past fields where the rough-headed poppy was peeping out among the corn, as I saw the white flowers of hemlock and the purple bells of foxgloves among the lush grasses, I laughed aloud, because I had reached a new knowledge of myself, and experience had taught me that in knowledge was strength.