Saraband for Two Sisters (28 page)

As I went through the canvases I found one of them already mapped out. The design was beautifully drawn and I thought Magdalen was quite an artist. It was a garden scene. There was a pond with lilies on it, and I realized at once that it was a study of the pond garden which was enclosed by a hedge and surrounded by a pleached alley. I studied it intently. What beautiful colours one could use. And then I saw that above the alley there was a glimpse of the towers of the Folly without the tall wall which was now there.

I must work that canvas, for it solved the problem of the drawing, and when I found exactly the silks I needed I could not wait to begin, so I sat down there in the room, for it was an ideal spot and I could understand why she had used it so much. The light was exactly what one needed for such work.

As I sat there a strange feeling came over me. I felt at home and as though I were not alone.

‘I hope, Magdalen,’ I said aloud, ‘you don’t mind my using your canvas.’

The sound of my voice startled me and I laughed at myself, but at the same time it was almost as though I heard a murmur of contentment as I sat there selecting my silks. How I loved working with bright colours! The room was full of sunshine, and I thought: Could I make this my room? Richard wouldn’t like it. Or had I imagined that? Perhaps he had merely been eager to show me the rest of the house and that was why he had not wanted to linger.

I worked on for a while and then suddenly the room darkened. I turned sharply and went to the window. It was only a dark cloud passing across the face of the sun. There was a tetchy wind and quite a number of clouds had sprung up.

I watched them scurrying across the sky. Now the sun was completely hidden and darkness hung over the towers of the Folly. My mood had changed and I fancied there was a menace in the air. I turned away to look round the room. It was different now it was darker. My canvas lay on the table and the room had lost its homely atmosphere.

It seemed full of menacing warning, and I had the feeling that I wanted to get away.

As I went out I could almost hear Bersaba’s voice mocking me as she had when I had wakened sometimes from my nightmares.

‘You’re too easily afraid, Angelet. Why should you always be afraid? You should make other people afraid of you sometimes.’

I hurried down to the room I had shared with Richard.

Meg was there putting my clothes away.

‘It’s getting really dark, my lady,’ she said. ‘I reckon we’re in for a storm.’

The days began to speed past. A messenger arrived after three weeks with a letter from Richard, in which he said he was in the Midlands and would be going north shortly. He believed he might be away for as much as six weeks. ‘You can be sure that as soon as I can I shall return to you.’

That was as near as he could get to saying he loved me, but it was enough; and I knew he would be as good as his word.

In the meantime I would learn all I could about the management of his house and would surprise him. It was a lonely life because no one called. I suppose his friends knew that he was away and when he was home it would be quite different. They had left us alone for the weeks following our marriage because they would reason that would have been what we wanted; and now they would wait for his return.

I had several talks with Mrs Cherry and I was getting to know the girls Grace and Meg very well. I chose Meg as my special maid—well, it was not exactly that I chose her as that she seemed to fall naturally into the role. I learned that Jesson had been with the General as long as the Cherrys had, and that he had brought his wife and daughters with him to serve the household. I was glad they were there because without them and Mrs Cherry it would have been a household of men.

Meg was more talkative than Grace; the younger of the two, she was thirty-seven and told me proudly that she had been born in the January of the year the great Queen died. Grace could say she had actually lived during that glorious reign.

She remembered the previous lady of the house. ‘Very gentle, she was, and kind,’ she told me. ‘She’d sit up in that room with her stitching, just like you’re doing. Funny you should like sewing too. I used to dress her hair for her. She didn’t have one of them curly fringes, though. Beautiful hair, it was, and she was as pale as a lily. I used to love to hear her play on the spinet, and when she sang with it, that was lovely.’

‘Did she play and sing for the General?’

‘Oh yes, and when there was company she would too. But there was something sad about her. And then of course she was going to have the baby …’ Meg stopped short.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘what was she like then?’

‘Oh, I wasn’t with her so much then,’ she said evasively.

‘But you used to do her hair.’

‘Yes … but it wasn’t the same.’

‘Was … the General very upset about what happened?’

‘Oh, very. He went away for a long time, and then it must have been a year after the poor lady had gone they started building that wall …’

‘The wall round the castle, you mean?’

‘It darkened the place a bit.’

‘It was put there because the castle is in a dangerous state, I believe.’

‘That’s right, my lady. We’re none of us to set foot there. I reckon one of these days one of them turrets will fall off.’

‘It ought to be removed.’

‘Well, that sort of thing’s best to be left to crumble on its own, don’t you think?’

‘No, I should have thought it could be demolished quite simply.’

‘Oh yes, but the story is this old ancestor built it and he might get nasty and start haunting the place. Not that that would be much worse. I reckon it’s haunted already.’

‘What makes you say that, Meg?’

‘Oh, nothing, my lady, only that that sort of place often is.’

‘But you said it was haunted. Have you seen anything?’

She hesitated and a little too long at that, and I saw her press her lips together as though she were determined to prevent words escaping which should not.

It was clear to me that there was some mystery about the castle and that someone—it must have been Richard—had given instructions that I was not to be frightened by gossip about it.

The days began to pass tranquilly enough. I worked for several hours on my canvas and felt my fingers itching to work on the castle, so I deserted the pond and stitched happily in the grey wool I had found and which was a fair match for its walls. Then I worked a little on the simples in the gardens and gathered them and made some of them into possets and potions as my mother had taught me, for there was a good stillroom at Far Flamstead. Mrs Cherry was very interested and told me that she was ‘a dab hand’ with the simples. She had recently cured Jesson of a pain he had which, between ourselves, she was sure was due to over-eating, and Meg swore by her cure for headaches. She was eager to add my mother’s recipes to her own. ‘You’re always learning something,’ she said.

I scarcely ever rode out because I found plenty to do in the house, and when I did I went round the paddock where I could be by myself.

Letters came from my mother and Bersaba. My mother’s were full of advice as to my housekeeping and telling me how she longed to see me. Bersaba’s were brief, so I suppose she was still easily tired. The intimate rapport between us seemed to have been lost. I suppose marriage had changed me, for I felt I had left the world of my childhood far behind me and had to start living a new life, but I was constantly thinking how wonderful it would be to see my mother and my sister.

I did not realize how I was thrown inwardly on my own resources and that I was becoming obsessed by the past, yet desperately as I wanted to please my husband I must understand him and learn all I could about him. I must therefore discover all that was possible of his life before he had known me and one of the most important events in that past must naturally have been his marriage.

Working on Magdalen’s canvas, sitting in her room, I felt I was getting to know
her.
She was one of the Herriots—a very well-known family. ‘High places at Court, they had,’ Mrs Cherry told me. ‘There were a lot of girls—six of them—and husbands had to be found for them. My lady was the youngest. She was always timid.’

Poor little Magdalen, who had been so frightened of the trials of childbirth. I shouldn’t be like that, I knew, for if only I could have a dear little baby everything would be worthwhile. After all, the best things in life had to be worked for, suffered for.

I found a great pleasure in being out of doors. On warm days I would take my canvas and sit in the pond garden. It was rather amusing to sit there in the very surrounding which I was stitching on to my canvas. I would wander around a good deal. I watched the flowers opening in the enclosed gardens and it occurred to me that I might bring in some of my own ideas. Perhaps I should tell Richard what I would like to do before consulting with the gardeners. However, there was no harm in making plans.

I found my footsteps led me often in the direction of the castle, but the high wall made it impossible to see it at close quarters, although I knew, from the Castle Room view, that surrounding the building was a thick growth of fir trees forming themselves into a little wood.

I wondered a great deal about it and what it was like inside. I imagined a tiny guardroom, suits of armour, a little keep, spiral staircases—Castle Paling in miniature.

The fir trees grew thick on both sides of the wall. Some of them could have been quite young trees planted perhaps when the wall was built. They were of the cupressus variety, the kind which grows very quickly and in a few years a little sprig becomes a bushy tree. The thought occurred to me that they might have been chosen for that purpose.

The more I thought of it the more strange it seemed. Of course, I thought, Richard is fully occupied with his military career. He doesn’t want the nuisance of having workmen here pulling down the castle. It would be a major undertaking. That was why he left it, and because it had been neglected for some years it probably was dangerous. But why build a wall around it?

I could not keep my thoughts from it. It was the first thing I looked at when I went to the Castle Room, and when I explored the gardens again and again it seemed my steps almost involuntarily led me there.

One day when I was walking through the trees close to the wall I felt suddenly alert, for I sensed that someone was near me in the copse. I didn’t know why that should startle me so much, for one of the servants might easily be there. But why should they be there? They might ask why should I.
I
was there because I was naturally curious about anything that concerned my new home and my husband, and I could not quite reconcile myself to the explanation he had given me of this mysterious castle.

I listened. The swish of a branch as someone brushed it aside; the dislodgement of a stone; the startled scurry of a rabbit or some such animal; but most of all the awareness of a presence. Someone was watching me. Perhaps someone who had seen me come here before and was alarmed by my curiosity?

I was going to find out.

I went forward quickly, then paused to listen.

Yes, there was the unmistakable sound of retreating footsteps.

‘Who’s there?’ I called.

There was no answer. And then … through the trees I saw a face. It was there and it was gone. Whoever it belonged to must have been hiding behind one of the trees and I had just caught him peering out.

It was a face though that, once seen, would not be easily forgotten. The dark hair grew low on the forehead and the bushy eyebrows were jet black; the face was very pale—unusually so—and there was a vivid birthmark on the left cheek.

It was the sort of face that could be a little startling and especially disembodied, as it were, for the tree hid the rest of him.

‘Who are you?’ I cried.

But the face disappeared, and for a few moments I could do nothing but stand there because I was more than a little startled by what I had seen.

Then I went on through the woods, calling to whoever it was to stop. But there was no response. I went through the trees until I came to the wall surrounding the castle. It was the first time I had approached it from this direction and that was how I discovered the door in the wall. I stood for a moment examining it, looking, furtively I must admit, over my shoulder, expecting at any moment to see that rather unearthly apparition. A door in the wall! There was an arch which betrayed it, for the wall at this point was covered with creeper which festooned over it, almost obscuring the door. I pushed aside the creeper and examined it closely. There was a keyhole which would take a large key. I lay against the door and pushed it. It was fast locked.

It was very strange, and as I stood there a sense of apprehension came over me. I felt alone suddenly and very isolated from the household of Far Flamstead. I kept thinking of that face which had looked at me through the trees, the strange expression of the eyes. They had not been threatening, far from it. They had seemed almost afraid of
me,
which was perhaps why I had somewhat recklessly followed.

But now I felt a great urge to get out of the copse. I started to run and did not stop until I was through the trees and in the clear.

I was quite breathless, and the first person I saw was Mrs Cherry. She was coming out of the herb garden carrying some leaves and sprigs in her apron which she must just have gathered.

‘Why, you look startled, my lady,’ she said.

‘I … I just saw someone in the copse.’

‘In the copse, my lady?’

‘Yes, the one by the castle wall.’

‘Oh?’ Her round eyes seemed to have taken on an alert look. ‘Trespassers then … ’

‘It was a man with dark hair and brows and there was some birthmark on his cheek.’

She hesitated for a few seconds, her brows drawn together while she looked down at the grass. Then she lifted her face and was smiling. ‘Oh, that would be Strawberry John. So he were there, were he? He’d no right, the rascal.’

‘Strawberry John. What’s that?’

‘He have this mark on his cheek like. In strawberry season it comes up just like a strawberry. They say his mother had a terrible fancy for strawberries when she were carrying him and he were born with it … right on his cheek, it is, so you can’t fail to see it. He makes a bit by poaching where he shouldn’t, if you get my meaning. Yes, I know Strawberry John.’