The Witch from the Sea (56 page)

After Carlotta and her mother had arrived Angelet came up to our room. She was very uneasy, because although she had no idea of the nature of my relationship with Bastian, she knew that I admired him and sought his company and he mine.

She looked at me anxiously. How relieved I am that I am not one of those girls who shed tears at the slightest provocation. I cry with rage sometimes; never the soft sentimental tears which Angelet gives way to. A sad story will bring the tears to her eyes, but they are easy tears, for she will have forgotten what made her cry a very short time afterwards.

‘What do you think of it?’ she cried. ‘Carlotta and Bastian!’

I shrugged my shoulders, but that couldn’t deceive even Angelet.

‘Of course,’ she went on, making an effort not to look at me, ‘he is getting old and I suppose it’s time he married. He was bound to marry sooner or later. But Carlotta! Why, she has only been there a week or so. What do you think of her, Bersaba?’

‘I suppose she is very attractive,’ I said calmly.

‘It’s a strange sort of attraction,’ said Angelet. ‘There’s something odd about her … and about her mother. I wonder if it’s true that her grandmother was a witch.’

Horrible pictures came into my mind, but I did nothing to suppress them because they soothed me.

Once, when I was about twelve years old, we had been riding with our mother and some of the grooms and we had come upon a shouting mob. There had been a woman in their midst and she was not such an old woman either. Her clothes were torn from her body and she was half naked, but it was the look of abject terror in her face which I had never forgotten. The crowd was chanting, ‘Hang the witch. Hang the witch.’ I don’t think I ever saw such fear in any face, before or after.

My mother had said: ‘We will go now.’ She turned her horse, and we rode off at speed in the opposite direction from that in which we had been going. ‘These things happen,’ she told us, ‘but it will not always be so. People will become more enlightened.’

I wanted to ask questions but my mother said: ‘We won’t speak of it any more, Bersaba. We’ll forget it. It’s unpleasant; it exists; but in time people will be wiser. We can do no good by talking of it, thinking of it …’

That was the attitude in our home. If there was anything unpleasant one did not think of it. If my mother had a fault it was pretending that things were so much better than they were. She told herself every time my father went away that he would come safely back. She was wise in a way; but it had never been mine to pretend, even to myself. I look straight into my heart, soul and mind and ask myself why I did such a thing. I think I know myself better than my mother or Angelet will ever know themselves because of this side of my nature which demands the truth however unpleasant or detrimental to myself.

Afterwards I went back to that lane and I saw the woman hanging there. It was a gruesome sight, for the crows were attacking her. Her hair was long and I could see even then that she had been a beautiful woman. It was beastly; it was vile; it haunted me for a long time; but at least it was reality.

And now I was thinking of Carlotta in the hands of that mob, Carlotta being dragged to that tree. Her grandmother was a witch … Perhaps she was. Perhaps that accounted for the manner in which she had taken Bastian from me. She had cast some spell upon him. An odd excitement possessed me and I felt better than I had since I had heard.

I said: ‘Is witchcraft something that is handed down from grandmother to mother and then on and on, I wonder?’

Angelet looked happy because she had come to the conclusion in her light let’s-see-the-best-of-everything manner that my childish fondness for Bastian had not gone as deep as she feared. One of the lovable things about Angelet had always been that my trouble had been hers. I looked at her now with a kind of contempt—which might have been another form of envy, for I admitted it must be pleasant to sail through life without these intense feelings which beset people like myself—as she answered: ‘Perhaps it is. Oh, I do wonder if Carlotta
is
a witch.’

‘It would be interesting to find out,’ I said.

‘How?’ she asked.

‘We could think about that,’ I suggested.

‘There are good witches as well as bad ones,’ Angelet said, in keeping with her nature immediately bestowing benign qualities on the woman who had stolen my lover. ‘They cure you of warts and styes and give you love potions to enslave a lover. I believe that if you have bad luck some witches can help you find illwishers who could be causing that bad luck. I was talking to Ginny the other day. She knows a lot about witches. She’s always fancying herself ill-wished.’

‘We’ll talk to Ginny,’ I said, and all sorts of thoughts were whirling round in my head; they soothed me.

‘I wonder if Bastian knows,’ giggled Angelet. ‘You’d better ask him.’

‘Why don’t you?’

‘Oh, you know he always liked you best.’

‘Did he show it then?’

‘You know he did. Wasn’t he always losing himself with you in the woods?’

Now she must see. Her words stabbed me as though they were knife blades. Riding in the woods with him, his pursuing me, intending to be caught, lying on the grass among the bracken … His voice: ‘This is madness. What if we were seen?’ And not caring because it was so important, so necessary to us both.

And now … Carlotta.

I said fiercely: ‘I’m going to find out if she’s a witch.’

‘We will,’ replied Angelet blithely. She would be less blithe when they took Carlotta down the lane, when they stripped her clothes from her, when they hung her up by the neck and the crows came.

It was difficult hiding the fact that I was so stunned. Carlotta knew that I had been fond of Bastian, but did she know how far that fondness had carried us? The more I thought of that the more angry I became. I thought of the insult, the humiliation; I, Bersaba Landor, to be cast aside. And his own cousin too. He must have been completely bewitched.

Carlotta was watching me as a cat watches a mouse, teasing me in the same way, patting me with her paw, letting me run a little way then clawing me back. I comforted myself with the thought that she didn’t know how wounded I was. I was sure she thought I had had a little girl fondness for Bastian and that I, childish like Angelet, was just a little hurt because he no longer paid me the same attention.

At supper that night Fennimore sat at the head of the table and Carlotta turned her langorous eyes on him. Fennimore was made in the image of his father, and as Carlotta was engaged to marry his cousin Bastian, it would not occur to Fennimore to be aware of her fascination. Like my parents, my brother created a sense of security and made even me think that whatever happened, this would always be my home and my parents would shelter and protect me.

Carlotta talked of her coming marriage and what it would mean to her.

‘I hesitate,’ she said. ‘I am not sure that I would wish to be buried in the country.’

‘You’ll get used to it,’ said Fennimore easily. ‘Bastian will be involved with the estates and that can be a full-time job, I assure you.’

‘When we were in Madrid we went to Court often. I am already beginning to find it somewhat dull here.’

‘Then,’ said Angelet logically, ‘you should not marry Bastian, unless you have other interests.’ Angelet looked slyly at me, and I thought: Oh no, sister, not now.

‘What interests are there in the country?’

‘There’s riding, for one thing. You can ride far more in the country than in the town. There are exciting things … like the May revels and Christmas when we bring in the holly and the ivy. We do have the occasional ball.’

‘They are nothing like the Court balls, I do assure you,’ said Carlotta coldly.

‘There are exciting things, though,’ insisted Angelet, ‘like going to see the witch of the woods.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘They hanged her some time ago,’ said Angelet soberly, ‘but there’ll be another. There are always witches.’

‘What do you know of them?’ Carlotta was animated.

‘That they do all sorts of interesting things, don’t they, Bersaba?’

‘They sell their souls to Satan in return for special powers on earth which enable them to get what they want.’

‘It’s strange,’ said Fennimore, ‘that witches so often seem to be ugly old women. If they could have what they want you’d think they’d be beautiful.’

‘Perhaps there are some beautiful ones,’ said Carlotta.

I thought exultantly: She is. I am sure she is.

‘My grandmother was said to be a witch and I never saw a more beautiful woman,’ she went on.

‘I wonder,’ I said slowly, ‘if witchcraft powers are passed down through families.’

Carlotta looked steadily at me: ‘I think that could be very likely,’ she replied, and I knew that she wanted me to think that she had special powers, powers to get what she wanted—attract people to her, for instance, take them away from those whom they loved by making herself irresistible.

Fennimore—how typical of him—evidently considered the subject unsuitable for his young sisters and determinedly and deliberately changed it.

I didn’t listen to what was said. I was excited and felt better than I had since I had heard the news.

Two days after Carlotta and Senara had come to Trystan Priory Bastian rode over. I saw him from one of the castle windows and I did not know what to do. Part of me wanted to run to our room and shut myself in, but it was Angelet’s room too and how could I shut her out? Another part of me wanted to go down to him, to rage at him, to abuse him, to tell him that I hated him.

Neither of these actions could I take, and there is another trait in my character which I don’t quite know whether I should be grateful for or deplore. When something good or bad happens I seem to stand outside the event, to look in and watch myself and others, so that whatever my feelings I can always curb them and ask myself what action will bring most advantage to me. Angelet never stops to think; she does what comes naturally. If she is angry her anger bursts forth, so does her joy. I sometimes think it would be easier for me if I were like that. As at this time. If I did what was natural—either to go to my room and burst into floods of tears or go down and abuse Bastian—people would know what I was feeling. But being myself, even in my most abject misery and hatred, and feeling everything so much more intensely than Angelet ever could, I must be outwardly calm and say: What is the best thing for me to do? And by best I always mean advantageous to myself.

So now I pondered, and I decided that I would go away from the house, so that if he looked for me he would be unable to find me. That would give me time to think.

I quickly changed into my riding-habit and went down to the stables, saddled my mare and rode out. As the wind brushed my face and caught at the hair under my riding-hat, I could smell the dampness of the earth, for it had been raining in the night. I felt the tears coming to my eyes, and I knew that if I could have cried I should have felt relieved to some extent. But I would not cry. Instead I nursed my anger. I thought of the insult to my pride, and I knew that I had loved Bastian because he had noticed me more and liked me better than my sister and that it was my pride which had made me love him; now he had wounded that pride he had taken away my reason for loving him and I hated him. I wanted to hurt him as he had hurt me.

I heard a small voice within me saying: ‘You never loved Bastian. You loved only yourself.’

And I knew it was true and I wished that I were like Angelet who never probed her own secret mind as I did.

I went down the old pack-horse track where the flowers on the blackberry bushes were out in abundance, and where we came with our dishes at the end of summer and gathered them so that they could make preserves in the stillroom. I started to gallop past the fields of deep green wheat and I came to the woods—the woods where I had lain with Bastian when he visited us at Trystan Priory. The foxgloves were flowering there. Angelet and I once gathered them and took them into the house, and old Sarah who worked in the kitchens said they were poison flowers and witches knew how to brew a potion from them to make you sleep forever.

I would like to make Carlotta sleep forever.

I was wrong to have come to the woods where there were too many memories. I thought of the last time we had been here together. It was six months ago—in January—and the trees were bare—lacy branches seen against a grey sky. How beautiful they had been; more beautiful, I had said to Bastian, than they were in summer.

‘I’d rather have the leaves to shelter us,’ he had said. ‘It’s dangerous here.’

‘Nonsense,’ I had replied. ‘Who’d come to the woods in winter?’

‘We did.’

It was cold, I remember—the wind was chill; but I said to him: ‘While our love is warm, what matters it?’

And we laughed and were happy and he said: ‘This time next winter we shall announce our betrothal.’ And it was an enchanted afternoon.

When we rode back I pointed out the points of yellow in the jasmine which climbed over one of the cottages we passed.

‘Promise of spring,’ said Bastian. It seemed significant. The future was full of promise for us.

Why did I want to come here to revive memories? Better to have stayed in the house.

Then I saw a man riding towards me, and I felt a sudden quiver of alarm because I was doing what was forbidden—riding out alone. I spurred up my horse and, turning off the road, broke into a canter across the meadow. My alarm intensified, for the man who had been on the road was coming across the meadow in my direction.

There is nothing to fear, I admonished myself. Why should he not come this way?

I seemed to hear my mother’s voice. ‘I never want you girls to go out alone. It is all right if Fennimore or Bastian is with you. But always make sure that there are two grooms at least.’

He had ridden past me and was pulling up his horse. Strangely enough my fear had left me; excitement took its place, for the rider was no ruffian. Far from it. He was elegant in the extreme and a stranger, for we did not often see such gentlemen in the country.