Филиппа Карр - The Song of the Siren

She was not the sort of child he was interested in and characteristically he made no effort to pretend he was. He did everything he could to intensify her fear of him. Grandmother Arabella scolded him for it and was particularly sweet to Damaris because of it. My grandfather preferred a rebel like me. He had not really wanted to stop my marriage to Beau, although he had ridden out after us when we eloped.

He thought it would be good for me to learn my own lessons. There was a great deal of him in me and he knew it, and as he thought what he was was the right thing to be, he had an affection for me which he never would have for Damaris.

She folded my gowns, stroking them as she did so.

“I love this blue one, Carlotta,” she said. “It’s the colour of peacocks’ feathers.

The colour of your eyes.”

“Indeed it is not,” I said. “My eyes are several shades lighter.”

“But they look this colour when you wear this gown.”

“Damaris, how old are you?”

“Nearly twelve,” she said.

“Then it is time you started thinking about what brings out the blue in your own eyes.”

“But mine are not blue,” she said. “They’re no colour at all. They’re like water.

Sometimes they look grey, sometimes green, and only a little blue if I wear something of a very deep blue. And I haven’t those lovely black lashes; mine are light brown and they don’t show very much.”

“Damaris, I can see what you look like very well and I don’t want a detailed description.

What shoes have you packed?”

She started to enumerate them, smiling in her usual good-tempered way. It was impossible to ruffle Damaris.

Twelve years old, I mused. I was just past twelve when I first met Beau. I was very different from Damaris. Aware even then of those glances that came my way. Damaris never saw anything but sick animals and tenants who were in need of repairs to their dwellings. She would make a very good wife for someone as stolid and virtuous as herself.

“Oh, get along, Damaris,” I said. “I can do this better myself.”

Crestfallen, she went. I was unkind to her. I should have tried to deserve a little of that admiration which she gave me so unstintingly. Poor pudgy little Damaris, I thought. She would always be the one to serve others and forget herself. She would live pleasantly ... for others and never really have a life of her own.

If I wasn’t so impatient with her I could find time to be sorry for her.

I was to leave the next day; and there was quite a ceremonial supper at Eversleigh, for my grandmother always insisted on our going over on occasions like this.

My uncle Carl, my mother’s brother, was home on leave. He had followed the family tradition and gone into the army. He was very like his father and Carleton was rather proud of him.

My grandmother gave me lots of messages for Harriet and had prepared some herbs and lotions which she thought might interest her. They would go with my baggage on one of the pack horses. It was a three-day journey taken in easy stages, and they were discussing the route by which I should go. As I had done it many times before this seemed unnecessary.

I protested that they were making it seem like the feast of the Passover.

Grandfather laughed and said: “Oh, our lady Carlotta is a seasoned traveller.”

“Enough of one to feel that all this discussion is unwarranted,” I said.

“I heard that the Black Boar is a most reliable inn,” put in Arabella.

“I can verify that,” said Carl. “I spent a night there on the way here.”

“Then you must go to the Black Boar,” said my mother.

“I wonder why they call it the Black Boar,” asked Damaris.

“They keep one there to set on the travellers they don’t like,” said my grandfather.

Damaris looked alarmed and my mother said: “Your grandfather is teasing, Damaris.”

Then the political talk started and once that had begun my grandfather would not let it stop. My grandmother suggested that we leave the men to fight their imaginary battles while we gave ourselves to more serious matters.

So the females sat in the cosy winter parlour and talked about my journey and what I must take, and that I must not allow Harriet to keep me too long. I was delighted when we left for the Dower House.

The next morning I was up at dawn. My mother and Damaris were in the stables and my mother assured herself that everything I should need was on the two packhorses.

Three grooms were accompanying me and one of them was to look after the packhorses.

My mother wore her anxious look.

“I shall expect a messenger to be sent back to me as soon as you arrive.”

I promised this should be done.

Then I kissed her and Damaris and set out, riding behind two of the grooms while one rode behind me; and the packhorses came a little way behind him. It was the usual procedure for the roads, for although they had improved in late years, they could still be unsafe.

I had had instructions, which I had agreed to obey, that I would not travel after dark.

I was on my way to Harriet.

It was a beautiful morning and I felt my spirits rise as we rode along the familiar lanes all gay and full of flowers-meadsweet, stitchwort and ground ivy. I could smell the sweet hawthorn as we passed fields in which the buttercups and daisies abounded, and in the orchards the apple and cherry trees were a riot of rose and white.

The fresh morning air, the beauty of the countryside, could not fail to have their effect on me. I felt more carefree than I had since I lost Beau and it seemed as though nature was telling me that I must not go on brooding forever. One season was past but another was beginning. Beau had gone and I must face that.

And yet what of the button I had found in Enderby? What of the scent of musk that had hung in the air? I had gone there again and there was no longer perfume in the air. There was nothing. I could have believed I had imagined it all but for the button.

He must have left it there before he went away. It could have remained in a corner, and perhaps when Mistress Pilkington went through the house she disturbed it. Yes, a possibility, but what of that scent?

You could have imagined it, I told myself.

Perhaps I wanted to think that on this May morning. I began to think of riding in the woods near Eyot Abbass with Benjie and rowing over to the Eyot with him. We could picnic there and stroll among the ruins. I was conceived there. My mother had told me that much. And when she and my father, Jocelyn, had returned to the mainland he had been captured and taken off to his execution. Yes, it was not to be wondered at that I had a special feeling for the Eyot.

We rode for a long time along the coast road and made good progress the first day.

The weather was ideal and we put up at dusk at the Dolphin Inn, where I had stayed on other occasions and was known to the host. He was delighted to see me and my party and served us some very good pike. There were quarters for us all at the inn, and following a good night’s rest we left early in the morning after a hearty breakfast of ale and cold bacon with freshly baked bread to which we did justice.

The morning began well. The sun was warm and the roads fairly good, and just before midday we stopped at the Rose and Grown and there partook of pigeon pies with the inn’s special brew of cider, which was a little more potent than we realized. I had very little of it but the groom in charge of the saddlebags was less abstemious and by the time we were ready to go he had fallen into a deep sleep.

I roused him but I could see that he would be little use on the road until he had a rest.

I said to Jem, the chief of the groom guards: “We can either wait or leave him.”