Филиппа Карр - Saraband for Two Sisters

Once, when we were very young, my mother bought us sashes for our dresses-mine was red and Angelet’s blue. “We shall now be able to tell you apart,” she had said jokingly. And when I saw Angelet in the blue and how people turned to her first and talked to her more than they did to me I became obsessed by the blue sash and it seemed to me that there was some magic in it. I took her blue sash and told her she could have my red one. She refused this, saying that the blue was hers. And one day I went to the drawer in which the sashes were kept and I cut the blue one into shreds. Our mother was bewildered. She talked to me a great deal, asking me why I had done this, but I did not know how to put my thoughts into words. Then she said to me, “You thought the blue one was better because it was Angelet’s.

You were envious of her blue sash, and you see what you have done. There is now no blue sash for either of you. There are seven deadly sins, Bersaba.” She told me what they were. “And the greatest of these is envy. Curb it, my dear child, for envy hurts those who bear it far more than those against whom it is directed. You see, you are more unhappy about the blue sash than your sister is.”

I pondered that. It was true, because Angelet had forgotten the sash in a day, though it lived on in my memory. But the incident did nothing to curb my envy. It grew from that to what it is today. It’s like a parasite growing round an oak tree and the oak tree is my love and need of my sister-for I do love her; she is a part of me. Nature, I think, divided certain qualities and gave her some and me the others, In so many ways we are so distinctly different and it is only my secretive nature that prevents this being obvious, for I am certain that no one has any idea of the dark thoughts which go on in my mind.

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 afterward.

“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 anymore, 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 everytime 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 looked straight into my heart, soul, and mind and asked 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 demanded the truth however unpleasant or detrimental to myself.

Afterward 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 sties and give you love potions to enslave a. lover. I believe that if you have bad luck some witches can help you find ill-wishers who could he 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.