Филиппа Карр - Saraband for Two Sisters

As soon as I could I said I was tired and I would go to my room, but my sister had to come up with me to tell me that I looked pale and strained and that I had been very wrong to ride out alone. Chiding me with this tender scolding was more than I could endure and I begged her to leave me alone that I might close my eyes and try to sleep.

Sleep! As i£ I could sleep.

I had lain there for half an hour when there was a knock on the door. I closed my eyes, thinking it was Angelet returning, but it was not. It was the maid Ginny with some posset Angelet had sent up for me.

I looked at Ginny. She was twenty-one, very wise. She had had a child when she was fourteen and kept him with her in one of the attics because my mother said that it was not right that a mother should be parted from her child. There had been many lovers since for Ginny but no more children. “Foolish girl,” said my mother. “She will find herself in trouble again one day.” But I understood her. She wasn’t so much foolish as helpless.

“Mistress Angelet said you was to take this, mistress,” she said now. “Her said it ‘ud make you sleep.”

“Thank you, Ginny,” I said.

She gave it to me. It was hot and soothing.

‘Wait a bit while I drink it.”

“Yes, mistress.”

“Have you ever talked to a witch, Ginny?”

“Oh, yes. I went to one when I had my trouble. It was too late though ... she could do nothing for me.”

“That was Jenny Keys, wasn’t it? They hanged her in the lane. »

“Yes, mistress, it were. There was naught wrong with Jenny Keys. She’d helped many a girl from her trouble and it was beautiful to see the way she could charm off your warts. She did good, she did. My granny used to say, there be white and black witches, Ginny, and Jenny Keys be a white one.’”

“Some didn’t think so.”

“No, there be some terrible people about. Jenny Keys could turn off a bad spell. Why, when my young brother had the whooping cough Jenny Keys cured him by tying a bag of spiders round his neck. I don’t reckon Jenny Keys ever laid a spell. Some of them do though, and there’s always them as will tell against a woman who’s a witch. Tain’t safe... being a witch... black or white.”

‘What happened to Jenny Keys?”

“There was people who hated her. They started to talk about her, build up against her like. A cow died in calf ... so did the calf, and the cowherd he were so mad he said he’d caught Jenny Keys ill-wishing it. Someone else said she’d gone along for a remedy and had seen Jenny Keys in her cottage with her black cat there at her feet and she was roasting a bullock’s heart stuffed with pins. She was saying: Tis not this heart I wish to burn But Jack Perran’s heart I wish to turn. Wishing him neither rest nor peace. Till he be dead and gone.

And when Jack Perran died ... all sudden in his sleep, people started whispering. They started remembering other witches and how in the times of King James there’d been regular witch baiting. They reckoned a lot of them had been driven underground at that time but now they was coming out again. They reckoned they ought to make an example of one. They talked ... they remembered ... they spied on Jenny Keys. Then came the day when they took her and hung her on a tree in Hangmans Lane.”

“If she was indeed a witch perhaps it was right”

“Perhaps it were, mistress, but they do say she were a white witch.”

“There was a witch once at Castle Paling. Have you ever heard of her?”

Ginny was startled. She looked furtively over her shoulder. “Why, yes, mistress, everyone have heard of how she come by the sea. My Granny told me. It were always remembered. She came and she went back to the Devil and came back again and then she went back to him and was never heard of no more.” I shivered.

“You be cold, mistress?”

“Someone walking over my grave, Ginny, as they say. You know the ladies here?”

Ginny was very disturbed. “Yes, mistress.”

“Well, the young beautiful one is the granddaughter of that witch.”

“Yes, mistress.”

“I’m going too far too fast,” I thought. But nevertheless I went on.

“Do you think the powers are passed down ... these dark powers, I mean?”

Ginny was a conspirator. Her voice sounded hoarse.

“I’ve heard it’s so. Yes, indeed I’ve heard it said.”

“I wonder... Here, take the dish. The posset was good and warming. I feel I could sleep now.”

She took the dish and tiptoed out. I felt like a gardener who Las prepared the ground and sown the first seeds.

Now I could wait and see what crop came forth.

I felt better because I had a plan. I became obsessed by it and would awake in the night when a wild excitement possessed me and this soothed my hatred and bitterness. I could understand Homer’s saying, “Revenge is sweeter far than flowing honey.” I used to dream of Carlotta’s being dragged by the mob to the tree in Hangmans Lane and all the humiliations which would be thrust upon her. I pictured her half-naked body and lewd men watching her and afterward Bastian coming to the lane and seeing her hanging there.

“How wicked I am!” I thought; but the hurt was so deep that I had to soothe it some way and at the back of my mind I believed it to be only a fantasy-like a daydream when one receives comfort for indulging in a fancy that one possesses something which is unattainable.

Carlotta created a good deal of attention in a household like ours. She was so different with her airs and graces; she was exotic, and anything foreign aroused suspicions in the simple. With interest I watched the servants’ behavior toward her. They were fascinated and a little afraid, and I did all I could to foster this fear in them. I think Ginny had talked and reminded them of that old story of the witch who had come from the sea.

Once, when we were riding, I saw a woman hurry away as we went by, averting her eyes from Carlotta, and I exulted because it seemed to me that the seeds I had sown were sprouting.

Bastian had left the next day. I don’t think he could bear to be in the same house with Carlotta and me together. When he left I did not say good-bye to him but kept out of the way, though I watched him ride off from one of the turret windows and saw how he kept looking backward, for a last glimpse of Carlotta, I thought angrily. Sometimes when I was in my room I would be frightened at what I was doing. I wanted to kill Carlotta, but not in a straightforward way since I planned that others should do it for me. It was cowardly because I was planning it so that when it happened I could pretend it had nothing to do with me.

Then, when I was with her, I would say to myself, “She deserves it. There is something wicked about her ... something evil. I believe she is a witch, for only a witch could have taken Bastian from me, and if she is, it is better that she be removed.”

Nobody could deny her beauty. It was not beauty which is a joy to behold and is the outward manifestation of inner goodness. I always thought my mother was beautiful in that way. Carlotta’s was a beauty which came from the Devil-meant for the destruction of those about her. At least that was what I told myself.

Her mother, Senara, was proud of her, but I didn’t think she loved her; and I was certain that Carlotta loved no one but herself. Indeed, sometimes I used to think that if Bastian married her that would be sufficient punishment for his treatment of me.

The servants did not like Carlotta. She was too arrogant with them, reminding them always that she was the great lady and they beneath her notice except for what they could do for her. She and her mother shared a Spanish maid whom they had brought with them. Ana was a woman in her mid-thirties, dark-haired with a faint line of black hairs on her upper lip and deepset eyes. She was very quiet and I had never heard her speak, but I imagined she was efficient and an excellent lady’s maid, for the manner in which she dressed Carlotta’s hair was a wonder in itself. Silent-footed, almost mouselike, one was hardly aware of her. She slept in a small anteroom adjoining Carlotta’s bedroom.