Виктория Холт - The legend of the seventh virgin

"Perhaps he don't care what people think like you do, Kerensa."

"He's got to care!" I said.

"He will, if it's meant."

"You said nothing was meant. You said people make their own future."

"Each makes his own, lovey. Tis for him to make what he will, same as tis for you to."

"He lies there on the talfat most of the day ... with his animals."

"Leave him be, lovey," said Granny. "He'll make his own life the way he wants."

But I wasn't going to leave him be! I was going to make him understand how he had to break out of this life into which he had been born. We were too good for it—all of us. Granny, Joe, and me. I wondered why Granny hadn't seen it, how she could be content to live her life as she had.

Gathering herbs always soothed me. Granny would explain where we had to go to find what we wanted; then she would tell me about the healing properties of each one. But on that day, as we picked, every now and then I would hear the distant sounds of the guns.

When we were tired, she said we should sit down under the trees and I persuaded her to talk of the past.

When Granny talked she seemed to put a spell on me, so that I felt I was there where it was all happening; I even felt that I was Granny herself, being wooed by Pedro Bee, the young miner who was different from all the others. He used to sing lovely songs to her which she didn't understand because they were in Spanish.

"But tain't always necessary to hear words to know," she told me. "Oh, he were not much liked in these parts, being a foreigner and all. There wasn't enough work for Cornishmen some of them did say—let alone foreigners coming to take the manshuns out of their mouths. But my Pedro, he laughed at 'un. He did say that once he'd seen me that was enough. He was going to stay, for where I be that was where he belonged to be."

"Granny, you loved him, truly loved him."

"He was the man for me and I wanted no other—nor ever have."

"So you never had another lover?"

Granny's face was set in an expression I had never seen there before. She had turned her head slightly in the direction of the Abbas and seemed as though she were actually listening for the guns.

"Your grandfather was not a mild man," she said. "He'd have killed the one who wronged him as lief as look at 'un. That were the man *e were."

"Did he ever kill anyone, Granny?"

"No, but he might have ... he would have ... if he'd known."

"Known what, Granny?"

She didn't answer, hut her face was like a mask that she'd put on so that no one should see what was beneath.

I lay against her, looking up at the trees. The firs would stay green all through the winter but the leaves on the others were already russet brown. The cold weather would soon be with us.

Granny said after a long pause: "But it was so long ago."

"That you had another lover?"

"He weren't no lover, I'll tell 'ee. Perhaps I should tell 'ee—for a warning. Tis well to know the way the world wags for others, for maybe it'll wag that way for you. This other one were Justin St. Larnston ... not this Sir Justin. His father."

I sat bolt upright, my eyes wide.

"You, Granny, and Sir Justin St. Larnston!"

"This one's father. There wasn't much difference in them. He was a wicked one."

"Then why ..."

"For Pedro's sake."

"But ..."

"Tis like you to come to a judgment afore you've heard the facts, child. Now I'm started, I must go and tell you all. He saw me; he fancied me; I was a St. Larnston girl, and I was bespoke. He must have made inquiries and found I was to marry Pedro. I remember how he cornered me. There's a little walled garden close to the house."

I nodded.

"I were silly. Went to see one of the maids that was in the kitchens. He caught me in that garden, and that was when he fancied me. Promised a job for Pedro that'd be safer and better paid than working in the mine—if I'd be sensible. Pedro never knew. And I stood out against him. I loved Pedro; I was going to marry Pedro; and there weren't going to be nobody for me but Pedro."

"And then ... ?"

"Things started going wrong for Pedro. The St. Larnston mine was being worked then, and we was in his power. I thought he'd forget me. But he didn't. The more I stood out, the more he wanted me. Pedro never knew. That was the miracle. So one night ... before we was married I went along to him, for I said that if it could be secret and he'd let Pedro alone ... it would be better than the way it were."

"Granny!"

"It shocks you, lovey. I'm glad. But Tm going to make you see I had to do it. I've thought of it since and I know I was right. It was like what I told you . , . making your own future. Mine was with Pedro. I wanted us to be together always in the cottage and our children round us ... boys looking like Pedro, girls like me. And I thought what's once if it'll buy that future for us? And I was right, for it would have been the end of Pedro. You don't know what he were like, that long-ago Sir Justin. He didn't have no feelings for the likes of we. We were like the pheasants they be shooting now ... bred up for his sport. He'd have killed Pedro in time; he'd have put him on the dangerous work. I had to make him leave us alone because I could see that this were like a sport to him. So I went to him first."

"I hate the St. Larnstons," I said.

"Times change, Kerensa, and people change with them. Times is cruel hard but not quite so cruel hard as they were when I was your age. And when your children come, then times'll be a little easier for them. It's the way of things."

"Granny, what happened then?"

"It weren't the end. Once weren't enough. He liked me too well. This black hair of mine that Pedro loved so much ... he liked it, too. There was a blight on my first year of marriage, Kerensa. It should have been so fine and grand, but I had to go to him, you see ... and if Pedro had known, he would have killed him—for passion ran high in his dear heart."

"You were frightened. Granny."

She frowned as though trying to remember. "It were a sort of wild gamble. And it went on for nigh on a year, when I found I was to have a child ... and I didn't know whose. Kerensa, I wouldn't have his child, I wouldn't. I saw it all through the years ... looking like him ... and deceiving Pedro. It would be like a stain that would never be washed out. I couldn't do it. So ... I didn't have the child, Kerensa. I was very ill. I came near to dying, but I didn't have the child; and that were the end as far as he were concerned. He forgot me then. I tried to make up to Pedro. He said I was the gentlest woman in the world with him, though I could be fierce enough with everyone else. It pleased him, Kerensa. It made him happy. And sometimes I think the reason I was so gentle with him and did all I could to please him, was because I'd wronged him; and that seemed strange to me. Like good out of evil. That made me understand a lot about life; that was the beginning of my being able to help others. So, Kerensa, you should never regret any experience, good or evil; for there's some good in what's bad just as there be bad in good ... sure as I sit here in the woods beside you. Two years later, your mother was born—our daughter, Pedro's and mine; and her birth nearly killed me and I couldn't have no more. It was all along of what had happened before, Fm thinking. Oh, but it were a good life. The years pass and the evil is forgotten and many a time I've looked into the past and I've said to myself you couldn't have done different. It was the only way."

"But why should they be able to spoil our lives!" I demanded passionately.

"There's strong and weak in the world; and if you're born weak you must find strength. It'll come to you if you look"

"I shall find strength, Granny."

"Yes, girl, you will, if you want. It's for you to say."