Виктория Холт - The Mask of the Enchantress

It was very flattering, for although she did talk awhile to Aunt Amelia, when I would be sent out of the parlor, it did seem as though her visits were especially for me.

After she had gone it would seem different in the house. Uncle William would look as though he was trying hard to stop his features breaking into a smile; and Aunt Amelia would go about murmuring to herself: "I don't know. I don't know."

The visits were noticed in the village of course. James, who drove the fly, and the stationmaster whispered together about her. I realized later that they drew their own conclusions on the matter, which could hardly have been called obscure, and I have no doubt that I should have learned earlier but for Matty Grey's injunction to her grandson to look after me. Tom had made it clear that I was in his charge, and anyone offending me would have to answer to him. I loved Tom though he never deigned to speak much to me. For me, however, he was my protector, my knight in shining armor, my Lohengrin.

But even Tom could not stop the children putting their heads together and whispering about me, and one day Anthony Felton noticed the mole just below my mouth on the right side of my chin.

"Just look at that mark on Suewellyn's face," he cried. "It's where the Devil kissed her."

They all listened with wide eyes while he told them how the Devil came at midnight and picked out his own. Then he kissed them and where he had touched them there was left a mark.

"Silly," I said. "Lots of people have moles."

"There's a special sort," said Anthony darkly. "I know it when I see it. I saw a witch once and she had one just like that right near her mouth... . See?"

They were all looking at me with horror.

"She don't look like a witch," Jane Motley ventured, and I was sure I did not, in my prim serge dress and mid-brown hair severely scraped back from my forehead and drawn over the top of my head to be plaited into two ropes, each tied with a piece of navy-blue ribbon. A nice neat suitable style, as Aunt Amelia had often commented when I wanted to wear it loose.

"Witches change shapes," explained Anthony.

"I always knew there was something different about Suewellyn," said Gill, the blacksmith's girl.

"What's he like ... the Devil?" asked someone.

"I don't know," I answered. "I've never seen him."

"Don't you believe her," said Anthony Felton. "That's the Devil's mark on her."

"You're a silly boy," I told him, "and no one would listen to you if you weren't the squire's grandson."

"Witch," said Anthony.

Tom was not at school that day. He had had to go and help dig up potatoes for his father.

I was afraid. They were all looking at me so oddly; and I was suddenly aware of isolation, of being different from the herd.

It was a strange feeling—exultation in a way because I was different—and, in another way, fear.

Miss Brent came in then and there was no more whispering, but when lessons were over for the day I ran out of school quickly. I was afraid of those children. It was due to something I had seen in their eyes. They really believed that the Devil had visited me in the night and put his mark on me.

I ran across the green to where Matty Grey was sitting at her door; there was a pint pot beside her and her hands were folded in her lap.

She called out to me: "Where you running to then ... like you've got the Devil at your heels?"

Cold fear touched me. I looked over my shoulder.

Matty burst out laughing. "Just a way of talking. There ain't no Devil behind you. Why, you look real skerried out of your wits, that you do."

I sat down at her feet.

"Where's Tom?" I asked.

"Still digging taties. It's a good crop this year." She licked her lips. "A good tatie is hard to beat. All hot and floury in a nice brown jacket. Nothing like it, Suewellyn."

I said: "It's this mole on my face."

She peered at me without moving. "What's that?" she said. "Oh, that's a beauty spot, that is."

"It's where the Devil kissed me, they said."

"Who said?"

"At school."

"They've no right to say that. I'll tell Tom. He'll stop 'em."

"Why is it there then, Matty?"

"Oh, sometimes you's born with it. People is born with all sorts of things. Now my aunt's cousin was born with what looked like a bunch of strawberries on her face ... all along of her mother having a fancy for strawberries before she was born."

"What did my mother fancy for me to be born with a spot like that on my face?"

I was thinking: And where is my mother? That was another strange thing about me. I had no mother. I had no father. There were orphans in the village but they knew who their parents had been. The difference was that I did not.

"Well, there's no knowing, is there, ducky?" said Matty comfortably. "We all of us get these things now and again. I knew a girl once born with six fingers. Now that wasn't easy to hide. What's a mole nobody's noticed before? I'll tell you something. I think it's sort of pretty there. There's some people that makes a lot of that sort of thing. They darken 'em to call attention to them. You don't want to worry about that."

Matty was one of the most comforting people I ever knew in my life. She was so content with her lot, which was nothing much but living in that dark little cottage—"one up, one down, a bit at the back where I can do the washing and cooking, and a privy at the bottom of the garden," was the way she described it. It was next door to that of her son, Tom's father. "Near but not too close," she used to say, "which is as it should be." And if the days were dry enough for her to sit outside and see what was going on, she asked no more.

Aunt Amelia might deplore the fact that she sat at her door bringing down the tone of the green, but Matty lived her life as she wanted to and had reached a contentment which few people achieve.

When I went to school the next day Anthony Felton came up to me and whispered in my ear: "You're a bastard."

I stared at him. I had heard that word used in abuse and I was ready to let him know my opinion of him. But Tom came up at that moment and Anthony slunk off at once.

"Tom," I whispered, "he called me a bastard."

"Never mind," said Tom and added mysteriously: "It wasn't the kind of bastard you think." Which was very confusing at the time.

Two or three days before my sixth birthday Aunt Amelia took me into the parlor to talk to me. It was a very solemn occasion and I waited with trepidation for what she was going to tell me.

It was the first day of September and a shaft of sunlight had managed to get through one of the slats in the blinds which had not been properly closed. I can see it now all so clearly—the horsehair sofa; the horsehair chairs to match, which, mercifully, were rarely sat on, with the antimacassars placed primly on their backs; the whatnot in the corner with its ornaments which were dusted twice a week; the holy pictures on the wall with that of the young Queen looking very disagreeable, her arms folded and the ribbon of the Garter over her very sloping shoulders. There was no gayety in that room at all and that was why the shaft of sunshine looked so out of place. I was sure Aunt Amelia would notice it and shut it out before long.

But she did not. She was obviously very preoccupied and rather concerned.

"Miss Anabel is coming on the third," she said. The third of September was my birthday.

I clasped my hands and waited. Miss Anabel had always come on my birthday.

"She is thinking of a little treat for you."

My heart began to beat fast. I waited breathlessly.

"If you are good," went on Aunt Amelia. It was the usual proviso, so I did not take much notice of that. She continued: "You will wear your Sunday clothes although it will be a Thursday."