Philippa Carr: Saraband for Two Sisters

We at the table heard cries of amazement, and in a short time my uncle and aunt reappeared and with them were two women—and in that first moment I was aware of their unusual appearance. I often think, looking back, that life should prepare us in some way, that when events occur which are the forerunner of great changes which will affect our lives we should be given a little nudge, some warning, some premonition.

But it rarely happens so, and as I sat at that table and looked at the newcomers—one a woman of my mother’s age and with her another of my own, or a little older—I was quite unaware that their coming was going to prove one of the most momentous events of our lives.

Aunt Melanie was crying out: ‘Tamsyn. You know who this is. Senara!’

My mother stood up; she turned first pale and then rosy red. She stared for a few minutes before she and the elder of the two women rushed towards each other and embraced.

They were laughing and I could see that my mother was near to tears. She gripped the stranger’s shoulders and they looked searchingly at each other.

‘Senara!’ cried my mother. ‘What happened?’

‘Too much to tell yet,’ answered the woman. ‘Oh, it is good to see you … good to be here …’ She threw back her hood and shook out magnificent black hair. ‘It’s not changed … not one little bit. And you … you’re still the old Tamsyn.’

‘And this …’

‘This is my daughter. Carlotta, come and meet Tamsyn … the dearest sister of my childhood.’

Then the girl called Carlotta came to my mother, who was about to embrace her when the girl held back and swept a low curtsey. Even then I was struck by her infinite grace. She was very foreign-looking—with hair as dark as her mother’s and long oval eyes so heavily fringed with black lashes that even in that moment I couldn’t help noticing them. Her face was very pale except for vividly red lips and the blackness of her eyes.

‘Your daughter … My dear Senara. Oh, this is wonderful. You must have so much to tell.’ She looked round at us. ‘My girls are here too …’

‘So you married Fennimore.’

‘Yes, I married Fennimore.’

‘And lived happy ever after.’

‘I am very happy. Angelet, Bersaba …’

We rose from the table and went to our mother.

‘Twins!’ said Senara. There was a lilt of laughter in her voice which I had noticed from the first. ‘Oh Tamsyn, you with twins!’

‘I have a son too. He is seven years older than the twins.’

Senara took my left hand and Bersaba’s right and studied us intently.

‘Your mother and I were as sisters … all our childhood until we were parted. Carlotta, come and meet these two children who are already dear to me because of their mother.’

Carlotta’s gaze was appraising, I thought. She bowed gracefully to us.

‘You have ridden far,’ said Melanie.

‘Yes, we have come from Plymouth. Last night we rested at a most indifferent inn. The beds were hard and the pork too salt, but I scarcely noticed, so eager was I to come to Castle Paling.’

‘What great good fortune that you found us here. We are on a visit.’

‘Of course. Your home would be at Trystan Priory. How is the good Fennimore?’

‘At sea at the moment. We expect him home before long.’

‘How I shall enjoy seeing you all again!’

‘Tell us what has happened.’

Melanie was smiling. ‘I know how you are feeling seeing each other after all these years, but, Senara, you must be weary. I will have a room made ready for you and your daughter, and you are hungry, I’ll dareswear.’

‘Oh Melanie, you were always so good, so practical … And, Connell, I am forgetting you and the dear children … But I am hungry and so, I know, is my daughter. If we could wash the stains of travel from our hands and faces and if we could eat some of this delicious-smelling food … and then perhaps talk and talk of old times and the future …’

Connell came to stand beside his wife. He said: ‘Call the servants. Let them make ready for our guests.’

Melder, good housewife that she was, was already leaving us to issue orders.

‘We’ll hold back the meal,’ said Melanie. ‘In the meantime come to my room and you can wash there. Your rooms will not be ready yet.’

She and my mother went out with the newcomers and silence fell on the table.

‘Who are these people?’ asked Rozen. ‘Mother and Aunt Tamsyn seem to know them well.’

‘The elder one was born here at Castle Paling,’ said Uncle Connell. ‘Her mother was the victim of a wreck and was washed up on the coast. Senara was born about three months after. She lived here all her childhood and when our mother died our father married Senara’s mother.’

‘So this was her home.’

‘Yes, it was her home.’

‘And she went away and hasn’t been heard of until now?’

‘It’s a long story,’ said Connell. ‘She went away to marry one of the Puritans and I think she went to Holland. No doubt we’ll hear.’

‘And she’s come back after all these years! How long is it since she went away?’

Connell was thoughtful. ‘Why,’ he said, calculating, ‘it must be nearly thirty years.’

‘She must be old … this Senara.’

‘She would have been no more than seventeen when she went.’

‘That would make her forty-seven. It cannot be so.’

‘She would doubtless have means of keeping herself young.’

‘How, Father?’ asked Rozen.

‘Senara was always a sly one. The servants used to think that she was a witch.’

‘How exciting,’ cried Gwenifer.

‘There was a lot of talk at the time about witches,’ said Connell. ‘You know how now and then there seems to be a fashion for it. The late King was a bit of a fanatic about them. People round here were certain that Senara’s mother was a witch and that can be dangerous. She went away.’

‘What became of her?’

‘It was never known. But after she’d gone they came to the castle to take Senara. You see, her mother had been washed up by the sea on Hallowe’en; she’d disappeared on Hallowe’en. Everything seemed to point to the fact that she was a witch and the people came to take her. When they found she wasn’t there they said Senara would do, so Senara fled for her life and that was the last we saw of her until now.’

‘And you and our mother helped her?’

‘Naturally we all helped her. She had been as a sister to us.’

‘And now she has come back,’ murmured Bersaba.

And we were silent. I was picturing it all so clearly. Senara’s mother being washed up by the sea, being a witch, and after Grandmother Linnet died marrying that fearful old man in the Seaward Tower and then running away from him—which didn’t surprise me. And the mob’s coming for Senara … who had been young then, with eyes like those of her daughter Carlotta. And who had been Carlotta’s father? We should hear, I was sure.

They came back into the hall accompanied by my mother and Aunt Melanie. My mother was flushed and excited and quite clearly very happy because of the arrivals.

I could not take my eyes from the girl Carlotta. She was the most arresting creature I had ever seen. It was something more than beauty, although, of course, she was beautiful. In the candlelight her black hair had a bluish tinge; and there was a mysterious look in her enormous almond-shaped eyes. Her skin was very delicately tinged, which prevented its being dead white; it was petal smooth and her nose was long, patrician and beautifully moulded. There was something exotic about her which added to her attraction. My cousins could not take their eyes from her any more than Bersaba and I could. Her mother was a beautiful woman still, but even though she must have shown considerable defiance to the years she could not completely elude their ravages, and I guessed that when she had been Carlotta’s age she would have been almost as attractive.