Philippa Carr: Saraband for Two Sisters

They had brought mystery and excitement into the castle. I kept thinking of the mob’s marching up the slight incline to the portcullis and storming their way into the castle. They would be carrying torches and shouting what they would do to the witch when they found her.

‘Sit beside me, Senara,’ cried my mother. ‘How wonderful it is to have you here. I could almost believe we are young again. You must tell us all that has happened.’

‘But first allow them to eat,’ begged Melanie with a smile.

Hot soup was brought; Senara declared it was delicious and it was of the kind she remembered Melanie’s preparing before she left the castle.

‘We add different herbs from time to time,’ said Melanie. ‘We try to improve on it.’

‘It was always too good to be improved,’ said Senara. ‘And see how impatient Tamsyn is. She is really chiding us for talking of soup when there is so much to tell.’

My mother said: ‘Eat, Senara. You must be famished. There is plenty of time to talk afterwards.’

They ate heartily of the soup, which was followed by lamby pie, and then there were strawberries with clouted cream.

‘I have indeed come home,’ said Senara. ‘Is it not exactly as I told you it would be, Carlotta?’

Carlotta replied: ‘Madre, you have talked of nothing else but Castle Paling and your sister Tamsyn ever since you made up your mind to come here.’

We were all waiting eagerly for the last of the strawberries to be consumed, and when the servants had removed the platters Senara said: ‘Now you are impatient to hear what happened. I shall give you a rough outline, for I cannot explain all the little happenings that made up a lifetime over a dinner table. But you will learn in due time. You young people may have heard of me. There was a great talk hereabouts when I was here … but that was long ago and when faces are no longer around they are forgotten. Yet my mother was different … She came mysteriously, thrown up from the sea. She was a noble lady, the wife of a count and bearing his child … which was myself. I was born here … in the Red Room. Is the Red Room still here?’

‘Why, it’s the haunted room,’ cried Rozen.

‘That’s right,’ went on Senara. ‘The haunted room. But it was haunted before my mother came to it. Colum Casvellyn’s first wife died there bearing a stillborn child. That was before he married Tamsyn’s mother. Yes, it was haunted then and my mother added another ghost to the Red Room.’

‘The servants won’t go there after dark,’ said Gwenifer excitedly.

‘It’s nonsense,’ retorted Melanie. ‘The room is not haunted. One of these days I intend to change all the furnishings.’

‘Several had that idea,’ said Senara. ‘Wasn’t it odd that no one ever did?’

‘Please go on,’ pleaded Bersaba.

‘My mother came and I was born and then she went away, but I grew up with Tamsyn and when her mother died, my mother came back and she married Colum Casvellyn. We were always together, weren’t we, Tamsyn? I used to shock you, but you thought of me as your sister.’

‘Always,’ said my mother.

‘Then came the day when my mother went away again and Colum Casvellyn had had his accident and was in his chair. The witch-hunters came for my mother and they were ready to take me in her place, so Tamsyn and Connell here got me out of the castle. I was very friendly with my old music master who had become a Puritan and was living in Leyden Hall. You know it of course.’

‘The Lamptons live there now,’ said Rozen. ‘We know them well.’

‘They bought it after the Deemsters left,’ added Aunt Melanie.

‘I fled there,’ went on Senara, ‘and the Deemsters took me in. I was married in the simple Puritan fashion to Richard Gravel—Dickon, my old music master—and we went to Holland together. Amsterdam was the refuge then for those who wished to worship as they pleased, so it was believed; but we began to discover that that freedom was to worship only in a manner approved by the Puritans. I was never really a Puritan at heart. I just changed when I met Dickon. I had brought with me some pieces of jewellery and to wear jewellery in our sect was considered sinful. At first I wore it in secret and Dickon was so besotted with me that he daren’t offend me by forbidding me to wear it.’

‘I never thought you could be a Puritan, Senara,’ said my mother with an affectionate smile.

‘You knew me well,’ answered Senara. ‘We left Amsterdam for Leyden, after which city the Deemsters had named their home. And here we spent eleven years while we made our plans to leave for America. Eleven years! How did I endure them!’

‘You had your love for Dickon.’

Senara laughed. ‘My dear Tamsyn,’ she replied, ‘you think we are all like you … good faithful docile wives. Far from it. I was soon out of love with Dickon and out of love with religion. There was little that was holy about me. All through those eleven years I longed to be back at Paling. I wanted to be young again. I knew that I had wanted Dickon mainly because he was forbidden to me. I knew that I had been wrong to marry a Puritan … not that he was always a Puritan. He could forget his religion on occasions.’

‘They provided an escape for you when you were in danger,’ my mother reminded her.

‘That’s true,’ agreed Senara. ‘But for them I might have had nowhere to go when I was in danger and that could have been an end to me.’ She grimaced. ‘All those years ago I might have been a corpse on that tree in Hangman’s Lane where they used to hang witches. Remember, Tamsyn?’

My mother looked uncomfortable.

‘They still hang witches there,’ said Rozen.

‘Are they searching them out as madly as they were when I left?’

‘Every now and then there is a revival,’ said my mother. ‘Thank God, we have heard nothing for these last few years. I won’t have the servants speaking of witches. It revives interest and that is bad. Why, a poor old woman has only to stoop or develop a mole on her cheek or have some spot which can be said to have been made by the Devil and they will take her to Hangman’s Lane. Many an innocent woman has been treated thus and I want to see it stopped.’

‘There will always be witches,’ said Uncle Connell, ‘and ’tis well that they should be dispatched to their masters,’

‘I shall always do all I can to save the innocent,’ said my mother, fierce when there was someone who needed her protection. ‘And,’ she added, ‘I should like to know more of witches and what made them give their souls to the Devil in the first place.’

‘Don’t attempt to dabble in witchcraft, sister,’ warned Uncle Connell.

‘Dabble!’ cried my mother. ‘I only want to know.’

‘That’s what many would say. They only wanted to know.’

‘Tamsyn, you are just the same,’ cried Senara. ‘You always wanted to look after anyone if you thought they needed your care.’

‘Do tell us what happened when you reached Holland,’ begged Bersaba.

‘Well, for those eleven years I lived as a Puritan. I would attend their meetings and listen to their plans. They were going to return to England and sail to America from there. I knew they had bought a ship called the Speedwell which they sent to Delftshaven. It was to go to America by way of Southampton. I did not relish the long sea voyage. Months on the ocean … prayers … endless prayers. My knees grew rough with kneeling. I hated the plain grey gowns I was expected to wear. I learned very quickly that I was not meant to be a Puritan.’

‘Did you and Dickon have no children?’

‘Yes, I had a boy. I called him Richard after his father. He grew up to be a little Puritan. From the age of five he was watching me to curb my vanities. I was stifled. I couldn’t endure it. Sometimes I thought that Dickon wouldn’t either. I used to think it was a sham, but he was deeper in his Puritanism than I knew. It might have been that he could have escaped at first, but it was like an octopus which twined its tentacles about him. When they left for England I did not go with them.’