Philippa Carr - Witch from the Sea

Then came August—hot nights when the bed curtains were drawn back to let in a little air. There was a swarm of wasps. Connell was stung and I treated the sting with a remedy Edwina had given me. How I wished I could see Edwina. I remembered then how she had said that there was something evil in the house.

Evil. Yes it was evil. There was no mistaking it. In my heart I thought: It was brought here by the woman from the sea.

I awoke in the night. It was too hot for sleep. Colum was not there. How many times had I awakened and found him gone. I went to the window and looked out to sea. It was calm and still. A shaft of moonlight made a path on the still waters. I could see the tips of the Devil’s Teeth clearly. There was no ship in sight.

Some impulse made me take my robe and wrap it round me. I opened the door and stepped out into the narrow corridor.

It was dark for there were no windows to let in the moonlight. I went back into the room and lighted a candle.

I knew where I was going and if I found what I felt I might find, what should I do? I would go to my mother. I would steal out of the house in secret and take the children with me. Or I might write to her and tell her that she must come for I needed her even as Damask did. Damask was recovering now. She could come to me and she must.

The candlelight threw shadows on the thick stone walls. I stood outside the Red Room, my fingers on the latch, yet I could not bring myself to open the door. In my mind’s eye I could picture them. It would be as it had been with us, for she had bewitched him.

Why did I use that word? Bewitched. It was wrong. There was no question of witchcraft. She was a beautiful and voluptuous woman, he was a sensual man. He desired her as he had once desired me, and did I not know that he would allow nothing to stand in the way of his desires?

The room of ghosts and shadows, I thought. She suffered here, poor Melanie. And if he visited Maria here, what did the poor sad shade of Melanie think? Could it be true that unhappy people walked, as the servants said? Did they hope to regain some happiness by so doing? Did they seek revenge on those who had made them suffer?

How like him it would be to join Maria in that room, on that bed where Melanie had died! … just as he had made me share it with him. I remember then his passion had been not only desire for me but a need to show Melanie’s ghost if it existed that he cared not a jot for it. It seemed that in Colum’s passion there must always be double motives.

Quietly I opened the door. The curtains were drawn back from the bed and a shaft of moonlight shone straight on to it.

It was empty.

I felt ashamed as I tiptoed back to my bedchamber. I lay on the bed. Colum did not join me. It seemed strange that they were both absent on that moonlit night.

September had come and the heat was still with us. I had to see my mother. I told Colum that either she must come to me or I would go to her.

He did not answer me; his thoughts appeared to be on other matters.

There had been no disasters at sea during the summer months. Colum rode off on long journeys by himself and often stayed away for several days. He never told me where he had been. Maria was at the castle—quiet, brooding almost; there was a secret smile in her eyes.

Colum came back after one of his long journeys. It was September—nearly a year since that night when I had gone out and rescued Maria from the sea. Senara was taking notice now. Her eyes would light up when I entered the nursery; I wondered what happened when Maria did. But of course she rarely did. She had borne her daughter and passed her over to us, as though it were our duty to care for her.

Soon the autumn would be with us. A whole year would have passed. At the end of October it would be Hallowe’en again.

When I rode inland I saw the birds congregating ready to leave for a warmer climate. The butcherbird, the nightjar, the chiffchaff and the common sandpiper were leaving us. Our ever-faithful gulls would remain to wheel over our coasts and utter their mournful cries.

I said to Colum: “I have written to my mother. It seems so long since I saw her. I am insisting that she comes.”

He looked at me steadily, his dark eyes cold.

“You have not heard,” he said. “I did not wish to disturb you. The sweat is raging in Plymouth.”

“The sweat!” I cried. “Then she must come to us at once.”

“Nay, that she will not. Dost think I will allow my children to run the risk of catching it?”

“She may be ill.”

“You would have heard had she been.”

“I must go to her.”

“You shall stay here.”

“But if she is in danger?”

“I doubt she is ill. But she is near the sickness and it spreads like wildfire. You must stay apart.”

“I want to see her so much,” I said.

“You talk like a peevish child. You have your home to think of. Know this. She shall not come here nor shall you go to her, I’ll not have danger brought to the castle.”

I was worried about my mother, but letters came. The sweat was taking toll of many people in the neighbourhood, she wrote. She did not go into the town. She had feared that Damask was sickening, but it turned out to be only a return of the fever she had had earlier.

She wrote that she thought it unwise of her to come to see me or me to go to her.

“I shall write often, my dearest child,” she said. “And until this terrible thing passes, we must be content with our letters.”

She sent me a pair of stockings such as I had never seen before. The art of weaving had been introduced by a gentleman of Cambridge. He was the Rev. Mr. Lee and my mother wanted to know if I had ever seen such stockings.

See how they mould themselves to the leg as stocking never did before (she wrote). I have heard from your grandmother in London that they are always worn by the quality and she says that soon there will be no other kind. I have more news from London. A Mr. Jansen who has been making spectacles has invented an instrument which makes things far off seem close. It is called a telescope. What will happen next, I wonder. What times we live in. I would instead they could find some means of preventing this terrible sickness breaking out every few years—and a cure for it when it comes.

To read her letters offered me some comfort; but I wanted so much to talk to her. I wanted to tell her of the strange atmosphere which was slowly creeping into the castle.

That it had something to do with Maria I was certain; and Colum was involved in it.

Are they lovers? I wondered. If they were, that would explain so much.

It was Hallowe’en again. Now the weather had changed. There was rain—a light drizzle which was little more than a mist.

Jennet’s eyes were dark with her thoughts. I wondered what she knew.

“’Tis a year,” she said, “since she came here. ’T’as been a long year … a long strange year.”

So Jennet had felt it too.

“And little Senara is ten months old.”

“A proper little miss,” said Jennet, her eyes softening and the mysterious look going out of them. “It does me good to see young Tamsie with her. Proper little mother. And Senara, she knows her too. Screams for her. I swear she said ‘Tamsie’ the other day. Mark my words, that’ll be the first word that one says.”

I was glad that my daughter was kind to the baby. It showed a pleasant trait in her character that there was no jealousy, for I knew that Jennet spoiled Senara. How far away that nursery world seemed from what was going on in the rest of the castle!

Hallowe’en was with us. A dark and gloomy day—quite windless; the mist hanging over the castle, shrouding the turrets and penetrating into the rooms. The coastline merged into a bank of mist. It would be hard for any ships who were near our coasts in this. They would not need the lights from Colum’s donkeys to deceive them. They would not be able to see anything through the mist.