Philippa Carr - Witch from the Sea

“No, but I wonder why you felt it necessary.”

She smiled secretly. I knew there was a reason. And why had she chosen the Red Room? I knew how daring and reckless she was. A thought had come into my mind. She was in love with Dickon. I was certain of that. The very fact that marriage with him would be so highly unsuitable would make it attractive to her. And he was going away soon, for when the Deemsters left he was going with them. He was one of them now. He would go first to Holland and join in that greater project to settle in America if it ever came to pass.

An idea came to me then. Could she have chosen the Red Room because if the servants heard strange noises there they would say it was a ghost and be afraid to enter?

Did Dickon really come to the castle to visit her at night? Not the puritan surely. But how sincere were they … either of them? And I believed that they were passionately in love.

It was a very uneasy situation. I wondered what would happen to Dickon if he were really visiting Senara and if my father or her mother discovered this.

Lord Cartonel was still paying his visits. Senara and her mother took wine with him. I was certain that he was going to ask for Senara’s hand; and if he did then I was sure that she would be obliged to take this very grand gentleman. He was just what I believed her mother had always wanted for her.

As for myself, I started my search for the papers again. But where could I look that I had not looked before?

My thoughts were diverted by the talk of witchcraft which had become rife since my departure. Merry was excited by it.

“They do say, Mistress,” she told me, “that there be a coven of ’em and ’tis not so far away. Some says some place, some another. Terrible things do happen there. ’Tis anti-Christian. There they do worship the Devil himself and he sits there in their midst in the form of a horned goat.”

“It’s a lot of nonsense, Merry,” I told her.

“’Tis not so thought to be, Mistress, pardon the contradiction. There be terrible goings on. One serving-girl were out late and she saw them there. She peeped and there they was mother-naked, dancing, wild, like … as though they was inciting each other to be criminal, like.”

“How did the serving-girl know they were acting in criminal manner?”

“Oh ’twere clear to see.”

“If she were innocent how would she recognize these criminal acts?”

“Well, ’twas moonlight and they threw off their clothes and danced together; and then when they be exhausted they lie down together and that’s the worst of it.”

“I would like to question that serving-girl.”

“Oh, she wouldn’t mind that, Mistress, only she bain’t one of ours. She be terrible upset about it for she do think they knew she was watching. They would, like, wouldn’t ’em, seeing they’m sold to the Devil and they say he be powerful … like God really but on the other side.”

“Merry,” I said severely, “you know that no good can come of this gossip.”

“’Tis saying that only good will come when every witch be hanging from a gibbet.”

I wanted to leave her, but I felt it was imperative that I knew the truth.

I said: “I think the girl imagined she saw this. What was she doing out at night in any case?”

“She’d been to visit her mother who’d been took ill and she had to wait with her till help come. She did see familiar faces there in the coven, Mistress. She knows now that some be the Devil’s own.”

“Has she said who?”

“No, she be feared to. Every time she do open her mouth to say she be took with trembling. But they be going to make her say. They be meeting … all them that is going to put a stop to witches will take her and make her talk. It must be so, Mistress. Mistress Jelling have lost her baby … stillborn it were, and a terrible disease have broke out among her husband’s cows.”

I knew that whatever I said would do no good. It frightened me. I could feel the tension rising.

I knew that the servants were watching my stepmother. In their hearts they believed that she had brought witchcraft into the castle. It was some years now since she had come but the nature of her coming would never be forgotten.

A terrible thought had struck me. If the people were aroused to look for witches, as I believed they had done in other parts of the country, the first place they would look would be in the castle.

Senara seemed to be possessed by a recklessness. I sensed that she was unhappy and that it was because Dickon was going away.

Surely she could never have imagined there would be a marriage between them. She might have done so, being Senara.

Once she had said: “With me all things are possible,” and she had meant it.

She was quieter than usual. I knew that she went often to Leyden Hall; and I was almost certain that Dickon crept into the castle at night.

I overheard the servants talking about familiars. “Could be a cat or a mouse most likely. It is really the Devil in that form. He talks to the one he comes to and tells her what evil she can do.”

I wondered whether they had heard voices in the Red Room.

I loved Senara, maddening as she was at times. I did not understand her but the bond between us was there.

I deplored this recklessness in her. I wanted to implore her to take care.

That was the last thing she would do. She knew there were whisperings. She knew that as her mother’s daughter she was suspected. Yet she seemed to take a delight in whipping up their fears and suspicions.

Once she came in late. I knew she had been to Leyden Hall for she had about her that look of exultation which was often there after her visits.

I said to her: “You have just ridden in on Betsy.”

She flashed at me, “Of course. What did you expect me to ride in on? My broomstick?”

And there were servants listening.

IT WAS STRANGE THAT when I was not looking for them I should find my mother’s papers. I had intended to write a letter to my grandmother and in my mother’s sitting-room where I did my writing at that time I opened the sandalwood desk box which I often used. There was paper wedged into the side of the box-like cavity and as I tried to dislodge it I touched a spring. A flap of wood fell down and the papers started to spill out.

I looked at them in disbelief. I glanced at a page. I could not believe it. My heart began to thud with excitement. That for which I had searched so earnestly had fallen into my hands.

I sorted the papers; there were far more than I would have believed possible in that secret compartment of the sandalwood desk box.

I started to read. There it was—my mother’s meeting with Fenn’s father, the possibility of their marriage and then with my father at the inn and the consequences. Knowing them, it was so vivid to me and yet I said to myself as I read on, did I know them? I suppose people are different beings to different people. They change their personalities to suit their background like a chameleon on his tree.

There was the coming of my stepmother. That I knew already. She had come on Hallowe’en and been found by my mother. It was a story which had often been told.

And then … my mother’s discovery of my father’s profession.

I could not bear that. I wished I had never found the papers. So on those nights of storm he lured ships on to the rocks. A flash of understanding came to me. The night I had lighted the lanterns in the tower they had been deliberately put out. It was for that reason that there had been a whipping in the Seaward courtyard. Someone had been blamed for lighting them on that night. Someone who should have seen that they were put out.

What can I do? I asked myself. I cannot stay here. I won’t stay here. I must get away. I must put a stop to my father’s hideous trade.