Isabella had been found at the bottom of a staircase. She was not the first to die in this way. Long ago the Queen, some said, would have married Robert Dudley. But he had had a wife and she was found dead at the bottom of a staircase.
Beware, unwanted wives.
What could I do? I could go to my mother. I could say: “Mother, let me live with you because my husband is trying to kill me.”
I could tell my daughter perhaps. But how could I? She hated her father already. There was too much hatred in the house. And somewhere at the back of my mind was the thought—the hope—that I was wrong. A part of me said: He would not kill you. He loved you once—oh, yes, this emotion he had for you was love. You are the same except that you are ageing and can no longer bear a son. He would never kill you. You still have the power to infuriate him, to anger him. How could he forget the passionate years, the delight you have had in each other, for it is true that you have. Battles there have been, but have not those battles been the joy of both your lives?
This was why it was so wounding and so impossible that Jake should want to kill me.
I would wake in the night trembling from some vague nightmare.
Jake was away a great deal and I was often alone. He was visiting the towns along the coast where preparations were going on for the possible coming of the Spanish Armada.
I was glad in a way. It gave me time to think. I went over many of the little incidents of our life together. I remembered vividly scenes from the past. And always afterward I would say: It is not so. I don’t believe this of him … not of Jake.
I refused to see Romilly. She was aware, of course, that I knew who Penn’s father was. Jake must have told her.
Penn was kept well out of my way and I never saw the boy. I could not bear to look at him—sturdy, healthy, his home my house, the son another woman had given Jake when I had failed to do so.
Linnet was worried about me. “Are you well, Mother?” she asked constantly. She would make me lie down and sit beside me.
Strange things started to happen. Once I awoke in the night when Jake was away and saw a figure in my room. A shadowy figure dressed in gray. It stood at the door. I could not see the face, for it was as though it were wrapped in a shroud.
I screamed and some of the servants came running into my room.
“Who is there?” I cried. “Someone came into the room. Find who it was.”
They searched, but they could find no one. Jennet appeared at some time later, half-asleep. I knew she had had farther to come than the others—from the bed she was sharing with a lover.
“It was a nightmare,” said Linnet. “I shall write and ask my grandmother to send something to make you well. You are not yourself.”
Who had come into my room, and for what purpose? What was the matter with me? I was not the sort to be intimidated. Why was I overcome by this strange lassitude so alien to my nature?
Linnet said I was to stay in bed for a day. I had had an unpleasant shock. She brought my food to me. I felt very sleepy.
“That is good,” she said. “It shows you need a rest.”
I slept and when I awoke it was dusk. I saw a shadowy figure by my bed and I cried out. Linnet was bending over me.
“Everything is all right, Mother. I have been sitting with you while you slept.”
Yes, I was different. Something was happening to me. I could not throw off this tiredness. I found that I was falling asleep during the day.
What is changing me? I asked myself, and once again I thought of my grandmother who knew so much about herbs and plants and how she used to talk to me when I was a child. My attention had often wandered, but my mother had said: “You must listen to your grandmother when she talks, Cat dear. She is very clever about these things and they are important to her. When terrible tragedy came to her she went into her garden and found solace there and she prides herself on her knowledge as you do on your riding.”
To please my mother I tried to listen and as a result certain things she said remained with me.
“There’s everything here in the ground, Catharine. There’s life and there’s death. There’s things to cure and things to kill. There’s things to make you lively and things to make you sleep.”
To make you sleep. There was poppy juice, I knew. That could make you sleep.
I thought: Someone is trying to unnerve me. Who was it who came into my room? Where in this house is there a gray shroud. Who wore it to stand at my door?
Why should I, who had fought Jake Pennlyon and sometimes been the victor, why should I be gradually growing into a lethargic, frightened woman?
I was going to find out.
I was sure that someone was tampering with my food. Romilly and Jake would work together. Did they talk together of how they would rid themselves of me? Did Romilly picture herself the mistress of this house? Were they impatiently asking each other: “How long must it be?”
Felipe had never talked to me of his desire to see an end of Isabella. Yet Isabella had died and the day she died the household had gone to the auto-da-fé and neither I nor Felipe was at the Hacienda.
Jake was away. Was he deliberately away? Did he, when he returned, hope to find me dead … say, at the bottom of a staircase?
Who would throw me down? Who had thrown Isabella? The man Edmundo had done it. He had confessed. But he had done it for Felipe and that was Felipe’s guilt. Who would do it for Jake? Jake was surely a man who would do such things for himself. Would he creep into the house by stealth when he was supposed to be far away? Would he come to my room and drag me to the top of the staircase and hurl me down? Would he strangle me first? It could be done, I had heard, with a damp cloth pressed over the mouth. That was what was said to have been done to Isabella.
I must regain my former strength and courage. I must first find out what was changing me into a feeble, defenseless creature.
I was no longer Jake’s wildcat; I was his tame mouse—frightened and caught in a trap. I was a woman who allowed others to plan her death while she waited inactive.
No more, I said.
I would never drink anything in my room. That would mean that my food could not be tampered with, for if I ate at table I would take from the dish which everyone partook of.
That was the first step. I did this and it was amazing how much better I felt.
There at the head of the table I sat—since Jake was away. Romilly was present, sly, eyes downcast. It was small wonder that she dared not look at me.
Linnet was delighted.
“You are getting better, Mother,” she said.
For three days my strength returned. I laughed at myself. I even laughed at the idea of Jake’s wishing to marry Romilly. How could she hold his affections? He would tire in a week of her meekness. I was for Jake as Jake was for me.
It had taken more than twenty years and threats of murder for me to realize this.
Then strange things began to happen again. I looked for a cloak in my wardrobe and could not find it. I sent for Jennet; she could not be found.
“That woman is useless,” I stormed.
I went into the garden and there I found her among the herbs and lettuces we grew for salads.
I said: “I sent for you.”
“Why, Mistress,” she said, “I was here, you see.”
“I cannot find my green cloak. Where is it?”
“Why, ’twas there but this morning, Mistress. I saw it when I was putting your clothes away.”
“Well, ’tis not there now.”
“Then where can it be to, Mistress?”
I went back to my room and she came with me.
She opened the wardrobe door and there was my cloak.
“’Twere here all the time, Mistress.”
“It was not,” I said.
“But, Mistress, ’tis there just as I hung it.”
“It was not there ten minutes ago.”
She shook her head with a disbelief she dared not utter.
This was constantly happening. I would miss something, question its disappearance and then find it miraculously in its place.