‘I must explain.’
I sped on, but he came after me, and caught up with me in the gallery.
‘There is nothing you can say to me,’ I told him. ‘It is I who must say to you congratulations.’
‘You must understand, Bersaba.’
‘I do understand. You have asked Carlotta to marry you. That’s clear enough, is it not?’
‘I can’t think how it happened. Bersaba, I love you.’
‘You love me so much that you are going to marry Carlotta. Oh, that is perfectly clear.’
‘It was a moment of madness. I don’t know what came over me … I was sort of bewitched. That’s how it is, Bersaba. You must understand. When she is there …’
Every word was like a knife in my heart. I wondered how such a simple man as Bastian could inflict such pain.
I pushed him from me. ‘Go to her then. Go to your witch. I promise you this. You’ll be sorry … sick and sorry …’
Then I turned and ran and I reached our bedroom. I was thankful that Angelet was not there. I locked the door. He was outside tapping on it, whispering my name.
‘I must explain, Bersaba …’
Explain. What was there to explain? Only that she was irresistible. He wanted her. He was ready to thrust me aside for her.
‘Go back to her,’ I whispered venomously. ‘Go back to your … witch.’
Fennimore immediately sent a messenger to Plymouth to tell my father of Sir Gervaise’s arrival, and while he was taking wine my brother persuaded him that he would be more comfortable at Trystan Priory than at the inn, and he begged him to come with his personal servants and baggage, and rooms would be made ready for him.
Sir Gervaise graciously accepted the invitation, but would not come until my father returned.
At supper everyone was talking about Sir Gervaise, and I explained how I had discovered him when out riding and was immediately reprimanded for riding alone. ‘You know our mother says you are always to have the grooms with you,’ said Fennimore. ‘It was wilful of you to do that while she was away.’
‘I’m not a child any longer, Fennimore,’ I said sharply.
I knew Bastian was looking at me and that he blushed a little, remembering our unchildlike behaviour, I was sure. He sat next to Carlotta and I was aware of the spell she had laid on him. He was hurt and bewildered by what had happened to him, which was just the way he would be if he were bewitched. But he could not keep his eyes from her; I saw his hands reach out to touch her. How I hated them both; and I must sit there and pretend that nothing was wrong.
Carlotta said: ‘He seemed a very courtly gentleman. I saw him when he left—but from a window.’
‘He will return when my parents are here,’ said Fennimore, ‘and then I expect he will stay for a few days.’
How I lived through that meal I did not know. Bastian must go home or I would break down. I could not bear to see him and Carlotta together. It was asking too much of me.
After supper the minstrels played soothing music from the gallery, and Thomas Jenson, who taught us music and had a beautiful voice, sang madrigals with us. Of course there was the inevitable one about the faithless lover, which did not help me.
As soon as I could I said I was tired and I would go to my room, but my sister had to come up with me and to tell me that I looked pale and strained and that I had been very wrong to ride out alone. Chiding me with this tender scolding was more than I could endure, and I begged her to leave me alone that I might close my eyes and try to sleep.
Sleep! As if I could sleep.
I lay there for half an hour when there was a knock on the door. I closed my eyes, thinking it was Angelet returning, but it was not. It was the maid Ginny with some posset Angelet had sent up for me.
I looked at Ginny. She was twenty-one, very wise. She had had a child when she was fourteen and kept him with her in one of the attics, because my mother said that it was not right that a mother should be parted from her child. There had been many lovers since for Ginny but no more children. ‘Foolish girl,’ said my mother. ‘She will find herself in trouble again one day.’ But I understood her. She wasn’t so much foolish as helpless.
‘Mistress Angelet said you was to take this, mistress,’ she said now. ‘Her said it ’ud make you sleep.’
‘Thank you, Ginny,’ I said.
She gave it to me. It was hot and soothing.
‘Wait a bit while I drink it.’
‘Yes, mistress.’
‘Have you ever talked to a witch, Ginny?’
‘Oh yes. I went to one when I had my trouble. It was too late, though … she could do nothing for me.’
‘That was Jenny Keys, wasn’t it? They hanged her in the lane.’
‘Yes, mistress, it were. There was naught wrong with Jenny Keys. She’d helped many a girl from her trouble and it was beautiful to see the way she could charm off your warts. She did good, she did. My granny used to say, “There be white and black witches, Ginny, and Jenny Keys be a white one.” ’
‘Some didn’t think so.’
‘No, there be some terrible people about. Jenny Keys could turn off a bad spell. Why, when my young brother had the whooping cough Jenny Keys cured him by tying a bag of spiders round his neck. I don’t reckon Jenny Keys ever laid a spell. Some of them do, though, and there’s always them as will tell against a woman who’s a witch. Tain’t safe, being a witch … black or white.’
‘What happened to Jenny Keys?’
‘There was people who hated her. They started to talk about her, build up against her, like. A cow died in calf … so did the calf, and the cowherd he were so mad he said he’d caught Jenny Keys ill-wishing it. Someone else said she’d gone along for a remedy and had seen Jenny Keys in her cottage with her black cat there at her feet and she was roasting a bullock’s heart stuffed with pins. She was saying:
“ ’Tis not this heart I wish to burn But Jack Perran’s heart I wish to turn Wishing him neither rest nor peace
Till he be dead and gone.”
And when Jack Perran died all sudden in his sleep—people started whispering. They started remembering other witches and how in the times of King James there’d been regular witch baiting. They reckoned a lot of them had been driven under ground at that time but now they was coming out again. They reckoned they ought to make an example of one. They talked … they remembered … they spied on Jenny Keys. Then came the day when they took her and hung her on a tree in Hangman’s Lane.’
‘If she was indeed a witch perhaps it was right.’
‘Perhaps it were, mistress, but they do say she were a white witch.’
‘There was a witch once at Castle Paling. Have you ever heard of her?’
Ginny was startled. She looked furtively over her shoulder.
‘Why yes, mistress, everyone have heard of how she come by the sea. My granny told me. It were always remembered. She came and she went back to the Devil and came back again, and then she went back to him and was never heard of no more.’
I shivered.
‘You be cold, mistress?’
‘Someone walking over my grave, Ginny, as they say. You know the ladies here?’
Ginny was very disturbed. ‘Yes, mistress.’
‘Well, the young beautiful one is the granddaughter of that witch.’
‘Yes, mistress.’
I’m going too far too fast, I thought. But nevertheless I went on.
‘Do you think the powers are passed down … these dark powers, I mean?’
Ginny was a conspirator. Her voice sounded hoarse.
‘I’ve heard it’s so. Yes, indeed I’ve heard it said.’
‘I wonder … Here, take the dish. The posset was good and warming. I feel I could sleep now.’
She took the dish and tiptoed out. I felt like a gardener who has prepared the ground and sewn the first seeds. Now I could wait and see what crop came forth.