“You may talk to me of anything if it comforts you to do so.”
“My dear child,” she said. “My poor dear child.”
I cried a little because, as Fenn helped me to forget my grief, she brought it back in all its vividness. I was right back in that dreadful morning when I had gone into my mother’s bedroom and seen her lying there. I could hear Jennet babbling of what she had found and all my misery swept over me afresh.
She rocked me to and fro. “Life has been cruel to us both, my child, cruel … cruel …”
“When did your daughter die?”
“Before you were born … It had to be before you were born.” I did not understand that, but I had already discovered that she was incoherent.
“She was murdered by her husband. He is a murderer. One day fate will catch up with him. You’ll see. It will be so. I am sure of it. And now my beautiful boy is taken from me by the sea. He was so young to die. Why did it have to happen to him? Within a few miles of the coast he was …”
“Perhaps he will come back.”
“Never,” she said. “I shall never see his face again.”
“At least,” I said, “You have hope.”
And I thought: I have no hope. I have seen my mother laid in her grave. Vividly into my mind there flashed the picture of the family burial ground—the grave of my father’s first wife and that of the unknown sailor and my mother’s.
She started to talk then, of her son Fennimore and his ambitions. “No mother ever had a better son. He was noble, he was good. He was a great man. And my daughter … my little girl. She was frail. She should never have married. But it seemed natural and there was that … that”—her voice sank to a whisper—“that monster!”
I tried to soothe her. I said she must go back to bed. But she would not be soothed; she started to lament loudly and I could not calm her.
I did not know what to do because she was becoming hysterical and I thought she must be ill. She clung to me, but I managed to disengage myself and I went along to my grandmother’s room.
I wakened her and told her what had happened.
“Poor woman,” she said, “she is in a sorry state. This terrible disappearance of her son has brought back the tragic loss of her daughter. She gives way to her grief and I fear it will unhinge her mind.”
We went back to her. She was sitting there, her hands covering her face while she rocked back and forth in her misery.
My grandmother said to me: “You should go to bed, my child.”
I did not take any notice. I felt there was something I could do.
“Come, Janet,” said my grandmother, “you should go to bed. I will bring you something to make you sleep.” She took Janet Landor’s arm and I took the other. We led her to her bed.
“Lie still,” soothed my grandmother. “Try to sleep. Don’t brood, it can do no good. We can best help ourselves and others by stifling our grief.”
I was proud of her because I knew how she suffered from my mother’s death and I wanted to be like her.
“That child’s mother,” whispered Janet, “was she murdered too?”
My grandmother had taken me by the arm.
“She is rambling,” she whispered to me. “Now, Tamsyn, go back to your bed. Try not to disturb the others. I will look after this lady. Good night, my child.”
I went away wondering about poor Janet Landor; and there was one phrase which kept ringing in my head: “That poor child’s mother … was she murdered too?”
She must have been referring to my mother, and what did she mean?
My grandmother had said she was rambling and she was certainly hysterical. She could not have been referring to my mother!
I did not see Janet Landor for several days and when I did she was quiet again and although I forgot that nightly disturbance the memory of it was to return to me with some force later.
Senara and I stayed with my grandmother until the spring. It was May when we went back to the castle.
A surprise awaited us. Our father had married again. Senara’s mother was to be my stepmother.
After coming back from Lyon Court, Castle Paling seemed an alien place, which was strange for it had always been my home. Everything seemed to have changed since we had been away. My mother’s influence had been eliminated entirely and in its place was something new—intangible; it was hard to say what.
Some of the furnishings had been changed—the bedchamber which my mother and father had shared was entirely different. There were rich velvet hangings about the bed and at the windows. There was a foreign look about it. I looked into the Red Room. That had been left exactly as it always had been. I remembered all the stories I had heard about its being haunted. My mother’s sitting-room which she had used so much was also left untouched. There was her carved wooden chair and the table on which stood the rather large sandalwood writing-desk of which she had always been fond.
Senara was secretly proud that her mother instead of being a rather mysterious guest in the castle was now the undisputed mistress of it. She had previously, I think, felt something of an outsider and that was why I constantly tried to remind her that I thought of her as my sister.
The servants had changed. They whispered a lot; they were constantly crossing themselves as though for protection against the evil eye. I knew that they were afraid of my stepmother Maria; sometimes I thought even my father was a little.
I could not suppress a certain resentment. In the first place I hated to see someone in my mother’s place; in the second, I thought it had happened too quickly. Three months after she had died my father had married my stepmother; and the fact that she had been living in the castle was somehow even more shocking.
My father had never taken much notice of me. Connell was his favourite. He had little regard for girls—at least, not for his own daughter. He kept out of my way after my return almost as though my presence embarrassed him. He knew how very devoted my mother and I had been to each other.
At first Senara gave herself airs but that was very soon at an end. The friendship between us was too firm for anything to harm it. The fact that her mother had taken my mother’s place might have caused a rift in some cases, not with us. My father engaged a tutor to give us lessons because my mother had done so in the past, and he was already installed at the castle—a Master Eller—he seemed aged, but I doubt he was much more than forty-five. He was strict and serious and even Connell had to pay attention, although he hated lessons and at twelve years old thought he should have been beyond them.
Jennet had scarcely changed except that she had aged a little. I think my mother’s death had shocked her deeply. She was only a year younger than my grandmother and I knew she had regarded my mother as her own daughter. She used to go about muttering to herself and she harboured a dislike for my stepmother which she was afraid to show.
So many people were afraid of my stepmother. It was because she had come on Hallowe’en and that was the time for witches. That she was different from other people was clear. She never appeared to be angry, but if she were displeased there would be a strange glitter in her eyes which was as frightening as my father’s loud displays of temper. Everyone and everything was different. The castle seemed full of shadows. Servants were afraid when the darkness fell. Jennet, who had been so talkative and pleased with life, was no longer so. On her face was a perpetual expression of bewilderment. Once she broke down and wept. “I knew your mother when she was a baby,” she told me. “I held her in my arms when she was but a day old. Your grandmother was good to me but sharp. She lifted her hand against me more than once, but Miss Linnet …” She broke down and we cried together.