“Go back to bed, Senara. You’ll catch cold.”
“Remember it,” she said.
The next day when I was showing Fenn round the castle we came to the burial ground near the old Norman chapel. I showed him my mother’s grave in that spot with the other two so that they were a little apart.
“Why,” he said, “that is my aunt’s grave.” He went to it and knelt beside it. “My aunt and your mother. Who is the other?”
I said: “It was a sailor. He was drowned and washed up on our coast. We buried him here.”
“I wonder who he is,” said Fenn.
“I wish I knew. I dare say he has those to mourn for him.”
Fenn was sad and I knew that he was thinking of his father.
“There must be many sailors,” he said, “who are lying in graves unknown to their families.”
“Few are washed up on the shore.”
“No,” he said, “the ocean bed is the graveyard of many, I’ll swear.”
“Do you still think so much of your father?”
“It is six years since we lost him but he is as vivid in my mind as he ever was. You would understand if you had known him. He was a kind, good man in a world that is far from good and kind. That was what made him so outstanding. My mother says he was born before his time. He belonged to a different age, when men had become wiser and kinder because of it.”
“That’s a wonderful thing for a wife to say about her husband.”
“He was a wonderful husband.” He clenched his fists suddenly. “I know I shall find out one day what happened to him.”
“Isn’t it obvious? His ship must have been lost at sea.”
“I suppose you are right, but I have a feeling that some day I shall hear.”
“How wonderful if he came back to her. My grandfather was away for years—captured and made a slave and my grandmother never gave up hope. And he did come back. Poor Grandmother, she feels his loss sadly.”
He was very thoughtful and I longed to share his thoughts.
Then he said suddenly, “Tamsyn, would you do something if I asked you?”
“I am sure I shall. What is it?”
“You have planted rosemary on your mother’s grave.”
“She loved it and so did I and it’s for remembrance.”
“Will you plant a bush on his grave?”
“Of course.”
“An unknown sailor. Who knows where his family is? Plant the rosemary and it will be as though you plant it for my father. Will you do that for me, Tamsyn?”
“You may trust me to.”
He stood up and took my hands in his. Then he kissed me lightly on the forehead.
I was blissfully happy because that kiss while he stood close to my mother’s and the unknown sailor’s grave was a symbol. It was like plighting my troth. I knew that I loved Fenn. I was not sure whether he loved me but I thought he did.
Fenn left next day but not before I had planted my rosemary bush. I saw how pleased he was.
“I know you are the sort of girl who would keep her promises,” he told me.
Before he left he said that he wanted me to come and stay with his parents. He would arrange that they should soon invite me.
I waved farewell to him and then went right up to the ramparts so that I should see the last of him.
Senara came and stood beside me.
“You’re madly in love with him,” she accused me.
“I like him,” I admitted.
“You show it. You shouldn’t do that. You should be aloof; it is for him to fall madly in love with you. Now I suppose he will ask for your hand in marriage and then you will go away to that place of his and I shan’t see you any more.”
“What nonsense!”
“It’s not nonsense. I shall be left here and I don’t like it.”
“When I marry—if I do—you shall come and stay with me.”
“What’s the use of that? We’ve always been together. We’ve shared a room. You’ve been my sister ever since I could remember.”
She was pouting and sullen. Then her eyes were suddenly mischievous. “What if I made an image of him and stuck pins in it? Then he’d die because I’d pierce his heart. No one would know how he died … except me.”
“Senara, I hate to hear you talk like that. It’s all such nonsense.”
“People do die … cows die, sheep die … as well as people. No one knows what killed them. There is no sign at all … They just die. It’s the evil eye. What if I put it on your precious lover?”
“You couldn’t and you wouldn’t … even if he were my lover, which he is not. He is merely a good friend. And, Senara, I beg of you do not say such things. It is dangerous to talk so. People hear it and take it seriously. You mustn’t say it.”
She dodged back from me and put out her tongue. A favourite gesture of hers which was meant to irritate.
“You are no longer a child, Senara,” I said. “You must be sensible.”
She stood still, her arms folded, mocking me.
“I am sensible. They are always saying my mother is a witch. Well, I’m a witch too. Nobody knows where we came from, do they? How do I know, how do you know, who my father is?”
“Senara, you are talking dangerously. Your mother had the misfortune to be wrecked at sea. My mother saved her life. You were about to be born. It is all easy to understand.”
“Is it, Tamsyn? Is that what you really think?”
“Yes, it is,” I said firmly.
“You always believe what you want to. Everything is good and nice, according to you. Other people don’t always think so. And one thing, don’t imagine you are the only one who has a lover.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ah, wouldn’t you like to know?”
I very soon did know. It suddenly occurred to me that Senara had inherited that indefinable quality from her mother. In the days which followed she seemed to grow more beautiful; she was passing out of her childhood and she was of a type to mature early. Her body had become rounded, her long eyes languorous and full of mystery—so like her mother’s. When she danced with Dickon she was so lovely that it was impossible to take one’s eyes from her.
Dickon adored her. When he danced with her there was such happiness in his movements that it was a joy to watch them. He would sit and play the lute to her and sing songs of his own composing. They seemed all to be about the charms of a dark-eyed maiden, who tantalized him and tormented him while she enchanted him.
Enchantment! Bewitchment! These were words which occurred again and again in his song. She beguiled his senses; she had this elusive quality which he could not define.
One day in the music-room Maria discovered her daughter in the arms of Dickon, the music teacher. Senara told me about it afterwards. She was hysterical, half defiant, half fearful.
“Dickon always wants to make love to me,” she had said. “He has a passionate nature and so have I. You wouldn’t understand, Tamsyn. You are so calm and dull about these things. I love Dickon. He is beautiful, do you not think so? And the feeling he puts into his songs … and when we dance together, I seem to melt in his arms. I am ready to grant any request he might make of me. That’s how Dickon affects me, Tamsyn.”
“It sounds a very dangerous state of affairs,” I had replied with trepidation.
“Dangerous? Of course it’s dangerous. That’s why it’s exciting. When I am going for my lesson I make Merry curl my hair and I choose my ribbons very carefully to match my gown. Merry laughs. She knows.”
Merry was the maid who had been given us now that we were growing up. She worked for us personally, looked after our clothes, did our hair and was in fact a lady’s maid whom we shared. She was youngish—a little older than I was in fact, and she was in love with Jan Leward, one of the menservants who lived in the Seaward Tower. They were going to marry one day, she had confided in us, and she was very pleased with life because of this. Senara tricked her into giving confidences about the progress of her love-affair with Jan.