I did not throw the stone away because when I came to take it next day it was missing.
I opened the door of the court cupboard and felt for the petticoat. There it was, rolled as I had left it. But it was light and the stone was not there.
I could not believe it. I had wrapped it so that it was hidden. No one could have known it was there. I knelt with the petticoat in my hand and a terrible apprehension crept over me. Could it really be that some other force—not human—had placed that stone first on the sailor’s grave and then on my mother’s? Was it really true that the ghosts of the castle were manifesting their existence in this way?
Hands caught at my throat and I screamed out in terror. My head was jerked back and I was looking up into Senara’s laughing face.
“What are you doing caressing that old petticoat? And I frightened you, did I not? Did you think it was an enemy? Have you such a bad conscience?”
“You … you did startle me.”
“I wondered what you were doing on your knees. I watched for minutes … well, a few seconds … I couldn’t make out why you kept looking at that old petticoat.”
She snatched it from me and unfurled it.
“Look, it’s torn. What possible good is it? That ribbon on it is rather pretty though …”
I rose and she studied me anxiously.
“You’re not ill, are you? You look scared.”
“I’m all right. It was just …”
“I know. Cold shiver. Someone walking over your grave, as they say.”
I pulled myself sharply together.
“Yes, something like that,” I said.
I was obsessed by memories of my mother. I had loved her dearly and she had rarely been far from my thoughts, but now the memories were with me all the time. I wished that I had taken more notice at the time. I had only been ten years old then and there was so much I had not understood. If only I had been older. If only my mother had been able to talk to me.
I remembered something Senara had said about our servants knowing so much about us and that led me to think of Jennet who was still in our household. She was getting old now; she was nearly as old as my grandmother and there had been talk of her going back to Grandmother when my mother died but she had wanted to stay.
She and my grandmother had been through many adventures together, and because my grandfather had given Jennet a child there was always a touch of asperity in my grandmother’s attitude towards her. They were fond of each other in a way but I think Jennet preferred to be with me.
When my mother had died she had said: “There’s young Tamsyn. I know Mistress Linnet would have wanted me to keep an eye on her.”
And in a way she had kept her eyes on me. In the last year she had become resigned to age as she had through her life become resigned to everything that had befallen her. The prospect of a baby in the house—we were all expecting every day to hear that Melanie was pregnant—revived old Jennet a little. If that baby came she would want to be in the nursery.
She said to me once: “Men! I’ve known scores of them and very good company too and from that company comes the best of all things—little babies, dear little babies.”
Now I wanted to talk to her about my mother. Jennet was easy to talk to; reminiscences flowed from her.
“Mistress Linnet,” she said, “she were a wild one at one time. Stood up to her father, she did. But she never had quite the fight in her that her mother had. Cat they called her and Wild Cat I’d heard the master say more than once—that was the Captain—a regular one he was. I reckon there wasn’t another like him. You see, your mother wasn’t wanted by him. He was mad for a boy and it seemed your grandmother couldn’t give him one. He let her see it, and Mistress Linnet she let him see that she knew it, and then sudden like they understood each other, and then—my dear life—there was something between them. He was proud of her. My girl Linnet’s as good as a son, he said. Then she met your father. And when she came here I came with her.”
“She was happy here, wasn’t she, Jennet?”
“Happy … what’s being happy? Most people are happy one minute and sad the next.”
“You’re not, Jennet. You’ve been as happy as anyone I ever knew.”
“I had a knack of it. Good things happened to me. I’ve had a good life, I have.”
I smiled at her fondly. I was not surprised that my mother had been fond of her.
“You were my mother’s personal maid, weren’t you?”
“Oh yes, I was. I was sent over here to be that. Your grandmother trusted me for all she could be sharp with me. She knew that I was the best one to look after her daughter.”
“Why did she think my mother needed looking after?”
“Oh, you know how it is … a young girl bride. She wants some of the old familiar faces round her.”
“How was she … towards the end, I mean.”
Jennet looked back into the past and frowned.
“She got a bit quiet, like … as though there was something …”
“Yes, Jennet, go on. As though there was something?”
“Something she wasn’t sure of.”
“Did she ever say anything?”
“Not to me. I reckon there was one person she would have told and that was your grandmother.”
“Why not … my father …”
“Well, what if it should have concerned him?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I don’t know. Just that if she was worried about him she wouldn’t have him to talk to, would she?”
“Do you know why she should worry about him?”
“Wives do worry about husbands, you know. There’s reasons. Why, your grandmother …”
But I was not going to be side-tracked.
“How did she seem during those last weeks, Jennet? I felt there was something.”
“She was always writing … I caught her at it more than once.”
“Caught her at it!”
“Well, that’s how it seemed. She’d be there at her table writing away and if I came in she would cover up what she was writing, and I never saw where it went in the end.”
“She must have been writing letters.”
“I don’t think so. She never sent so many letters away. But when I came back to her room it would all be put out of sight. I never saw any sign of it then, which was strange. I often wondered where she kept it.”
“I wonder what she was writing.”
“It was some sort of diary, I always thought. People do that. They like to write things down.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “I wonder where she put her diary.”
“’Tis my belief she hid it away.”
I thought to myself: If she did that she must have felt there was something she must hide.
I didn’t want to discuss her any more. I started Jennet talking about the old days at Lyon Court and Captain Jake, my grandfather. That was a subject for which she would turn away from any other.
I was excited though. If my mother had written a diary and if she had recorded everything that happened to her as it did, surely there would be some clue in it as to what she had been feeling during those last weeks of her life.
I was determined to find my mother’s journal or diary, whatever it was. I could not forget that moment when I had seen the stone on her grave. Why had it been put there? Because someone knew that her death had not been natural?
Perhaps I thought the mischief-maker had meant to put it on her grave in the first place and had in mistake put in on the unknown sailor’s. I went down to the shore where I could be quiet to think of what had happened. I found the rhythm of the waves soothing. I looked up at the straight grey walls of the castle and I said to myself: Someone in there knows what happened to my mother.