THE TURRET LIGHTS
IT WAS CHRISTMAS DAY, my eighteenth birthday and Senara’s sixteenth. My stepmother had invited people to the castle. She seemed eager to find husbands for us both, and particularly for me perhaps because I was two years older.
During the last weeks Senara liked to go off alone. I believed that she was riding to Leyden Hall. She was becoming more and more interested in the new sect who were called the puritans. It amused me because there could be no one less like a puritan than Senara.
She had taken the feather out of her riding hat and wore it plain. She would put on a demure expression which ill-matched her brilliant long eyes with the mischief in them. Of course I had never been absolutely sure of Senara.
She talked to me about the puritans and often she would become quite earnest.
“They want to make it all as simple as possible, Tamsyn,” she said. “And religion should be simple, shouldn’t it? Do you think God wants all that ceremony? Of course He doesn’t. One should worship Him in the simplest possible way. The church is always ready to persecute those who don’t conform.”
“You are really interested, Senara,” I said. “You’ve changed since you arranged to get lost near Leyden Hall.”
“I arranged it, as you know,” she said. “I couldn’t believe Dickon had become a puritan. I had to go and see.”
“Surely he is not making one of you?”
“Can you imagine me … a puritan!”
“That is something beyond my powers of imagination.”
“No, I should never be a puritan at heart, but I admire them in a way. Think of Dickon.”
“It seems to me you think of him a good deal.”
“He is so beautiful … even now in his plain clothes and his curls pressed out he is still more handsome than any other man … even your Fenn—who has gone away without declaring his feelings—even he looks quite ugly compared with Dickon.”
“You are bewitched by him.”
“You forget I am the one who does the bewitching.”
“So it is he who is bewitched by you.”
“I think that in spite of his new puritan ideas, he is a little. For I am a very bewitching person, Tamsyn.”
“In your own opinion, certainly.”
“It is so interesting,” she said, “and so dangerous. It has been since the Hampton Court Conference.”
“Keep away from religion that is dangerous.”
“What a thing to say! Surely that is quite cynical. How can people help what they believe, and if you believe, shouldn’t you defend that belief with your life if need be?”
“Our country and my family have been torn by religious beliefs. One of my ancestors lost his head in the reign of Henry VIII, another was burned at the stake in the reign of Mary. We don’t want any more religious conflict in the family.”
“You’re a coward, Tamsyn.”
“That may be but that is how I want it.”
“They are talking of going away.”
“Who, Dickon and the Deemsters?”
“Yes, to Holland. They can worship there as they wish. Perhaps one day they will go far away and make a land of their own. They talk about it a good deal.”
I laughed.
“What amuses you?”
“That you, Senara, of all people, should be caught up with puritans. Of course it is not the puritans, I know. Can it really be Dickon?”
“How could it be? I would never be allowed to marry a man who was our music master and now grows vegetables and works for a family like the Deemsters.”
“I cannot see you in the humble role of wife to a man in such a lowly position.”
“Nay, nor could I. For I came from such nobility that is far beyond anything I have had here.”
“Oh, how do you know this?”
“My mother has told me. In Spain she moved in very noble circles—royal, in fact. So you are right when you say I could not marry Dickon.”
“Don’t look sad. It’s the first day of Christmas. We shall make merry this night. You will dance and sing for the company and no one will be merrier than you.”
“It will be a very different Christmas at Leyden Hall,” she said.
“I can picture it. They will make of it a purely religious occasion. There will be no feasting, dancing and making merry, as we do, no King for the Night, no blessing on the hall, no mummers, no carol singers. This is more to your taste, Senara.”
“It is!” she cried; and that night she was beautiful in a blue velvet gown, her dark hair caught back in a gold band,
I was not the only one who thought her the loveliest of all present. There were several young men who did and would doubtless in due course ask for her hand, which was what her mother wanted.
There was Thomas Grenoble for one, who came from London and was connected with the Court. He was young, rich and good-looking. I knew he was one my stepmother had chosen for Senara. He could do the latest dances which she quickly mastered and I wondered whether as she danced with Thomas Grenoble she thought of Dickon. If she did she gave no sign of it.
Melanie had been brought up by her mother to be a good housewife and I don’t think our household matters ever went so smoothly as they did that Christmas. Melanie was quite unobtrusive and gentle; Connell was inclined to ignore her and flirt with some of the young women guests, but Melanie remained unruffled. She reminded me very much of Fenn and how I wished that he were with us!
I mentioned him to her and asked if she had heard from her mother when he was expected back.
“It was not to be a long voyage,” she answered. “My mother thinks he will be back by the spring.”
That gave me new hope. I was just waiting for the spring.
I was still looking for my mother’s diary and when it seemed that I had looked in every possible place I began to think that it had never existed. Jennet was known to exaggerate, to romanticize, particularly now that she was getting older. Had she seen my mother writing once or twice and imagined she had been writing something which she wanted to hide? That seemed very likely.
And my mother’s death? People did die suddenly when they were not very old. One heard of them now and then and no one was skilled enough in medicine to know the cause. If one was in Court circles and known to have enemies people thought of poison. I wondered how many men and women had been believed to be poisoned when they had died of natural causes.
Then on some days my feelings would change and I would be certain that my mother had not died naturally. I could not forget the stone I had found on her grave. And who could have removed it from the cupboard in which I had placed it?
That was what had started my speculations. It was certainly mysterious. My mood fluctuated. At times I would think it was nonsense; then at others the certainty that my mother had not died naturally would be with me. Then I would start to look again for the journal, for if there was a secret would it not be in that? But if she had not known she was about to die how could it have been! But had she known? Why should she have been afraid during those last days of her life?
It would be in the book and if that book existed it must be in the castle.
I could think of nowhere in her sitting-room where it could be. I had searched that and the settle had yielded nothing. In the bedroom which she had shared with my father and was now that of him and stepmother? That had been refurbished after my mother’s death. Surely if the book had come to light it would have been mentioned—or destroyed perhaps.
It was all mysterious and long ago. Yet at times the urge to discover that book came back strongly to me.
There were turret rooms in the towers of both Nonna and Crow where perhaps something could be hidden. In one of my exploratory moods I decided to look.