Witch from the Sea

It was true that they had not the same respect for our reigning king. He was dirty in his habits; unkempt in his appearance and ill-mannered at the table. He had the disadvantage of having been brought up by Scotsmen, they said.

“Though his mother,” said my old gentleman, “was said to be one of the most elegant and beautiful women the world has ever known.”

Then they started to talk of old times and how the Queen of Scotland had been the centre of plots to put her on the throne and our Queen had always been one step ahead of the scheming Mary.

“Mary was an adulteress,” said one.

“And a murderess,” said the other.

They discussed the murder of her second husband, Lord Darnley.

“He was to have been blown up in Kirk o’ Fields, and we know who planned that. But it went wrong, and he was found in the grounds … dead … but without a sign on his body of how he died.”

I found I was suddenly listening attentively.

“There was nothing to show …”

I felt my heart begin to beat faster and I said: “How could that be possible?”

“Oh, it is possible,” was the answer. “There is a method and these villains knew it.”

“What method?” I asked earnestly.

“I believe that if a wet cloth is placed over the mouth and held firmly there until the victim is suffocated, there will be no signs of violence on his skin.”

I felt it hard to concentrate after that. Those words kept dancing about in my brain.

There had been no signs of violence on my mother’s body. Nor had there been on Lord Darnley’s.

I would have liked to talk to my grandmother but I dared not. She looked so old and fragile that I did not want to upset her.

I said nothing. I wanted to go back to the castle. I was certain now that my mother had feared something. On the night I had left her alone she had died … and there were no marks of violence on her body.

Someone had killed her. Moreover she had an inkling that someone was trying to.

If she was writing down the events of her days she must have written something which she considered secret since she had wanted to hide it.

I had to find those papers.

It was April when I arrived back at the castle. When I went up to our bedchamber, I found that Senara’s things were gone.

She came hurrying in and hugged me.

“So you are back. I’ll admit it doesn’t seem the same without you.”

“Where are your things?”

She put her head on one side and regarded me with a smile. “I thought it was time you and I had separate rooms. There are enough and to spare in the castle. It was all very well when we were little and afraid of the dark.”

I was a little hurt. I thought of the pleasant manner in which we had always chatted before we slept; and how she had clearly not been pleased if I was ever not there, as for instance when I visited my grandmother.

“I’ve gone into the Red Room,” she said.

“Why that room? There are others.”

“I had a fancy for it.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“You’re not angry, are you?” she asked.

“No, but I wonder why you felt it necessary.”

She smiled secretly. I knew there was a reason. And why had she chosen the Red Room? I knew how daring and reckless she was. A thought had come into my mind. She was in love with Dickon. I was certain of that. The very fact that marriage with him would be so highly unsuitable would make it attractive to her. And he was going away soon, for when the Deemsters left he was going with them. He was one of them now. He would go first to Holland and join in that greater project to settle in America if it ever came to pass.

An idea came to me then. Could she have chosen the Red Room because if the servants heard strange noises there they would say it was a ghost and be afraid to enter?

Did Dickon really come to the castle to visit her at night? Not the puritan surely. But how sincere were they … either of them? And I believed that they were passionately in love.

It was a very uneasy situation. I wondered what would happen to Dickon if he were really visiting Senara and if my father or her mother discovered this.

Lord Cartonel was still paying his visits. Senara and her mother took wine with him. I was certain that he was going to ask for Senara’s hand; and if he did then I was sure that she would be obliged to take this very grand gentleman. He was just what I believed her mother had always wanted for her.

As for myself, I started my search for the papers again. But where could I look that I had not looked before?

My thoughts were diverted by the talk of witchcraft which had become rife since my departure. Merry was excited by it.

“They do say, Mistress,” she told me, “that there be a coven of ’em and ’tis not so far away. Some says some place, some another. Terrible things do happen there. ’Tis anti-Christian. There they do worship the Devil himself and he sits there in their midst in the form of a horned goat.”

“It’s a lot of nonsense, Merry,” I told her.