Witch from the Sea

She must have seen me up here on the ramparts. She would think I was the ghost. But she would tell someone and perhaps they would come. I waited expectantly.

But no one came. It was almost dark now. I could not spend the night up here. It was better to go into the castle.

On impulse I threw my petticoat over the ramparts. They would search for me and that would let them know that they had to come here. They would open the door then and come and find me, for the garment would surely give them a clue as to my whereabouts.

I watched it flutter to the ground. It was uncanny. It looked as though it were a woman falling down. What had Nonna felt when she discovered her husband had been unfaithful to her? Life was no longer good for her and she had decided to take her life.

It was the fading light; it was the tension which I must necessarily feel in this situation which had made me fanciful; but it did seem as though that was a human being falling. There was a screech as she fell, but it was the gulls, startled perhaps by what would seem to them a gigantic bird floating down. Several of them rose overhead calling protestingly.

I stood there shivering.

Someone will find the petticoat soon and come for me, I promised myself.

I found my way down the spiral staircase, not so easy to manage in the gloom. I reached the gallery and went down to the hall.

It looked different now. There was very little light coming through the windows, which were few and so narrow. The Tower was built for defence and the lower windows were meant to supply the minimum light and air, for in a fortress the lower part was the most vulnerable.

I picked my way between bales of cloth that had been sodden and were drying out, garments, spices, goods which had been carried from one place to another—gold, silver, ivory; the kind of commodities which my father and the Landors were dealing in. Trade.

So much slipped into place. Colum going out on the nights of storm. His clothes soaked with rain and sea water. The Ysella tower to be locked and intrusion into the courtyard discouraged. Jennet dismissed from the Seaward Tower on the nights when Colum and some of his men were going on a journey. The men who inhabited the Seaward Tower who were not quite the same as the other servants. “They are fishermen, they catch our fish and I am very fond of fish,” he had said. They were men of the sea, those who inhabited the Seaward Tower. There were boats there, there were horses and donkeys, pack-horses.

I felt sick. I did not know whether it was the smell of these sea-saturated goods or the knowledge which had come to me or the thought of Colum’s anger if he ever knew that I had intruded into his tower. And he would know. Even now he would be looking for me. He would search for me and they would find my petticoat in the courtyard. That would surely lead them to Ysella’s Tower.

It was clear now. These goods which filled the tower had come from shipwrecked ships. On the night of a storm when ships were unable to withstand the fury of the elements, when they broke up on our coast, Colum and his servants were there. They salvaged the goods; they brought them ashore; they stored them in Ysella’s Tower and then he made bargains with men such as those he met in The Traveller’s Rest.

And it was a secret.

Was it against the law then to take goods from the sea? Was this why it must be done in secret? He had been angry when he had discovered my curiosity about the tower. He had told me the story in the hope that I would be afraid to go near it because it was said to be haunted.

He had not wished me to know of this. When I found the amulet, he knew that it had fallen from some goods which had been brought into the tower. The locket he gave to me he knew to have been part of these goods. When he gave me a present of jewellery, and he had given me one or two, he came down here and selected it. Something which looked like new … or would have done if I had not discovered the secret spring and the name in it.

What was this business of his? It seemed that there was something callous about a man who could come by his merchandise through the distress of others.

I shivered. Deep down in my heart I knew that there was something frightening about Colum. I knew that had I married Fennimore Landor I should have lived a peaceful happy life; my only anxiety would be when he took his sea voyages, and that would be for his safety, not for my own.

What a strange thought that was. But my mind felt so lucid now. It was as though a misty mirror had been wiped and I could now see clearly what was reflected.

Colum would be angry. What form would his anger take? If he raged against me, if he struck me—he never had but there were times when I had thought he was about to—I think I should be more at ease than if he silently accepted what I had done.