Witch from the Sea

Senara and I stayed with my grandmother until the spring. It was May when we went back to the castle.

A surprise awaited us. Our father had married again. Senara’s mother was to be my stepmother.

After coming back from Lyon Court, Castle Paling seemed an alien place, which was strange for it had always been my home. Everything seemed to have changed since we had been away. My mother’s influence had been eliminated entirely and in its place was something new—intangible; it was hard to say what.

Some of the furnishings had been changed—the bedchamber which my mother and father had shared was entirely different. There were rich velvet hangings about the bed and at the windows. There was a foreign look about it. I looked into the Red Room. That had been left exactly as it always had been. I remembered all the stories I had heard about its being haunted. My mother’s sitting-room which she had used so much was also left untouched. There was her carved wooden chair and the table on which stood the rather large sandalwood writing-desk of which she had always been fond.

Senara was secretly proud that her mother instead of being a rather mysterious guest in the castle was now the undisputed mistress of it. She had previously, I think, felt something of an outsider and that was why I constantly tried to remind her that I thought of her as my sister.

The servants had changed. They whispered a lot; they were constantly crossing themselves as though for protection against the evil eye. I knew that they were afraid of my stepmother Maria; sometimes I thought even my father was a little.

I could not suppress a certain resentment. In the first place I hated to see someone in my mother’s place; in the second, I thought it had happened too quickly. Three months after she had died my father had married my stepmother; and the fact that she had been living in the castle was somehow even more shocking.

My father had never taken much notice of me. Connell was his favourite. He had little regard for girls—at least, not for his own daughter. He kept out of my way after my return almost as though my presence embarrassed him. He knew how very devoted my mother and I had been to each other.

At first Senara gave herself airs but that was very soon at an end. The friendship between us was too firm for anything to harm it. The fact that her mother had taken my mother’s place might have caused a rift in some cases, not with us. My father engaged a tutor to give us lessons because my mother had done so in the past, and he was already installed at the castle—a Master Eller—he seemed aged, but I doubt he was much more than forty-five. He was strict and serious and even Connell had to pay attention, although he hated lessons and at twelve years old thought he should have been beyond them.

Jennet had scarcely changed except that she had aged a little. I think my mother’s death had shocked her deeply. She was only a year younger than my grandmother and I knew she had regarded my mother as her own daughter. She used to go about muttering to herself and she harboured a dislike for my stepmother which she was afraid to show.

So many people were afraid of my stepmother. It was because she had come on Hallowe’en and that was the time for witches. That she was different from other people was clear. She never appeared to be angry, but if she were displeased there would be a strange glitter in her eyes which was as frightening as my father’s loud displays of temper. Everyone and everything was different. The castle seemed full of shadows. Servants were afraid when the darkness fell. Jennet, who had been so talkative and pleased with life, was no longer so. On her face was a perpetual expression of bewilderment. Once she broke down and wept. “I knew your mother when she was a baby,” she told me. “I held her in my arms when she was but a day old. Your grandmother was good to me but sharp. She lifted her hand against me more than once, but Miss Linnet …” She broke down and we cried together.

Then Jennet crossed herself suddenly and said in a hollow voice: “God help us all. That good lady’s place … my little Mistress Linnet’s place … be took by …” Then she looked over her shoulder and after a long pause she murmured, “by … by another.”

Like everyone else, Jennet was afraid of my stepmother. I wondered about my father. His eyes followed her wherever she was. I heard one of the servants say: “He be spellbound.”