The Witch From The Sea Part 17

The host bowed and shuffled out and left us standing there looking at each other.

Colum came to me and laid his hands on my shoulders. "I always promised myself that you and I should sleep in that bed."

"You are a man who cannot endure to be baulked."

"What man worth his salt is not?"

"But most men realize that there are some things in life which must be denied them."

"Not this man," he retorted.

I laughed. "You planned this," I said, "because of what happened here when I came with my mother."

He shrugged his shoulders. "I had business to transact so I thought, why should I not do it at The Traveller's Rest? I will take my wife with me and we will share the Oak Room, for it will bring home to her the fact that she has a husband who will have his way sooner or later."

"I can never understand why a man who is acknowledged as the king of his castle should have to go to such lengths continually to stress the fact that he is."

"Because he is not sure that one person fully realizes it, and to tell you the truth, it is that person he is most anxious should."

I laid my head against his chest and put my arms about him.

"I am content with life as I have found it, Colum. You are a strong man. I should be the last to deny it, but whatever I was made to accept I should always have my own views ... you appreciate that."

"I would not want a foolish simpering creature ... like ..."

I was glad he stopped, but I knew of course that he was referring to Melanie.

To change the subject I said: "You say you have come here to do business. Do tell me, Colum, I am most eager to know."

I saw a shadow pa.s.s over his face. He went to the window and looked out; then he turned his head and said to me: "What do you know of my business?"

"Nothing much at the moment but I should like to learn."

"There is nothing to learn," he said. "I have some merchandise I wish to show to a merchant. We are meeting at this inn."

"So it was because it is business, not because of that night?"

"Shall we say a little of each."

"What merchandise have you to dispose of, Colum? Where does it come from?"

He did not answer that question.

He said: "Ere long two of my men will arrive with pack-horses. They will bring the merchandise."

"What merchandise is this?" I persisted.

"It varies."

He drew me to the bed and removed my cloak.

"Colum, there is much I wish to know. When I come to think of it there is so little I do know. You are my husband. There is nothing I want so much as to share my life with you and if I do so I must know ..."

"Know what?" he said, loosening my hair from the net which held it. "What should you, a good and obedient wife, wish to know but that you please me?"

"I want to please you, yes. In every way I want to please you. But I want to help you too."

He kissed me with more gentleness than I was accustomed to. "You please me and you please me most when you wait for me to tell you what I will."

"You mean this business of yours is a secret?"

"Who talks of secrets? What a woman you are for creating drama from ordinary events. You store up ghosts in the Red Room."

"You were secretive about that."

"Secretive! I! Because I forgot something in the past which it can do no one good to remember. You should be grateful that my first marriage was a failure. It makes me more than ever contented with my second."

"I know you are content, Colum, but I want to help you. I want to understand ... everything."

He laughed and pressed me back on the bed. He kissed my throat. Then he said: "Nay, the host's table is awaiting our attention. We will eat and then mayhap I will attend to my business and when that is finished you and I will be together here in this Oak Room as I yearned to be when I first saw you here."

He rose and pulled me to my feet.

"But, Colum ..." I began.

"You have a hungry husband, Madam," he told me. "He must needs eat before he can answer more questions."

We went to the dining-room. Memories came back. I pictured his sitting there eating with gusto, catching my skirt as I pa.s.sed. How I had hated him then! It was incredible that in so short a time that hatred could have turned to this pa.s.sionate love.

He ate heartily, doing full justice to the muggety pie made of sheeps' entrails, and taken with cream-a Cornish custom which we of Devon had never indulged in, although we were as famous for our clotted cream as the Cornish were. He drank the metheglin but rather sparingly, I thought, and while we were eating two men put their heads into the dining-room.

He acknowledged them but he did not introduce me. They did not remain in the dining-room but went away-I believed to wait until Colum was ready, and had come in either to see that he was there or a.s.sure him that they had arrived. They looked like merchants in their best clothes. One wore a russet jacket with camblet sleeves and there were pewter b.u.t.tons on it. The other was in brown with grey kersey hose and they both wore steeple-crowned hats.

"They are friends of yours, Colum?" I asked.

"They are the men whom I have come to see."

"On business," I said.

"Aye, business."

"I had thought you a man of means, not a merchant."

"Merchants are men of means, wife. I have rich lands, a castle and many servants. To keep up such an establishment and maintain a wife is costly in these days. So now and then when the mood is on me I am a merchant."

"What is your merchandise?"

"Whatever comes my way."

"So it is no particular commodity?"

"Enough of questions. Your curiosity will make a scold of you yet."

"It is only because I would serve my husband that I wish to learn his habits."

"He will keep you acquainted of the best way to serve him. Now I must leave you for a while so I will take you to the Oak Room and then you will go to bed. You may be sure that the moment I have completed my business I will be with you."

He took me to the Oak Room and left me there. I sat on the bed and thought of him down there transacting his business. What business? The men had arrived with the pack-horses. I wondered what they had brought. It was strange for the squire who owned a castle and was the lord of his neighbourhood to barter over merchandise. I wondered again what it was, and why he should be so reluctant to discuss this with me. There could be two reasons. The first was that wives were not supposed to share in their husband's business affairs. They were not supposed to understand them. That was something I would not accept, as my mother would not either. I knew that Colum, while delighting in my spirited nature, was also determined to subdue it. He wanted me relegated to what he would call a wife's place. He seemed to ignore the fact that if he ever did he would lose interest in me. Perhaps deep down in his heart he wanted to. Perhaps he wanted to keep me as the mother of his children and go off in search of erotic adventures with other women, I was sure that was what he did before we had married. In a way he chafed against this pa.s.sion between us. Once he had said with a sort of exasperated anger: "None will satisfy me now save you." He was a strange man. He hated above all things to be shackled. It might well be that he wished to keep his business apart from me because he did not want to share everything. He wanted to exclude me because he feared I was becoming too important to him. The other reason was, of course, that it was something of which he was ashamed. Ashamed! He would never be ashamed. Something that must be kept secret perhaps.

So I pondered and I longed to creep down the stairs and into the room which the host would have set aside for them and listen at the door.

Instead I went to the window and sat there, and thought over every detail of what had happened on that other occasion at the inn. It had been the most important of my life in a way, for had I not come here I should never have met Colum. How easy it would have been for us to have taken another road, to have stayed at another inn. It seemed incredible that life could be affected by so flimsy a chance.

I sat at that window for a long time thinking of this and I was still there when I heard a bustle below. Looking down, I saw the two men who had looked in at the dining-room. A groom was leading two pack-horses. They were not ours. Then came Colum with the two men. I drew back but not so far that I could not see them.

They talked together. Then the men mounted their horses and rode away.

I knew that Colum was coming up now so I left the window and sat on the bed.

In a few minutes he was in the room.

"What!" he cried. "Still up! What do you here? 'Tis time we were abed."

I could not sleep well that night. I had bad dreams. I was not sure of what for in them events were jumbled, but Colum was there and so were the merchants and the pack-horses, and Melanie too ... for my dream had s.h.i.+fted to the Red Room. Melanie was warning me: "Don't be too curious. If you are, you could uncover something you would rather not know."

In the morning we rode back to Castle Paling. It was a beautiful morning. There is nothing like sunlight for was.h.i.+ng away the fears which come by night. They are exposed as nothing but vague shadows conjured up out of the darkness. I revelled in the green of the conifers and the call of the cuckoo, though he was beginning to stammer now. All was well. In six months' time my child would be born and now I was going to my home where my son would be waiting for me.

It was August. I could no longer ride and the days seemed long and tedious. One night there was a violent storm and I awoke to find that Colum was hastily dressing.

I sat up in bed, and he told me to lie down and keep the curtains drawn. He was going out because he thought there might be a s.h.i.+p out there in distress.

I said should I not be up in case there was something I could do? He said no, he would forbid it. I had to think of the child I carried.

Nevertheless, I rose and went to look in at the room adjoining ours where Connell slept. He was a year old now. I thought the thunder and lightning might frighten him. Nothing of the sort. He shouted with delight as the flash lit up the room and he clearly thought the violent thunder was part of a game which had been devised for his benefit.

I laughed with him, glad that he was not frightened and because I did not wish him to see that I had expected him to be afraid I left him.

I went back to my bed and drew the curtains around me, and I thought of that other night when there had been a storm and Colum had gone out to see what could be done.

He had told me that on dark nights he caused a lantern to be put in the turret rooms of the towers facing the sea as a warning to sailors that they were close to the Devil's Teeth.

He said: "It has been the custom of our house to give this service. When sailors see the lights, if they know they are on the Cornish Coast, they will realize that they are near the Devil's Teeth and keep away-so in the Nonna and Seaward Towers these lanterns shone on all dark nights."

So I lay in bed and prayed that if any s.h.i.+p was being buffeted by the violent winds it would come safely through.

The storm died down and I slept. It was light when I awoke and Colum had awakened me by coming into the room.

His clothes were sodden with the rain and there was a hot colour in his cheeks.

"Was a s.h.i.+p in distress?"

He nodded. "She's broken on the rocks."

"She couldn't have seen the lights in the tower."

"She was blown on to the rocks. We did what we could."

"You are soaked." I rose and started to dress.

"There is nothing you can do," he said. "It is over. You'll see her when it's thoroughly light. It's a sorry sight."

I did see her-poor sad vessel that had once been so proud. I could not stop myself looking at her and I thought of my father who had gone off on a trading expedition to the East Indies. Fennimore had gone with another s.h.i.+p and Carlos was captaining another. This could happen to any of them. It was terrible to contemplate the hazards of the sea.

As I stood by the window Colum came beside me and put an arm about me.

"Do not go out today," he said.

"Why not?"

"Why must you always question?" he demanded with a touch of irritation. "Why cannot you obey me like a good wife?"

"But why should I not go out?"

"The ground is slippery. I'd never forgive you if aught happened to the child."

That afternoon Colum went away for a day or two. I watched him go and then because the sun was s.h.i.+ning and the sea was calm-only a slightly muddy colour to suggest last night's trouble-I felt the urge to go out was irresistible.

I would walk with care but I must go out into the suns.h.i.+ne. I would not take the cliff path which could be treacherous but I would just walk in the precincts of the castle.

Thus I came to the cobbled courtyard before Ysella's Tower. I looked up at it remembering the story and asking myself how it was possible for a man to keep two women in the same dwelling and one not know the other was there. "Preposterous!" I said aloud. But if they were meek women who obeyed without question the husband they shared, it might have been managed. No, I could not believe it. Although with the forceful Casvellyns perhaps anything was possible. Colum would like me to be as docile as Ysella and Nonna must have been.

Then I noticed the sand among the cobbles. There was a good deal of it. I wondered idly how it could have got there. Could it have been blown up in the storm? Impossible. It would have to come right over the top of the tower to get there. The only answer was that people who had been on the beach had been walking here. Strangely enough, I had been here the day before and not noticed it.

I was there on the stone step close to the iron-studded door, so whoever had brought it in had stood on that stone step.

As I stood there I saw a glittering object and stooping to pick it up I saw that it was an amulet. It glittered like gold.

I examined it. It was oval in shape, about an inch wide and two inches long. It was beautifully engraved and what was depicted fascinated me. It was the figure of a beautiful youth about whose head was a halo, and at his feet lay a horned goat; one of the youth's feet was resting on the goat as though he had vanquished it. There was a name engraved on it in very small letters so that I could scarcely read it: I took it to my room and examined it and at last I made out the name to be VALDEZ. So it was Spanish. Someone must have dropped it. Someone who had been on the sh.o.r.e and brought the sand up on his boots.

I put the amulet in the drawer.

Colum returned two days later. I saw him riding towards the castle with the men and the pack-horses. They were unladen.

I went to the kitchen and ordered that the joints should be set on the spits immediately and that one of his favourite pies should be made without delay-squab perhaps as there was plenty of bacon and mutton and Colum had the Cornishman's love of pastry.

We dined alone in the little room where we had our first meal together. Colum always wanted us to be there alone on occasions like this. It showed an unsuspected sentimentality.

I put on the diamond chain with the ruby locket and it was a very happy evening. It was when I put the chain and locket away that I opened it and looking at the s.p.a.ce for a miniature inside it decided that I should like to have a picture of my son there after the custom.