Saraband for Two Sisters

They had brought mystery and excitement into the castle. I kept thinking of the mob’s marching up the slight incline to the portcullis and storming their way into the castle. They would be carrying torches and shouting what they would do to the witch when they found her.

“Sit beside me, Senara!” cried my mother. “How wonderful it is to have you here.

I could almost believe we are young again. You must tell us all that has happened.”

“But first allow them to eat,” begged Melanie with a smile. Hot soup was brought; Senara declared it was delicious and it was of the kind she remembered Melanie’s preparing before she left the castle. “We add different herbs from time to time,” said Melanie. “We try to improve on it.»

“It was always too good to be improved,” said Senara. “And see how impatient Tamsyn is. She is really chiding us for talking of soup when there is so much to tell.” My mother said, “Eat, Senara. You must be famished. There is plenty of time to talk afterward.”

They ate heartily of the soup, which was followed by lamby pie, and then there were strawberries with clouted cream.

“I have indeed come home,” said Senara. “Is it not exactly as I told you it would be, Carlotta?”

Carlotta replied, “Madre, you have talked of nothing else but Castle Paling and your sister Tamsyn ever since you made up your mind to come here.”

We were all waiting eagerly for the last of the strawberries to be consumed and when the servants had removed the platters Senara said, “Now you are impatient to hear what happened. I shall give you a rough outline, for I cannot explain all the little

 happenings that made up a lifetime over a dinner table. But you will learn in due time. You young people may have heard of me. There was a great talk hereabouts when I was here ... but that was long ago and when faces are no longer here they are forgotten. Yet my mother was different. She came mysteriously, thrown up from the sea. She was a noble lady, the wife of a count and bearing his child ... which was myself. I was born here ... in the Red Room. Is the Red Room still here?»

“Why, it’s the haunted room,” cried Rozen.

“That’s right,” went on Senara. “The haunted room. But it was haunted before my mother came to it. Colum Casvellyn’s first wife died there bearing a stillborn child. That was before he married Tamsyn’s mother. Yes, it was haunted then and my mother added another ghost to the Red Room.”

“The servants won’t go there after dark,” said Gwenifer excitedly.

“It’s nonsense,” retorted Melanie. “The room is not haunted. One of these days I intend to change all the furnishings.”

 “Several had that idea,” said Senara. “Wasn’t it odd that no one ever did?”

“Please go on,” pleaded Bersaba.

“My mother came and I was born and then she went away, but I grew up with Tamsyn and when her mother died, my mother came back and she married Colum Casvellyn. We were always together, weren’t we Tamsyn! I used to shock you, but you thought of me as your sister.”

“Always,” said my mother.

“Then came the day when my mother went away again and Colum Casvellyn had had his accident and was in his chair. The witch-hunters came for my mother and they were ready to take me in her place so Tamsyn and Connell here got me out of the castle. I was very friendly with my old music master who had become a Puritan and was living in Leyden Hall. You know it of course.”

‘The Lamptons live there now,” said Rozen. “We know them well.”

“They bought it after the Deemsters left,” added Aunt Melanie. “I fled there,” went on Senara, “and the Deemsters took me in. I was married in the simple Puritan fashion to Richard Gravel-Dickon, my old music master-and we went to Holland together. Amsterdam was the refuge then for those who wished to worship as they pleased, so it was believed; but we began to discover that that freedom was to worship only in a manner approved by the Puritans. I was never really a Puritan at heart. I just changed when I met Dickon. I had brought with me some pieces of jewelry, and to wear jewelry in our sect was considered sinful. At first I wore it in secret and Dickon was so besotted with me that he daren’t offend me by forbidding me to wear it.”

“I never thought you could be a Puritan, Senara,” said my mother with an affectionate smile.

“You knew me well,” answered Senara. “We left Amsterdam for Leyden, after which city the Deemsters had named their home. And here we spent eleven years while we made our plans to leave for America. Eleven years! How did I endure them?»

“You had your love for Dickon.”