Saraband for Two Sisters

As we came along the coast we saw the ship riding the water and we knew it for our father’s. My mother’s eyes glistened with joy as she beheld the sight. It was named after her, the Tamsyn, and my father had had it built five years before. I had heard my father extol her and say that since she was named after the best woman in the world she must indeed be the best ship that ever sailed the seas. From her poop lantern to her figurehead she was some two hundred and twenty feet in length and forty feet across the beam. She carried cannon of course-a necessity when on her journeys she might meet pirates or rivals masquerading as such. It was a source of great anxiety to my mother that on their return voyage the ships were laden with precious cargoes of silks, ivories, and spices. The figurehead of the Tamsyn was an exquisite carving of my mother. My father had said that in some ways that made him feel as though she were with him. He was a very sentimental man and theirs was indeed a rare marriage of minds. We turned away from the coast to take the road to Trystan Priory and our horses could not carry us fast enough. My father was in the courtyard when we arrived, for he had seen our approach from one of the turret windows, knowing that it would be that day, for he was well aware that as soon as my mother received news of his arrival she would lose no time in setting out His eyes went first to her. He lifted her down from her horse and they embraced there. The servants looked on with a kind of wonder. There was something about this love between our parents which was sacred to us all. Bersaba felt it; we had discussed it; we had once both declared that we would never marry because we couldn’t marry our father and where in the world would we find another husband like him? There flashed into my mind then a vision of Carlotta’s long secretive eyes and I wondered what she would have said had she been here. I was glad she was not. I could not have endured her cynical comments or her looks, which would betray her thoughts about my parents, so I was glad that she had stayed behind at Castle Paling. But I knew that she would come here some day. Then something would change to make it different and I did not want it to change.

My father had turned to us. “My girls,” he said, and caught us both up in his arms.

“You’ve grown,” he accused us. “You’re not my little girls anymore.” Our brother Fennimore was smiling rather sheepishly. He was just as happy as the rest.

“And you came while I was away,” my mother was saying. “Oh, Fenn, I wish I’d known.

We’d only been there a day or so ...if only I’d been at home.”

“Well, you’re here now, my love.”

“I must see the servants. I must go to the kitchen... Oh, Fenn, when did you come?”

He said, “Leave the kitchen. Stay with me. Let us talk and talk.”

So we went into the house and for a short time we forgot Carlotta and her mother.

We dined in the intimate parlor-just the family-and Father talked of his adventures. Trade was becoming more prosperous. The great rivals were the Dutch because they were very commercially minded and were seeking maritime expansion. They were good sailors-as much to be feared as the Spaniards had been a few years back. They were as deadly in a way, for while the Spaniards had never lost sight of the desire to bring Catholicism to the entire world, the Dutch had one objective-maritime supremacy, which would make them the biggest and richest traders in the world; and as the very same ambition was possessed by the English in general and in particular those of the East India Company, the rivalry was intense.

“They want to drive us off the seas,” Father told us. “And we are determined not to be driven. Why people cannot trade in peace has always been a mystery to me. There are riches enough in the world for us all and let the man who finds them first keep them.”

Our mother was in full agreement with my father, and I thought that if everyone in the world were like them it would be a happier place.

My father told us stories of his adventures in strange lands. He made us see palm-fringed islands where the people lived in primitive fashion and rarely saw a white man, how they had been overawed by the sight of the big trading ships and were sometimes hostile. But he always implied that there was no real danger and that he would emerge safe from all his adventures and I fancied that he sometimes colored the stories to give this effect, for the last thing he wanted was to add to our mother’s anxieties. We basked in this atmosphere of contentment and neither Bersaba nor I thought beyond the present; we shut our eyes to the truth that one day he would sail away again. While he was home there must be perfect contentment.

We none of us asked on that first day of reunion when he would be leaving us again and it was the next day before we mentioned Senara’s return. Then a faint frown appeared on his face and I thought uneasily, “He doesn’t like Senara.”

“You knew her well, Father?” I asked.