Saraband for Two Sisters

In the evening the servants went into the bedrooms to prepare the beds for the night, to turn back the quilt and if it were cold put in hot bricks wrapped up in flannel. Ana did not turn down the beds for Carlotta and Senara any more than she cleaned their rooms. That was a housemaid’s task and Ana, as lady’s maid, would consider it beneath her. It was Mab who did the beds and I was particularly amused because she was the one whom I had heard talking to Ginny. When I considered that it seemed as though I were being guided by fate, for I knew what Mab would find when she turned down Carlotta’s bed. There was a tall livery chest in the corridor outside the bedroom door and when I heard Mab going up to the rooms I followed at a discreet distance and hid myself behind the chest.

It happened just as I knew it would. It was not long before I heard Mab’s piercing scream and she came running out of the bedroom, her face white as a lily petal. She didn’t see me because her one thought was to get away from that room as fast as she could.

I slipped out and went into Carlotta’s room. There on the pillow was the toad. He seemed to glare at me with baleful eyes, so I smothered him in the kerchief and hurried from the room. As I did so I felt my blood run cold and my heart began to beat so wildly that it was like a drum beating against my bodice. I was standing there by the bed when I had a strange feeling that I was not alone. I looked around the room. No one was there. The door of the communicating room where Senara slept was open a little but I could see no one.

What was it-this sudden fear? It had seemed so easy. All I had to do was put the toad in her bed, leave it there for Mab to find when she came to do the beds, then when she ran out as I was sure she would, I was to go in and remove the toad so that when she brought the others to see it, it would have disappeared, which I felt was just the sort of thing a familiar would do.

As I stood there in that room and I could feel the toad moving in the kerchief I had an impulse to drop it and run. I thought to myself: “Suppose she is truly a witch? She bewitched Bastian. Suppose the toad is her familiar! Suppose it is a devil in toad form!” But I had found him a perfectly harmless toad by the pond in the garden and it was I who had placed him in her bed.

It was just a feeling that eyes were watching me. Why? I went swiftly to the door between the two rooms. I looked inside. No one was there. Then I ran from the room, out into the corridor. I could hear Mab’s voice explaining what she had seen. Ginny was saying: “Tis nothing. You dreamed it. ‘Twas because we was talking of toads.”

And Mab: “I can’t go in there. I’d die rather.”

I waited in one of the rooms while they went up to Carlotta’s room, then I came swiftly along the gallery and down the stairs praying I should meet no one. I went out through a side door and across a courtyard to the gardens.

I sped across to the pool and laid down the kerchief. The toad remained still for several seconds. I watched him fearfully, half expecting him to turn into some horrible shape, but seeming to realize that he was free and on his home ground, he made his cautious way to the edge of the pool and hid himself under a large stone. I picked up the kerchief and went into the house.

On the way I met several of the maids, who were chattering wildly together.

“What’s happened?” I said.

“Oh, ‘twas Mab, Miss Bersaba. Her be well nigh in hysterics.”

“Why?”

“Tis what her have seen in the lady Carlotta’s bed.”

“In her bed?”

Ginny said, “Mab could have fancied it There were a toad there when I went up.”

The maids were silent, their eyes on my face.

“Whatever made Mab imagine such a thing?” I asked.

“ Tis talk, Miss Bersaba,” said Ginny.

“I did see it,” Mab insisted. “It were there ... on her pillow. The way it looked at me ... ‘twere terrible. It was like no other toad I seen.”

“Well, where is it now?” I asked with a hint of impatience.

“It have clean disappeared,” said Ginny.

“Well, that’s a blessing,” I answered infusing skepticism into my voice.

And I passed on.

I knew that that night the great topic of conversation among the servants would be the toad Mab had seen in Carlotta’s bed. I knew too that the story of the toad would not be confined to the Priory. It would spread to the village. I wondered what Thomas Gast would say when he heard it. The habits of witches would be great sin in his eyes.

I dreamed of him that night standing by his furnace with his wild eyes gloating on the flames.

Journey Through the Rain