Saraband for Two Sisters

“We’ll see,” said our mother; but I knew that she did not want us to go. When our father had left we paid another visit to Castle Paling. My mother and Aunt Melanie talked a great deal about Senara’s suggestion and my mother said she feared the difficulties of the journey and she would be very anxious for her girls traveling without her. If she could have gone it would have been different but she was never sure when my father would be home. He had just left, it was true, but sometimes there were reasons for returning almost at once. She had never felt she could leave the Priory when Fenn was away and when he was there she must be there with him.

We paid our visit to Grandfather Casvellyn, who glared at us in the way to which we had become accustomed and shouted at us because we did not speak and roared to us to say something sensible when we did.

I noticed that his eyes were on me. He singled me out and I was sure he knew which one I was.

“Come here,” he said and he drew me to him so that I was touching the rug which covered his mangled legs. Then he gripped my chin in those bony fingers and made me look at him. “What have you been doing?” he asked.

I said, “I have been helping Aunt Melanie to gather the flowers.”

He laughed. “I didn’t mean that. You know I didn’t. You’re a sly one, I fancy.”

He gave me a little push.

My mother was watching and smiling as though she were delighted that one of her children pleased her father. She was a very innocent woman, my mother; it came of believing the best of everybody. Grandfather Casvellyn had been a great rake in his day; there were dark stories about him and his activities; they concerned women too. He was telling me that he believed there was something of him in me. Perhaps there was.

He made me feel a little uneasy though, because I wondered if sometimes he had seen me coming in with Bastian and knew what had happened between us. Gwenifer and Rozen discussed the invitation at length and were envious because they had not received one.

“I expect,” said Angelet, “she wants to thank Bersaba for saving her. There was a plot to take her, you know. Bersaba heard of it and stopped it.” They were very interested. It was amazing how excited people became whenever witches and witchcraft were mentioned.

We stayed at the Castle for a week. During the journey back it rained all through the day and we arrived home soaked to the skin. Mother insisted on our putting our feet in bowls of hot water into which was added some herb which was supposed to ward off chills.

However, I caught one and it seemed to hang about for quite a time. Phoebe by now was getting near her time. She was large and the baby was supposed to be due in mid-September. The time came and passed and still it was not born.

I was very interested in Phoebe’s baby. So was Angelet, but to me there was something special about it. I wanted her to have a healthy child to whom in due course she would tell the story of my bringing her to the Priory and the child would realize that it owed its existence to me.

September was almost over. Each morning I would look anxiously at Phoebe, who seemed to be getting larger and larger, but the baby gave no sign of wanting to be born. Ginny said, “Oh, that Phoebe-she’s misjudged the time, I reckon. That father of hers scared her out of her wits.”

The last day of September came and still the baby was not born. It was a dark morning with a heavy mist in the air when I said to Angelet, “I reckon the baby will be born today.”

“It must be,” she answered. “It’s already three weeks late.”

Phoebe was beginning to look frightened.

“I feel something awful be happening to me, Mistress Bersaba,” she said. “Do ‘ee think the Lord be punishing me for being wanton like?”

“No,” I said sharply. “If He’s going to punish people for being like that He shouldn’t have made them that way.”

Phoebe looked frightened. I think she expected the wrath of Heaven to descend upon me to punish me for my blasphemy. It was to be expected. Hadn’t she been brought up in the smithy?

In the afternoon it started to rain, great heavy drops that fell steadily down. At four o’clock I thought Phoebe looked ill and she said she was in pain so I went down to the stables and told one of the grooms to ride over to the midwife and tell her to come without delay. She lived some two miles away in a little group of cottages just outside our estate.

He went off and I went back to Phoebe. I made her go to bed and I stood at the window, watching for the midwife.

Phoebe looked very ill and I wasn’t sure whether it was the pain she was suffering or the fear which had returned now her time had come. For seventeen years she had listened to her father’s ranting about the vengeance of God so it was small wonder that she was reminded of it now.