Saraband for Two Sisters

“I shall get used to that,” I told myself. And I thought of the lessons of the trees and the laws of nature and I fell to wondering if soon I would know that I was to have a child. There was no doubt of my feelings about that. I imagined the letters I would write home.

It was strange eating alone but I felt that the attitude of the servants had changed and that I was not served with the same military precision. Another facet of Richard’s character was that he could not endure unpunctuality. He would arrive exactly at the appointed time and on one or two occasions when I had been a few minutes late his expression had shown his disapproval although he had said nothing. After supper the evening seemed long. I went to the library. Most of the volumes dealt with military matters. I smiled wryly. ‘Well,” I told myself, “you did marry a soldier.”

Then to bed.

How big the bed seemed-how luxurious and comforting. I slept soundly and when I awoke in the morning I felt a sense of desolation because he was not there. Life, I assured myself, was full of contrasts, light and shadow, pleasure and endurance.

During the day I would miss him so much, but I had to admit I was relieved at night. I spent the morning in the garden as I always did. I ate a solitary dinner, and the afternoon stretched out long before me. Should I ride? If I wanted to go far I would have to take a groom with me just as we always had to at home, so I had no great desire to go.

I found myself climbing the newel staircase to look at the view from the roof, but as I came to the Castle Room the urge came to me to go in and it was so strong that I couldn’t resist it. Even as I stood on the threshold I felt uneasy, I suppose because I was doing something of which my husband would not approve. It was an ordinary room. There were table chairs, a little writing table, and a court cupboard. What was unusual about it? Only the fact that from it there was a good view of the castle.

The castle! This room! Forbidden territory. I wondered why. As the castle was unsafe, the stone was crumbling, why not remove it? It seemed to be of no use, but it had been put there by an ancestor. But why should this most logical man care about that?

I could hear his voice as he bent over his toy soldiers. “The infantry here were useless ... quite useless. If they had been here now ... they could have done very good work and that might have been another story.”

The site of the castle could be used for another building. Something useful. Or gardens perhaps.

I went to the window seat and, kneeling there, looked out. It really was rather absurd. Just a modest little house really, with grinning gargoyles on its turrets and tiny machicolations from which no boiling oil or hot tar had ever been thrown down on intruders.

I turned back to the room. “Homely,” I murmured. Yes, it did look as though it had been lived in. I wondered by whom. I tried to open the doors of the court cupboard. They were locked, but one drawer opened and in it was a key. It was that to the cupboard, so I was able to open the doors. It was full of canvases.

I was interested. Richard had said that he wanted me to start a tapestry and I thought it is just what I needed to fill the hours while he was away, and here were the canvases. I took them out and examined them. They were of varying sizes. I opened another drawer and found a quantity of beautiful colored embroidering silks. I took out the canvases, spread them out on the table, and as I did so a small worked piece fell out. I picked it up. It was one of those samplers which most children were expected to make at some time as a lesson in patience and diligence. This one was neatly worked and the cross-stitches were minute. I had worked one myself, but Bersaba had cobbled hers and had asked my mother what useful purpose it served to have to sit there making neat little stitches-though Bersaba’s were never neat-in the form of the alphabet, numbers one to nine, and a verse from the Bible, “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the Earth” or something like that, followed by one’s name and the date. My mother had seen Bersaba’s point and she did not have to pursue hers. I finished mine and my mother showed it to my father with great pride. This was similar.

The letters of the alphabet, the numbers, and: My lips shall -not speak -wickedness neither shall my tongue utter deceit.

The price of wisdom is above rubies.

And underneath that, M. Herriot in the year of our Lord 1619. “Magdalen,” I thought. She lived here. This was her room. It was for that reason that Richard had not wished me to come here.

Now that Richard was not here, the servants’ attitude definitely changed towards me. Mrs. Cherry liked to talk to me, and when I went to the kitchen my stays were longer than they had been.