Saraband for Two Sisters

Letters came from my mother and Bersaba. My mother’s were full of advice as to my housekeeping and telling me how she longed to see me, Bersaba’s were brief, so I suppose she was still easily tired. The intimate rapport between us seemed to have been lost. I suppose marriage had changed me, for I felt I had left the world of my childhood far behind me and had to start living a new life, but I was constantly thinking how wonderful it would be to see my mother and my sister. I did not realize how I was thrown inwardly on my own resources and that I was becoming obsessed by the past, yet desperately as I wanted to please my husband, I had to understand him and learn all I could about him. I therefore had to discover all that was possible of his life before he had known me and one of the most important events in that past must naturally have been his marriage.

Working on Magdalen’s canvas, sitting in her room, I felt I was getting to know her. She was one of the Herriots - a very well known family. “High places at Court they had,” Mrs. Cherry told me. “There were a lot of girls-six of them-and husbands had to be found for them. My lady was the youngest She was always timid.” Poor little Magdalen, who had been so frightened of the trials of childbirth. I shouldn’t be like that, I knew, for if only I could have a dear little baby everything would be worthwhile. After all, the best things in life had to be worked for, suffered for.

I found a great pleasure in being out of doors. On warm days I would take my canvas and sit in the pond garden. It was rather amusing to sit there in the very surroundings which I was stitching onto my canvas. I would wander around a good deal. I watched the flowers opening in the enclosed gardens, and it occurred to me that I might bring in some of my own ideas. I thought, “Perhaps I should tell Richard what I would like to do before consulting with the gardeners.” However, there was no harm in making plans.

I found my footsteps led me often in the direction of the castle, but the high wall made it impossible to see it at close quarters. I knew, however, from the Castle Room view, that surrounding the building was a thick growth of fir trees forming themselves into a little wood.

I wondered a great deal about it and what it was like inside. I imagined a tiny guardroom, suits of armor, a little keep, spiral staircases Castle Paling in miniature. The fir trees grew thick on both sides of the wall. Some of them could have been quite young trees planted perhaps when the wall was built. They were of the cupressus variety, the kind which grows very quickly, and in a few years a little sprig becomes a bushy tree. The thought occurred to me that they might have been chosen for that purpose.

The more I thought of it the more strange it seemed. “Of course,” I thought, “Richard is fully occupied with his military career. He doesn’t want the nuisance of having workmen pulling down the castle. It would be a major undertaking. That was why he left it, and because it had been neglected for some years it probably was dangerous. But why build a wall around it?”

I could not keep my thoughts from it. It was the first thing I looked at when I went to the Castle Room, and when I explored the gardens again and again it seemed my steps almost involuntarily led me there.

One day when I was walking through the trees close to the wall I felt suddenly alert, for I sensed that someone was near me in the copse.

I didn’t know why that should startle me so much, for one of the servants might easily he there. But why should they be there? They might ask, why should I? I was there because I was naturally curious about anything that concerned my new home and my husband, and I could not quite reconcile myself to the explanation he had given me of this mysterious castle.

I listened. The swish of a branch as someone brushed it aside; the dislodgement of a stone; the startled scurry of a rabbit or some such animal; but most of all the awareness of a presence. Someone was watching me. Perhaps someone who had seen me come here before and was alarmed by my curiosity?

I was going to find out I went forward quickly, then paused to listen.

Yes, there was the unmistakable sound of retreating footsteps.

“Who’s there?” I called.

There was no answer. And then ... through the trees I saw a face. It was there and it was gone. Whoever it belonged to must have been hiding behind one of the trees and I had just caught him peering out.

It was a face, though, that once seen would not be easily forgotten. The dark hair grew low on the forehead and the bushy eyebrows were jet black; the face was very pale-unusually so-and there was a vivid birthmark on the left cheek. It was the sort of face that could be a little startling, especially disembodied, as it were, for the tree hid the rest of him.

“Who are you?” I cried.