Witch from the Sea

He acknowledged them but he did not introduce me. They did not remain in the dining-room but went away—I believed to wait until Colum was ready, and had come in either to see that he was there or assure him that they had arrived. They looked like merchants in their best clothes. One wore a russet jacket with camblet sleeves and there were pewter buttons on it. The other was in brown with grey kersey hose and they both wore steeple-crowned hats.

“They are friends of yours, Colum?” I asked.

“They are the men whom I have come to see.”

“On business,” I said.

“Aye, business.”

“I had thought you a man of means, not a merchant.”

“Merchants are men of means, wife. I have rich lands, a castle and many servants. To keep up such an establishment and maintain a wife is costly in these days. So now and then when the mood is on me I am a merchant.”

“What is your merchandise?”

“Whatever comes my way.”

“So it is no particular commodity?”

“Enough of questions. Your curiosity will make a scold of you yet.”

“It is only because I would serve my husband that I wish to learn his habits.”

“He will keep you acquainted of the best way to serve him. Now I must leave you for a while so I will take you to the Oak Room and then you will go to bed. You may be sure that the moment I have completed my business I will be with you.”

He took me to the Oak Room and left me there. I sat on the bed and thought of him down there transacting his business. What business? The men had arrived with the pack-horses. I wondered what they had brought. It was strange for the squire who owned a castle and was the lord of his neighbourhood to barter over merchandise. I wondered again what it was, and why he should be so reluctant to discuss this with me. There could be two reasons. The first was that wives were not supposed to share in their husband’s business affairs. They were not supposed to understand them. That was something I would not accept, as my mother would not either. I knew that Colum, while delighting in my spirited nature, was also determined to subdue it. He wanted me relegated to what he would call a wife’s place. He seemed to ignore the fact that if he ever did he would lose interest in me. Perhaps deep down in his heart he wanted to. Perhaps he wanted to keep me as the mother of his children and go off in search of erotic adventures with other women, I was sure that was what he did before we had married. In a way he chafed against this passion between us. Once he had said with a sort of exasperated anger: “None will satisfy me now save you.” He was a strange man. He hated above all things to be shackled. It might well be that he wished to keep his business apart from me because he did not want to share everything. He wanted to exclude me because he feared I was becoming too important to him. The other reason was, of course, that it was something of which he was ashamed. Ashamed! He would never be ashamed. Something that must be kept secret perhaps.

So I pondered and I longed to creep down the stairs and into the room which the host would have set aside for them and listen at the door.

Instead I went to the window and sat there, and thought over every detail of what had happened on that other occasion at the inn. It had been the most important of my life in a way, for had I not come here I should never have met Colum. How easy it would have been for us to have taken another road, to have stayed at another inn. It seemed incredible that life could be affected by so flimsy a chance.

I sat at that window for a long time thinking of this and I was still there when I heard a bustle below. Looking down, I saw the two men who had looked in at the dining-room. A groom was leading two pack-horses. They were not ours. Then came Colum with the two men. I drew back but not so far that I could not see them.

They talked together. Then the men mounted their horses and rode away.

I knew that Colum was coming up now so I left the window and sat on the bed.

In a few minutes he was in the room.

“What!” he cried. “Still up! What do you here? ’Tis time we were abed.”

I could not sleep well that night. I had bad dreams. I was not sure of what for in them events were jumbled, but Colum was there and so were the merchants and the pack-horses, and Melanie too … for my dream had shifted to the Red Room. Melanie was warning me: “Don’t be too curious. If you are, you could uncover something you would rather not know.”

In the morning we rode back to Castle Paling. It was a beautiful morning. There is nothing like sunlight for washing away the fears which come by night. They are exposed as nothing but vague shadows conjured up out of the darkness. I revelled in the green of the conifers and the call of the cuckoo, though he was beginning to stammer now. All was well. In six months’ time my child would be born and now I was going to my home where my son would be waiting for me.