Saraband for Two Sisters (8 page)

‘His ears!’ cried my mother, deeply shocked.

‘Ah madam,’ said our guest, ‘you live in this peaceful spot. Pray God it may always remain so. But there are changes creeping over our country and they are such that the people will not endure.’

I was trying to imagine what a man looked like without his ears, and I felt a sudden pain and fear such as I had never known before.

When I rode out I noticed that the people of the countryside seemed thoughtful. It was as though a cold wind had started to blow across the country from Whitehall, so steadily, so relentlessly that we were even feeling it at Trystan Priory.

We had been home for two weeks when my father was called to Plymouth to discuss the next voyage. My mother begged to go with him, leaving our brother Fennimore in charge of the household.

‘We shall not be away long,’ my mother assured us, and when they rode off together I thought she looked like a bride setting out on her first journey with her new husband. The house seemed different without her. We were accustomed to my father’s absences so that did not affect us so much—but the house without her seemed somehow bereft.

After we had bade them farewell in the courtyard, Bersaba and I climbed to the turrets and watched them from there until they had disappeared from sight.

‘When I am married I shall be just like our mother,’ I told Bersaba.

‘You will not,’ answered my sister, ‘because you are not like our mother.’

‘I mean I shall have a husband who thinks I am as young and beautiful after thirty years of marriage as I was on the day he first saw me.’

‘You are not going to marry a blind man?’

‘You know what I mean. Father thinks that of our mother.’

‘There are not many like them.’

Sadly, I agreed with her.

‘Mind you, it would be dull if they were. I want my marriage to be different from that. Theirs is hardly exciting.’

‘I don’t think anyone could ever have a more exciting moment than our mother when she hears his ship is sighted.’

‘It would greatly depend on what excitement meant to you,’ Bersaba pointed out.

‘Oh, you can never accept things as they are. You always have to probe and dig about and spoil them.’

‘I like to know the truth,’ observed my sister. ‘I wonder what’s happening at Castle Paling?’

‘It’s odd that we haven’t heard.’

‘Do you think they will be asked here?’

‘Not until Father goes. He clearly didn’t like Senara. She tried to stop his marrying our mother. She was jealous … She didn’t want anything to come between her and our mother. She loved her so.’

‘I’ll suggest that she wanted to be the one to marry first.’

‘It must have been exciting then. I wish we could read our mother’s journal. It will be all about Senara and her mother and Grandfather when he was young. Have you started writing, Bersaba?’

‘No,’ said Bersaba shortly.

‘Are you going to?’

‘When I’ve something that’s exciting enough to put down.’

‘Well, don’t you reckon Senara’s return with Carlotta is?’

‘It remains to be seen.’ She hesitated. Then she said: ‘I’ll tell you something. I swear someone from Paling will be over soon.’

‘Who’s coming over from Castle Paling then?’

She smiled secretly. ‘Bastian perhaps,’ she said.

It was not Bastian who came. It was Senara and her daughter. I wondered if they knew that my father was absent.

Senara cried: ‘So your mother is not here—’

We told her she had gone with our father to Plymouth.

‘Who is in charge?’ asked Senara.

‘My brother Fennimore,’ I answered. ‘And Bersaba and I are the hostesses.’

‘It’s nice of you to welcome us,’ said Carlotta with a sly smile, reminding us that we had done nothing of the sort.

Bersaba told them that Fennimore was out on the estate and we hastily ordered the grooms to take the horses while we brought them into the hall.

‘It’s a lovely old place,’ said Serena. ‘I always thought so. The castle is so much grimmer.’

‘But grander,’ added Carlotta.

‘Our mother will be so sorry not to be here,’ said Bersaba.

I could not imagine my mother’s being in the least sorry while she was with my father. In fact, I thought she would be rather pleased not to be here, since he would not want these visitors.

‘We’ll have a room made ready,’ I said, and went away to give orders.

When I came back Bersaba was taking the visitors into the intimate parlour, and one of the maids had brought the wine and cakes with which we always refreshed travellers on their arrival.

‘I was surprised,’ Senara was saying, ‘that your mother did not insist on our coming before.’

‘It was because our father was home,’ Bersaba was explaining. ‘When he comes they have so much to talk of because he has been away so long. They just have to be together. It has always been like that.’

‘Your mother fell in love with him when she was nothing but a girl … younger than you are,’ said Senara.

‘And she has stayed in love with him ever since,’ I said defiantly, as though there was need to defend her.

‘We were not all destined to find such happiness in married life, alas,’ commented Senara. She smiled at Carlotta and went on: ‘Let us tell the twins your news. I suppose I should be right to wait until your mother returns. She should be the first to know. But I can see you are all agog with curiosity.’

‘What news is it?’ asked Bersaba.

‘Carlotta has already had a proposal of marriage.’

‘Already … but from whom?’ My mind went over the people we knew. The Krolls, the Trents, the Lamptons … Surely one of those young men would not be considered good enough by Carlotta, who had gone to great pains to make us aware of her almost royal lineage.

‘She has to consider it, have you not, Carlotta? It is not the match she would have expected had she stayed in Spain, but it will bind the families closer, and I have never forgotten all through my life the days I spent here in my childhood.’

‘Who is it?’ asked Bersaba almost sharply.

‘It is your cousin Bastian. He has asked Carlotta’s hand in marriage.’

Because I am close to Bersaba I felt the shock which ran through her. It numbed me as it numbed her and instinctively I knew that she was deeply disturbed.

I began to talk rapidly to save her the necessity of doing so. I said: ‘So soon? How can you be sure? How can Bastian? What do Uncle Connell and Aunt Melanie say?’

‘They say it is a matter for Bastian to decide. He is of age. He is his own master and there is no doubt how strongly he is involved. Is that not so, Carlotta?’

‘He is determined to marry me.’

‘And you to marry him?’ I asked faintly.

A smile flicked across her lips. ‘I am not sure. He must wait for his answer.’

‘We left Paling so that Carlotta could have time to think of this in peaceful surroundings,’ Senara explained.

‘I wanted to know what you felt about it here,’ said Carlotta. ‘Would you be happy to have me in your family? I wanted the twins to tell me.’ She was looking at Bersaba, who stood still, her eyes downcast, saying nothing. ‘Of course,’ went on Carlotta, ‘I shall not listen to what you tell me. I shall make up my mind whether or not I shall marry Bastian.’ Again that look at Bersaba. ‘And something seems to tell me that I shall.’

The atmosphere had grown tense with secret feelings. It affected me strongly because it came from Bersaba. I could see Grandfather Casvellyn’s wild eyes, hear his accusing voice: ‘They’ll bring trouble here if they stay.’ Was that prophecy already coming true?

I
AM DESOLATE SO
I am taking up my pen. I had said I would only do so when there was something interesting to write about. I did not think it would be heartbreak. I am so hurt, so humiliated and I think above all angry. My anger is none the less fierce because I hide it from the world; it is like a fire inside me, a banked-up fire which is waiting for the moment to burst forth, and when it does I believe I should be capable of killing the one who has brought me to this state.

I put down my pen then and wrung my hands together; I wished that it were her neck I had in my hands. They are very strong, my hands. I could always do things with them that Angelet could not attempt.

At this time I am only half believing it. I say to myself: It can’t be true. But in my heart I know it is. Grandfather was a prophet when he said she would bring disaster to us. He was thinking of me, I know, because Grandfather has a special feeling for me. There is a bond between us. I think I know what it is, for it is a need, a desire, which he himself possessed and which came down through him to me. I appear outwardly quiet … quieter than Angelet, but internally I am not.

If I had not been as I am, this would not have happened to me. I should not have lain with Bastian in the forest and have revelled in that wild exultation which I could no more resist than he could. I used to think that if we were discovered they would blame him; they would say he had seduced me; he was older than I and I was little more than a child. But it would not be true. I was the one who had tempted him—artlessly, subtly, it was true. He used to kiss me and be frightened by the kisses I gave him in return; I would caress him in such a manner as to arouse his desires. He thought it was innocence which made me do these things. He didn’t understand that virgin though I was, at that time I was possessed by a raging desire to be possessed.

When I was fourteen years old I knew that I wanted Bastian to be my lover. He had singled me out as his favourite and this endeared him to me, for although we were so much alike people were more comfortable in Angelet’s company. She was not prettier than I … how could she be when most people did not know which of us was which? It was something in her manner. When I pretended to be her—it was our favourite game to delude people into thinking one of us was the other—I could assume her nature: open, thoughtless, chattering without thinking very much what she was saying, light-hearted, believing the best of everyone, and being easy to deceive because of that. I just had to think of Angelet’s ways to be her. But she never really succeeded in being me, because if she lived to a hundred she would never know this deep sensuality which was the strongest force in my nature and which was why Bastian and I had become lovers when I was but fifteen years old and he was twenty-two.

The first time it happened we were riding in the woods near Castle Paling where I was staying with my mother and sister. A party of us had gone out riding and Bastian and I slipped away from the others. We came to a thicket and I said the horses were tired and we should give them a rest.

Bastian said, Nonsense. We had not long left the castle. But I dismounted and tied my horse to a tree and he did the same. I lay down on the grass and looked at him standing above me. Then suddenly he was lying beside me and I took his hand and held it against my breast. I remember how his body shook with his heartbeats and how excited I was. And then he was beside me, saying: ‘We must go, Bersaba. Dear little Bersaba, we must go back.’

But I had no intention of going back, and I put my arms about him and told him I loved him because he loved me more than he loved Angelet. And all he could say was: ‘No, Bersaba, we must go. You don’t understand.’

I understood perfectly but he would not know that. He was the one who did not understand. I knew then that there are people who are born with knowledge and I was one of them. There was one of the servants—we called her Ginny—who was the same. I had heard the servants say that she had had lovers since she was eleven years old. But perhaps I was not the same, for I did not want lovers: I wanted my cousin Bastian.

Afterwards Bastian was frightened. When we stood up beside our horses he took my face in his hands and kissed me.

He said: ‘We must never do that again, Bersaba. It was wrong, and when you are old enough I’m going to marry you, and if necessary before.’

I was happy then but Bastian wasn’t. I thought he would betray what had happened by his mournful looks. For some time he would take great pains not to be with me. I would look at him with hurt and yearning eyes, and then one day it happened again, and again he said: ‘It must never happen like that until we are married.’

But it did. It became a ritual, and afterwards he would always say that we were going to be married.

I thought of Bastian all day. My sketchbook was full of sketches of him. I could not wait until the day I would be old enough to marry him.

He said: ‘We shall be married on your birthday and announce our intentions six months before.’

I used to think: I shall be married before Angelet is. Another of my characteristics which is almost as strong as my sensuality is the need to better Angelet. She is my sister, my twin, so like me that many cannot tell one from the other, and she is important to me. Sometimes I feel that she is part of me. I love her, I suppose, for she is necessary to me. I should hate it if she went away, and yet there is an insane desire within me always to better her. I must do everything better than she can or I suffer. People must prefer me or I am consumed with jealousy—and as she has this open, sunny, frank manner and mine is dark and devious, it is often that they turn to her.

Once when we were very young my mother bought us sashes for our dresses—mine was red and Angelet’s blue. ‘We shall now be able to tell you apart,’ she had said jokingly. And when I saw Angelet in the blue and how people turned to her first and talked to her more than they did to me, I became obsessed by the blue sash and it seemed to me that there was some magic in it. I took her blue sash and told her she could have my red one. She refused this, saying that the blue was hers. And one day I went to the drawer in which the sashes were kept and I cut the blue one into shreds.

Our mother was bewildered. She talked to me a great deal, asking me why I had done this, but I did not know how to put my thoughts into words.

Then she said to me, ‘You thought the blue one was better because it was Angelet’s. You were envious of her blue sash, and you see what you have done. There is now no blue sash for either of you. There are seven deadly sins, Bersaba.’ She told me what they were. ‘And the greatest of these is envy. Curb it, my dear child, for envy hurts those who bear it far more than those against whom it is directed. You see, you are more unhappy about the blue sash than your sister is.’