Part 36 (1/2)

”I had a knack of it. Good things happened to me. I've had a good life, I have.”

I smiled at her fondly. I was not surprised that my mother had been fond of her.

”You were my mother's personal maid, weren't you?”

”Oh yes, I was. I was sent over here to be that. Your grandmother trusted me for all she could be sharp with me. She knew that I was the best one to look after her daughter.”

”Why did she think my mother needed looking after?”

”Oh, you know how it is ... a young girl bride. She wants some of the old familiar faces round her.”

”How was she ... towards the end, I mean.”

Jennet looked back into the past and frowned.

”She got a bit quiet, like ... as though there was something ...”

”Yes, Jennet, go on. As though there was something?”

”Something she wasn't sure of.”

”Did she ever say anything?”

”Not to me. I reckon there was one person she would have told and that was your grandmother.”

”Why not ... my father ...”

”Well, what if it should have concerned him?”

”What do you mean by that?”

”I don't know. Just that if she was worried about him she wouldn't have him to talk to, would she?”

”Do you know why she should worry about him?”

”Wives do worry about husbands, you know. There's reasons. Why, your grandmother ...”

But I was not going to be side-tracked.

”How did she seem during those last weeks, Jennet? I felt there was something.”

”She was always writing ... I caught her at it more than once.”

”Caught her at it!”

”Well, that's how it seemed. She'd be there at her table writing away and if I came in she would cover up what she was writing, and I never saw where it went in the end.”

”She must have been writing letters.”

”I don't think so. She never sent so many letters away. But when I came back to her room it would all be put out of sight. I never saw any sign of it then, which was strange. I often wondered where she kept it.”

”I wonder what she was writing.”

”It was some sort of diary, I always thought. People do that. They like to write things down.”

”That's interesting,” I said. ”I wonder where she put her diary.”

”'Tis my belief she hid it away.”

I thought to myself: If she did that she must have felt there was something she must hide.

I didn't want to discuss her any more. I started Jennet talking about the old days at Lyon Court and Captain Jake, my grandfather. That was a subject for which she would turn away from any other.

I was excited though. If my mother had written a diary and if she had recorded everything that happened to her as it did, surely there would be some clue in it as to what she had been feeling during those last weeks of her life.

I was determined to find my mother's journal or diary, whatever it was. I could not forget that moment when I had seen the stone on her grave. Why had it been put there? Because someone knew that her death had not been natural?

Perhaps I thought the mischief-maker had meant to put it on her grave in the first place and had in mistake put in on the unknown sailor's. I went down to the sh.o.r.e where I could be quiet to think of what had happened. I found the rhythm of the waves soothing. I looked up at the straight grey walls of the castle and I said to myself: Someone in there knows what happened to my mother.

My father. He had married within three months of her death. It was very soon, too soon, said some. But my father was a law unto himself and he did not consider convention.

He had married a strange woman: a witch. On Hallowe'en, the one before my mother died, she had returned to the castle. Could it really be true that she was a witch and that she had willed my mother to die? There were no marks on her body. How could she have died? ”A failure of the heart.” But did not hearts always fail in death, no matter how it came?

Did my father wish to be rid of her that he might marry my stepmother? Did my stepmother wish her dead that she might marry my father? Had my mother discovered a secret which someone in the castle wished to hide?

If she had kept her journal faithfully-and what was the point of keeping it if not faithfully-she would have written it there. She must have done so, for she was so anxious to keep it hidden where no one could see it. What had happened on that last night of her life? Had she written in her journal and then gone to that bed from which she had never risen?

I must find the journal. I would have no rest until I did.

Where would it be most likely to be? In the bedroom she had shared with my father and which he now shared with my stepmother?

No, I did not think so, for she would surely not wish my father to see it. There was her sitting-room in which she had spent a great deal of time. No one used it now. I would begin my search there.

It was a small room and not very light-no room in the castle was, for the long narrow slits of windows had originally been built more for defence than to let in air and sunlight.

As I entered the room I felt deeply moved. I remembered so well her sitting there. She liked to sit in the window seat with me beside her, or at her feet while she talked to me.

There was the chair on which she sat and there was the table. On it was a book and her sandalwood box, a kind of desk. I went to it and opened it. That part on which one wrote lifted up to disclose a cavity in it. There was nothing there but some sheets of blank paper.

It was the obvious place in which to put one's journal though she would hardly keep it there if she wished to hide it.

Where then? I looked round the room, at the chair with the panelled back decorated with inlay and carving; it was one which my grandmother had had made for my mother and of a modern design. Not so the old settle. That had been in the castle for as long as I could remember. My mother said it was there when she came and it had probably been built in the middle of the previous century, long before the defeat of the Armada. It was really a chest with the back and arms put on it, the top of the chest making the seat and the extensions the back and the arms. I went to it and lifted the seat. I pulled out some old garments. There was a hat with a feather which I remembered seeing my mother wear. I was excited. This was her room and it had not been changed since her death. I was certain that somewhere here I would find her journal.

In chests such as this there were often secret compartments. What more likely than that she should have hidden her papers in this very chest?

I took out the clothes to examine it better. On either side the wood appeared to be thicker and I felt that this could quite easily conceal a cavity. I tapped gently on the wood. It seemed hollow. I was certain that somewhere there was a secret spring.

And as I knelt before the chest I heard a noise. What was it? Only a footstep in the corridor. Only someone pa.s.sing the door. Keeping my kneeling position I stared at the door. My heart started to beat wildly as the latch of the door moved and the door was silently and slowly opening.

My stepmother was standing on the threshold of the room.