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 passing 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.
She was always mysterious; I knew the servants feared her, and at that moment so did I. She remained silent for what seemed a long time but could only have been a few seconds. What was it that was so frightening about this moment? I realized suddenly that her face did not move or change very much. When she smiled her mouth turned up a little at the corners—that was all. I suddenly felt that I was in the presence of evil. This is what the servants felt. But who could say whether it was because of the reputation she had of being a witch or whether there really was something satanic within her.
Her lips moved slightly in her immobile face.
“Are you clearing out your mother’s clothes?”
She had walked in; the door shut behind her. I felt a great desire to dash past her out of this room. I was deeply conscious that I was here with her … alone.
“Why … yes,” I said. “All these years these things have been here.”
“Did you find anything that you were looking for … particularly?”
“There are only her clothes.”
I stood up.
“Nothing else there?” she said.
“Nothing,” I answered.
She picked up a shoe, cork-soled, high-heeled and round-toed.
“Hideous!” she said. “Fashions are better now, are they not? Look at this ruff. The lace is beautiful. But an ugly fashion, do you not think? It is well that it is no longer the mode. It had one virtue though. It made the ladies hold their heads high.”
I picked up the things and put them back into the chest.
“Do you propose to leave them there?” she asked.
“I do not know what else to do with them.”
“I thought perhaps you had some purpose in gathering them together. The servants perhaps would like them. But even they are conscious of the fashion.”
I picked up the things and put them in the chest. Then I shut down the lid and it was turned into a settle.
“It is not an unpleasant room,” she said. “We should use it. Or did you feel that since it was your mother’s …”
“Yes, I do feel I should like it to remain just as it is.”
“It shall be,” she said, and went out.
I wondered if she had been aware of the tension I was feeling.
I went to my bedchamber. I was glad Senara was not there. After a while I felt better. Then I asked myself what had come over me to make me feel so disturbed because my stepmother had discovered me looking into the chest.
Jennet had been gossiping. Poor Jennet, she could never resist it. I heard through Senara.
“Your mother was always writing,” she said. “She wrote in a book she had every day. Did you know?”
“Jennet mentioned it the other day. So she told you too?”
“Not exactly. Merry said she was talking about it in the kitchens. It all sounded rather mysterious.”
“Why should the fact that she was keeping a diary be mysterious? Many people do, I believe.”
“Well, she hid this away, apparently.”
“Who said so?”
“Well, where is it? Have you got it? I believe you have.”
“I haven’t.”
Senara looked at me intently. “If you had it, would you read it?”
“Why do you ask that question?”
“For the reason people usually ask questions. I should like an answer.”
I hesitated and she went on. “People put their secret thoughts into diaries. If she had wanted you to read it she would have shown you, wouldn’t she?”
I was still silent. I was thinking of Jennet’s spreading the news that my mother had written down what happened to her every day and had been so anxious that someone should not see what she had written that she had been very careful to put her writings in some secret place.
I thought of the diary I had once kept when I was a child. It read something like this: “Rained today.” “There were visitors at the castle for my father.” “Hotter today.” And so on, except at Christmas time when there would be a description of the festivities. Nothing to be hidden away there.
Then I thought of my mother stealthily writing and finding some spot where she could secrete her journal for fear it should be read by someone in the castle.
Senara went on: “There was something strange about her, wasn’t there … just before she died?”
“What do you mean … strange?”
“You used to go and sleep with her every night. Why?”
“I just had a feeling that I wanted to.”
“What a baby! Who wanted to be with her mother!”
“Perhaps I did.”
“It wasn’t that. You were playing the mother. You always seem to like it when there’s someone who wants to be looked after. You’re always finding animals to nurse. Dogs and birds, that sort of thing. Do you remember that gull you brought home with the broken leg? The others were pecking him to death and you found him there, making horrid squawking noises. I remember how you brought him home and nursed him but it didn’t do any good, did it? He died in the courtyard. ‘Miss Tamsyn at it again,’ they said. And look how you’re always clucking over the peacocks at Lyon Court. So you went to look after your mother. Why? You would have been there the night she died if I hadn’t been sick. Oh, Tamsyn, do you blame me for that?”
“Don’t be silly. Of course I don’t.”
“I did drink too much mulled wine. It was horrid. I shall never forget the feeling. I’ll never do it again. But I wonder why your mother hid away her diary. Wouldn’t it be fun if we found it?”
Then I knew that my stepmother had known for what I was looking when she had seen me at the chest.
We were approaching Hallowe’en, always remembered at the castle with a certain awe because it was on Hallowe’en fifteen years ago that my stepmother had come to us. Jennet remembered it well and while Jennet had a tongue in her head it would not be allowed to be forgotten.
There is something about the autumn which has always fascinated me. Spring was the season my mother had loved because of all the wild flowers she found in the hedgerows. She knew the names of most of them and tried to teach me, but I was not a very apt pupil and tried to learn to please her more than for any special interest. For me the special time of year was autumn when—a little inland—the trees sported their bronzed and golden leaves and there were carpets of them in fields and lanes and the spider’s webs were draped over the hedges. I liked the mists of the mornings and evenings and even the chill in the air. I used to think before my mother died: Soon it will be Christmas, the time of holly and ivy and yule logs, and families being together and forgetting their differences. It was a time to look forward to. Autumn was the looking forward time, and so often anticipation is better than realization.
Jennet told me that in the days before that Hallowe’en when my mother brought the woman who was to replace her into the house, the servants used to make a large bonfire which was said to keep off witches; and when it was burnt out they would scramble for the ashes which they would preserve to keep off the evil eye.
The castle was filled with the autumnal shadows; when I awoke in the morning and looked out to sea there would often be nothing but a wall of grey mist. I pitied sailors in such weather and I thought often of Fenn and wondered when he would be home.