Colum would talk about “our boy”, and I would beg him not to talk so constantly of a boy for it could well be a girl.

“Nay, nay,” he would say, feeling the faint protuberance of my body. “This little one is a boy. I know it.”

“And if it is a girl are you going to dislike her?”

“I’ll accept her. There’s time for boys. I know you will give me one.” He bit my ear rather sharply. “You wouldn’t dare do aught else.”

And he went on talking of our boy.

He would insist on my taking care. It was very important that I should produce a healthy boy. He wanted nothing to go wrong during my pregnancy. “A man can get lusty boys on serving wenches but by God, often the fates are against him when he wants a legitimate son. It must not be so with us,” he added, as though if it did it would be my fault.

That was how my father had been with my mother, I dare-swear, and she had longed to please her husband as I did mine.

The castle itself was a strange place to be in. There was so much to know about it. There were so many servants that I could not keep track of them.

The four towers with ramparts and battlements formed the main structure. In two of these towers, the Crows’ Tower which faced the land and Nonna’s Tower which faced the sea, we lived with our personal servants. I wondered about the other two. From the Seaward Tower—on a level with Nonna and which also looked out to sea, I had seen men and women coming and going. I supposed they were servants but I had rarely seen them working in that part of the castle where we lived. But the place was so vast that there would naturally be many servants and it would take a long time to get to know them all.

Sometimes I would go to the ramparts of Nonna’s Tower and look through the battlements to the sea. There the great black rocks known as the Devil’s Teeth could sometimes be seen, but only when the tide was out. They were a group of cruel, sharp-pointed rocks. Teeth was an apt description, particularly if they were seen at some angles. Then their formation could be likened to a grinning mouth. At high tide they were not visible, lurking as they did just below the surface of the water. They were about half a mile out to sea and almost in a straight line with Castle Paling. Some people called them the Paling Rocks.

The great wall of the castle on the sea side rose up starkly straight, and looking down at the surf below, I thought what a well chosen spot it was for a fortification. It would have been almost impossible to attack from the sea and there was only the landward side to be protected.

I found the desire to stand up there and lean on the battlements and gaze down irresistible and dangerous. It seemed to me symbolic of my life here.

Once when I was up there I was seized from behind and Colum lifted me off the ground and held me high. He laughed in that way of his which I could have called satanic.

“What are you doing up here?” he demanded. “You were leaning over too far. What if you had fallen? You would have killed yourself and our son. By God, I’d never have forgiven you.”

“As I should have been past your vengeance why should I care?”

He put me down and kissed me hard on the mouth.

“I couldn’t do without you now, wife,” he said.

I put my hand up and touched his hair. “Why do you always call me wife? It sounds unromantic … it is as an innkeeper might call his spouse.”

“What else are you?”

“Linnet.”

“Bah!” he said. “A silly little bird.”

“Names change when you are fond of people. You might get to like it.”

“Never,” he said. “The day I call you Linnet you will know I have ceased to love you.”

I shivered and he noticed.

“Yes,” he said, “you should take care to keep me warm. You must always do your wifely duty. You must give me sons and sons.”

“Beauty is impaired by too much childbearing.”

“That may be. But the sons are a man’s compensation.”

“But if she no longer arouses his desire?”

“Then he turns elsewhere. A fact of nature,” he said curtly.

“I would not wish that to happen.”

“Then you must see that it does not.”

“And what if a wife is neglected? She might turn elsewhere. What of that?”

“If she were my wife that would be the time to beware.”

“What would you do to her if she were unfaithful?”

He lifted me up suddenly and set me on the parapet. He laughed and it did indeed sound like the laughter of devils. “I should take my revenge, you may be sure. Mayhap I’d give her to the rocks.”

He lifted me down and held me against him. “There, I alarm you and that is not good for our boy. Why should you speak of such things? Have I not given you proof that you are my choice?” He took my chin in his hands and jerked up my face. “And you, are you a wanton then that you talk to your husband in this way? What of Fennimore Landor, eh? Did you not once think of marrying that man?”

“It was mentioned,” I said.

“Did he ask you?”

“Yes, he did.”

“I am amazed that you did not accept such a model of virtue.”

“It was after …”

That amused him. “After I had taught you what it meant to bed with a real man, eh?”

“Remember I was not conscious.”

“Enough though to realize, eh?”

“I knew that I had been deflowered.”

“What a foolish expression! Deflowered! Rather have you been flowered. Have not I given you fertility? Our son will be the flower and the fruit. Deflowered! I did you great honour and much good as you will admit.”

“Yes,” I said, “I think I will admit it here, where none can hear but you and the choughs.”

Then he kissed me again and in his hands which caressed my body was that tenderness which was the more precious because it was so rare.

Then he held me against the stone wall and he talked about the castle, how it was his stronghold and how he had walked the ramparts when he was a boy, how he had dreamed of possessing it and had played wild games in the dungeons and on the winding spiral staircases.

“There are stories of my ancestors which we pass on from generation to generation,” he told me. There was in his eyes a yearning and I knew he was seeing our boy playing in the castle, learning to grow up like his father.

“We have been a wild lot,” he said. “What a family you have married into! In the reign of King Stephen my ancestor of that time was a robber baron. He used to waylay travellers and bring them to his castle. He was called the Fiend of Paling. In the Seaward Tower”—he pointed to it—“he used to take his victims there and he would demand a ransom of their family and if it were not paid the victim would be tortured. He would give a grand banquet and bring him out for the amusement of his cronies. At night it is said that the cries of long dead tortured men and women can be heard in the Seaward Tower.” He looked at me sharply and I could see he was thinking of the child I carried. “There is nothing to fear,” he went on quickly. “It was all long ago. Then Stephen died and Henry II was our King. He was for law and order and extorting money for his wars through taxes, so he suppressed the robber barons by means of meting out dire punishments and the Casvellyns had to find a new means of sustenance.”

“I have seen men going in and out of the Seaward Tower.”

“My servants,” he said. “They are fishermen, many of them. They catch our fish and I have a fancy for it. They serve me in many ways. Down there in the lower part of the Seaward Tower are our boats. You may see them venturing out now and then. Have you seen them?”

“No.”

“You will know our ways in due time. I will tell you of another ancestor of mine. He had a fair wife but he was very fond of women. It is a failing—or it may be a virtue—in the men of my family. They adore women. They need women.”

“Are you telling me this to put me on my guard?”

“One must always be on one’s guard to hold a possession which is precious. You should remember that.”