Thus we could comfort each other.

I made him tell me about ships and the company. His father had talked a great deal to him. I could imagine the sort of father he had been—a father of whom his children need never be afraid and for whom they had the utmost love and affection and above all respect. An ideal father. To have had such a father was a great blessing, but alas, to lose him must be the greatest tragedy.

Once he said to me: “Why is it that we have never met before? We often come here. You must do too, for this is the home of your grandparents.”

I admitted it was strange, for we had come frequently.

“We must just have missed each other.”

There was no doubt that Fenn and I did a great deal for each other and my grandmother was pleased about this.

There was one strange incident which happened during that visit and which I could never forget.

Senara, Damask and I shared a room at Lyon Court. It was a big room and there were three beds in it. One night I lay sleepless, for I had not slept well since my mother’s death. I dreamed a good deal about her and I would wake up suddenly and imagine she was calling to me to come to her for she was afraid of something. This dream was a recurring one. In it I was always fighting to get to her and was unable to reach her. I would call out in my despair and then I was awake.

This is what happened on that particular night. I woke up wretched and sat up in bed, being unable for the moment to realize where I was. Then out of the gloom the familiar objects took shape—the planked hutch, the table with the carved panels and the two other pallets on which lay Damask and Senara.

I could hear the sound of someone’s crying. I got out of bed, wrapped a robe about me and opened the door. I went into the corridor. The crying was coming from the room next to ours.

I knocked lightly on the door and as there was no answer I opened it gently. In the window seat, sitting very still, the tears falling unheeded down her cheeks, was Fenn’s grandmother.

She started up as I entered. I said quickly: “I’m sorry. I heard your crying. Is there anything I can do?”

“It is Tamsyn,” she said. “Did I awaken you?”

“I was not sleeping very well.”

“You too are grieving,” she said. “My poor child, you have lost your mother. I have lost my daughter and my son.”

“Perhaps he did not drown.”

“Yes, he did. He comes to me in dreams. His eyes are empty sockets and the fishes swim round him; the sea has him; he lies deep on the sea bed and I shall never see my beloved son again.”

There was something alarming about the wildness in her eyes and I could see that her grief was an illness and that she was deeply stricken by it.

“Both my son … and my daughter,” she said.

“Your daughter too?”

“My daughter was murdered,” she said.

“Murdered!” I whispered.

She caught her breath in a gasp of horror and then she said: “You are little Tamsyn Casvellyn. I must not talk to you of my daughter.”

“You may talk to me of anything if it comforts you to do so.”

“My dear child,” she said. “My poor dear child.”

I cried a little because, as Fenn helped me to forget my grief, she brought it back in all its vividness. I was right back in that dreadful morning when I had gone into my mother’s bedroom and seen her lying there. I could hear Jennet babbling of what she had found and all my misery swept over me afresh.

She rocked me to and fro. “Life has been cruel to us both, my child, cruel … cruel …”

“When did your daughter die?”

“Before you were born … It had to be before you were born.” I did not understand that, but I had already discovered that she was incoherent.

“She was murdered by her husband. He is a murderer. One day fate will catch up with him. You’ll see. It will be so. I am sure of it. And now my beautiful boy is taken from me by the sea. He was so young to die. Why did it have to happen to him? Within a few miles of the coast he was …”

“Perhaps he will come back.”

“Never,” she said. “I shall never see his face again.”

“At least,” I said, “You have hope.”

And I thought: I have no hope. I have seen my mother laid in her grave. Vividly into my mind there flashed the picture of the family burial ground—the grave of my father’s first wife and that of the unknown sailor and my mother’s.

She started to talk then, of her son Fennimore and his ambitions. “No mother ever had a better son. He was noble, he was good. He was a great man. And my daughter … my little girl. She was frail. She should never have married. But it seemed natural and there was that … that”—her voice sank to a whisper—“that monster!”

I tried to soothe her. I said she must go back to bed. But she would not be soothed; she started to lament loudly and I could not calm her.

I did not know what to do because she was becoming hysterical and I thought she must be ill. She clung to me, but I managed to disengage myself and I went along to my grandmother’s room.

I wakened her and told her what had happened.

“Poor woman,” she said, “she is in a sorry state. This terrible disappearance of her son has brought back the tragic loss of her daughter. She gives way to her grief and I fear it will unhinge her mind.”

We went back to her. She was sitting there, her hands covering her face while she rocked back and forth in her misery.

My grandmother said to me: “You should go to bed, my child.”

I did not take any notice. I felt there was something I could do.

“Come, Janet,” said my grandmother, “you should go to bed. I will bring you something to make you sleep.” She took Janet Landor’s arm and I took the other. We led her to her bed.

“Lie still,” soothed my grandmother. “Try to sleep. Don’t brood, it can do no good. We can best help ourselves and others by stifling our grief.”

I was proud of her because I knew how she suffered from my mother’s death and I wanted to be like her.

“That child’s mother,” whispered Janet, “was she murdered too?”

My grandmother had taken me by the arm.

“She is rambling,” she whispered to me. “Now, Tamsyn, go back to your bed. Try not to disturb the others. I will look after this lady. Good night, my child.”

I went away wondering about poor Janet Landor; and there was one phrase which kept ringing in my head: “That poor child’s mother … was she murdered too?”

She must have been referring to my mother, and what did she mean?

My grandmother had said she was rambling and she was certainly hysterical. She could not have been referring to my mother!

I did not see Janet Landor for several days and when I did she was quiet again and although I forgot that nightly disturbance the memory of it was to return to me with some force later.

Senara and I stayed with my grandmother until the spring. It was May when we went back to the castle.

A surprise awaited us. Our father had married again. Senara’s mother was to be my stepmother.

After coming back from Lyon Court, Castle Paling seemed an alien place, which was strange for it had always been my home. Everything seemed to have changed since we had been away. My mother’s influence had been eliminated entirely and in its place was something new—intangible; it was hard to say what.

Some of the furnishings had been changed—the bedchamber which my mother and father had shared was entirely different. There were rich velvet hangings about the bed and at the windows. There was a foreign look about it. I looked into the Red Room. That had been left exactly as it always had been. I remembered all the stories I had heard about its being haunted. My mother’s sitting-room which she had used so much was also left untouched. There was her carved wooden chair and the table on which stood the rather large sandalwood writing-desk of which she had always been fond.