I think during my stay she tried to make me interested in other young people. She gave several dinner parties to which she invited eligible young men. One or two of them were engaged in the Trading Company and knew Fenn. His name was mentioned more than once. It was very clear to me that he was a highly respected member of the company, as I would expect him to be.

There were several older men there, seamen mostly who had worked for my grandfather in his various ships in the days before he had become a trader.

I was amazed how these people enjoyed talking of the old days.

“Life has become tame,” said one of them who was seated next to me at dinner. “The days of the old Queen was the time to be alive.”

Another of his age put in: “And that was the days before the Defeat of the Armada.”

“We were in a very dangerous position then.”

“That was good for us. Every man ready to do his best to ward off the foe. People are not like that now. They’re selfish, looking for their own gain.”

I could not help commenting that they had always been like that.

They talked with great affection of the old Queen, of her vanities, her temper, her injustice and her greatness.

“There has never been so shrewd a monarch and there never will be,” was the verdict.

It was true that they had not the same respect for our reigning king. He was dirty in his habits; unkempt in his appearance and ill-mannered at the table. He had the disadvantage of having been brought up by Scotsmen, they said.

“Though his mother,” said my old gentleman, “was said to be one of the most elegant and beautiful women the world has ever known.”

Then they started to talk of old times and how the Queen of Scotland had been the centre of plots to put her on the throne and our Queen had always been one step ahead of the scheming Mary.

“Mary was an adulteress,” said one.

“And a murderess,” said the other.

They discussed the murder of her second husband, Lord Darnley.

“He was to have been blown up in Kirk o’ Fields, and we know who planned that. But it went wrong, and he was found in the grounds … dead … but without a sign on his body of how he died.”

I found I was suddenly listening attentively.

“There was nothing to show …”

I felt my heart begin to beat faster and I said: “How could that be possible?”

“Oh, it is possible,” was the answer. “There is a method and these villains knew it.”

“What method?” I asked earnestly.

“I believe that if a wet cloth is placed over the mouth and held firmly there until the victim is suffocated, there will be no signs of violence on his skin.”

I felt it hard to concentrate after that. Those words kept dancing about in my brain.

There had been no signs of violence on my mother’s body. Nor had there been on Lord Darnley’s.

I would have liked to talk to my grandmother but I dared not. She looked so old and fragile that I did not want to upset her.

I said nothing. I wanted to go back to the castle. I was certain now that my mother had feared something. On the night I had left her alone she had died … and there were no marks of violence on her body.

Someone had killed her. Moreover she had an inkling that someone was trying to.

If she was writing down the events of her days she must have written something which she considered secret since she had wanted to hide it.

I had to find those papers.

It was April when I arrived back at the castle. When I went up to our bedchamber, I found that Senara’s things were gone.

She came hurrying in and hugged me.

“So you are back. I’ll admit it doesn’t seem the same without you.”

“Where are your things?”

She put her head on one side and regarded me with a smile. “I thought it was time you and I had separate rooms. There are enough and to spare in the castle. It was all very well when we were little and afraid of the dark.”

I was a little hurt. I thought of the pleasant manner in which we had always chatted before we slept; and how she had clearly not been pleased if I was ever not there, as for instance when I visited my grandmother.

“I’ve gone into the Red Room,” she said.

“Why that room? There are others.”

“I had a fancy for it.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“You’re not angry, are you?” she asked.

“No, but I wonder why you felt it necessary.”

She smiled secretly. I knew there was a reason. And why had she chosen the Red Room? I knew how daring and reckless she was. A thought had come into my mind. She was in love with Dickon. I was certain of that. The very fact that marriage with him would be so highly unsuitable would make it attractive to her. And he was going away soon, for when the Deemsters left he was going with them. He was one of them now. He would go first to Holland and join in that greater project to settle in America if it ever came to pass.

An idea came to me then. Could she have chosen the Red Room because if the servants heard strange noises there they would say it was a ghost and be afraid to enter?

Did Dickon really come to the castle to visit her at night? Not the puritan surely. But how sincere were they … either of them? And I believed that they were passionately in love.

It was a very uneasy situation. I wondered what would happen to Dickon if he were really visiting Senara and if my father or her mother discovered this.

Lord Cartonel was still paying his visits. Senara and her mother took wine with him. I was certain that he was going to ask for Senara’s hand; and if he did then I was sure that she would be obliged to take this very grand gentleman. He was just what I believed her mother had always wanted for her.

As for myself, I started my search for the papers again. But where could I look that I had not looked before?

My thoughts were diverted by the talk of witchcraft which had become rife since my departure. Merry was excited by it.

“They do say, Mistress,” she told me, “that there be a coven of ’em and ’tis not so far away. Some says some place, some another. Terrible things do happen there. ’Tis anti-Christian. There they do worship the Devil himself and he sits there in their midst in the form of a horned goat.”

“It’s a lot of nonsense, Merry,” I told her.

“’Tis not so thought to be, Mistress, pardon the contradiction. There be terrible goings on. One serving-girl were out late and she saw them there. She peeped and there they was mother-naked, dancing, wild, like … as though they was inciting each other to be criminal, like.”

“How did the serving-girl know they were acting in criminal manner?”

“Oh ’twere clear to see.”

“If she were innocent how would she recognize these criminal acts?”

“Well, ’twas moonlight and they threw off their clothes and danced together; and then when they be exhausted they lie down together and that’s the worst of it.”

“I would like to question that serving-girl.”

“Oh, she wouldn’t mind that, Mistress, only she bain’t one of ours. She be terrible upset about it for she do think they knew she was watching. They would, like, wouldn’t ’em, seeing they’m sold to the Devil and they say he be powerful … like God really but on the other side.”

“Merry,” I said severely, “you know that no good can come of this gossip.”

“’Tis saying that only good will come when every witch be hanging from a gibbet.”

I wanted to leave her, but I felt it was imperative that I knew the truth.

I said: “I think the girl imagined she saw this. What was she doing out at night in any case?”

“She’d been to visit her mother who’d been took ill and she had to wait with her till help come. She did see familiar faces there in the coven, Mistress. She knows now that some be the Devil’s own.”

“Has she said who?”

“No, she be feared to. Every time she do open her mouth to say she be took with trembling. But they be going to make her say. They be meeting … all them that is going to put a stop to witches will take her and make her talk. It must be so, Mistress. Mistress Jelling have lost her baby … stillborn it were, and a terrible disease have broke out among her husband’s cows.”